Consider these two videos. The first is one of several political ads praising Trump that were widely broadcast over the past weekend. It is set to the song "Love Me" by R&B singer JMSN. I saw one of these ads multiple times during the NFL football games. Each ad ended with the words: "Paid for by the U.S. Government."
The second video is from the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas on September 10. Trump told the crowd to raise their right hands and repeat after him a Pledge of Allegiance to himself. "I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the country that loves us so much he can't even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, and vote on November 3." He later added: "You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to Hell." The Pledge concluded with "So help me God." Trump has asked his supporters to recite a similar Pledge of Allegiance to himself beginning in his first political campaign in 2016.
These two videos illustrate how Trump's second term as president is all about regime change--about Trump trying to change America from a liberal democracy to presidential patrimonialism. We can foresee that Trump will fail, and that the voters in the upcoming midterm elections will repudiate Trump's patrimonialism because they understand, even if only in some vague way, that it's better for them to live in a liberal democracy rather than under Trump's patrimonial rule. This will confirm Francis Fukuyama's claim that we live now at the "end of history," where the long debate over thousands of years as to the best way to organize social and political life has come to an end, because we now see that liberal democracy is the most satisfying social order for most human beings.
TRUMP'S PATRIMONIALISM
In the American Pledge of Allegiance, Americans pledge allegiance "to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." They pledge their allegiance to America--its flag, its political institutions, and its moral principles. Thus they pledge allegiance to those impersonal symbols, institutions, and principles that are distinctively American.
By contrast, in Trump's Pledge of Allegiance, Americans pledge their personal loyalty to Trump as America's leader. That's what German sociologist Max Weber--in Economy and Society (1922)--called "patrimonialism." The Oxford English Dictionary defines patrimonialism as "a system of social organization or government in which a male leader maintains authority through individuals with loyalty to him personally." This personal loyalty to the leader is based on kinship, personal allegiances, and patron-client relations. The leader enforces this loyalty by rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies. For example, organized criminal gangs of mobsters are often patrimonial organizations based on personal loyalty to one's family, to the familial patriarch, and to others bound together by the exchange of favors between patrons and clients. Political patrimonialism means that the political leader runs the state as if it were his personal property or family business. That explains why Trump can have his political campaign advertising paid for by American taxpayers: Trump treats the federal treasury as his personal bank account. (Explaining Trump's presidency as a patrimonial attack on the modern liberal state has been elaborated by Hanson and Kopstein [2024] and Rauch [2025].)
According to Weber, patrimonialism stands in contrast to "rational-legal bureaucracy," in which public administrators and government staff are judged by impersonal standards of merit and efficiency rather than personal loyalty to the leader. Before Trump became president, the norm was that federal administrators should be hired and advanced based on their expertise, experience, and training. But under Trump, particularly in his second term, administrators have been judged by their personal loyalty to Trump. And so, for example, Todd Blanche's only qualification for becoming Attorney General was that he had been Trump's personal lawyer. Trump appointed him so that he could turn the Department of Justice into Trump's personal law firm, which he has done by firing anyone in the Department who is perceived as disloyal to Trump.
Similarly, Pete Hegseth was appointed Secretary of Defense not because he had the expertise and experience that would have prepared him to manage one of the most complex bureaucracies in the world, but because he pledged his loyalty to Trump. One example of that loyalty was his attempt to punish Senator Mark Kelly for making a video with five other Democratic lawmakers directed at the military and intelligence community, in which they said "Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders." This message enraged Trump, who accused the Democrats of "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" Since Kelly is a retired Captain in the Navy, Hegseth tried to punish him by ordering a military review of his public statements that could result in a reduction of his retirement rank and pension.
Notice what is implied here. To declare that the military can "refuse illegal orders" from the president is "seditious behavior, punishable by death," because, as Trump has said, "as President, I can do anything I want." To say that the president's orders could be illegal is to assert that the impersonal rule of law constrains the personal rule of a president. But Trump's patrimonialism means that the law is whatever he says it is. That's why Trump relies so much on executive orders by which he makes laws as personal decrees of his will. He thus invokes the principle of the Stuart monarchs in England--Rex Lex: the King is the law, and therefore the King can do no wrong.
This patrimonialism is rooted in human biological nature, which explains why it appears so often in human history. Evolutionary biologists explain natural human sociability as based primarily on two principles: kin selection (or inclusive fitness) and reciprocal altruism. Both principles depend on the kind of personal relationships that support patrimonialism. Evolution by kin selection inclines human beings to cooperate with genetic relatives (or those thought to be genetic relatives), while being more altruistic toward closer genetic relatives than to more distant relatives. The evolution of reciprocal altruism inclines human beings to develop relationships of mutual benefit or mutual harm through "tit-for-tat" interactions. If you have benefited me in some way, then I will benefit you. But if you have harmed me, then I will harm you. In these two ways, human beings engage in social cooperation based on personal trust that is generated either by genetic kinship or by social reciprocity.
Patrimonialism is rooted in these same two principles. The patrimonial leader (such as a mob boss or a political ruler) supports his family members and his friends who have exchanged favors with him in the past. They all trust one another based on their history of familial bonding and social reciprocity. But outside that personal circle of family and friends, the rest of the world cannot be trusted. It's friends against enemies. (This point about how patrimonialism is grounded in the biological nature of social cooperation through kinship and reciprocity is developed by Fukuyama in his book The Origins of Political Order.)
When impersonal institutions for cooperation--such as the rule of law or impartial norms of justice--are weakened, then people will tend to fall back onto the two natural forms of personal cooperation that support patrimonialism. And so in a patrimonial government like that being built by Trump, the offices of government will be filled by his family members or by those with a history of loyalty to him, regardless of whether these people have the expertise or experience that would make them likely to carry out the duties of their office efficiently.
If Trump's patrimonialism were to succeed in overturning American liberal democracy, that would seem to refute Fukuyama's argument about the triumph of liberal democracy at the end of history.
FUKUYAMA'S END OF HISTORY
In the summer of 1989, The National Interest published Fukuyama's article "The End of History?" Fukuyama argued that the end of the Cold War confirmed G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy of history--at least as interpreted by Alexandre Kojeve--according to which history was culminating in the liberal democratic state as the state in which all human needs would be satisfied. According to Fukuyama, there are two reasons for the triumph of liberal democracy, which he understood as combining a capitalist economy, a liberal society, and a democratic polity. First, liberalism satisfies the human desire for material security and comfort through the economic productivity of a free-market economy and the scientific conquest of nature. Second, liberalism satisfies the human desire for recognition of one's moral worth by others through an egalitarian social and political order in which all human beings mutually recognize one another as equal in their dignity and human rights. Thus, the history of human striving for satisfaction comes to an end when human beings discover that liberal democracy is the only social order that satisfies their deepest longings--the longing for material prosperity and the longing for moral recognition. In 1992, Fukuyama elaborated his reasoning in a book--The End of History and the Last Man.
This writing made Fukuyama internationally famous, and it provoked a debate over his "End of History" thesis that has continued to the present. His critics have objected that obviously history has not come to an end because there have been many historical conflicts--wars, revolutions, and social unrest--since 1989, and many of those conflicts have arisen from illiberal movements attacking liberal democracy. So, for example, the 9/11 terrorist attacks seemed to show the violent challenge of radical Islam to Western liberal democracy. Then, later, the populist authoritarian regimes (like Victor Orban's Hungary) seemed to present "illiberal democracy" as an alternative to liberal democracy. And, most recently, Donald Trump's patrimonialism seems to be an attempt to overturn the liberal democratic tradition in American history.
Fukuyama has responded to these criticisms by claiming that his critics have read the title of his article, but they haven't read the article itself, nor have they read his first book. If they had read the article and his book carefully, they would have seen that he makes two crucial points about the meaning of the end of history. First, if they had read the last paragraph of the article and the last five chapters of the book, they would have seen that Fukuyama worries that "the end of history will be a very sad time," because it will bring what Nietzsche called the Last Man, a man who desires only a safe and comfortable life of petty pleasures and shallow entertainment with no striving for anything great or transcendent because such grand striving would be too risky and strenuous. The society of the Last Man will be boring. This led to the last sentence of Fukuyama's article: "Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again."
The second point ignored by Fukuyama's critics is that when he speaks about the "End of History," he is using the word "history" in a special sense. In his most recent book--In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir--he says that the End of History is not about history as "the flow of day-to-day events around the world" but history "on the level of ideas" (98). Human history as the unpredictable flow of human events will never end--at least as long as there are living human beings. But the intellectual history of the human debate over the most desirable social order did come to an end once it became clear that liberal democratic capitalism--as based on the principles of liberty and equality--is the most fully satisfying social order.
There are still passionate opponents of liberal democracy in the world today. But they cannot present any coherent and plausible vision of an alternative to liberal democracy that would satisfy human desires better than existing liberal democracies. We can see that in the failure of Trump's patrimonial authoritarianism to Make America Illiberal Again. Trump and the intellectual defenders of Trumpist authoritarianism (like those at the Claremont Institute) have failed to offer a persuasive account of a Trumpist authoritarian social order that would be more satisfying than the American liberal democracy established by the American Founders.
A few days ago, at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Majorie Taylor Greene declared: "MAGA is dead." That is surprising considering that Greene was one of the most loyal supporters of Trump in the Congress. Her break from Trump began last year when he refused to honor his campaign promise to release all the files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was once friends with Trump. He told Greene that releasing all of the Epstein files would hurt "my friends." Greene and other MAGA Republicans were outraged that Trump was protecting those rich and powerful people who belonged to the "Epstein class" because they were his friends. In using the power of the state to protect his friends, Trump acts like the typical patrimonial leader.
It is also typical for a patrimonial leader that Trump has called Greene a "traitor" for criticizing him. Since he regards himself as the personal embodiment of America, anyone who becomes his enemy becomes the enemy of America, just as Senator Kelly is guilty of sedition and should be executed.
Another reason for Greene and other Republicans to break with Trump is his war on Iran. This violates Trump's campaign promise that he would have an "America First" foreign policy, so that there would be no more foreign wars, particularly in the Middle East. When Trump was asked about how this war contradicted his "America First" policy, he answered by saying that since the idea of "America First" was his personal creation, this idea will mean whatever he says it means. So according to Trump's patrimonialism, "America First" really means "Trump First."
We can also see Trump's patrimonialism in how he decided to go to war with Iran. Not only did he not consult with Congress, he did not even take seriously the objections to the war coming from the military and intelligence bureaucrats, who warned that there would be no regime change in Iran, that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz and cause an oil crisis, and that the war would deplete the stock of interceptor munitions. Trump ignored all these warnings because Benjamin Netanyahu knew how to use flattery to persuade Trump that a U.S. war against Iran would bring a regime change in Iran that would show the world that Trump really is the most powerful human being who has ever lived.
Trump won the popular vote for president for the first time in 2024. As I have argued previously, Trump's electoral victory came from putting together a multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious liberal coalition of voters, many of whom were voting against the high inflation reached during Biden's term. So these voters were not voting for the illiberal patrimonialism that Trump has displayed over the past year and a half. Those who voted for him in 2024 will have the chance in the upcoming midterm elections to reject his presidential patrimonialism by voting for Democrats.
If that happens, the implicit message will be that most American voters regard liberal democracy as far more desirable than Trump's patrimonialism. If so, that will confirm Fukuyama's claim that liberal democracy continues to be the most satisfying social order for human beings at the end of history.
REFERENCES
Fukuyama, Francis. 1989. "The End of History?" The National Interest, summer.
Fukuyama, Francis. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2011. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehistoric Times to the French Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2026. In the Realm of the Last Man: A Memoir. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Hanson, Stephen E., and Jeffrey S. Kopstein. 2024. The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Rauch, Jonathan. 2025. "One Word Describes Trump." The Atlantic, February 24.
