Formalizing Fukuyama

Fukuyama posits a tripartite model of good government: it balances a strong state, the rule of law, and democratic accountability. It seems we might make a trigonometric model of government types to formalize this. We take the element of the three that is strongest, say, the rule of law, and make that hypotenuse. Then the relative strength of that factor and the two remaining ones can be expressed with the trigonometric functions. So we could say, for instance, that the sine of mainland China is much greater than that of Nigeria (depending, of course, on which other leg we put a strong state and which democratic accountability).

And, of course, if we venture into generalized trigonometry, we can even drop the requirement that we pick out a hypotenuse, and deal with all possible relationships between the three factors.

In any case, that is what I woke up thinking about this morning