(via GNXP)  Francis Fukuyama is interviewed in the Aussie journal Policy about the interaction between the social and political sciences.  Fukuyama starts by pointing out the axiomatic debate between "The Blank Slate" and "Innate Human Nature" views of the world.   The intellectual tide is beginning to turn towards the Innate Human Nature crowd:

Andrew Norton:You are unusual amongst contemporary political theorists in that an explicit theory of human nature is central to your thought. Do you think political theories can do without a view of human nature?

Francis Fukuyama:I think most social scientists and a lot of post-Kantian philosophers have tried to do without human nature. The only reason that I feel you can raise the human nature argument again is that over the last 30 years in the life sciences there has been a lot of empirical work that has made the concept respectable to scientists again. I think social scientists and certainly people in cultural studies haven't gotten that message yet. They are committed to the idea that all human behaviour is completely plastic and socially constructed. They are very resistant to the notion of human nature.

Fukuyama, of course, is perhaps the pre-eminent "humanist" and "universalist" today.   He fundamentally believes in an innate set of gene-encoded human desires across cultures and contends that the twin pillars of Liberal Democracy and Capitalism are the appropriate governmental manifestations of those universal impulses.

On the Taliban & the suppression of Human Nature (which, in this case is a desire for Indian pop culture):

[Fukuyama] It was quite revealing in Afghanistan after the Taliban were defeated that the first thing the people in Kabul did was to do dig up their VCRs and television sets and watch these corny Indian soap operas. Like virtually every other human being on the planet, they like that sort of thing. You can't say that watching cheesy Indian movies is a universal characteristic of human beings, but beneath that there are certain tendencies that are given by nature, and if you try to restrict them too much you are going to run up against some real political problems.

And finally, on social 'recognition':

AN: The desire for 'recognition' is a theme in all your books. Can you explain what you mean by that?

FF: It’s probably easiest to go back to Adam Smith and The Theory of Moral Sentiments because I think he understood this perfectly well. Economists have this notion that people seek utility, which for most economists has to do with the satisfaction of various desires or money income. I think Smith understood that there’s actually a more complex psychology involved. In some cases we do want resources, but in many other cases what we want is the inter-subjective esteem of another human being that recognises your dignity. Smith has this phrase where he says that when the rich man glories in his richness it is not that he lives to enjoy in private the money that he has, it is more that he is seen by other people as having achieved wealth and status. The reason Smith says poverty is humiliating is that the poor man is invisible to his fellow man and is not recognised as another human being.

The point Fukuyama makes here represents one of my most fundamental breaks with the general idea of Nozick-style Anarcho-Capitalism.   Formalized social structures like local political elements aren't merely there to maximize freedom/wealth-making ability.   There's an almost Rawls-like element of distributed social justice revolving around political voices.