Democracy Inc.
A new industry has sprung up in the West to promote democracy abroad. Sometimes it does more harm than good.
Friends and foes of the United States smirked last fall as the champion of the free world waded in embarrassment through Florida´s electoral swamps. Even as U.S. government agencies and nonprofit groups were busily monitoring "troubled" elections in half a dozen foreign lands, from Haiti to Azerbaijan, America´s presidential election was thrown into doubt by arthritic voting technology, sloppy voter registration, and partisan election officials--flaws that were supposed to afflict only "less developed" countries. One Brazilian pundit half-seriously called for international sanctions to force a new vote in Florida.
But American democracy has never been faultless, and--derisive comments in the international press notwithstanding--U.S. efforts to promote democracy abroad have never been predicated on its perfection at home. Indeed, the American groups that work to spread representative government overseas have drawn heavily on non-American models precisely because they recognize the shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of the U.S. system.