Day: August 18, 2011

For most of its history, the United States has prided itself on its democracy as one of its most endearing and distinguishing characteristics. Indeed, we think so highly of our democratic system of governance that we will go to war to inflict it on other countries and cultures.

But from elsewhere on the globe, the U.S. democratic system doesn’t look so great these days, as Robert Grenier notes in Al Jazeera in English:

Americans like to think of themselves and their country as a model for the world. Indeed, this attitude of self-congratulation is one of the least attractive aspects of US culture when viewed from abroad, even if Americans themselves are barely aware of it. For most Americans, this common faith in the superiority of many aspects of their society – from popular entertainment, to higher education, to the judicial system, and so on – is part of the web of shared assumptions that underlie US culture. And among these, nothing is so firmly fixed in the American mind than the inherent superiority of their democratic political system.

….

No, to understand the core of the problem in the US system one must look deeper, at the nature of the system itself. Those in the Middle East who are currently struggling to democratise their systems of governance would do well to take a hard look to the US model: Not just to copy its positive aspects – and there are many – but to avoid its palpable weaknesses. As I used to note for younger cadres who suffered under my years of management in government, one should not doubt the value of a negative model. For students and proponents of democracy there is much to be learned from the US, even if the nature of those lessons is not always what most Americans would anticipate.