The United States has always taken pride in being a model of democracy. However, presidential systems are more closely associated with dictatorship and single-party rule in other parts of the world like Latin America and Africa. Indeed, democratic practices more often flourish in parliamentary systems, and the United States remains the only advanced, industrialized democracy with a presidential system instead of a parliamentary organization.
Each of the 21 chapters in Importing Democracy: Ideas from Around the World to Reform and Revitalize American Politics and Government highlights a feature of a foreign nation's political system that is absent in the U.S. system. Chapters also draw on brief case studies from countries as diverse as Australia, Brazil, Iceland, India, Germany and South Africa. Importing Democracy explores whether American politics and government might be enhanced by incorporating a multiparty system, a simplified Constitutional amendment process, parliamentary practices of accountability, proportional representation elections, presidential votes of "no confidence," restraints on judicial power, and much more.
About the Author: Raymond A. Smith, PhD, is adjunct assistant professor of political science at Columbia University and New York University in New York City, NY.
