The culture club: exploring the central liberal truth.

• Author: Harrison, Lawrence E.

IN THE early 1960s, when I started my career in development assistance, the experts were convinced that tyranny, poverty and social injustice could be successfully combated by a combination of decolonization, good policies, and the financial, technical and moral support of the advanced democracies. Democracy and capitalism, many thought, were rooted in human nature, and all that was necessary was to remove the "artificial" obstacles to progress created by colonial powers, irresponsible and greedy oligarchies, and incompetent politicians, economists and administrators.

John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, where I worked, was symbolic of the optimism of the time. Inspired by the success of the Marshall Plan, the architects of the alliance foresaw within ten years a democratic, rapidly developing Latin America immune to the Cuban revolutionary infection. Yankee good intentions, know-how and money would help enlightened Latin American leaders to transform the region. Similar approaches following decolonization in Africa, the Middle East and Asia would produce similar results.

But with a few conspicuous exceptions, mostly in East Asia, almost a half-century later the optimistic scenario has not materialized. As Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia demonstrate, democracy is far from consolidated in Latin America, and sustained, transforming economic growth has eluded all but Chile. Africa's post-colonial hopes have been replaced by despair in the wake of irresponsible, often tyrannical leadership and frequent civil wars. In the entire continent, only Botswana has approximated the optimistic scenario. The Islamic world, a millennium ago a leader of human progress, lags far behind the West and East Asia, a condition underscored by female illiteracy rates in excess of 50 percent in Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

As disappointment and then frustration set in with the passing decades, the experts tried new approaches, with limited success. Among the development magic wands: infrastructure, community development, focus on the poorest of the poor, appropriate technology, macroeconomic policy, the private sector, promotion of democracy and the rule of law, and anti-corruption campaigns.

During my twenty years (1962-82) with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), I directed USAID missions in four Latin American countries and Haiti. My new frontiersman can-do optimism was gradually displaced by a growing sense of the complexity and intractability of many of Latin America's problems. The more I tried to help find solutions, the more I encountered a pattern of obstacles that were confounding, because, as it became increasingly clear to me, behind them lay deeply rooted values, beliefs and attitudes--culture--inimical to democracy, social justice and prosperity.

With respect to economic development, I was learning something that was articulated by Alan Greenspan many years later, in the wake of the collapse of the Russian economy in the late 1990s: "I used to think that capitalism was human nature. But it isn't at all. It's culture." This, of course, evokes Max Weber's thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

With respect to democratization, I was learning how on the mark Alexis de Tocqueville was in Democracy in America:

 I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in despite of mores; while the latter may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to some advantage. The importance of mores is a common truth to which study and experience incessantly direct our attention. I find it occupies the central position in my thoughts; all my ideas come back to it in the end. 

Tocqueville's wisdom appears to have escaped the Bush Administration, which has staked so much on the doctrine, "The values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society."

PRESIDENT BUSH'S frequent references to the democratization of Japan during the post-World War II occupation as a model for Iraq is fundamentally flawed. Our military occupations of three countries in the Caribbean basin in the early decades of the 20th century may have far greater relevance.

At the end of World War II, Japan was a defeated, devastated society. But four years earlier, it had much of East Asia and the western Pacific under its domination, reflecting its highly developed industrial, technological and infrastructure base, as well as a unified, disciplined, educated and skilled populace. Japan had eliminated male and female illiteracy in the first decades of the 20th century. By contrast, according to World Bank statistics, more than 70 percent of Iraqi women and more than 40 percent of Iraqi men were illiterate in 2001.

It is true that Confucianism, a dominant influence on Japanese values and attitudes, nurtures authoritarian governance. But Confucianism can also nurture economic miracles that can in turn nurture democracy: Witness the democratic transformations of South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as Japan. By contrast, no Arab country has yet come close to stable democracy, and, among all Islamic countries, only Turkey and perhaps Indonesia approach...