ABSTRACT
Democracy is a matter of culture as many countries in postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe have come to realize. There is much more to democracy than freedom of speech, the freedom to vote, and other such institutional measures.1 Democracy requires some sense of community in order to function eff ectively; a sense that people are bound together by something more than self-interested reasons; that they are part of a tradition in which there are certain core values that make a country distinctive and something to which people can give their allegiance. There has to be some sense of common interests that binds people together and creates a culture that is more than the sum of individual interests. Yet democracy in our country is undermined by a sense of individualism that is part and parcel of our economic system and thus spills over into our understanding of government and its role in society.
