ABSTRACT
Any discussion of the United States’ political democratization is fundamentally complicated by its role since 1917 as a global model and defender of liberal democracy, a role that burgeoned after 1941. The transformation of US politics from a narrowly based assimilationist and exclusionary system to a broadly defined and inclusive democracy is the major story of its twentieth-century politics. As a set of bureaucratic resources and institutions, the US federal state also appeared weakly placed to advance democratization in comparison with other liberal democracies. Since 1917, but particularly from 1941, the United States has acted as the pre-eminent defender of liberal democracy in two senses. First, it has espoused democratic values in its political institutions and political culture and offered them, at times explicitly, as suitable for emulation by other states. Second, it has served as the principal military enforcer of democracy against totalitarianism, in its various guises.
