ABSTRACT
With all the “nation-building” that has gone on in the post–World War II period, it has finally dawned on most of us that there is a strong cultural component in how various nations perceive the value of their own particular political arrangements. America is finding it a hard sell to convince many nations that not only is democracy a good thing, but that it is a universal way of governing, and not just the same thing as becoming just like America. For that matter, it is often just as difficult for other nations to convince Americans that democracy is not exactly the same as them becoming just like us. Increasingly we are beginning to realize that no matter how much we try to help other countries modernize, we shouldn’t assume a simple evolutionary path, that in fact though nations try to control their paths of development they usually don’t succeed entirely. In fact, whatever choices they do make have costs as well as benefits, and in reality national development involves cultural and even psychological choices in addition to processes of political and economic choice.
