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Is Democratic Theory for Export?
Sixth Annual Morgenthau Memorial Lecture on Ethics and Foreign Policy
Annual Morgenthau Memorial Lecture Series (1981-2006)
Jacques Barzun
May 26, 1986
Cultural historian Jacques Barzun argues that democracy is not an ideology that can be exported but a historical development and mode of life peculiar to the political context in which it developed. Extrapolating from this, we can say that attempts to base a foreign policy on the idea of exporting democracy—as sought by both the Reagan and Clinton administrations—will forever be doomed to failure.
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Democracy, Democracy Promotion
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