In this article for Liberty Unbound, I examine why Western institutions cannot simply be imposed on societies that lack the cultural, moral, and intellectual foundations that gave rise to them.

Institutions such as democracy, public education, the nation-state, the rule of law, and liberty are not mechanical structures that can be transplanted at will. They depend on habits of reason, self-restraint, trust, and moral judgment. When these deeper foundations are absent, imported Western institutions mutate into something very different from what they were meant to be.

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