Critical Reviews from Abroad

Many Americans accept as a truism Winston Churchill's famous aphorism -- "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." But many foreigners -- even if -- they seem to have feel lived in that the U.S. democracy, for at a least time in its American incarnation, is not right for them.

In the past 23 years 550 business, political and educational leaders from 86 foreign countries have studied American life and thought firsthand, for up to five months, under the privately financed Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship program. Of the 280 who responded to a recent survey, more than half rejected the U.S. system of constitutional democracy as a model for their countries. Nearly two-thirds said the U.S. social-welfare system is inadequate. Fully 85% thought Americans were unsympathetic to foreign revolutionary governments. More than half scorned U.S. trade policy and foreign investment as being motivated chiefly by self-interest. A slight majority rated the U.S. as altruistic only in combatting pollution of the seas and feeding the hungry.

There was one bright area in the fellows' generally negative view of the U.S.: almost two-thirds found equality of opportunity existed for most U.S. citizens, while another 26% thought it existed at least for some.

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