Importing Democracy

How far would you go to find the "American Dream?" Would you go to the ends of the earth? Literally?In the furthest corner of the globe, there is a little island nation known primarily for exporting lamb, wool, and Hobbit-based movies. It is only as big as Colorado, and has a population about the same size as the L.A. Metro area. It has little to no strategic influence in world affairs. But they performed a political miracle. New Zealand is the only country to ever move from a...
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How far would you go to find the "American Dream?" Would you go to the ends of the earth? Literally?In the furthest corner of the globe, there is a little island nation known primarily for exporting lamb, wool, and Hobbit-based movies. It is only as big as Colorado, and has a population about the same size as the L.A. Metro area. It has little to no strategic influence in world affairs. But they performed a political miracle. New Zealand is the only country to ever move from a two-party democracy to a multi-party democracy via referendum. And as a result, New Zealand is the least corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International. Importing Democracy is an explanation of how New Zealand changed its broken system and the resulting effects. It explores flaws in the United States electoral system which lead to corruption, political polarization, and increase our risk of political instability. These flaws, contrary to the popular wisdom, are not a consequence of our character, but are the result of cold mathematics. But Importing Democracy is not a dry academic treatise. It is also a travelogue and personal journey of self-discovery, as the angry young man who starts this exploration eventually becomes the mellow, not-so-young man who learns to accept that democracy is not a zero-sum game where one side must lose for the other side to gain, and that democracy need not be "us vs. them" when it can be just "us." Bouncing from kilted satirists to crazed conspiracy theorists to the offices of party leaders, journalists, and Prime Ministers. It tells the story of how his assistant was wrongfully accused of terrorism - in a country that has no terrorism - just days before the project began, and how he met a Rastafarian Parliamentarian at a rally supporting his release. It is a story about finding success only because nobody bothers to tell him what he is doing is impossible. It is an outsider's perspective on politics that questions the most basic assumptions behind American Democracy. No political system is perfect, if only because all political systems elect politicians. But perhaps instead of focusing on "exporting democracy" we can focus on importing ideas whose time have come.