by Patrick Basham

About the author: Patrick Basham is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Representative Government in Washington, D.C. He writes and speaks extensively on comparative politics, democratization, political parties, campaigns, and elections.

President George W. Bush is rolling the democratic dice in Iraq and gambling that the formation of democratic institutions there can stimulate a democratic political culture. If he is proved correct it will mean a democratic first, for what Bush seeks to achieve in Iraq has never been accomplished before. On the contrary, the available evidence strongly suggests that the relationship between institutions and culture works the other way around.

A political culture shapes democracy far more than democracy shapes the political culture. The building blocks of a modern, democratic political culture are not institutional in nature. The building blocks...