The publisher’s blurb for Bob Rae’s Exporting Democracy: The Risks and Rewards of Pursuing a Good Idea is intriguingly provocative. “The way most western politicians talk, democracy is the pinnacle of civilization, the best political system there is. Many think it’s the system the rest of the world ought to adopt. Bob Rae’s not one of them,” pronounce the PR gurus at the publishing house.
This reviewer was hooked. Bob Rae, leading Liberal (and liberal) luminary, a democracy skeptic? The former head of the Forum of Federations, an organization devoted to promoting federalism abroad, now wary of getting his hands dirty in foreign lands? The same author who argued so eloquently in The Three Questions: Prosperity and the Public Good that “we need more of [the democratic spirit] to give hope to those who feel abandoned and bewildered in this brave new world of rapid change,” turned from idealist to Kissingerian foreign policy...
Leslie Campbell is senior associate and director of Middle East programs at the Washington-based National Democratic Institute. Before joining NDI he was chief of staff to New Democratic Party leader Audrey McLaughlin and an assistant to Manitoba NDP leader Gary Doer.
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