One of the constants of American history -- at least as long as I've been alive -- is the following.
Every time we look at a country whose traditional political structure has been ripped apart by invading armies (often ours) or by internal dissensions aided and abetted by foreign influences (often ours), and which then somehow fails to immediately come up with a new system consisting of a bicameral parliament, a strong executive who will brook no disagreement with what we want it to do, a two-party system and a populace lulled by a media system that works with the government to manufacture a consensus (thanks for the term, Noam!), the immediate explanation that everyone jumps on is: "These people have no tradition of democracy!"
Of course, everybody has a tradition of democracy, to some degree or another, at least if you get away from the idea that a democracy is not just represented, in our particular case, by two parties, three branches of government, and a ballot box, but that it is two parties, three branches of government, and a ballot box.
Democracy is, in fact, any system in which individuals have the right, power, and willingness to help decide the rules of the society in which they live. Most societies embrace this, in one form or another. True, it's not always that obvious at the national level, but certainly at the local or tribal level it's fairly common. Even at the national level, the worst of dictators has to go to the effort to make people at least believe that they are participating in such decision-making. Note: the ballot-box may have been one of the most pernicious inventions in history, in this regard, since it provides the people of such nations with the illusion that they are participating in making decisions, while at the same time actually depriving them of that power (the dictator lets them shove their ballots into the box, and then simply ignores the result).
That people want to participate in such decision-making is obvious to those who work in the polls here in the United States. I've seen people from a number of countries, most of which belong to that class of those that have "...no tradition of democracy...", show up at my precinct, ready and willing to participate in the decision-making process, even when they don't even speak the language of this country yet (a situation which, according to many American defenders of democracy, should prevent them, like small children, from participating in the process that sets the rules that they will then have to follow along with all the rest of us). Pretty obviously, either these people have their own tradition of democracy, or they are not much affected by the lack of such a tradition.
When it comes to other countries ― Iraq immediately springs to mind, in this year 2004 ― perhaps it would be wise to note the following:
(1) It's not a tradition of democracy but a structure in which that tradition can best be expressed that is often lacking. Give 'em a little time to develop one, and in the meantime try to keep your own (often dirty) fingers out of the soup while the people who are cooking it and who will have to eat the result are stirring.
(2) Don't expect that it will necessarily look exactly like the structure your ancestors implemented more than two centuries ago. It's a different era, a different bunch of people, with different priorities and needs.
(3) Finally, once it's in place, don't expect that those people, making their own decisions, are necessarily going to make the decisions that you think they ought to make. Again, their priorities are not going to be the same as yours.
(4) And when they disagree with you, please try not to go storming in once again and kicking this new structure to pieces. And if you do, please don't blame the results on the fact that "those people" have no tradition of democracy.