Freedom Can Be Exported

In Afghanistan, all politics are tribal. National governments are examples of the triumph of hope over experience. No American official wants to seem culturally insensitive by suggesting that the new Afghan government--headed by Pushtun leader Hamid Karzai--should be shaped in our own image. Yet James Madison has much to offer the moujahedeen, including a system designed to handle the very thing that is tearing their country apart.

Despite the cultural and religious differences, the United States and Afghanistan have one important characteristic in common: factions. When Madison helped design our system, he knew that the United States was the most pluralistic and factional nation on Earth. Composed of immigrants of different races, faiths and traditions, the United States appeared as ungovernable as the frontier itself. Likewise, the Afghans are a hodgepodge of small tribal and religious factions, which are the cause of the years of instability and feudal tendencies there.

In his study of why governments fail, Madison found factions to be the chief culprit. Until that time, factions in a country had largely been ignored in formal governmental systems. Most constitutions are written at the worst possible time--right after a war or revolution, when a country is experiencing great unity and communal affection. It is a Bud Light “I love you, man” moment--a genuine but fleeting sentiment. This was evident in Bonn, when delegates embraced one another in genuine joy at the formation of a 30-member ruling Afghan council. Inevitably, however, factions develop and most systems remain vulnerable to the instability and violence that factions bring on the “morning after” such celebrations.

Madison built a constitutional system without romance based on a frank understanding of the inclinations of free people. He rejected the unguarded optimism of human nature as the guarantee of good government. “If men were angels,” Madison noted, “no government would be necessary.” Madison built a system that could be governed by devils and still function. Rather than having factions fester beneath the surface and explode into the streets, the Madisonian system encourages their expression. Because of this unique system, the United States has weathered crises that would have shattered most other countries, ranging from the Depression to the civil rights struggle to presidential scandals.

The Madisonian system is designed for the conditions of Afghanistan: built for bad weather, not good weather. It is the all-terrain model for constitutional systems. Yet despite our own success in governance, we often display the modesty or uncertainty of the nouveau riche, as if faintly embarrassed by our own success. It is considered bad form to suggest that a country as distant and ancient as Afghanistan could benefit from our system. Of course, we are more than eager to send every form of soft drink or computer game to other countries, but we seem to view the Constitution as a product that does not travel well.

There are no cultural prerequisites to our constitutional system and no reason why an Islamic nation could not flourish under it. The problems facing the Afghans are not unique to their nation, though they unfortunately appear poised to replicate the mistakes of earlier indigenous systems. Modern Afghans have considerable experience in mountain fighting but decidedly less experience in stable government. It is not the presence of factions that has been their undoing but their traditional forms of government, which are ill-suited for a national as opposed to local governance.

This does not mean that the Afghans should copy our Constitution jot for jot. Afghanistan is a nation with deeply held traditions that must be accommodated. Some of these traditions, however, may return the country to a cycle of factional warfare. It was a cycle described by Madison more than 200 years ago in discussing another emerging nation torn by division and scarred by war. He knew that the quiet aftermath of a victorious war would be short-lived as factions grew in number and intensity. Without a fundamental change in the model of government in Afghanistan, we may be enjoying the false and transient calm in a hurricane’s eye.

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Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University.