My direct experience with the Bulgarian aspect of the interallied rivalries following the Second World War extended from the planning of postwar policy in the Department of State in 1943–44 through the first year (1944–45) of American participation in the implementation of the Bulgarian armistice.

Among influential writers in the field of political development and comparative politics in the last two decades few have excelled Samuel P. Huntington. With a prudent economy of basic concepts, Huntington has addressed a variety of political problems in many different kinds of societies. His work has been germane to the issues of power and morality, revolution, stability, violence, corruption, participation, and, above all, the political implications of social change. In a challenging and encyclopedic manner, Huntington has managed to relate his ideas to the experiences of Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States, enriching the conceptual insights of diverse area specialists and providing interesting theoretical linkages for seemingly very different and singular social and political worlds. Acknowledging all this, one nevertheless may (and this writer would say “must”) question the basic premise of Huntington's understanding of politics: both theoretically and practically.

For two hundred years the United States, with its theory of the separation of powers, has presented a compelling argument on behalf of presidential government. In contrast to the parliamentary system alternative offered by Great Britain, the American credo posits that the surest preventive against tyrannical rule lies in the deliberate parceling out, rather than concentration, or fusion, of political power. Proof of its validity, insist proponents of the separated powers doctrine, has been demonstrated on numerous occasions, even—nay, especially—in times of national emergency.

I propose to examine the relationship of American democracy to the Third World along two planes of reality, one briefly sketched in outline and miniature, the other drawn with greater elaboration and substance. The brief sketch sums up all that follows; it draws on America's great leader, Abraham Lincoln, who prophetically defined the issues that faced both the young American republic and today's fledgling nations by asking the question:

Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?

The American states experienced an extraordinary political transformation in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. For more than a generation state governments had stimulated economic development by subsidizing agriculture and industry, investing in private enterprise, constructing internal improvements at public expense or lending the public credit for such purposes, and granting special privileges to private companies. By the mid-1840's, however, the states had begun to assume a more passive role. Accompanying this withdrawal from economic activity and associated with it was a general restructuring of state political systems. New state constitutions, the most visible evidence of such change, lowered suffrage requirements, stripped legislatures of the appointing power, and extended the elective process to more state offices. They also curtailed legislative authority in economic policy areas by prohibiting certain types of activity; requiring general incorporation laws in place of special charters; establishing detailed procedures for managing state debts and public works; and, in some instances, mandating specific policy actions.