I found the following chart (From the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project via Sunday's New York Times Magazine, and which accompanied this James Traub story) telling, though frankly I’m uncertain what it tells:
The five countries with the most favorable views of American ideas about democracy are Subsaharan African nations. None of the countries with the least favorable views are African. As someone who believes in the American ideals (and thus ideas) of democracy, broadly framed, but who also has serious qualms about gaps between ideals and practices, I think that what we might have here is a case in which Africans see the ideals and hope that the reality will follow while those with a negative view of the United States and its democratic ideals have had recent confrontations with the United States in which those ideals gave way to pragmatic realities that were not so nice. Most of those encounters, though not all, would be directly connected to current American policies in the Middle East. I cannot help but wonder (or perhaps hope) if the ideals don't endure beyond the temporal manifestations of American policy.
