Maybe we could export the Australian version of democracy. The gov of the day in an election bribe voters to vote for them, especially in rural areas. Then of course lie about it. Regards, numbat

The US model does have one significant advantage over others systems, the separation of the legislature (the creation of laws) from the executive (who must execute them).

These means that politicians cannot create laws and then either modify them when things get too hot for them or have some excuse why something cannot be done.

(The Freedom of Information Law is a prime example of this. In Australia ministers can refuse to provide information and all they must do is have this rejection recorded in parliamentary records.)

In the US the senior executives - equivalent to Australia's ministers - are not from Capitol Hill and cannot weasel out of their obligations.

This is not a vote for or against exporting the US model of democracy but just a statement that there are some benefits to that system.

The authors of this essay rightly argue that instead of exporting a presidential system of government to Afghanistan, we should be exporting the separation of powers. This is much more difficult, because it requires building institutional structures from the ground up. However, with such institutions as a functional judiciary and public service there is then less prospect for the corruption of the extra-parliamentary power that resides in a presidency. Otherwise, it morphs over time into a dictatorship.

The separation of powers is common to most western nations, including Australia, the UK, the USA, NZ, Canada etc. It refers to the separation of the three arms of government: the legislature (where laws are made), the executive (where the laws are administered) and the judiciary (where the laws are interpreted).

In Australia, the Prime Minister is drawn from the legislature and is responsible directly to it. The Crown forms an overlay of notional power that is rarely exercised. In the USA, there is a similar parliamentary system, but there is a significant overlay of power in the office of the President, who is directly elected with his own mandate.

The potential for corruption of the powers of this office has always been there, but rarely seen except during the Nixon administration. On ABC Lateline last night, Gore Vidal, who has just published a book entitled "Inventing a Nation", expressed his view that those presidential powers have again been corrupted, and that Bush has become the "tyrant" that Benjamin Franklin feared.