British and American economic success and growth flow from those
nations’ knack for creating “social capital,” especially the
capacity to assimilate immigrants into the nation’s cultural
fabric. Since the end of the Cold War, there has not been any
serious argument among countries aspiring to be modern over what
might be called the macro-structure of basic political and
economic institutions. There are, of course, few serious
contenders to liberal democracy as a form of government, and
with the collapse of socialism, no real alternatives to market-
based economics. There are, of course, differences in policies
and nuances of institutional design within this larger
framework, but the degree of choice among formal macro
institutions available to serious countries is far more limited
than it was a generation or two ago. What we understand less
well is the cultural basis for successful liberal democracy and
market economies. Two examples illustrate this simply. During
the nineteenth century, almost all the countri