Is the U.S. Too Democratic?

That bedrock of constitutional democracy—the election—may be handicapping the United States. “Not that democracy is a bad thing,” economist Dambisa Moyo told PRI’s The Takeaway. Many of the problems facing the country can be solved in a democratic framework. But the constant election cycle “means that governments do not have the opportunity to focus on structural, longer term problems like pensions, like infrastructure, like education,” according to Moyo. “They’re forced into myopia and to short-termism, and it’s that that is actually causing this decline in economics.”