In other words, Japanese or Norwegian democracy
“is part the local value set” and frames the kind of moral values in line with this civic culture
(ibid). Goodman (2003) has argued that reform rhetoric is similar in the East and West,
although the actual language of the debates is used in different ways. Clearly, each borrowed
model must be evaluated in terms of appropriateness to the debate. Policy makers often
transport models designed in one context without realizing the “distinctive historical and
cultural dimension of policies is to risk ‘false universalism’ whereby similarities are spotted
without reference to the context in which they were developed,” (Power and Whitty, 1999:
124). As Dewey and others have alluded to, we can learn from history and social evolution;
however, we must be mindful of the cultural and historical influences which have shaped a
specific society before mixing and matching social constructs from dissimilar models.