Just look at the recent Lisbon Treaty to see the EU’s contempt for democracy. The EU Constitution was oft compared unfavourably to it’s transatlantic equivalent — not just because of it’s heft, but it’s impenetrable legalese, nobody quite knew what it did. So when most countries were offered a referendum on it, they voted “No” in droves.

“Ah, sorry, that was the wrong answer” came the reply — some junior bureaucrat did a find and replace and the Constitution became the Lisbon treaty. As “just another treaty” no referendum was offered, except in Ireland, where some clever chap worked out that the changes outlined in the treaty were so sweeping it would require an amendment to the Irish Constitution to pass it into law, and Constitutional amendments require a referendum.

But, they voted “No” too… so what does the EU do? Asks again…

Some hierarchy is necessary to maintaining stability; figuring out how to give ambitious and capable young people from all walks of life opportunities to ascend within the hierarchy without destabilizing it — that’s a hard case.

(It also includes a depressing idea of how free-market policies lead to prosperity, which lead to the immigration [in this case illegal, but that's not the key feature] of people trying to capture a slice of that prosperity for themselves, which leads to redistributive interest groups, which leads to ever-expanding government, which leads to the stagnation that we see in California. In other words we only see libertarian governance in poor but developing areas, and even this libertarianism contains the seeds of its own destruction.)

I may also not have given enough weight to the experience of the founding generation of having drafted multiple state and federal constitutions. There is a strong argument that it was that iterative set of experiences with constitution making that produced our Constitution as much as it was the background cultural norms that facilitated its ratification. Again, nature and nurture.

Currently, that place looks to be the Sea, which will require a carefully concocted incrementalist approach to sovereignty, but largely-autonomous financial areas like JAFZ, Singapore, and Hong Kong set a nice precedent for partial-seccession within a larger, more illiberal country.

This is the cultural analog to the nature/nurture debate. The answer is yes, both. Policies => Institutions => Policies’ => Instiutions’ => etc.

Now what you have going for you here is the historical fact that institutional reform almost never comes from within. Almost.

What you have goign against you is perhaps more signifant — and disadvantages are noticable absent from your post here. What you have going against you is a history of fantastically bloody and violent revolutions. Competition among sovereigns tends not to be polite!

Take two historical models: the French and American Revolutions. How are you going to tweak your reform efforts in such a way as to be more like one than the other?

The answer you will find, I believe, is that some good institutions emerge from good policies that preexisted them. See Weber, Calvin, Luther, &c., &c.

See here, for example:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2009/janfeb/17.28.html?start=1