Businesses and farm organizations provide American products, stimulate business activity, and establish American practices in the market and workplace. Religious and charitable institutions provide material and spiritual support for the least advantaged, and cultural institutions establish links with the society's intellectual leaders. Ideas flow through engagement. The internet, television, books, newspapers, copying machines, magazines, and popular entertainment spread ideas like democracy, human rights and the rule of law. In a growing economy these ideas fall on fertile ground - an expanding and assertive middle class that opposes corruption and abuse of power.
Economic activity is a core element of engagement.
Trade and investment promote growth, and a growing, diversified economy is one of the pillars of democracy. Repeated studies have shown a strong relationship between economic growth and the development of democratic institutions. American businesses, farmers and workers transplant American values and culture overseas. By just doing business Americans stimulate a country's entrepreneurial sector, train local managers and reward them based on initiative and merit, help develop economic and social infrastructure, promote respect for the individual and workplace safety, and stand for the rule of law and against corruption. In the last decade democracy has ascended amidst economic liberalization in Taiwan, Korea, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay and Ecuador.