Driving along a crowded Moscow street with a friend, I was shocked when a traffic cop waved his baton and pulled us over. We weren't speeding, weaving drunkenly or driving an unsafe car. My friend produced a fistful of papers, including her permit to live in Moscow.

"This is normal," she said, amused by my outrage. "They make more money in a year than I can in ten." Several other cars stopped behind us. The policeman inspected each one with care, finding a flaw here, a missing document there. He collected his money and we went on. I saw similar traffic stops on rural roads, city streets and superhighways. This is only one form of petty, but expensive, corruption in Russia.

A dozen years ago, when the Iron Curtain came crashing down, there was so much hope, both here and throughout the former Soviet Union, for the newly democratic countries. Americans and Europeans rushed to invest in the unfolding market economies. Experts on law and economics and privatization offered their services.

What we failed to remember at the time is that a democracy is built on institutions. These include a legal system that is respected and obeyed, an independent judiciary, a financial system that works and a skilled bureaucracy to maintain these institutions. It requires a body of representatives fairly elected by all the people, an independent press and public accountability.

What is truly remarkable about our democracy is that, at 225 years of age, the institutions and structure established in a very different time continue to serve us so well. Perhaps even more important, we have civil servants who are rarely corrupt and who see their jobs as serving the public good. While I know I'll be hit up by a politician for a legal campaign contribution, I can't imagine being shaken down by a traffic cop seeking an illegal payoff.

In the United States, we expect our institutions to work. When they don't, we protest vigorously. We may think government functions imperfectly, but we can generally accomplish the daily tasks of life rather quickly. Not so in Russia. Just conducting the minute details of living is a constant challenge. Most things require permission and permission usually requires money and lots of time.

As I was leaving Moscow, for example, I waited in a short line nearly an hour to get an exit stamp on my passport. The immigration agent scrutinized each document and individual with great care, sometimes conversed lengthily with another agent, occasionally forced a hapless person to move to yet another line. One such examination took nine minutes. In the U.S., when we want to go somewhere, we just march up to the airline check-in counter, present our passports and head off to wherever we want to go.

Clearly, in Russia, the bureaucracy still lives in the Soviet era. The institutions of democracy are weakly formed, if formed at all. There is no concept of a government that is supposed to serve the people. There is little belief that laws should be applied to everyone equally. The press is systematically being muzzled. Even the KGB, the former secret police, is making a comeback, pushing its tentacles across society.

While every democracy will have its own unique characteristics, all must share some core principles. Foremost among these is the rule of law, and citizens must be confident about the fairness and universality of those laws. We must be sure that our public officials are held to the same standards as the rest of us, with accountability being both the legal system and the ballot box. We must have the freedom to speak our minds, to move about as we wish and to make our own decisions about what is best for us.

Finally, American democratic institutions were designed to support our passion for individual freedom and our commitment to the public good. There are many ways to form a democracy, but a dedication to those two ideals must underlie any of them. It isn't enough to call yourself a democratic nation; you must act like one.