What would an anthropologist make of the curious ritual of the Iowa caucuses? Part town meeting, part beer party, part coffee clatch with hot dishes, the Iowa caucuses may seem like an odd way to elect a politician to an outside observer. Every four years, the world media tries to decipher the curious liturgy of this bit of democracy in the heartland of America. The BBC’s Paul Adams filed this report about looking at an American electoral tradition from a foreigner’s perspective.