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The chaos of Afghanistan's election has focused minds on a grave and unsolved conundrum of the post-9/11 world: how does a society move from dictatorship to democracy without violence?
After much international pressure, President Hamid Karzai has now agreed to a second contest with his principal challenger, Abdullah Abdullah.
Hopefully, it will be freer of the widespread fraud and corruption that blemished the August election.
This included entire blocks of forged ballot papers, fake ID cards, ink cleaner for repeat voters (those who have voted get a finger dipped in supposedly indelible ink) and ghost polling stations - and all this in addition to the violence and intimidation exercised by an increasingly sophisticated Taliban insurgency.
An election's aim is to put in place a leadership that will be credible to a nation's people and will use its time in office to build institutions of good governance that improve the quality of life.
But because Afghanistan's institutions remain weak and in many cases rotten, this hasn't happened. To think that it will with any newly elected leader may well prove to be a pipedream.
Meanwhile, the continued uncertainty is playing havoc with the West's military strategy as well as its nation-building plans: President Obama has hesitated over sending more troops in part because of a desperate hope that the election would confer more authority on the Afghan government. As its future drifts, so does US military strategy.
Since the 2001 US intervention, Afghanistan has drifted towards becoming what is known as an "illiberal democracy", a phrase coined in 1997 by the young academic Fareed Zhakaria.
Coincidentally, Zhakaria was prompted into thinking about this by Richard Holbrooke, the man who is now the American special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In the mid-1990s, while working as the American negotiator on the Bosnian conflict, Holbrooke found himself facing a similar dilemma to the one now posed by Afghanistan.
Supposing an election was held and it was declared free and fair, but that those elected were racists, fascists and separatists not suited for public office in a modern democracy?
Recognising that an emerging illiberal democracy in Bosnia would lead to yet more violence, Holbrooke threw the rulebook of national sovereignty out of the window.
He designed a chain of command that gave ultimate authority to a United Nations-recognised technocratic institution removed from the vested interests of the country's corrupt political elite.
Over the past 14 years, Bosnia has been rocky but largely peaceful. Bosnians have held elections and are building institutions.
Ultimate authority lies with an internationally appointed High Representative who has powers to deploy troops and dismiss politicians should they cross the line of acceptable behaviour.
A similar system was set up in Kosovo with the UN after the 1999 Nato intervention.
Likewise in Liberia in 2005, the international community took control of the country's budget in order to stop corruption.
Yet the Afghan government faces few such constraints, despite the country's corruption and internal chaos.
The pitfalls that arise when oppression and dictatorship are unglued are not specific to Afghanistan.
The repercussions of bad governance anywhere, be it from dictatorship or an illiberal democracy, can be catastrophic.
They include loss of dignity, the fear of violence, the disappointment of seeing money meant for your community vanish through corruption and increasing poverty.
These repercussions are now the driving focus of Western foreign policy, because understanding how to handle them will help neutralise the threats from the failed or rogue states.
Democracy's success depends on many factors, the most crucial of which are those institutions that can uphold the rule of law.
There needs to be a free and responsible press, incorruptible public services, an independent judiciary, a disciplined police and military, a strong election commission, a banking authority and public organisations that can be held to account.
A minimum degree of institutional quality is essential for a successful election to be held.
This takes time: the question yet to be answered for Afghanistan by Western leaders is what to do if the institutions are too weak for voting to go ahead.
In more than eight years as a budding new democracy, violence and corruption in Afghanistan have worsened.
Its experiment in parliamentary politics has led to unsavoury horse-trading that resembles nothing of the democratic vision advocated by Western leaders.
In order to secure electoral support, President Karzai allied himself with powerful figures widely seen as being linked to oppression, corruption and drug trafficking.
His government also introduced laws to appease religious hardliners, including one that allows men to starve their wives if they refuse to have sex and another that bans a Muslim from changing religion.
Within months of the end of the Second World War, Western powers began formulating the sophisticated policy of containment to counter the looming Soviet threat.
If discontent in Afghanistan and other failed states really do threaten the streets of Britain, as Gordon Brown insists, why then do we not have an equally sophisticated policy in place today?
Holbrooke's Bosnia formula cannot be repeated everywhere. But elements of it should always be on the table for discussion.
The issue is how much control should be taken from a nation's government and put in the hands of a neutral organisation in order to repair a failed state.
It can be highly contentious. But the lack of clarity in Afghanistan could explain why the country has been allowed to drift, why the narcotics trade has burgeoned, supplying heroin addicts in Britain, why the proceeds have lined the pockets of warlords and government officials, why the lives of our soldiers are being lost - and why, eight years after the Western intervention, the root cause of the problem remains unresolved.
Humphrey Hawksley is a BBC world affairs correspondent. His book Democracy Kills: What's So Good About the Vote? is published by Macmillan.
Reader views (1)
How does a society move from dictatorship to democracy without violence?
It'd be good if the world had a portable democratic election system which could be quickly lent out and installed any time, any place, anywhere for this purpose. (This might be a good project for a new EU president who may be able to ring round any other interested global powers to see what they think)
Of course, there may be societies which would first need help to sort out any concerns arising from this thing called "governance" generally ie where does the individual citizen stand both in terms of the "governance of the commons" so to speak, and in relation to "the governance of the boundaries of the firm". But the global research community are`already onto the importance of such work ( See this years nobel economic prize winners) which strikes me at least as having very great potential in a diverse range of areas.
- Mrs.Josephine Hyde-Hartley, Bacup,UK
