This week’s battles in the Ivory Coast, where the president is refusing to go despite losing at the polls, reminded me of Zimbabwe.
There, in 2008, Mugabe’s thugs intimidated his opponent into throwing the election, even though he had won.
Even when countries appear to practice democracy, the consequences are often unintended.
In Gaza, the decisive vote by Palestinians in 2006 for Hamas, the Islamist movement funded by Iran, surprised and alarmed Western governments and has caused problems ever since.
The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ across the Middle East has been greeted as a brave new world, where democracy and freedom will reign.
All I would say is, be careful what you wish for.
In Egypt, we now know the army and the Muslim Brotherhood have hijacked the revolution.
In a country of 80 million - half aged under 20 - the fundamentalist Islamic Brotherhood is trading its influence with the young in exchange for power.
History has a way of repeating itself.
Like the 1979 Iranian revolution, the liberal middle classes, who demonstrated for regime change, are no longer in the picture. And far from a democracy, Egypt risks becoming a hardline theocracy.
Also, some democracies are different.
Libya, where our coalition forces are engaged in daily air strikes against Gaddafi’s troops, is not actually undemocratic.
Libyans do have a say in how they are governed.
There are no political parties but 2700 local representatives take the concerns of the masses to a General People’s Congress.
And that government works. Libya has both the highest literacy rate – 82% - and the highest per capita income in Africa.
The problem is that any Libyan government can be trumped by Gaddafi’s 1969 Revolutionary Committee.
I would guess that what the Libyan people want is freedom from Gaddafi - not necessarily freedom to vote.
Our kind of democracy is not necessarily desirable or even possible where basic freedoms don’t exist.
And in the end, who are we to impose our views?
After all, as Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried.”