Prime ministers refusing to leave, political parties with a large number of votes being excluded and dubious coalitions being negotiated — which country are we in, the United Kingdom or Iraq?

The parallels between current political events in London and Baghdad are truly striking, although they cannot be pushed too far. To be fair to incumbent British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he was obliged by constitutional custom to stay on in office as caretaker until some sustainable arrangement between the various parties could be agreed.

By contrast in Baghdad — where uncertainty has been continuing since the election in March — the entrenched prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has point blank refused to concede to the leader of the slightly larger Iraqiya party, Ayad Allawi, and has vigorously maneuvered to sew a coalition of Shiite groups together to keep out his challenger. This is an ominous development for Iraq and will intensify the fury of both Sunni and other groups that feel they are once again being excluded unfairly from power. If it goes ahead, more violence is bound to follow.

One hopes that in London matters are being more swiftly resolved and that excluded groups will not resort to extreme measures — although the situation nearly came to violence on election night when hundreds, maybe thousands, of would-be voters found they could not get into the voting booths before the appointed closing time (10 p.m.) and erupted in fury.

At the time of writing it is not possible to predict how either of these situations is going to work out, or how political stability and firm government are going to be restored in either country. But there is one general lesson to be drawn from these stormy events that deserves to be emphasized: Democracy is a very tricky and complex concept, often leading to unpredictable and unsettling results, and no individual country or society can claim to have the ideal solution.

In the U.K., the apparently simple method by which members of Parliament are elected — the person with the most votes in each district or constituency being the winner — has produced the present confused outcome, with parties like the Liberal Democrats receiving large numbers of votes overall, but winning few seats as a result. This has reinforced demands for a new voting system, notably proportional representation, which may seem fairer but can and does produce even more confused results in practice.

In Iraq, one is left wondering whether all this voting, balloting and party struggling is really the path to stable government at all, or whether it takes account of the completely different cultural background compared with Western democracies, and the far greater importance of tribal and family links, and other less noble pressures. The same thought could be applied to Afghanistan, where Western soldiers have died in an attempt to ensure Western-type elections in Kabul, which have only led to more chaos and instability.

The lesson here is that democracy is not just about votes and political maneuvers. One hears commentators glibly calling in the media for more elections and more voting as though this alone will lead to more accountability and better government. But in reality democracy only "works" if much deeper conditions and attitudes are set right. It requires respected constitutions, an upright and wise judiciary administering law in predictable and rule-based ways, and a well-dispersed pattern of power in the hands of people and organizations — including the media — who know how to use it responsibly, fairly and in a self-controlled way.

Above all, workable democracy requires political classes that are trusted and, yes, trust each other, even though they may have sharply diverging opinions. The true democrat in any society likes all democrats and has friends of all political persuasions. The true democrat also recognizes political structures and cultures vary hugely from country to country and does not try to impose blueprint models on other societies.

Unfortunately, recent times in Western capitals have seen the predominance of shallow and ideologically driven opinion-formers who understand neither of these fundamental points about democracy. Poorly educated and inexperienced "experts" have peddled political elections as the answer to all problems — like some quack medicine — for instance by demanding an elected House of Lords to counterbalance the power of the House of Commons at Westminster.

Excitable journalists have lost all sense of fairness, caution and balance in exercising their undoubted power and influence. Politicians have worked themselves into states of venomous hostility toward their opponents that destroy acceptance and agreement. Judges have bowed to political fashion. Constitutional reformers have vandalized constitutions. Above all, the ignoramuses of the real nature and meaning of democracy, especially in the Western world, have tried to impose their own models on other cultures — notably the Middle East — with disastrous results. Iraq is the most obvious current example, but there are many others.

Perhaps the muddle and confusion of the U.K.'s latest democratic experience will bring a pause for reflection and a wiser understanding of what democracy really means, of its limitations and how it really works. It is not that simple.

David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of Lords ([email protected]) (www.lordhowell.com).