Some look at a headline such as this and are shocked. Those of us who have been reading Kaplan’s work for years can say, this type of post-election chaos has long been on the horizon.

Up to 1,000 killed in Kenya crisis

World powers have been horrified by the sudden outbreak of bloodshed in a country once seen as one of the continent’s most stable democracies and promising economies… The election dispute unleashed protests, riots and anarchy that have scattered refugees across a nation more used to helping those fleeing from countries like Sudan and Somalia.

It’s easy to feign shock and horror at the utter chaos that resulted from the narrow win by the incumbents in Kenya, but democracy in Africa regularly throws a veil of stability over an untamed tribal society. This AFP report notes that broadcast programs warning that ghosts would haunt theives of looted property were more effective in returning stolen goods than the police.

The chaos in Kenya reminds me of one of Kaplan’s best articles out there: Was Democracy Just a Moment? In this brutal intellectual expose, Kaplan talks about that fact that democracy works best when it emerges last.

Hitler and Mussolini each came to power through democracy. Democracies do not always make societies more civil-but they do always mercilessly expose the health of the societies in which they operate… The lesson to draw is not that dictatorship is good and democracy bad but that democracy emerges successfully only as a capstone to other social and economic achievements.

Just because a country holds elections, don’t confuse that as being the same thing as civil society, the rule of law, or checking corruption. For many thugs in today’s world, democracy is just another form of legitimizing rule over a society, and only a thin line away from seeing a country fall into anarchy.

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