[...]Freedom is more than a free vote. Britain is defined not by the one day in five years that it goes to the polls but by the broader framework of which that vote is an expression. Canada, the subject of some pretty feeble maple-boosterism in these pages last week, would be a poor country if judged strictly by its national politics: at the federal level it’s a one-party state. But Canadians still live, just about, in liberty. If you look at healthy nations, competitive electoral politics is often the final stage of their journey: property rights, the rule of law, enforceable contracts and many other things come first. Fareed Zakaria has just published an interesting book on this theme, The Future of Freedom, in which he notes one of the trends of this post-Cold War era: the thug nations from Africa to Central Asia are developing the knack of holding elections while remaining, in all other respects, tyrannies. Zakaria is a little too partial to elite rule and light authoritarianism for my tastes — though it’s entirely reasonable to prefer Singapore to Nigeria — but his basic diagnosis is very relevant to the future of Iraq. There’s no point doing a Zimbabwe — holding one ‘free and fair’ election that delivers up the state to its President-for-Life.[...]