The Atlantic, November 2007 " title="External link to: The Atlantic, November 2007 " class="external">Forget Democratic Institutions. It's the Tribes, Stupid!
The kinship of tribes is key to building stability and establishing a balance of justice in areas like Iraq and Pakistan with both eroding and nascent political institutions.
The disorderly and anarchic conditions in these countries, says Robert D. Kaplan in The Atlantic, answer to the overlapping actions of multiple groups seeking to maximize their power. In these lawless places, it is not democratic institutions, but tribal leaders, who are the law. Factoring them into the equation might yield more satisfactory results, than tactics based on a traditional theoretical concept of the state as a monolithic entity.
