The western formula

The basic reason 
for democracy's lack of solutions to such problems (arab regions in turmoil, my note) is that its principles have been formulated in industrialised capitalist societies characterised by considerable cultural homogeneity and relatively small economic gaps.

Democracy is a set of formal principles developed in Western Europe with the aim of facilitating the representation and articulation of the middle and working classes and designed to contain peacefully the conflicts between them and the upper class.

In the absence of a balance of power between classes,  a consensual unifying national identity, the automatic installation of formal democratic principles might only make matters worse. (well balancing power between classes might be a crucial political contradiction, liberal disorder and condemnation of the actual revolution)