But if the Ivory Coast is a test case, it appears to be a less difficult one. The world is united on the matter -- as it was not, for example, in the case of Darfur. Even China won't defend a regime whose chief export is cocoa. But will that be enough? Gbagbo has been offered all sorts of blandishments to step down: professorships to gratify his vanity, a position with an unspecified international organization, the opportunity to remain in the country as head of the "loyal opposition." Nothing has worked. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the former head of U.N. peacekeeping, knows Gbagbo well and says that Gbagbo believes fervently in his own legitimacy, and would rather stand and fight than accept a sinecure.

If the carrots have been exhausted, that leaves the sticks. The U.N. has already imposed sanctions on the government; Susan Rice, U.S. President Barack Obama's ambassador to the United Nations, has called for a travel ban and asset freeze on Gbagbo. This week, Gbagbo appeared to crack, promising a delegation of West African heads of state that he would lift the blockade around Ouattara's hotel. But then nothing happened -- which of course is the president's modus operandi. Then Gbagbo's security forces raided an office of Ouattara's party, killing at least one person. Maybe Gbagbo is another Mugabe: "I think he's the kind of person who might just bring his country down rather than let his power go," says Guéhenno. Tellingly, Gbagbo has sent a diplomatic emissary to Harare, Zimbabwe, to consult with that country's leaders. But Ouattara is not about to step down either.

The head of the ECOWAS commission recently reiterated the threat to oust Gbagbo by force. In 1999, the organization's military wing, known as ECOMOG, sent thousands of troops to Sierra Leone to prevent rebels from overthrowing the country's elected president. They were quite effective, if also extremely brutal. But in that case, they had been invited, and they were fighting a bunch of crazed gangsters. Would West African armies really invade a member country, and fight its army, to support the results of an election? Not likely. In fact, it would probably be a terrible idea. One West African diplomat at the United Nations told me that the "threat value" of an invasion might be enough to persuade Gbagbo. He added, however, that he believed, "given time," the president would agree to go peacefully.

The Obama administration has done a great deal behind the scenes, which is precisely what it should be doing. Obama has called Ban as well as Goodluck Jonathan, the president of Nigeria, which currently chairs ECOWAS and is its true motive force, urging both to take an unequivocal stance against Gbagbo. Susan Rice prevailed on Obama to telephone Gbagbo, who refused to take the call. France, the Ivory Coast's colonial patron, has also pressed hard for U.N. action.

But the Ivory Coast does not pose a test for the United States or France. It does for the United Nations, which has troops on the ground, and which has used every instrument at its disposal to dislodge Gbagbo. And it does even more for the Ivory Coast's neighbors, and for the African Union and ECOWAS.

Regional institutions don't matter that much in many parts of the globe. The Organization of American States may be a weak reed, but South America is largely democratic and peaceful today. Asia has many such bodies, none of them very effective, but Asia is mostly stable. And because the Middle East is almost wholly autocratic, institutions like the Arab League have no interest in promulgating democratic norms. Only in Africa, where despots cling to power in the face of rising public aspirations, are such institutions called on to mediate primal conflicts. If Gbagbo successfully defies the pressure, he will make ECOWAS look like a paper tiger, and thus seriously weaken the forces of democracy and the rule of law.

It is -- truly -- the hour of Africa.

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