Word: authoritarianism
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ElBaradei also called on his home country of Egypt to “move beyond an authoritarian system to a democracy, empowering people and restoring basic freedoms...
Mohamed ElBaradei has taken Egypt's stagnant political scene by storm since his reincarnation two months ago from Nobel Peace Prize-winning international nuclear watchdog to domestic reform campaigner. But any effort to push the authoritarian regime of President Hosni Mubarak into making democratic concessions is unlikely to succeed without the support of the only opposition force in Egypt with a real grass-roots following: the banned Muslim Brotherhood. That leaves ElBaradei facing the question of whether to make common cause with a party regarded with suspicion by many secular democrats. (Watch TIME's video "10 Questions for Mohamed ElBaradei...
Tocqueville once wrote, in reference to the danger of America’s non-authoritarian, self-governing society, “Once an idea has taken hold of the American people’s minds, whether it’s a just one or an unreasonable one, nothing is more difficult than to uproot it.” One could say Harvard Professor Leo Damrosch faces this challenge in writing “Toqueville’s Discovery of America.” In his new book, Damrosch is attempting to remedy the general American conception of Tocqueville through...
Initially, Kyrgyzstan stood out among the newly independent Central Asian republics for its sound, multi-party democratic system. While its neighbors returned to authoritarian rule, built on networks of patronage run by Soviet apparatchiks of old, Kyrgyzstan became relatively open, buoyed in particular by an outspoken civil society. However, by the mid-1990s, Askar Akayev, president since the republic's inception, took an autocratic turn. He shielded business monopolies owned by friends and family and cracked down on journalists who pried into allegations of corruption - all the while, Kyrgyzstan's economy floundered, its Soviet-era industry and agriculture withering away...
...Thailand has been locked in a vicious cycle of pro- and anti-Thaksin demonstrations since late 2005. Thaksin's opponents say he was authoritarian and corrupt; his supporters say he was the first prime minister to address the problems of the nation's poor. The September 2006 coup failed to resolve the conflict. "The coup made the divisions even deeper. Now they are an abyss," said Weng Tojirakan, a red shirt leader...