Word: authoritarianism
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...Mexico's drug war worsening? Democracy may be one culprit. As countries like Russia know, democratic transitions often create power vacuums that benefit organized crime. Under the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the drug cartels were tolerated but regulated by party bosses. After the PRI's 71-year rule ended in 2000, the government took steps to dismantle the cartels, only to watch them atomize into smaller but more sinister gangs. The most vicious is the Zetas, a 2,000-member army led by ex-commandos hired by the border-based Gulf Cartel because of their military skills. The Zetas...
...Tiananmen Square, and millions more watched on television, as the city celebrated an event that's now exactly a year away - the opening of the 2008 Summer Olympics. China has reason to get the party started a little early: As could be expected of the world's largest authoritarian state, infrastructure preparations for the Games have been pushed through with remarkable speed. But that doesn't mean that China is quite ready to welcome the world. Beijing's air is still terrible, and the government is ill-prepared for the growing attention of the world's media. Here...
...Skeptics, however, note that Libya's new profile is a product of the same thuggish authoritarian power structure that has ruled the country since 1969. And they suggest that the principles on which Libya is resolving problems sometimes amount to extortion. For example, the release of the Bulgarians - spurious though their convictions may have been - saw still undisclosed donor nations acting on behalf of the E.U. shell out $460 million in damages for the Libyan victims of HIV infection, and also landed Tripoli diplomatic and commercial rewards that include the construction of a nuclear power plant. Even worse, French daily...
...James Mann points out in his new book, The China Fantasy, the idea that China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues to underlie the U.S.'s China policy, providing the central rationale for maintaining close ties with what is, after all, an unapologetically authoritarian regime. But China's Me generation could shatter such long-held assumptions. As the chief beneficiaries of China's economic success, young professionals have more and more tied up in preserving the status quo. The last thing they want is a populist politician winning over the country's hundreds of millions...
...knee-jerk rush to the statute books." Bob Marshall-Andrews, a Labour M.P. and bleak critic of the Blair Administration, says, "There is a completely different spirit in Parliament, and everyone can feel it. The signs are that we are in for a much more liberal and less authoritarian period of government...