Word: czarism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more interesting criticism, however, is the charge that czarism simply doesn't work. Czars generally don't have budget control or other real authority, and are often caught up in turf battles among Cabinet secretaries and fellow West Wingers. "There've been so many czars over the last 50 years, and they've all been failures," New York University public-service professor Paul Light told the Wall Street Journal. "It's a symbolic gesture of the priority assigned to an issue." Sometimes, however, symbolism matters. John Koskinen, the Clinton Administration adviser responsible for overseeing Y2K preparation, was cited...
Washington czarism reflects the fact that some of our thorniest problems sprawl over turf belonging to more than one agency. Bruce Reed experienced this firsthand as director of domestic policy under President Clinton - the czar czar, if you will. He concluded that whether you say "czar" or "point person," it's important that someone have a mandate that cuts across competing domains. "The Cabinet may carry out policy," Reed says, "but the White House makes policy. Every White House has to find the right balance to make clear who has responsibility for what and how to resolve differences when turfs...
...creeping czarism is also a way of exploiting the undemocratic yearning for strongmen, playing on the idea that compromise is fine when the stakes are small, but when the chips are down, only a tyrant will do. Generations of Russian dissidents braved prison, execution and revolution to rid their nation of czars. And the Founding Fathers so feared czarlike power that they fashioned a government intricately checked and balanced. Hard to imagine Madison and Mason agreeing to put the really difficult problems in the hands of unelected superstaffers...
Sergei Eisenstein, the father of Russian cinema, is best known for his theory of film-as-montage. He positioned himself as a manipulator of space and time whose role it was to contribute to the foundation of a new Russia after the revolution of 1917: the end of czarism, the beginning of communism...
Sakurov’s technical innovation is meta-historical argument: a refutation and rejection of Eisenstein, a reconsideration of Russia from czarism, through communism, to the present...