Word: feudality
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...onetime policeman who seized power in a military coup in 1969, sealed his own fate by depending more and more on his kinsmen and overreacting to any challenge to his autocratic rule. Former U.S. diplomat Chester Crocker, a professor at Georgetown University, calls Siad Barre an "old-style, feudal, tribal chieftain." The country is ethnically homogeneous -- 98.8% are Somalis -- so there are no significant tribal hatreds. But its 8 million people are split into rival clans that have been battling one another for centuries...
...That is not true. Vietnam has had a strong democratic tradition for centuries. No single king or emperor has ever been feudal. "The order of the king must stop at the village gates," is an old Vietnamese saying. That represents a strong democratic tendency at the grass-roots level. Under my regime, even in wartime, we applied democracy in a Western style by having not only an elected national assembly and provincial councils but also at the hamlet and village level...
...Saudi Arabia et al. to restrict production enough to shoot the price up to $40 per bbl.? Get real. The central issue is aggression, and how -- make that whether -- it can be contained in the post-cold war world. And forget all the moaning about shedding blood to keep feudal autocracies in control of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. One might well wish for more appealing victims and potential victims to champion. But if < aggression is to be opposed only when the targets are kindly liberal democracies, the world is going to become a far more dangerous, savage and bloody place...
Salinas seems to be tugging his country out of a feudal past, yet he is also pulling Mexico back to an era of paternalistic rule by an all-powerful caudillo. Behind the engaging grin, twinkling eyes and computer-like mind is a man obsessed with his public image. "He is fascinated with power and control," says a longtime acquaintance. "Whether it's politics or football, he wants to win every time. And if he doesn't, he can be very nasty...
...Communists sought to change all that in 1949 by freeing women from the household, putting them to work in fields and factories and giving them the right to inherit property. Suddenly a girl could have positive economic value. Still, feudal tradition has resisted change in many regions, and the government's draconian one-child-per-couple population policy, begun in 1979, has inflamed age-old prejudices against females. Rural and minority families routinely lie, cheat or pay fines in order to try a second pregnancy in the hope of having a son. And female infanticide -- plus its modern variation...