Indeed, some believe that if Montenegro stays inside the federation it could help democratise Serbia.

ECONOMIST: Montenegro

All three major parties pledged before the last general election to democratise the House of Lords.

ECONOMIST: Electing the Lords

The big question now is whether Mr Bush will adopt their wider hope: to democratise the Middle East.

ECONOMIST: Winners and losers in American politics

The signal to President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda will be: if you want British support to continue, you have to democratise.

ECONOMIST: Britain and East Africa

Mr Gandhi said he wanted to democratise the party and empower people.

BBC: Will Rahul Gandhi walk the talk?

He said it would also democratise the study of history because anyone would now be able to walk through the archive and re-interpret events.

BBC: JFK library to put all its records online

Andy Wightman, co-ordinator of the new campaign, said the aim was to democratise companies that were run by a handful of people who did not live on the land involved.

BBC: Mount Stuart on Bute

Such digital micropayments promised to democratise commerce: anybody with an idea, a piece of news, anything at all that someone, somewhere, might want to see, could become a publisher online.

ECONOMIST: So many ways to pay online

In Asia and Latin America, economic reforms had often been started by authoritarian regimes, but in Africa, where states are fragile, governments have had to carry out economic reforms and democratise at the same time.

ECONOMIST: The rulers, the ruled and the African reality