They looked not to Athens, whose democracy quickly devolved from demagoguery into despotism, but to republican Rome.

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Mr Khatami was thwarted by his own timidity and by the despotism of the conservative forces ranged against him.

ECONOMIST: Politics in Iran

In the past two years America and European countries have made the same mistake in Nigeria, an impoverished and unstable country emerging from years of corrupt despotism.

ECONOMIST: By invitation

But to Tocqueville the price in despotism was too high.

ECONOMIST: Liberty and democracy

It is disappointing to see The Economist confusing possible enlightened despotism, which we in Pakistan might not mind at all, with the more-of-the-same despotic self-interest that we know all too well.

ECONOMIST: Letters

It was history's odd timing: A great historical rupture in the Arab world, bearing within it the promise of remaking a flawed political tradition that knew no middle ground between despotism and nihilistic violence, happened on the watch of an American president proud of his deliberateness and his detachment from history's passions.

WSJ: Fouad Ajami: Obama's Holbrooke Moment