Factional fighting between Fatah and Hamas claimed more than 90 Palestinian lives between December and February.
Will the elite splinter and dissipate its energy and power in factional rivalry and fighting?
For a decade or more the country has been racked by factional and ethnic violence.
All it takes is for a few factional players to start pressing their speed dials.
In 1991, more than 40 people were reported killed in factional fighting around Johannesburg, South Africa.
Moreover, the mechanism of firing incompetent cadres is still subject to political or factional considerations.
Pakalitha Mosisili's departure comes after two years of factional squabbles in the Lesotho Congress for Democracy.
BBC: Lesotho's PM Pakalitha Mosisili deserts political party
The idea that the party can be different and avoid such cliques and factional fights seems unrealistic.
Some of the violence is factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah, or among Fatah's increasingly divided sub-factions.
The Chinese bureaucracy, while in direct charge of more of the national economy, is riven by factional infighting.
In previous terms, Suharto has used that job as one of the many techniques for balancing factional differences.
The killings had probably been part of a factional dispute inside La Familia.
Given the factional nature of Korean politics, however, it is a faint hope.
All this is part of the long-running factional battle between moderates and conservatives.
If the extremists inside the opposition win, Syria could see factional fighting for many years, followed by anti-democratic, anti-Western policies.
So it was no surprise that Mr Mitsuzuka, a powerful factional boss and wily politician, has kept his cabinet seat.
Instead it's a politics of factional warfare, where the aim of the government is to maintain power by all means necessary.
His top priority is to restore morale and unity within an organization fragmented by factional strife and plagued by money politics.
But inter-factional fighting is spilling into the streets of Gaza and the West Bank, and threatens to spiral out of control.
Or it may be the upshot of a high-level factional or personal battle, in which corruption charges are often a favourite weapon.
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As the PA has become riven by factional infighting, support for Hamas has steadily grown in Gaza, its influence now exceeds the PA's.
It is believed to be factional infighting within the La Familia cartel.
It's not, I'm assured, a factional thing - an army of continuity Blairites receiving their orders and waiting for the moment to strike.
As I wrote this piece, numbers were being counted, factional players were being sounded out, and a leadership challenge was in the offing.
Concealed, avoided or otherwise ignored, conflict will likely fester only to grow into resentment, create withdrawal or cause factional infighting within an organization.
King said the bombing had nothing to do with any factional fighting and U.S. forces "never get involved" in disputes between rival warlords.
Throughout her career the focus has generally been on counting numbers and lining up factional support rather than coming up with big ideas.
But the post is too important probably more important at the moment than the prime minister's to be filled according to the dictates of factional politics.
Israel's policy of assassinating Hamas and Fatah men alike has encouraged the formation of cross-factional groups, binding together the national and the Islamic resistance.
ECONOMIST: Israel and the Palestinians: The consequences of selective killing | The
This distinguishes them from the major parties that tend to fudge and obfuscate policy positions in order to accommodate factional, regional, and competing economic interests.
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