The cumulative effects of an increasing loss of legitimacy, rising popular dissatisfaction and widespread economic decline will serve only to sharpen the infighting at the top.
But that support has diminished, the analysts say, as Iran's economy buckles under international sanctions over its nuclear program and Syria's government battles rising popular unrest.
Greece's troubles — and rising popular unhappiness with austerity programs there, as well as in Portugal and Spain — have shaken and divided European leaders.
But it may be the rising popular impact of television, as much as its content, that is making these shows so controversial.
As Bahrain's leaders struggle to hold back a rising popular revolt against their absolute rule, Washington's posture toward the Shiite majority, which is spearheading the opposition, could prove crucial to future relations with this strategically valuable Persian Gulf nation.
The country's financial woes have arrived in a feverish climate of judicial investigations, lurid rumors and rising popular anger with politicians who keep their privileges while imposing spending cuts on other Italians.
His sentence was changed to hard labour for life, but in 1956 he was one of many prisoners granted parole in an attempt to stem rising popular unrest regarding Soviet influence.
The Saudi government must also manage the rising popular demand for greater action to defend the rebels against the Syrian government, widely seen here as a proxy for Saudi Arabia's arch-nemesis, Iran.
A truck driver's son who graduated from the nation's top university, Mr. Yokokume, an energetic 27-year-old lawyer, is a candidate for the main opposition Democratic Party, which has ridden rising popular discontent with the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party.
But although Mr. Monti has won over many Italians with his steady hand and flashes of wry irony, he faces continued resistance from the political parties that are nominally supporting his government but are eager to capitalize on rising popular discontent about new tax increases and an immediate rise in the retirement age.
