"Mahfouz's Egypt," Said wrote, "is an immense accumulation of history... and despite the astounding variety of its rulers, regimes, religions and races, nevertheless retains its own coherent identity".
The effect of the Machiavellian dichotomy between the need for flexibility and the inescapable constancy of character is to demonstrate an inherent practical limitation in single-ruler regimes.
The city's various rulers and regimes, from the pharaohs to Mubarak, have woven themselves in Cairo's urban fabric.
After an easy conquest and the successful installation of a pro‑western puppet ruler, the regime was facing increasingly widespread resistance.
Though his imagined Free Republic of Aburiria bears an unmistakable resemblance to Kenya under Moi, the sad truth is that there are dozens of possible models for the corruption and venality that mark the Aburirian ruler's regime.
Media and technology have played a powerful role in mobilizing protesters and exposing authoritarian rulers and regimes.
As well as made-to-fit fatwas prohibiting dissent as fitna (division and social strife) and demonstrations and pickets as forms of "insurrection against rulers", the regime has resorted to bribing its subjects in return for allegiance and acquiescence.
In addition to the North Korean border patrols, defectors are often arrested and repatriated by authorities in China, which supports North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un's regime.
A central tenet of Al Qaeda's jihadist ideology is that secular Muslim rulers and their regimes have oppressed the believers and plunged Islam into a historic crisis.
First, the film evokes a moment of crisis, when duty and conscience may make disloyalty to one ruler and his regime a matter of higher loyalty to the country and the state.
(Even those rulers who act without the authority of the people must take care to shape their people in accordance with the needs and circumstances of their regime. This kind of effort need not be altogether selfish on the part of such rulers, since all regimes do have an interest in law and order, in common decency, and in a routine reliability or loyalty).
