So the only achievements the government can showcase, as Prime Minister Ashraf did in his farewell address, are the precedents it has set in terms of democratic infrastructure and surviving without a coup.
Far from disappearing, some of these communities have even grown since the 1970s, surviving on the insufficient infrastructure that marked them for disinvestment.
Georgia will point out that its energy infrastructure survived the war unscathed: no pipeline was bombed.
How much longer can Russia's public services, roads, bridges and other bits of public infrastructure survive on their current diet of neglect By rights, Russia should have fallen apart already.
The managers concur with the initial American assessment that the infrastructure survived the war intact and that the North Oil Company was nearly ready to change hands with little more than the installation of new management and the passing of old keys.
Of course, a few other ingredients would have to survive as well: infrastructure, international cooperation, and the rule of law.
But the power to shop, to max out credit cards (as one couple told the reporter), to carry too much household debt, well: We have seen in the United States how the concentration of wealth at the top, a barely surviving middle class, and declining infrastructure and public services can weaken the international leadership even of an established power.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has said that for California's electricity infrastructure to survive privatization, more power plants and transmission lines will have to be built (news article, Nov. 2).
Tacloban, a city that suffered massive deaths from storm surges during Haiyan and was braced for similar casualties from Hagupit, survived with "very little infrastructure damage," according to Richard Sandison, head of Plan International, a British development organisation.
