As Frank Miller, a telecommunications entrepreneur with broad experience in the Russian market, puts it: "You've either got to have ties with the Kremlin or to regional strongmen."

The line of shoguns gradually weakened after Yoshimitsu and increasingly lost power to the daimyō and other regional strongmen.

Blatter has long received the support of a system of patronage run by regional strongmen.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, unable to defeat former Taliban guerrilla leaders intent on re-starting civil war, appointed some 50 regional strongmen as police chiefs last month.

It is possible that these early, suburban villas were also in fact the seats of power (maybe even palaces) of regional strongmen or heads of important families (gentes).

As these powerful regional strongmen were able to act independently of the central government, there was little coordination between the provinces and the government.

Construction of numerous river valley settlements as well as hill forts indicates that political integration was driven by regional strongmen protected by their armed retinues.

The regional strongman is gone, but nobody seems to want his stuff.

However, the provinces were not about to give up their freedoms, where many caudillos (regional strongmen) and common folk were seething with ambition, fueled by the liberals' declarations.

Juniper was a lawless city, ruled by regional strongmen.