The events in Indonesia have also buried a theoretical justification of strongman rule.

Indonesians have learned to live with strongman rule that curtails their political and civil liberties in exchange for a constantly rising standard of living.

The days of strongman rule are over, he said; in the new Russia, there will be only one dictatorship: a "dictatorship of the law."

One response to unrest could be reimposition of strongman rule.

Those two countries also tried to combine capitalist economies with strongman rule, but were felled by economic stagnation and corruption.

Four years later, Cambodia is back under strongman rule and the space is even emptier.

He centered his presidential campaign on a promise to end the system of strongman rule.

But in the last four years, since the end of President Suharto's strongman rule, they have drawn disproportionate attention.

It seems particularly shocking in a country where democracy has replaced the coups and strongman rule of past decades.

His speech has been pitched as a sobering account of Africa's enduring afflictions: hunger, disease, corruption, ethnic strife and strongman rule.