ABSTRACT
Authoritarian regimes generally tend to concentrate power and authority. In concentrating power they may have either a hard or a soft constitution, but real power is often as not, particularly in the modern era, not vested in the legal system, but rather in the political leadership. The control of agricultural technology led to a strongly centralized government and in turn the centralized government fostered intensive agriculture which depended upon the careful use of the available technology. The harnessing of the productive or potentially destructive energy of the river might be undertaken by a single family or a small community, but only a stable political environment afforded the peace and stability requisite for even that small-scale enterprise to be safely and regularly undertaken. Egypt's geopolitics were similar to and yet also very different from those of Mesopotamia. Post-Communist eastern Europe saw business reacting enthusiastically to the relaxation of previously strict and prohibitive legal regulation.
