Isnt it the case that both French and Russians regimes were weak and hugely dysfunctional at that point and relaxed cause they had no other options basically?
The same could be said of the Ottoman Empire at the time of the Tanzimat; their desire for reform came from suffocating under an incredibly tangled administrative system and spending hundreds of years losing territory to their neighbors, not from an abstract desire to run things better.
Authoritarian regimes tend not to liberalize until they absolutely, positively have no other alternatives.
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Isnt it the case that both French and Russians regimes were weak and hugely dysfunctional at that point and relaxed cause they had no other options basically?
The same could be said of the Ottoman Empire at the time of the Tanzimat; their desire for reform came from suffocating under an incredibly tangled administrative system and spending hundreds of years losing territory to their neighbors, not from an abstract desire to run things better.
Authoritarian regimes tend not to liberalize until they absolutely, positively have no other alternatives.