The shift works very well, giving a contemporary immediacy to this tale of how power and vice corrupt everything around them.

WSJ: School for Scandal

Owen Bennett-Jones, BBC Islamabad correspondent at the time, recalls that when Mr Sharif was removed from power, many Pakistanis expressed great relief, describing him as corrupt, incompetent and power-hungry.

BBC: Profile: Nawaz Sharif

He won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years in power by the notoriously corrupt Daniel arap Moi, who was constitutionally barred from extending his term.

NPR: Kenya Leader Re-Elected in Disputed Vote

They, and others, are motivated less by racism than by a belief that the established parties of Austria's centre-right and centre-left have been involved for too long in a corrupt carve-up of power and patronage.

ECONOMIST: Austria��s rancid choice

They are quick to point to successes in the past, such as Corazon Aquino's "People Power" in the Philippines, which ousted the corrupt regime of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, or, more recently, the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Game-changing chance

Mrs Arroyo first took power in 2001 in a genuine people-power uprising, that succeeded in booting out another prodigiously corrupt president, Joseph Estrada.

ECONOMIST: Hope��s six-yearly victory over the Philippine experience

For all the power of the elite and the poverty of the magistrates, the corrupt practices of French tradition are becoming ever harder to maintain.

ECONOMIST: Eva Joly, France��s elite-hunting magistrate

It can rely solely on compacts with the region's existing power-brokers, which often means conniving at, or even reinforcing, the corrupt practices by which they shore up their own authority and squash the emergence of rivals.

ECONOMIST: Balkan rebirth

The current chief justice, Bagir Manan, successfully lobbied parliament for the power to appoint non-career judges, who are considered more open-minded and less corrupt.

ECONOMIST: Pervasive corruption is bad for business