Popular Use
The transition from one political regime to another, esp through concerted political or military action - most recently seen in the regime change undergone by Tunisia.
The term has been popularized by recent US Presidents. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush regularly used the term in reference to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Ronald Reagan had previously called for regime change in Libya, directing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to work towards that goal.
The term regime change is sometimes erroneously used to describe a change in the government of the day.
The term regime change can also be applied to bodies other than nation states.
Read more about this topic: Regime Change
Famous quotes containing the word popular:
“If they have a popular thought they have to go into a darkened room and lie down until it passes.”
—Kelvin MacKenzie (b. 1946)
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)