Power vacuum

"The strength of the barriers in eastern and south-western Europe varied from century to century.

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A power vacuum is an expression for a political

Politics

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporation, academia, and religion institutions....
 situation that can occur when a government

Government

Government is the body within any organization that has the authority to make and the power to enforce laws, regulations, or rules. Typically, the government refers to a civil government -- local, provincial, or national -- but commercial, academic, religious, or other formal organizations are also administered by governing bodies....
 has no identifiable central authority

Authority

In government, authority is often used interchangeably with the term "power ". However, their meanings differ: while "power" refers to the ability to achieve certain ends, "authority" refers to a claim of legitimacy , the justification and right to exercise that power....
. The metaphor implies that, like a physical vacuum

Vacuum

A vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty," but in reality, no volume of space can ever be perfectly empty....
, other forces will tend to "rush in" to fill the vacuum as soon as it is created, perhaps in the form of an armed militia

Militia

The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service....
 or insurgents, military

Military

A military is an organization authorized by its nation to use force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or Threat of force ....
 coup

Coup d'état

A coup d??tat , often simply called a coup, is the sudden unconstitutional overthrow of a government by a part of the state establishment – usually the military – to replace the branch of the stricken government, either with another civil government or with a military government....
, warlord

Warlord

A warlord is a person with power who has military dictatorship over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority....
 or dictator

Dictator

A dictator is an authoritarian ruler who assumes sole and absolute power without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship....
.

Historian Fernand Braudel

Fernand Braudel

Fernand Braudel , was the foremost French historian of the postwar era, and a leader of the Annales School. He organized his scholarship around three great projects, each worth several decades of intense study: "The Mediterranean" , "Civilization and Capitalism" , and the unfinished, "Identity of France" ....
 compared the situation of Italy

History of Italy

Italy, united in 1861, has significantly contributed to the culture and social development of the entire Mediterranean Sea area. Important cultures and civilizations have existed there since prehistoric times....
 during the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
 as a "cyclonic zone, an enormous vacuum", which would sweep in foreign armies:

"The strength of the barriers in eastern and south-western Europe varied from century to century. The nomads' worlds rotated between these areas of negligence, weakness and sometimes ineffectual vigilance. A physical law drew them now westwards, now eastwards, according to whether their explosive life would ignite more easily in Europe, Islam, India or China. Eduard Fueter's classic work drew attention to a cyclonic zone, an enormous vacuum in 1494 over the fragmented Italy of princes and urban republics. All Europe was attracted towards this storm-creating area of low pressure. In the same way hurricanes persistently blew the people of the steppes eastwards or westwards according to the lines of least resistance.

During or following a civil war

Civil war

A civil war is a war between organized groups to take control of a nation or region, or to change government policies. It is high-intensity conflict, often involving Regular Army, that is sustained, organized and large-scale....
 there is often a power vacuum of some sort. For example, the war-torn

Somali Civil War

The Somali Civil War is an civil war in Somalia that started in 1991....
 nation of Somalia

Somalia

Somalia , officially the Republic of Somalia and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, is a country located in the Horn of Africa....
 is currently mired in a power vacuum, with no central government

Politics of Somalia

The politics of Somalia are defined by the state of civil war which, since 1991, has divided the country into various warring entities and autonomist and secession regions....
 or president

List of Presidents of Somalia

This page contains a list of the Presidents of Somalia.ncumbent!Tenure!Affiliation|- bgcolor="#ffffff"|colspan="3"|Somalia|-| Aden Abdullah Osman Daar...
 exercising control over the supposed "Republic

Republic

A republic is a state or country that is not led by a hereditary monarch but in which the people have an impact on its government. The word originates from the Latin term res publica....
 of Somalia".

A power vacuum can also occur following a constitutional crisis

Constitutional crisis

A constitutional crisis is a severe breakdown in the orderly operation of government. Generally speaking, a constitutional crisis is a situation in which separate factions within a government disagree about the extent to which each of these factions hold sovereignty....
 in which large portions of the government resign or are removed, creating unclear issues regarding succession

Order of succession

An order of succession is a formula or algorithm that determines who inherits an office upon the death, resignation, or removal of its current occupant....
 to positions of power.

After the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
, there was a power vacuum. Along with the division of East

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic was a self-declared socialist state created in the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany and the East Berlin of Allied Occupation Zones in Germany....
 and West Germany

West Germany

West Germany was the common English name for the Germany , from its formation in May 1949 to German reunification in October 1990, when East Germany was dissolved and its States of Germany became part of the Federal Republic, ending the more than 40-year division of Germany....
, Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953....
's diplomacy

Foreign relations of the Soviet Union

At its founding, the Soviet Union was considered a pariah by most countries, and as such was denied diplomatic recognition by most states. Less than a quarter century later, the Soviet Union not only had official relations with the majority of the nations of the world, but had actually progressed to the role of superpower....
 and governance

Stalinism

File:Joseph Stalin.jpgStalinism is a term that purportedly describes the political system of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1929?1953....
, the development

History of nuclear weapons

The history of nuclear weapons chronicles the development of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are devices that possess enormous destructive potential derived from nuclear fission or nuclear fusion reactions....
 of the atomic bomb

Nuclear weapon

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either nuclear fission or a combination of fission and nuclear fusion....
, policies

Foreign policy

A state's foreign policy, also called the international relations policy, is a set of goals outlining how the country will interact with other countries economically, politically, socially and militarily, and to a lesser extent, how the country will interact with non-state actors....
 of containment

Containment

Containment was a United States government policy uniting military, economic, and diplomatic strategies to contain any further spread of Communism in the world after World War II, with the goal of thereby enhancing America?s security and influence abroad by preventing a "domino effect"....
 of communism

Communism

Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarianism, classlessness, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general....
, the expansionism of the USSR

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 and a growing lack of trust (fear of a hegemony

Hegemony

Hegemony first denoted the dominance of a Greek city-state over other city-states, then denoted the dominance of one nation over others. The political scientist Antonio Gramsci developed the former conceptions to identify the dominance of one social class over the other social classes in a society by means of cultural hegemony....
) were seen to be factors in the emergence of the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state of conflict, tension and competition that existed between a number of world powers, including the United States, the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, France, United Kingdom and those countries' respective allies from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s....
.

More recently, the tight control which Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the President of Iraq of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003.A leading member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power....
's Baath party exerted on Iraq

Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
 could have been exploited during a transitional hand-over period following the 2003 invasion of Iraq

2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, from March 20 to May 1, 2003, was spearheaded by the United States, backed by United Kingdom forces and smaller contingents from Australia, Spain, Poland and Denmark....
. Instead, the US Government's policy of purging Baath party members from the Iraqi government after the invasion created a power vacuum which was quickly filled by insurgents, who then began to attack American service personnel using improvised explosive devices and snipers such as Juba.

The general concept of a "power vacuum" is relevant to many personal and organizational situations. In the criminal world many druglords are able to become untouchable because of fear of any backlash occurring in a power vacuum situation.