I've learned to cede control of the classroom over to the students over time.

There are two types of conflicts of interest among the government bodies. First, China s powerful bureaucracy is disinclined to cede its powers in the name of liberalization and a shift toward a more market oriented economy.

The legislation agreed by the Defence Reform Commission during the reporting period (but adopted by the entity parliaments thereafter) will mean that the entities cede their remaining defence responsibilities and institutions to the State on 1 January 2006.

One of the companies agreed to bring its prices to within 10 per cent of the other's, and the other firm agreed, in return, to cede 6 per cent of the market to its rival over a period of five years.

National governments are unlikely to cede significant control to transnational institutions, and harmonizing rules would not benefit societies with diverse needs and preferences. The European Union may be the sole excep tion to this axiom, though its current crisis tends to prove the point.

That saved the euro, but it also relieved the pressure on Germany to cede control of its oft distressed banks. Since then, the German government has used its clout to eviscerate the proposed banking union all that remains is a shell to keep up appearances.

As for Syria, the only plausible route to normalcy begins with forcing President Bashar al Assad to cede power. To this end, the US and its allies should consider striking Assad s strongholds in Syria, while establishing safe havens for the moderate opposition under the protective cloak of a no fly zone.

To be sure, US President Barack Obama has tried to exercise global leadership. He pushed for the agreement to reform the IMF at the G 20 summit in Seoul in November 2010 (the first meeting to be hosted by a non G 7 country), and he prevailed over understandable European reluctance to cede power.

After General Augusto Pinochet s dictatorship gave way to democracy in 1990, the center left coalition known as the Concertación won four consecutive free and fair presidential contests. After 20 years in office, it will now cede power to Piñera s Coalición por el Cambio , composed of his center right Renovación Nacional and the more conservative Union Demócrata Independiente .

Meanwhile, Italy must decide whether it replaces Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who displayed no interest in reform and European affairs, with the cautious Romano Prodi, the former European Commission President. Tony Blair, once an ardent pro European (at least by Britain s undemanding standards), might finally have to cede power to Gordon Brown, who is famously cold to European integration.

In 2011, after Côte d Ivoire s President Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power following his electoral defeat the previous year, the UN, backed by French forces, arrested him and transferred him to the International Criminal Court, cutting short a potentially devastating civil war. Nonetheless, their intervention came too late for the hundreds of civilians who were killed in the city of Duékoué.

Despite European reluctance to cede ground, US President Barack Obama succeeded in brokering such a reallocation of IMF quota shares at the G 20 summit in Seoul in November 2010. Five years later, the US Congress is still holding up IMF quota reform not because it would imply any loss of power or cost to US taxpayers, but because many members do not want to give Obama anything he asks for.

EAST LANSING, MICHIGAN Turkey has over the past few weeks become the spearhead of a joint Western Arab Turkish policy aimed at forcing President Bashar al Assad to cede power in Syria. This is quite a turnaround in Turkish policy, because over the past two years the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had gone out of its way to cultivate good relations with neighboring Syria, with whom it shares a long land border.