Glossary

Definitions of terms used throughout CountryReports.

This glossary contains 1,144 terms used throughout CountryReports — political, economic, cultural, historical, and geographic terminology referenced in country profiles and articles. Terms are drawn from authoritative sources including the Library of Congress.

corporatism: A political doctrine primarily of Iberian roots, which emphasizes organic, hierarchical politics and analogies with the corporeal body and blood lines.
corporatist: An hierarchical conception of society that assigns to elites the guiding roles of maintaining social harmony and identifying the general will of the nation.
gada system: An Oromo term used to refer to a system that groups persons (invariably males) of the same generation (rather than age) into sets. The sets are ordered hierarchically and assigned a range of social, military, political, and ritual rights and responsibilities. Generation-set systems are found in varying forms among the Oromo and other groups, e.g., the Konso and Sidama.
Roman Catholic: In historical use, the Latin Church refers to the western wing of Christianity using Latin as its liturgical language, jurisdictionally related to the bishop of Rome (the pope) rather than one of the other patriarchs, and generally corresponding to the area of the Western Roman Empire rather than the Eastern Roman or Byzantine section. After the great schism of 1054 those churches accepting papal authority became known as Catholic in contrast to the Orthodox; the vast majority of these were Latin rite or Roman Catholic. Since the religious conflict in Lusignan and Venetian Cyprus was as much cultural as one of hierarchical structure, Roman Catholics have continued to be known in Cyprus as Latins; the term also is used to distinguish the descendants of the former Lusignan and Venetian elites from Greek Cypriots.