A series of fascinating images accompany an article entitled The Architecture of Autocracy. It includes Foster and partners' Khan Shatyry Entertainment Center, Kazakhstan; RMJM's Okhta Centre, St Petersburg; and Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre, Baku (Foreign Policy; full-text article requires subscription/registration). It must be, surely, a paradox that non-democratic regimes are sponsoring some of the most dazzling contemporary architecture: one of those circumstances that seems to reveal the limitations of democracy itself.