Within the oil industry, corruption was widespread, with entrenched systems of patronage.

To think of overcoming a solidly entrenched system would have seemed an exercise in futility.

Each threat can be overcome, but standing in our way is an entrenched political system and news media that refuse to confront these threats seriously.

Will he push through policies to reform the entrenched system of corruption and pay-offs?

It took gumption for women to buck the entrenched millinery system back then.

At issue is an entrenched system that lets many sanitation workers collect a full day's pay for as little as four hours of labor.

Those changes would hit at the heart of the entrenched political system, at patronage and other such prizes that elected officials control.

"Long before our present problems became apparent, I have been a lone voice standing up against the entrenched system," he said.

He, too, is trying to change an entrenched system - in this case one of patronage and bureaucracy.

But Europe's entrenched system of rigid work rules is cracking in other ways, even if laws have not been relaxed.