Factions within parties, alignments and realignments within parties, and self-serving coalitions further worsened matters.
The imperial regime's account is, of course, self-serving and must be viewed within the context of the time.
Such terms hardly befit a collaborator of empire or a spineless, self-serving monarch.
Secondly, they permit citizens to hold their representatives accountable and to punish them if they enrich themselves in corrupt or self-serving ways.
Process, not outcomes (especially outcomes sought by self-serving groups elsewhere), is what we should aim at in countries that lack democratic ways.
We can equally dismiss a posteriori rationalizations of design intent as self-serving, and atomistic efforts to include intent as overly strong representation.
Indeed, as she mentioned earlier, prudence is about right reasoning, in order to apply good means to good ends, not necessarily self-serving ends.
And yet it does not seem plausible to attribute to mere self-serving cynicism all complaint that appeals to such principles.