OVO

It doesn’t happen often, but it happens more than never.  Sometimes people in power use legal means to remove some of their own power, or share their power with others and thus diminish their own power.

Wikipedia: Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519 BC – 430 BC?) was an ancient Roman aristocrat and political figure, serving as consul in 460 BC and Roman dictator in 458 BC and 439 BC. Cincinnatus was regarded by the Romans, especially the aristocratic patrician class, as one of the heroes of early Rome and as a model of Roman virtue and simplicity. A persistent opponent of the plebeians, when his son was convicted in absentia and condemned to death, Cincinnatus was forced to live in humble circumstances, working on his own small farm, until he was called to serve Rome as dictator, an office which he immediately resigned after completing his task of defeating the Aequians. His immediate resignation of his absolute authority with the end of the crisis has often been cited as an example of outstanding leadership, service to the greater good, civic virtue, and modesty.

Wikipedia: Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus [...] was Roman Emperor from 20 November 284 to 1 May 305. [...] Diocletian appointed fellow-officer Maximian his Augustus, his senior co-emperor, in 285. He delegated further on 1 March 293, appointing Galerius and Constantius as Caesars, junior co-emperors. Under this “Tetrarchy”, or “rule of four”, each emperor would rule over a quarter-division of the empire. [...] Diocletian retired to his homeland, Dalmatia. He moved into the expansive palace he had built on the Adriatic near the administrative center of Salona. [...] Galerius assumed the consular fasces in 308 with Diocletian as his colleague. In the autumn of 308, Galerius again conferred with Diocletian at Carnuntum (Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria). Diocletian and Maximian were both present on November 11, 308, to see Galerius appoint Licinius to be Augustus in place of Severus, who had died at the hands of Maxentius. He ordered Maximian, who had attempted to return to power after his retirement, to step down permanently. At Carnuntum people begged Diocletian to return to the throne, to resolve the conflicts that had arisen through Constantine’s rise to power and Maxentius’ usurpation. Diocletian’s reply: “If you could show the cabbage that I planted with my own hands to your emperor, he definitely wouldn’t dare suggest that I replace the peace and happiness of this place with the storms of a never-satisfied greed.”

Wikipedia: Peter Kropotkin was born in Moscow. His father, Prince Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, owned large tracts of land and nearly 1200 “souls” (male serfs) in three provinces. [...] “[U]nder the influence of republican teachings” he dropped his princely title at the age of twelve, and “even rebuked his friends, when they so referred to him.”

Wikipedia: Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin [...] was a well-known Russian revolutionary and theorist of collectivist anarchism born in the Russian Empire to a family of Russian nobles.

Wikipedia: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon [...] was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first to call himself an anarchist.

Wikipedia: Richard Milhous Nixon [...] was the 37th President of the United States (1969–1974) and is the only president to resign the office.

About John Robbins: The only son of the founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, John Robbins was groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps, but chose to walk away from Baskin-Robbins and the immense wealth it represented to “…pursue the deeper American Dream…the dream of a society at peace with its conscience because it respects and lives in harmony with all life forms. A dream of a society that is truly healthy, practicing a wise and compassionate stewardship of a balanced ecosystem.”

Wikipedia: At least four of the fifteen post-Civil War Constitutional amendments were ratified specifically to extend voting rights to different groups of citizens. [...] Abolition of property qualifications for white men, 1812-1860; Non-white men, 1870; Women, 1920; Native Americans, 1924; Residents of the District of Columbia, 1961; Poor, 1964; Racial minorities in certain states, 1965; Adults between 18 and 21, 1971.

Wikipedia: Solidarity was the first non-Communist-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country. In the 1980s it constituted a broad anti-bureaucratic social movement. The government attempted to destroy the union during the period of martial law in the early 1980s and several years of repression, but in the end it had to start negotiating with the union. The Round Table Talks between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and in December 1990 Wałęsa was elected President of Poland.

Wikipedia: Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev [...] was the second last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, serving from 1985 until 1991, and the last head of state of the USSR, serving from 1988 until its collapse in 1991. [...] Gorbachev’s attempts at reform as well as summit conferences with United States President Ronald Reagan and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War, ended the political supremacy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Michael Meyer, The Picnic that Brought Down the Berlin Wall: in Hungary itself, a new generation of reform-minded communists had taken charge. Almost overnight, they wrote a U.S.-style constitution and began speaking openly of a free press, free markets and free elections. Emboldened, a small group of local Sopron activists decided to celebrate the new spirit. Their modest aim: put up some tents, hire a brass band and let the beer and good vibes flow. One of the organizers came up with an especially inspired idea – to briefly open a gate through the barbed-wire frontier to Austria, allowing people to casually stroll back and forth across the border for the first time in four decades. They called it the Pan-European Picnic. Because anything involving the border was a matter of extreme sensitivity, their request for a permit came to the attention of Hungary’s young prime minister, Miklos Nemeth, the man behind so many of the Gorbachev-like changes taking place. Immediately, a light bulb went off in his head. [...] Nemeth hoped to unleash a flood. He believed that a mass escape of East Germans from Hungary would pose an existential threat to the regime of Erich Honecker, the dictatorial boss of the German Democratic Republic. He also believed that if Honecker fell, it would bring down the Berlin Wall – and with it the entire communist bloc. Amid the chaos, he could realize his true goal. Hungary too would gain its freedom.