Over the past 25 Congresses, there have been, by my count, 49 senators who were selected by gubernatorial appointment in midterm (this excludes cases where a senator-elect acceded to office a few days early to gain seniority on his colleagues, a once-common courtesy that is becoming less so).
Since the congresses' single-term members exist to serve the interests of their parties, not of voters, their scrutiny of the governor usually their party boss is not exactly forensic.
Almost all delegates at every level, though nominally elected (either by lower-level congresses or by the public in the case of the lowest tiers), are in fact selected by the party.
A 1904 treaty, ratified by the Congresses of both countries, legalised its annexation of Bolivia's nitrate-rich coastal province of Antofagasta.
But the most useful reforms for China's nascent civil society are really the same things that all China needs: a stronger judiciary, more responsive people's congresses, a more independent press.
Across a whole range of issues but particularly focusing on trade and the conduct of the war on terror at home and abroad the Democratic majorities in Congress are confronting the president in a way that the compliant Republican Congresses he faced in his first six years in office never dared to do.
But Gypsies in the ghettos have never heard of it, and few of those who attend its congresses have been democratically elected themselves.
And that accounted for a slightly more desolate atmosphere at the meeting than is normal at astronautical congresses.
In the past few months, at provincial-level congresses across the country, delegates have vetoed government appointees in favour of their own candidates.
And it will probably take at least another week until the Bundestag, Germany's lower house, will be able formally to elect the new chancellor, who will then pick her cabinet: the whole deal first has to be approved by congresses and the parliamentary groups of all three parties involved.Given the long and arcane procedure, much can still go wrong before the new government is in place.
Party members there have been allowed to select delegates to party congresses through secret ballots.
