In addition to 17 women elected on reserved seats, 1 was elected as a technocrat.

Most Italians breathed a collective sigh of relief that three time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is being replaced by a technocrat par excellence, former European Commissioner Mario Monti, a respected economist. Greece, too, is turning over the reigns of government to an unelected, and supposedly apolitical, technocrat, Lucas Papademos, a former vice president of the European Central Bank.

Monnet was a born technocrat, who hated political conflict and almost made a fetish of unity. (In 1940, when Hitler seemed indomitable, Monnet suggested to Winston Churchill that France and Britain might be rolled into one country.)

The willingness to give up power if necessary is one of the advantages that professors bring to such positions. (The ECB presidency then went to another economist and technocrat, Mario Draghi, who is, in fact, the perfect man for the job.)

But he was a senior civil servant, and seemed to be the only technocrat who could credibly hold together Hong Kong s disaffected civil service, which China knew was indispensable to governing the territory, regardless of its British heritage. But Tsang brought his own weaknesses to Hong Kong s government most notably, greed.

To be sure, governments cannot escape their responsibilities to their citizens, and only the most naïve technocrat believes that the market alone can ensure energy independence. At the same time, however, purely bilateral negotiations between individual EU members and oil and gas producing countries weakens the member states bargaining power, as well as undermining Europe s geopolitical weight in world affairs.

The Legislative Level As a result of general elections held in October 2002, 73 women have been elected as members of the National Assembly 60 on reserved seats and 14 on general seats, 18 women as Senators 17 on reserved seats for women and one as a technocrat and 143 as members of the various provincial assemblies 128 on reserved seats and 15 on general seats.

In Germany, Axel Weber resigned as President of the Bundesbank and member of the Governing Council of the ECB last January, reportedly because his statements opposing the Banks purchases of troubled eurozone countries bonds reflected his political naivety. The press could not imagine that a technocrat might voluntarily relinquish a sure shot at a position of great power successor to Jean Claude Trichet as ECB President on a matter of principle.