Abstract: Women constitute a major segment of society in both developed and developing countries. In developed countries, women with greater awareness and responsibility contribute to the nation-building process through local political bodies. Their counterparts in developing countries are lagging behind in this respect, perhaps due to political apathy. The best way to overcome this hurdle is to encourage women's initiative and interest in politics at the grass-roots level. India is attempting just this process in its three-tiered, local, self-governing institutions. In urban areas, these tiers are called municipal committees (which serve a population ranging from 10,000 to 100,000), municipal councils (100,000 to 500,000), and municipal corporations (more than 500,000). Our interest is focused on the middle tier. Any person regardless of gender who is at least 21-years-old and whose name appears in the official voter list may contest election to the municipal council unless otherwise debarred by any of the rules or by-laws concerning elections. Municipal councillors discuss, debate, and approve local development plans and the annual budget and supervise the executive wing. As representatives of the people, they also listen to their constituents' grievances and try to get them redressed. Although women have never been debarred from contesting elections to local bodies, few have come forward and fewer still have been successful. To ensure women some representation, most states in India have crafted municipal acts that provide for the state government to nominate a woman if none have succeeded through the electoral route. Such a provision is clearly inadequate, yet it indicates that politicians, academics, opinion leaders, and

Abstract: On 31 January 1795, the deputy Jacques-Antoine Creuze-Latouche stood before the National Convention to decry what he saw as a glaring weakness in its program of educational reform. Nowhere had it made provision for the study of "the relationship of laws and social institutions to the mechanical arts and industry." To remedy this oversight, Creuze-Latouche proposed that a chair in political economy be added to the faculty of the Ecole normale, the center for teachers' training that had just opened its doors earlier the same month. "Citizens," he declared, "among modern nations the advantage, both in terms of power and freedom of action, will, all things being equal, always be where there is the best government of industry and the mechanical arts."1 Of this, it seems, the Convention needed little persuading. Without delay, it approved Creuze-Latouche's patriotic appeal and instructed its Committee on Public Instruction to nominate a professor. On 6 February the committee selected Alexandre-Theophile Vandermonde (1735-96), a former member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and a well-traveled revolutionary administrator. "We believed," the committee reported, "that the professor of political economy, who is charged with seeking out and presenting the sources of prosperity for the national community [la grande famille], must combine enlightenment with love of the Republic."2 The next day, 7 February, the convention confirmed the committee's recommendation.

Abstract: T aiwan's gradual adaptations of U.S.-style political party primary elections (otherwise known s "preliminary" or "n min ting" elections) mark a significant trend among other developments in that island's "democratization." We have joined a small group of observers to chronicle and analyze the introduction and acceptance, modification, or rejection of this nominating innovation.1 This article appraises trends in the nominating processes among Taiwan's three major political parties for elections in 1995 and 1996. Primaries have not typically been used by political parties outside the United States. In the U.S. they have become a fixed method for parties to use in determining which candidates to nominate for elective offices. "The nomination function is perhaps the most singular feature distinguishing political party organizations from other political groups," wrote Richard G. Niemi and M. Kent Jennings.2 All political organizations, indeed all organizations, exhibit common functions, including membership recruitment and socialization, goal formation and adaptation, leadership selection, and resource acquisition and allocation. Niemi and Jennings observed that political parties rely uniquely on primary elections-relatively formalized elections for choosing nominees to oppose candidates from other parties-to fill a variety of offices. They might have qualified their generalizations to allow exceptions for parties that do not resort to primaries, particularly those in parliamentary systems in which leaders devote considerable attention to identifying and inducing talented persons to stand for parliamentary elections. Likewise, Niemi and Jennings could have taken note of occasional variations, perhaps harbingers of change in society at large, among nonparty organi-

Abstract: This paper proposes a way for shareholders to monitor a firmis management more effectively. This is accomplished by direct shareholder vote to choose an outside firm to nominate director candidates. Later, if shareholders so decide, such a monitoring firm could perform more director functions, perhaps by holding board seats directly. Potential benefits include higher productivity of capital, more realistic levels of executive pay, less short-termism, and a smoother system of discipline than a cycle of corporate bloat followed by drastic cuts.