Frank Dobson, the health secretary, has not thrown many Tory placemen off health trusts in favour of council representatives, as many had hoped he would.

ECONOMIST: Resolving Labour��s local difficulties

Ruling parties habitually try to unseat their predecessors' placemen amid howls of protest from opposition parties who did much the same when they were in power.

ECONOMIST: Poland's public television

The House of Lords should be elected: it is absurd to have political placemen shaping the laws of the land, let alone people who owe their seats to their family tree.

ECONOMIST: Britain��s feuding coalition government

But the events in Romania unpleasantly echo those in Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orban, used his thumping election victory in 2010 to weaken independent institutions and pack his placemen into senior jobs.

ECONOMIST: Romania and democracy