Representative Government in Modern Europe

Michael Gallagher is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College at the University of Dublin. He is co-author of Candidate Selection in Comparative Selection (London, 1988), The Referendum Experience in Europe (Basingstoke, 1996), and Politics in the Republic of Ireland, 3rd Edition (London, 1999). His current research interests include a study of the backgrounds, attitudes and roles of members of political parties. Peter Mair holds the chair of Comparative Politics in Leiden University in the Netherlands and previously taught at the University of Limerick, the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, the University of Manchester, and the European University Institute, Florence. He is the author (with Stefano Bartolini) of Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability (Cambridge, 1990), which was awarded the Stein Rokkan Prize, and of Party System Change (Oxford, 1997). Recent co-edited books include How Parties Organize (London, 1994), and Partien auf komplexen Wahlermarkten (Vienna, 1999). He is co-editor of the European Journal of Political Research and is currently engaged in a project on the long-term development of elections, parties, and governments in Western Europe over the period from 1950 to 2000. Michael Laver holds the chair of Political Science at Trinity College, University of Dublin. He previously taught at Queens University, Belfast, the University of Liverpool, University College Galway and has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Harvard University and Duke University. Recent books include Private Desires, Political Action (London, 1997), Playing Politics: The Nightmare Continues (Oxford, 1997) and (with Kenneth A. Shepsle) Making and Breaking Governments (New York, 1996). He is currently working on the impact of intra party politics on inter party coalition bargaining, and on the development of more dynamic models of government formation.