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.