About the Author

George Kurian is president of the International Encyclopedia Society. He has produced nearly twenty encyclopedias and other reference books, including the World Encyclopedia of Parliaments and Legislatures (Congressional Quarterly, 1998), which was a Choice Outstanding Academic Book in 1998. James E. Alt specializes in political economy and methodology. He is the Director of Graduate Studies and Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is or has been a member of the editorial boards of the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Political Studies, and the American Political Science Review. Simone Chambers is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her primary areas of scholarship include political philosophy, ethics, democratic theory and constitutional theory. Geoffrey Garrett is founding CEO of the United States Studies Centre and Professor of Political Science at the University of Sydney. A dual citizen of Australia and the U.S., he has written widely on numerous aspects of the global political economy. Margaret Levi is the Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington, and Professor of U.S. Politics at the University of Sydney. She is also the Director of the CHAOS (Comparative Historical Analysis of Organizations and States) Center and served as President of the American Political Science Association from 2004-2005. Paula D. McClain is a Professor of Political Science at Duke University. She is also the Co-Director for the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Social Sciences.