David M. Farrell is Jean Monnet Professor of European Politics at the University of Manchester, England. Farrell is the pre-eminent international expert on electoral systems and is the author of two standard works on electoral systems: Electoral Systems: A Comparative Introduction and Comparing Electoral Systems. Ian McAllister is Professor of Politics at the Australian National University. He is the co-editor, most recently, of The Cambridge Handbook of the Social Sciences in Australia and coauthor of The Australian Political System, Longman, 1998, Ian McAllister has written extensively on Australian politics, parties and elections, and has been a co-director of the Australian Election Study since 1987. He is currently chair of the 50-nation Comparative Study of Electoral Systems group.