People

Ian McAllister is professor of political science at The Australian National University. He is the co-author of How Russia Votes and The Australian Electoral System, and co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of the Social Sciences in Australia. He has been director of the Australian Election Study since 1987 and chair of the 50-nation Comparative Study of Electoral Systems since 2003. He is a specialist on public opinion surveys and political behaviour and is currently working on Australian and comparative electoral behaviour, the Northern Ireland conflict, and patterns of democratization in postcommunist societies.

Andrew Leigh is an associate professor in the Economics Program of the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. His current research is in the fields of labour economics, public finance and the economics of elections. He holds a PhD from Harvard University, and has previously worked as a lawyer, a political adviser and a think-tank researcher. He has published over thirty journal articles and two books, is a regular columnist for the Australian Financial Review and writes a semi-daily weblog. In 2006, he received an Early Career Award from the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.