About the Authors

MICHAEL JOSEPH SODARO (chapters 1–18 and 20) is the principal author and editor of Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction. As Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, where he has been on the faculty since 1977, he is the Director of the European and Eurasian Studies program at the Elliott School of International Affairs and a member of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. He has a BA from Fordham University, an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD from Columbia University. He earned a certificate at the Institut d'études politiques in Paris and studied in Berlin. He has conducted research in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia, and has taught at Georgetown, John Hopkins, and the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. In addition to publishing numerous articles and book chapters and a co-edited volume, he is the recipient of the Marshall Shulman prize for Moscow, Germany, and the West from Khrushchev to Gorbachev (Cornell, 1990). In 1992 he was awarded the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg prize for excellence in teaching at George Washington University.

DEAN W. COLLINWOOD (chapter 19, "Japan") is Director of the Global Business Development Center and of the U.S.-Japan and China Centers in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he also teaches in the Political Science Department at the University of Utah and serves on the board of the Salt Lake Committee on Foreign Relations and the Asia-Pacific Council. He has a BA from Brigham Young University, an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD from the University of Chicago. He was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Tokyo in 1986–87 and is a past president of the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. He is the author of the Global Studies series volumes Japan and the Pacific Rim, published by Dushkin/McGraw-Hill.

BRUCE J. DICKSON (chapter 21, "China") is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University. He obtained his BA, MA, and PhD from the University of Michigan. He is the author of China's Red Capitalists: The Party, Private Entrepreneurs, and Prospects for Political Change (Cambridge, 2003) and Democratization in China and Taiwan: The Adaptability of Leninist Parties (Oxford, 1998). He is co-editor of three other books and author of articles appearing in Asian Survey, China Quarterly, Comparative Politics, and other leading journals.

JOSEPH L. KLESNER (chapter 22, "Mexico and Brazil") is Professor and Chair in the Department of Political Science at Kenyon College. He received his BA at Central College and his SM and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author of articles appearing in Comparative Politics, Mexican Studies, Electoral Studies, and the Latin American Research Review, in addition to many book chapters, he has worked on politics in Mexico and on public opinion and political culture in Latin America. His research has been funded by Fulbright grants to Mexico, South America, and most recently, Ireland and by funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

TIMOTHY D. SISK (chapter 23, "Nigeria and South Africa") is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver, where he also serves as a faculty member in the MA program in Conflict Resolution and as Director of the BA program in International Studies. He obtained his BA and MA from Baylor University and his PhD from the George Washington University. After experience as a journalist in South Africa and a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate, he served as a program officer and research scholar at the federally chartered United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. Sisk is just completing a major new scholarly book titled Pursuing Peace in Civil Wars: From Escalation to Sustainable Settlement. He is also the author of a new book for policy practitioners titled Democracy, Conflict and Human Security (with Judith Large; International IDEA, 2006). He has written five other books and many articles, including Democracy at the Local Level (IDEA, 2000), Democratization in South Africa (Princeton, 1995), and Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflicts (Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1995).