This second edition has been extensively revised and updated, based, in large part, on the comments and suggestions of anonymous readers contacted by Cambridge University Press. We could not follow all of their suggestions but have acted on most of them, resulting in a great many changes to the book, some major, some minor. We also had very useful feedback from Matthijs Bogaards and his students at the Jacobs University, Bremen, from Wolfgang Müller at the University of Mannheim, from Henk van der Kolk at Twente University and from the very helpful students at the University of Southampton who ‘road tested’ some of the chapters for us. Ursula Neumann and Benjamin Engst at the University of Mannheim checked many of the entries and provided updated information. Also, Benjamin Engst pitched in at the last stages of the revisions and helped us to meet our deadline.

Ken Newton would also like to thank Wolfgang Merkel and his colleagues in the DSL Research Unit in the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin for their continuing support and for providing a wonderful working environment. Susanne Fuchs was especially helpful and deserves special thanks.

As political scientists, not politicians, we cannot blame any faults and errors in this second edition on anybody but ourselves, least of all those named above.