Hanna Bäck is a Professor of Political Science at Lund University, Sweden. She received her PhD from Uppsala University, and has previously held a position at University of Mannheim. Her research mainly focuses on political parties, legislators, governments, and cabinet ministers in parliamentary democracies. She has published extensively on these topics, for example in journals such as British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Political Science Research and Methods. She is the co-author of the book, Parties, Parliaments and Legislative Speechmaking (Palgrave Macmillan). Marc Debus is Professor of Comparative Government at the University of Mannheim, Germany. He studied Political Science, Sociology, History and Methods of Empirical Social Research at the Universities of Marburg and Mannheim and received his PhD from the University of Konstanz in 2006. His research interests include political institutions, in particular in multilevel systems, and their effects on the political behavior of voters and legislators, as well as party competition, coalition politics and decision making within parliaments and governments. His publications appeared, amongst others, in the Journal of Politics, the European Journal of Political Research, Party Politics, Political Science Research and Methods, Public Choice, West European Politics, Legislative Studies Quarterly. Jorge M. Fernandes is Assistant Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal. Jorge received his PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute, Florence. His main interests are representation, electoral systems, legislatures, political parties, and party competition. He has published extensively on these topics in inter allia, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and Party Politics. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Portuguese Politics.
