Elections, voting and party systems.

Ian McAllister is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The Australian National University, and from 1997 until 2004 was Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at the ANU.

He has previously held chairs at the University of New South Wales and the University of Manchester and has held other academic appointments at The Queen's University of Belfast and the University of Strathclyde.

He was President of the British Politics Group 2001-2002, edited the Australian Journal of Political Science from 2004 to 2010, and was chair of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project from 2003 to 2008. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Ian McAllister has four main current research projects.

First, his work on Australian politics involves co-directing the Australian Election Study, a national survey of political opinion conducted after each federal election since 1987. The next survey, funded by the ARC, is due after the 2010 federal election. He is also involved in a major ARC-funded study of Australian public opinion towards defence and foreign policy.

(2) Postcommunist politics and the problems of democratization is a collaborative project with Stephen White (University of Glasgow), and is funded by the ARC. A book length monograph on Russian political opinion, tentatively titled The Russian Voter, is in preparation.

(3) His interests in Northern Ireland politics involve examining trends in public opinion and the relationship between social divisions and political cleavages. A book length study (with Bernadette Hayes, University of Aberdeen) is nearing completion.

(4) The study of comparative political behavior involves examining such issues as how accountability and representation are structured by political institutions, and as part of this work, he has edited special issues of the journals Electoral Studies and Party Politics.

He is also completing a book length study on parties and party government with Russell J Dalton (University of California Irvine) and David M. Farrell (University College Dublin) to be published by Cambridge University Press.