David P. Conradt East Carolina University, USA

David P. Conradt has been a professor of political science at East Carolina University since 1993. From 1968 to 1993 he was at the University of Florida (Gainesville). He has also held joint appointments at universities in Konstanz, Mannheim, Cologne, and Dresden. Among his recent publications are The German Polity (Tenth Edition); A Precarious Victory: Schr?der and the German Elections of 2002 (2005); and Power Shift in Germany: The 1998 Election and the End of the Kohl Era (2000). He has also published a variety of articles and monographs on German political culture, parties, and elections, including ‘‘The Shrinking Elephants: The 2009 Election and the Changing Party System’’ (German Politics and Society, 2010). In 2005 the president of the Federal Republic awarded him the Merit Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany for his body of work.