Coevolution of capitalism and political representation: The choice of electoral systems

David Soskice is Research Professor of Political Science at Duke University. And he is Research Professor of Comparative Political Economy at Oxford University and Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College. He was Director of the Research Institute for Economic Change and Employment at the Wissenschaftszentrum für Socialforschung in Berlin (WZB)from 1990 to 2001; and School Centennial Professor of European Political Economy at the London School of Economics from 2004 to 2007. He did his undergraduate and graduate studies at Trinity and Nuffield Colleges at Oxford, and from 1968 to 1990 he was Official Fellow in Economics at University College, Oxford, where he is now Emeritus. He has been visiting professor at the Dept of Economics, Berkeley (1973/4, 1977, 1979, 1983), the Dept of Political Science, Duke University, the Industrial and Labour Relations School, Cornell University, at the Johns Hopkins Graduate Center for Advanced International Studies at Bologna, and in Dept of Social Sciences at Trento; he was adjunct Professor at the Research School of Social Sciences in the Australian National University. In 2004 he was the Mars visiting professor of Political Science at Yale. And in Spring 2007 he was visiting professor of Government at Harvard. He was seconded to the Prime Minister's Policy Unit in 10 Downing St (May 1998 to Feb 1999) to develop long-term policies on education and training. He wrote Unionism, Economic Stabilization and Incomes Policies: Euopean Experience (Brookings, 1983) with Robert Flanagan and Lloyd Ulman, and Macroeconomics and the Wage Bargain (OUP,1990) with Wendy Carlin. His major research area is comparative systems of advanced capitalism, and he and Peter Hall published an edited volume, Varieties of Capitalism (Oxford Univ Press, 2001) in which much of this work is summarised. With Wendy Carlin, he published Macroeconomics: Imperfections, Information and Policies (OUP, 2006); a second edition is in preparation. He is currently working with Torben Iversen on the interrelationship of capitalism and political institutions. He is beginning a project with Nicola Lacey on the comparative political economy of crime and punishment.