M. Steven Fish is a comparative political scientist who studies democracy and regime change in developing and postcommunist countries, religion and politics, and constitutional systems and national legislatures. Originally from Kentucky, he now makes his home in the San Francisco Bay Area and serves as a professor of political science at the University of California-Berkeley. He has conducted extensive field research in Eurasia, East Europe, and Southeast Asia. He served as a Senior Fulbright Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia, in 2007 and at the European University at St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2000-2001. In 2005, he was the recipient of the Distinguished Social Sciences Teaching Award of the Colleges of Letters and Science, University of California-Berkeley.