William J. Crotty is the Thomas P. O'Neill Chair in Public Life and Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. His teaching and research interests include political parties; electoral behavior, political behavior and representation; American politics; presidential nominating systems and procedures; comparative public policy; and democratization processes and development. He has been a recipient of the Samuel J. Eldersveld Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Political Science Association's Political Organization and Parties Section, is a past president of the Policy Studies Organization and of the Midwest Political Science Association. Among his publications are Winning the Presidency 2012 (Paradigm Publishers, 2013); The Obama Presidency: Promise and Performance (2012); Winning the Presidency 2008 (Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), editor/author; and Handbook of Party Politics (London: Sage Publications, 2006) (with Richard S. Katz). He is currently developing the 2012 edition of Winning the Presidency and has a book forthcoming, The Consequences of Polarization: Parties, Politics and Policy (TBA). His current research agenda includes the following: Research agenda: 1) polarization in politics and its impact on social policy, economics, aging, national health care, minority group interests, and other areas of policy concern; 2) adaption to peace processes in advanced democratic countries with histories of religious ethnic and economic conflict; 3) processes of political and party change over time; 4) presidential agendas and campaign issue positions.