Dr. Maria Spirova is Associate Professor of Comparative Politics and International Relations in the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University, Netherlands. She has published on issues related to party development, minority policy, ethnic politics and Europeanization in the post-communist world. She is the author of Political Parties in Post-communist Societies: Formation, Persistence and Change (Palgrave McMillan, 2007) and co-editor of Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies (with Petr Kopecký and , Peter Mair, OUP, 2012). Her research has appeared in Party Politics, West European Politics, EJPR, Electoral Studies, East European Politics, Comparative European Politics, and Europe-Asia Studies.