The Madisonian Turn: Political Parties and Parliamentary Democracy in Nordic Europe

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments As editors and contributors to this volume, we have over the past several years accumulated a great number of debts to the many individuals and institutions who have helped us make this study possible or improved its quality . Besides our respective home institutions, the first main sponsor of this research was the Nordiska samarbetsnämnden för humanistisk och samh ällsvetenskaplig forskning, NOS-HS, through its grant to the project Nordic Parliamentary Democracy (Nordisk parlamentarisk demokrati, Ref. NOS-S 20084 Bergman). And through its grant to the project Constitutional Reform 2010: Political Parties and the Rules of the Game (P20070370 :1-E Bergman), the Swedish Riksbankens Jubileumsfond helped us complete the project and the book. Both the individual contributors and the editors have been very fortunate in having excellent research assistance. The contributors are pleased to acknowledge these contributions in their respective chapters. We unfortunately cannot here thank all those who have helped us centrally or locally, but we do want to acknowledge that at different times during the past few years Emelie Lilliefeldt, Erik Svedman, and Marcus Holmström at Umeå University and Jens Nilsson at Luleå University of Technology have through their hard work and long hours helped us tremendously in the central coordination and execution of this study. During the final months of our project, Emily O. Matthews has meticulously and efficiently reviewed the entire manuscript, including all the tables and figures, for consistency and clarity of presentation. She was also instrumental in proofreading the text and in preparing the manuscript for submission. In effect, at this critical juncture she managed the editors, and she did so to our great satisfaction. We are endlessly grateful also to all those colleagues who have read various parts of this manuscript and provided constructive comments. We especially want to express our gratitude to Robert Harmel and Jo Saglie, x ✦ Acknowledgments who a couple of years back read the entire manuscript and gave us detailed suggestions that helped us rethink and improve the book. Not least, we want to express our gratitude to our contributors, who, even though most have had previous experience of working with us, have stood by the editors in a long research process. Their positive attitudes and commitments have made our job a lot easier. The responsibility for any remaining errors rests with us, the editors. We are also most grateful to Melody Herr and the production staff at the University of Michigan Press for their efficient, professional , and cheerful collaboration in turning this manuscript into a traditional as well as an electronic book. Finally, we thank our respective families, and especially Cindy and Digna, for their invaluable patience and support. The text discusses Nordic politics up through early 2010. The tables report data available at that time. With the publication of this book, we will release additional tables containing a variety of useful data on the parliamentary institutions of the Nordic countries. The interested reader will find these in the Nordic Parliamentary Democracy Data Archive at the following Internet address: www.erdda.se. Torbjörn Bergman ✦ Kaare Strøm ...