Giorgos Charalambous is Senior Research Consultant at the Cyprus Centre of the Peace Research Institute Oslo and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Cyprus. Christophoros Christophorou studied Education in Nicosia and Paris and Political Science in Athens and Lille. His research and publications focus on Cyprus political parties and electoral behaviour, and media regulation.
Approachably written by an interdisciplinary team of experts, this is a fascinating book - and not just for those interested in Cyprus and Southern Europe. Anyone who wants to understand political parties, and the complex web of societal connections they are still capable of spinning in some places, will get a lot out of reading it. Recommended. Tim Bale, Queen Mary University of London This book fulfills a gap in the literature because it sheds light on a little-studied case, that of the Republic of Cyprus. Thus the book includes both a part devoted to the study of Cypriot political parties and a part devoted to how non-partisan groups use strategies to affect the behavior of parties. Needless to say, there is also a part in the book where issues of ethnic conflict are also covered. In brief, this is a book which will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners interested in how the relations between parties and society affect the quality of contemporary democracies, based on a little-studied yet quite revealing case study. Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos, University of Athens