Peter Mair and West European Politics: In Memoriam

Peter Mair, co-editor of this journal from 2001, died suddenly whilst on holiday with his family in his native Ireland in August 2011. Peter’s death brought to an abrupt end a very close association with West European Politics that can be traced back almost three decades to the publication of his analysis of the Irish general election of 1981 (Mair 1982). In the ensuing years, Peter became a frequent contributor to the journal, writing book reviews and articles and editing no fewer than five special issues. It is no exaggeration to say that the development and maturation of Peter’s academic interests can, to a large extent, be charted through the pages of WEP. His initial and enduring fascination with Irish politics found early expression through his 1981 election analysis (Mair 1982) and a subsequent review article on ‘Recent Writing on Irish Politics’ (Mair 1984). It continued with his examination of the Irish party system (Mair 1989) and was still evident two decades later in his review of Gallagher and Marsh’s book on the 2007 Irish elections (Mair 2008). His equally keen appreciation of the political system of his adopted homeland was expressed in his article on ‘The Correlates of Consensus Democracy and the Puzzle of Dutch Politics’ (Mair 1994). Peter will, perhaps, be best remembered for his comparative study of the changing nature of political parties and party systems, and it is humbling to recall how much of this best work he chose to place with WEP. His early landmark volume on European party politics, co-edited with his colleague, frequent collaborator and friend, Stefano Bartolini (Bartolini and Mair 1984), was followed by the equally influential special issue on party system change, on which he collaborated with Gordon Smith, one of the two founding co-editors of the journal (Smith and Mair 1989). These two special issues did much to establish and consolidate the reputation of WEP as a prime outlet for research on political parties and party systems. Thus, well before he became co-editor, Peter helped to fashion the academic profile of the journal. His own pieces in these early special issues (Bartolini and Mair 1984; Mair 1984, 1989a, 1989b; Smith and Mair 1989) established him as one of the leading comparativists of his generation, and regular contributions in later years further enhanced his standing. One only needs to re-read his articles West European Politics, Vol. 35, No. 5, v–x, September 2012