James W. Ceaser is the Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1976. He also serves as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and has previously taught at Harvard University, Princeton University, Oxford University, the University of Basel, and the University of Bordeaux. He has written widely on American political thought, political institutions, and campaigns, including Presidential Selection, Reconstructing America, and Nature and History in American Political Development, and Designing a Polity.