Parliamentary Candidates Between Voters and Parties This book offers the frst comprehensive, comparative and coherent per- spective on parliamentary candidates in contemporary representative democracy. Based on the unique database of the “Comparative Candidate Survey” project which interrogated parliamentary candidates in more than 30 coun- tries, it flls a signifcant lacuna by focusing on the thousands of ordinary candidates who participate in national elections. It examines who the can- didates are in terms of their sociodemographic background and political career patterns, how they were selected by their parties, what their policy preferences are and whether these are congruent to those held by their vot- ers, who they seek to represent and how they intend to do so once elected and what their visions are on representative democracy and party govern- ment. Last but not least, it investigates how they go about reaching out to their potential voters during the election campaign. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political par- ties and party politics, political elites, political communication, political participation, elections, theories of democracy and representation, legisla- tive studies, voting behaviour and, more broadly, to European politics, as well as political and policy professionals throughout Europe. Lieven De Winter is Emeritus Professor at the Université Catholique de Lou- vain, Belgium. Rune Karlsen is Professor at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, and Research Professor at the Institute for Social Re- search, Oslo, Norway. Hermann Schmitt is Emeritus Professor of Electoral Politics at the Univer- sity of Manchester, UK, a Research Fellow of the MZES and Professor at the University of Mannheim, Germany.