John Higley is Emeritus Professor of Government and Sociology and held the Jack S. Blanton Chair in Australia Studies until his retirement in 2012. In addition to chairing the Government Department, he was founder and director of the Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies and chair of the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on Political Elites. He has written extensively about political elites, especially roles they play in democracies: Elites and Non-Elites: The Possibilities and Their Side Effects (1972); Elites in Australia (1979); Elitism (1980); Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (1992); Elites, Crises and the Birth of Regimes (1998); Elites After State Socialism (2000); Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy (2006); Democratic Elitism: New Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives (2010); Political Elites in the Transatlantic Crisis (2014), The Endangered West. Myopic Elites and Fragile Social Orders in a Threatening World (2016). Higley is senior editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites (2017).