About the Authors

JOEL D. BARKAN is Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa and Senior Consultant on Governance at the World Bank. He has written extensively on democratization and electoral processes in sub-Saharan Africa. He has been awarded fellowships for his research on early elections from the United States Institute of Peace (1997-98) and from the Woodrow Wilson International Center (2001-2002). He may be contacted at joel-barkan@uiowa.edu

PAUL J. DENSHAM, is Reader in Geography at University College London. His research interests focus on spatial decision support systems, GIS, locational analysis, and parallel algorithms for spatial problems. Whilst at SUNY Buffalo, he co-lead the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis’ research initiatives Spatial Decision Support Systems and Collaborative Spatial Decision-Making, and lead the research investigation Parallel Computation and GIS. He may be contacted at pdensham@geography.uci.ac.uk

GERARD RUSHTON is Professor of Geography at the University of Iowa. His research is in location theory and methods of spatial analysis. In 1998 the Association of American Geographers awarded him “Honors for Distinguished Scholarship in Geography for scholarly contributions to geographical theory and practice concerning revealed space preference, location-allocation modeling, and GIS-related decision support systems, and for applied research in community planning and facility location throughout the world.” He may be contacted at gerard-rushton@uiowa.edu