ABSTRACT
Those actors-candidates and their campaign staffs, political parties, interest groups, the media, and voters-are the focus this book. Highlighting their individual roles is not intended to detract from the significance of the structural elements of campaigns and elections. Indeed, election laws and electoral systems establish the frameworks within which these processes occur in a country, and they constrain, or enable, the behavior of the actors who are central to this text, but it is those actors who actually conduct campaigns and decide elections. Each plays a critical role in carrying out the processes we find so important to democracy.
