Ian Budge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex UK, and well known internationally as author of numerous research articles and textbooks on democratic politics.

Preface: Explaining Politics Systematically. Introduction: Politics and Policy What Do We Want to Explain and How? Part I: Processes. Elections alternate party-based governments with different preferences and priorities thus bringing public policy into line with centrist popular preferences in the long run: Overview 1. Why Politics? Making Policies to Provide Public Goods 2. How Popular Preferences Develop 3. Measuring Electoral Preferences 4. Electors' Policy Thinking: From a Joined Up Left-Right Perspective to Issue-by-Issue Reactions 5. Party Policy Thinking: Framing Policy Targets and Election-Based Estimates of Majority Preferences 6. Matching Public Policy to Popular Preferences 7. The 'Web of Explanation': Relating Process Theories to each other Within a General Political Science Context. Part II: Rules. Rules designate - but may misrepresent - majority preferences, thus biasing policy outcomes: Overview 8. Majority Choice of Policies: Voting Paradoxes and Attempted Solutions 9. General Elections and Election Systems: Finalizing Collective Choice of Policies. Part III: Protagonists. Parties and governments shape popular preferences and reflect them in public policies: Overview 10. Citizens, Parties and Governments: Interactive Preference Formation 11. Parties: Ideological Policy-Carriers 12. Governments: Prime Participants in Policy Making 13. Ministries: Separating out Policy Areas. Part IV: States. Collective action without binding rules: Overview 14. Globalization and World Democracy. Part V: Explanation. Explaining politics by specifying its processes so as to predict outcomes. Overview: Theory-Driven Data-Analysis 15. Generating 'Big Data': Sources, Procedures, Error Checks 16. Simplifying 'Big Data': Dimensions, Majorities and the (Missing?) Middle 17. Managing 'Big Data': Theoretical Explanation and Statistical Analysis 18. Developing Political Science by Explaining Democracy