Konstantin VÖSSING is Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) of Comparative Politics in the Department of International Politics at the City University of London. He was a student at University of Bonn and the University of Reims, and he received his PhD from the Ohio State University. He has had previous appointments at Humboldt University Berlin, the European University Institute, Harvard University, and Ohio State. He studies how people form preferences about controversial issues, how elites shape opinions and the behaviour of citizens through mobilisation, persuasion, and information in different political environments, and how these processes relate to critical episodes of major political conflict, such as class politics, regional integration, the transformation of the welfare state, and the current challenge to democracy.