[2] Peter Mair was born in Rosses Point,[3] County Sligo, Ireland, and studied history and politics at University College Dublin.
In 1990, he co-authored the book Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability with Stefano Bartolini.
[4] It was awarded the ISSC/Unesco Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research.
[5] He continued to work at Leiden University becoming professor of comparative politics in 1994 when he held an inaugural address entitled "Party democracies and their difficulties".
In 2005 he returned to the European University Institute to invest time in his research into democracy, indifference and populist parties.