Attila Ágh, Professor and Head of Political Science Department at the Budapest University of Economics, Hungary. His current research project is on the adaptation of the Hungarian polity to the rules and institutions of the European Union. His recent publications include Politics of Central Europe and Emerging Democracies in East Central Europe and the Balkans.
Francis Akinde, Professor of Economic Sociology at Université de Bouaké, and associate researcher at the Research Institute for Development, Côte d'Ivoire. His research interests are in the field of democratization and social policy in Francophone Africa. His recent publications include Les mirages de la démocratie en Afrique subsaharienne and "La transformation des lieux de pouvoir en Afrique subsaharienne sous les contraintes de la mondialisation."
Yusuf Bangura, Project Co-ordinator at UNRISD, for the projects on "Technocratic Policy Making and Democratization" and "Public Sector Reform and Crisis States". Before joining UNRISD in 1990, he was Lecturer in political science at Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria. His publications in the field of economic policy-making include, Authoritarianism, Democracy and Adjustment: The Politics of Economic Reform in Africa (co-edited); and "Intellectuals, Economic Reform and Social Change: Constraints and Opportunities in the Formation of a Nigerian Technocracy".
Björn Beckman, Associate Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden. His current research interests are on trade unions, economic restructuring and public sector reforms. He is the co-author of Union Power in the Nigerian Textile Industry: Labour Regime and Adjustment and The Wheat Trap: Bread and Underdevelopment in Nigeria.
Wiseman Chijere Chirwa, Deputy Director of the Centre for Social Research, University of Malawi, Malawi. His current research projects include: State of Democracy in Malawi; Civil Society and Poverty Reduction; and Institutions of Democratic Governance in Malawi. He is editor of the Malawi Journal of Social Science, and has published widely in journals and edited books.
Martin Chungong, Officer-in-Charge of the Programme for the Study and Promotion for Representative Institutions at Inter-Parliamentary Union, Switzerland. He previously served as senior official in Parliament of Cameroon and was also lecturer at the Universities of Yaounde and Buea in Cameroon. His main area of interest is parliamentary institution building for democratic governance. He has prepared and delivered several papers on the role and working methods of parliaments, and recently contributed to the Union's publication The Parliamentary Mandate.
Javier Corrales, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Amherst College, USA. He is specializing in Latin America and his articles on the political economy of market reforms have appeared in numerous journals. He is currently working on a book manuscript on the relationship between presidents, ruling parties and market reforms in Argentina and Venezuela.
Robert Elgie, Senior Lecturer in European Politics at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is a specialist on European politics and has written widely on issues concerning political leadership and governmental accountability. He is co-author of The Politics of Central Banks and editor of Semi-Presidentialism in Europe.
Stefanie Grant, Chief of the Research and Rights to Development Branch at United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Switzerland. She is a specialist in migration human rights law. The Future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring, to which she is a contributor, will be published soon.
Richard Joseph, Professor of Political Science, Emory University, USA. He was formerly Director of the Carter Center's Africa Governance Programme. He has recently been appointed Director of the Institute of Caribbean and International Studies (ICIS) at St. George's University, Grenada. His current teaching and research interests include post-1989 political and economic transformations, comparative democratization, state-building and democracy, and renewed democratization in Nigeria. He has published extensively on democratization, his most recent book is an edited volume entitled State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa.
Junko Kato, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Tokyo, Japan. Her current research interests include comparative tax policy and the welfare state, coalition theory and contemporary Japanese politics. She is the author of The Problem of Bureaucratic Rationality and "When the Party Breaks: Exit and Voice among Japanese Legislators."
Alan Leather, Deputy General Secretary, Public Services International, Ferney-Voltaire, France. He is responsible for the European Region of PSI. For the last nine years he has specialised in public service trade union development in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union. He has published many policy papers for strategic planning of PSI activities in CEE.
Eddy Lee, Director of the International Policy Group at the International Labour Office in Geneva. He was responsible, in 1995 and 1996, for producing the first two issues of the ILO's annual report on global employment issues entitled "World Employment". His latest publication is The Asian Financial Crisis: The Challenge for Social Policy, which analyses the social impact of the crisis and its policy implications.
Maureen Mackintosh, Professor of Economics at the Open University, U.K. She is a development economist, specializing in the economics and management of public sector services. She has published research on public sector reform and contracting processes in social sectors. Her most recent book is co-edited, entitled Economic Decentralization and Public Management Reform.
Thandika Mkandawire, Director of UNRISD. He previously served as Executive Secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Dakar, Senegal, from 1986 to 1996. He is co-author of Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment, and "Crisis Management and the Making of 'Choiceless Democracies'".
Sylvia Maxfield, Lecturer in Government and Research Associate at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, USA. She was formerly Associate Professor of international political economy at Yale University. She has published numerous books and articles on the political economy of emerging market countries with emphasis on finance. Her most recent book is Gatekeepers of Growth: The International Political Economy of Central Banking in Developing Countries.
Pratap Mehta, Associate Professor of Government and of Social Studies at Harvard University. His specializations include, political philosophy, the history of political thought and contemporary Indian Politics. He is currently co-directing a project that will involve a major survey of India's public institutions. His articles on India have appeared in numerous journals. He is the author of Consolations of Modernity.
Veronica Montencinos, Associate Professor of Sociology at Penn State University, McKeesport Campus, USA. She is currently working on the education of foreign economists in the United States. She is the author of Economists, Politics and the State in Chile, 1958-1994, and co-author of "The Privatization of Social Security and Women's Welfare: Gender Effects of the Chilean Reform."
Abdul Raufu Mustapha, Lecturer in African Politics at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, UK. His research interests and publications are in the fields of rural sociology, structural adjustment and livelihood strategies, democratization and the military, with a special focus on Nigeria and Africa. He is the author of a forthcoming book entitled Peasant Politics and Democratization in Nigeria.
Toshihiro Nakamura, Research Assistant at UNRISD for the project on "Technocratic Policy Making and Democratization". He holds a Bachelor's degree in law from Kyoto University, Japan and a Master's degree in comparative politics from London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. He contributed to the chapter on "fragile democracies" in the UNRISD report Visible Hands: Taking Responsibility for Social Development and is currently working on a manuscript on the declining technocratic governance in Japan.
Robert O'Brien, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and member of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University, Canada. He specializes in international political economy and international relations. He recently co-authored Contesting Global Governance: Multilateral Economic Institutions.
Doh C Shin, Endowed Chair and Professor of Korean studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA. His research work includes problems of the third-wave of democratization, the cultural dynamics of Korean democratization, and the Korean economic crisis. He is the author of Mass Politics and Culture in Democratizing Korea and a co-editor of Institutional Reform and Democratization in Korea.
Patricio Silva, Lecturer of Political Sociology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands. He is the author of numerous articles on technocratic ascendancy in Latin America. He is currently working on a book on technocratic projects in Chile since the 1920s. He is co-editor of Designers of Development: Intellectuals and Technocrats in the Third World and The Politics of Expertise in Latin America.
Ole Therkildsen, Senior Research Fellow, at the Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen. His current research interests include public sector reform, service provision and taxation. He is co-editor of Service Provision under Stress in East Africa: The State, NGOs and People's Organisations in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and author of "Public sector reform in a poor aid-dependent country, Tanzania."