Contributors

Bruno Jobert is Senior researcher at the CNRS. He works in PACTE, a research centre attached to the Institut d’Études Politiques of Grenoble. He has worked on the role of discourses and ideas in public policies. See Létat en action, 1987, (with Pierre Muller); Le tournant neo libéral en Europe, 1994, (with Jacques Commaille, eds); Les métamorphoses de la régulation politique, 1998.

John K. Glenn is Director of Foreign Policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and a visiting scholar at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Framing Democracy: Civil society and civic movements in Eastern Europe, 2001, and co-editor of The Power and Limits of NGOs: A critical look at building democracy in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, 2002, as well as numerous articles in scholarly journals and publications.

Alfio Mastropaolo is Professor at the University of Turin and director of the Department of Political Studies. He published extensively on the crisis of Italian democracy, on populism and antipolitics. See Antipolica, L’Ancora, 2000; La mucca pazza della democrazia. Nuove destre, populismo, antipolitica, 2004; Il Parlamento. Le assemble legislative nelle democrazie contemporanee, 2005 (with L. Verzichelli).

Per Selle is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen in Norway. Among his publications are "Limits of Civil Society Voluntary Organizations and the Norwegian Welfare State: From Mutual Trust to Contracting?" 2003 (with Magne Eikås); "Participation and Social Capital Formation: Norway in Comparative Perspective?" 2003 (with Dag Wollebæk) and "Age and generation: patterns of associational fertility and survival" 2007 (with Sigrid Roßteutscher and Lucia Medina).

Dag Wollebæk is a PHD student of comparative politics at the University of Bergen in Norway. He has previously published two books (in Norwegian) and numerous articles on voluntary organizations, social capital and civil society. Among his recent publications are: "The Origins of Social Capital: Socialisation and Institutionalisation Approaches Compared" (with Per Selle, Journal of Civil Society, 2007) and "Voluntary associations, trust and civic engagement: A multi-level approach" (with Kristin Strømsnes, forthcoming in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly).

Thomas Heberer is professor of Political Science/East Asian politics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany with long term experience in China. Among his recent publications in English are: Doing Business in Rural China. Liangshan's New Ethnic Entrepreneurs, 2007; Rural China, Economic and Social Change in the Late Twentieth Century, 2006, (with Jie Fan and Wolfgang Taubmann); The Power of Ideas. Intellectual Input and Political Change in East and Southeast Asia, 2006, (with Claudia Derichs, ed); and Private Entrepreneurs in China and Vietnam. Social and Political Functioning of Strategic Groups, 2003.

Hélène Michel is maître de conferences in political science at the University of Lille II and researcher at the Groupe de Sociologie Politique Européenne (GSPE-PRISME), laboratory of Sciences Po Strasbourg. Her main research deals with interest groups and the policy of European institutions toward civil society. She recently published Lobbyistes et lobbying de l’Union européenne, 2005. She also contributed to Déloye, Dictionnaire des élections européennes/ Encyclopaedia of European Elections, 2006.

Raul Urzua is professor of sociology of the University of Chile and director of the Centre for Public Policies. He is the author of Fault-lines in democratic governance (with F Aguero)1998; Urban poverty and decentralization (with D Palma) 1997, and Social change and public policies (1997). His main present research area is the impact of economic globalization on the state, society and public policies at the local level.

Jacques de Maillard is Professor of Political Science at the University of Rouen and researcher at PACTE (Grenoble). His main research interests are crime prevention policies at the local level and justice and home affairs policies at the European Union level. He recently published Réformer l’action publique, 2004, and coedited (with A. Smith) Union européenne et sécurité intérieure: institutionnalisation et fragmentation", Politique européenne, 23, 2007.

Konstantinos Papadakis is researcher at the International Institute for Labour Studies (IILS) of the International Labour Organisation (ILO, Geneva). His recent publications include: Civil society, Participatory Governance and Decent Work Objectives: the case of South Africa, 2006, and "Socially Sustainable Development and Participatory Governance: legal and political aspects" (Discussion Paper), 2006.

Yannis Papadopoulos is professor of public policy at the University of Lausanne. He recently co-edited with Arthur Benz, Governance and Democracy: National, European and International Perspectives, 2006. He is also co-editor with Philippe Warin of a special issue of the European Journal of Political Research on "Innovative, participatory, and deliberative procedures in policy-making: democratic and effective?", and with Arthur Benz and Carol Harlow of a special issue of the European Law Journal on "Accountability in the EU multi-level system", 2007.

Stefanie Edler-Wollstein has studied Political Science at The University of Mannheim and The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. She has worked on questions of ethnicity and nationalism.

Beate Kohler-Koch is Professor at the International Graduate School of the Social Sciences, Bremen, and former Chair for International Relations and European Affairs at The University of Mannheim. She is coordinator of the Network of Excellence ’CONNEX’ on Efficient and Democratic Governance in a Multi-level Europe. She has published widely on European integration and EU governance. Her most recent publications include "The 'Governance Turn' in EU Studies", 2006, (with B. Rittberger); ‘The Institutional Shaping of EU-Society Relations: A Contribution to Democracy via Participation’, 2007, (with B. Finke); Debating the Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union, 2007, (eds with B. Rittberger); A decade of research on EU multilevel governance, forthcoming 2008, ( eds with F. Larat).