Alfred Stepan is a Professor, Fellow at American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of British Academy. His teaching and research interests include comparative politics, theories of democratic transitions, federalism, and the world’s religious systems and democracy. His published books includes Arguing Comparative Politics and Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe (with J. J. Linz); Politics, Society, and Democracy: Comparative Studies (ed. with H. E. Chebabi); Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone.

Anthony Heath is a Professor of Sociology at Oxford University. His research interests are Sociology of Education and Ethnicity, Social Mobility, Political Sociology, Cross National Research with a special interest in India. The prime areas of his lecturing have been Research Design, Ethnicity and Nationalism, Sociology of Education. His publications include Ireland North and South: Perspectives from Social Science (1999), 'British National Sentiment', British Journal of Political Science (1999), ‘The Need of Data Analysis for Rational Action Theory: Pros and Cons' (1998), just to name a few.

Ashis Nandy is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies and Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures. He is a member of number of national and international civil society bodies. Nandy has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., a Charles Wallace Fellow at the University of Hull, and a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, University of Edinburgh. He held the first UNESCO Chair at the Center for European Studies, University of Trier, in 1994. His select publications include Alternative Science (Oxford University Press, 1980, 1995); The Savage Freud and Other Essays in Possible and Retrievable Selves (Princeton University Press and OUP, 1995); An Ambiguous Journey to the City: The Village and Other Odd Ruins of the Self in Indian Imagination (OUP, 2001); and Time Warps: The Insistent Politics of Silent and Evasive Pasts (Permanent Black, C. Hurst and Co., Rutgers University Press, 2002).

Juan Linz is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political and Social Science, is former Chairman of the Committee on Political Sociology of the International Sociological Association and the International Political Science Association. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Georgetown, Granada, Autónoma de Madrid and Marburg, and in 1987 was awarded the Premio Principe de Asturias in the social sciences and in 1996 the Johan Skyte Prize in Political Science. His publications include Crisis, Breakdown and Reequilibration, an introductory volume to The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes; "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes," in Handbook of Political Science; Conflicto en Euskadi; and essays and monographs on Spanish politics and society in edited volumes. His research on the sociology of fascist movements has been published in Reader's Guide to Fascism and Who Were the Fascists? co-editor (with L. Diamond and S. M. Lipset) of a four-volume work Democracy in Developing Countries.

Marta Lagos is the Executive Director of the Latino barometer project since its initiation. She has worked on public opinion field since 1984 at the Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Contemporánea (CERC), where she was the director (1990-1993). In 1994 she founded her own market and society opinion research company in partnership with MORI multinational in UK. She is part of the Word Value Survey team and part of the committee that organizes the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). Additionally, Mrs. Lagos has been consultant on survey issues and electoral process in transition in 23 countries. At the academic field, Marta Lagos is author of Barómetro CERC, which monitors the Chilean Transition since 1987 up to date, as well as, the author of three books about the consolidation of democracy. She also has taught courses of public opinion on various private Chilean universities since 1990. She is the Member of the board of several Chilean organizations: among them World Woman’s Bank, where she is a member or the board. Has served as consultant at UNDP, WB and IADB.

Paul M. Evans is the Co-CEO and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. He is on secondment from the University of British Columbia where he is a Professor in the Faculty of Graduate Studies co-appointed to the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Institute of Asian Research. Dr. Evans is a member of the International Council of the Asia Society in New York and he also sits on the editorial boards of The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs and International Politics. His principal books are: John Fairbank and the American Understanding of Modern China (1988); a co-edited volume, Reluctant Adversaries: Canada and the People's Republic of China, 1949-1970 (1991); and an edited volume, Studying Asia Pacific Security (1994); Beyond Boundaries: A Report on the State of Non-Official Dialogues on Peace, Security and Cooperation in South Asia (1997); and (with David Capie) The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon (2002).

Rajni Kothari Rajni Kothari is known in India and abroad as a scholar and an activist for his continuing search on intellectual, political and ethical dimensions of contemporary reality. The result has been varied: setting up of institutions like CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) and Lokayan (Dialogue of the People), participating in bodies like PUCL (People's Union of Civil Liberties), ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Science Research) and IFDA (International Foundation for Development Alternatives) in Nyon (Swtizerland) as Chairperson, and producing works like Politics in India, Footsteps into the Future, State Against Democracy, Rethinking Democracy etc. He calls for the emergence of a new India that "Federat[es] from below, federating regionally (that being the challenge of Punjab and Kashmir and Tamil Nadu) and federating socially (that being the challenge of Mandal), with a deep ecological content (that being the challenge of Narmada) and an extensive economic rationale (that being the challenge of the struggle against globalization.

D.L. Sheth is an Honorary Senior Fellow and former Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies He founded Lokayan, a movement for alternatives in politics and development, in 1980 and has been serving on its governing body since it became an independent NGO in 1983. He has also worked as President of People’s Union for Civil Liberties (1991-93). He has edited Citizens and Parties (1995), with Ashis Nandy, Multiverse of Democracy (1996) and with Gurpreet Mahajan, Minority Identities and the Nation-State (1999) he is also the Editor of the journal Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance.

V.B.Singh is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. Prof. Singh served as CSDS director from 1997 to 2003. He has been working on Electoral Politics for many decades and his publications include a five volume series on Elections in India giving detailed results, including by-elections from 1952 to 1985 for all the states in the Union of India. From 1987 to 1990 Professor Singh directed a program on Survey research and training, which conducted research methodology courses in the social sciences. CSDS and the Council for Social Development jointly ran the program.