Karim Bardeesy is a second-year Master in Public Policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School from Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada. He was Legislative Assistant and Policy Advisor to Ontario Finance Ministers Greg Sorbara and Dwight Duncan from 2003 to 2006, and served as a campaign advisor and assistant to several Ontario Members of Provincial Parliament from 2001 to 2003. Karim holds a BA (Honours) in Political Science from McGill University in Montreal, has worked as a journalist in the US and Canada, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Kennedy School Review.

David Beetham is professor emeritus, University of Leeds; fellow, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex; associate director, Democratic Audit. Recent publications include: Democracy and Human Rights, Polity, 1999; (jointly) International IDEA Handbook on Democracy Assessment, Kluwer, 2001; (jointly) Democracy under Blair, Politico’s, 2002; Democracy, a Beginner’s Guide, Oneworld Publications, 2005; Parliament and Democracy in the Twenty-first Century: a Guide to Good Practice, Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2006; (jointly) Power to the People? Assessing Democracy in Ireland, TASC at New Island, 2007; (jointly) Assessing the Quality of Democracy: a Practical Guide, International IDEA, 2008. He has undertaken many international consultancies: for UNESCO and the UNDP on democracy; for the UN High Commission on Human Rights on human rights and democracy; for International IDEA on democracy assessment; for the Inter-Parliamentary Union on parliament and democracy.

Simone Chambers, is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. She is writing a book Public Reason and Deliberation, which investigates the role of citizen deliberation in contemporary democratic theory. Her primary areas of scholarship include deliberative democracy, civil society, public sphere, and Canadian constitution and democratic institutions. She is the author of Reasonable Democracy: Jürgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse (1996) and the co-editor of Deliberation, Democracy, and the Media (2000) and Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society (2001) as well as many articles including a number on democratic participation in Canada.

John C. Courtney is scholar-in-residence, Diefenbaker Canada Centre, and professor emeritus of political studies, University of Saskatchewan. He is currently at The Brookings Institution, Washington D.C. as a Canada-US Fulbright Scholar. A former President of the Canadian Political Science Association, he is the author of several studies on Canada’s electoral system, party leadership, and party conventions. His recent books include Do Conventions Matter? Choosing National Party Leaders in Canada (1995), Commissioned Ridings: Designing Canada’s Electoral Districts (2001), and Elections (2004). Together with David E. Smith he is co-editing the Oxford University Handbook of Canadian Politics for OUP (New York).

Bill Cross is a member of the Department of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada. His research is primarily in the areas of party systems and party democracy in Canada and other western democracies. From 2000 - 2005 he held the Davidson Chair in Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University during which time he led the Canadian Democratic Audit. He also served as Director of Research for the province of New Brunswick's Commission on Legislative Democracy from 2003-2005.

David Docherty completed his BA in political science at Wilfrid Laurier University in 1984. He completed his MA (McMaster) in 1990 and his PhD (University of Toronto) in 1995. He returned to Wilfrid Laurier in a teaching capacity in 1994. Between 2001 and 2005 David served as chair of the Department of Political Science. On July 1st 2005 David was appointed dean of the Faculty of Arts at Wilfrid Laurier University. David specializes in research on the Canadian Parliament and comparative legislative studies. He is particularly interested in questions of representation and the legislative behaviour of elected representatives. He is the author of Mr. Smith Goes to Ottawa: Life in the House of Commons (UBC Press) and Legislatures (UBC Press) and the co-editor of Reforming Parliamentary Democracies (McGill-Queen’s Press). He has written several articles and book chapters on legislative behaviour and legislatures in Canada, and frequently comments on Canadian politics in local, provincial and national media.

Joseph Fishkin is a D.Phil candidate in Politics at Oxford University; he completed his J.D. at Yale Law School in 2007. From 2008-2010, he will be a Ruebhausen Fellow at Yale Law School. His research interests include election law, equality of opportunity, and pluralism.

Archon Fung is professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research examines the impacts of civic participation, public deliberation, and transparency upon public and private governance. Recent books include Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency (Cambridge University Press, with Mary Graham and David Weil) and Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy (Princeton University Press). Current projects examine democratic reform initiatives in electoral reform, urban planning, public services, ecosystem management, and transnational governance. He has authored five books, three edited collections, and over fifty articles appearing in journals including American Political Science Review, Public Administration Review, Political Theory, Journal of Political Philosophy, Politics and Society, Governance, Journal of Policy and Management, Environmental Management, American Behavioral Scientist, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Boston Review.

Jason Kaufman, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, received his A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard College (1993). He holds an MA (1996) and PhD from Princeton University (1999). His dissertation examined patterns of local political development in the United States through the Progressive Era, focusing on the impact of new information networks on early American political behavior. He has also published papers on civic associationalism in the 19th century United States; AIDS preventive policy and anti-discrimination law; and the cultural worlds of American high school students. A major comparative history of the United States and Canada (1578-present), forthcoming from Harvard University Press under the title, American Gemini: The Historical Origins of Modern Political Differences in the US and Canada. This project continues a long tradition of sociological research into "American Exceptionalism" and the "Continental Divide."

Dr. Amy Lang is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia's Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, housed in the Department of Political Science. Her academic research focuses on the dynamics of deliberative institutions. She has published articles in Politics & Society and in Mark E. Warren and Hilary Pearse's book /Designing Democratic Renewal /(Cambridge University Press, 2008). She is currently working on a book comparing the BC and Ontario Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral Reform. Her research questions include understanding how citizens formulate collective priorities and how participating in policy formulation increases citizens’ civic capacities. As part of this work she has consulted with the Government of Ontario Democratic Renewal Secretariat and the staff of the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. She is also a board member of the Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation, a national network of public engagement researchers and practitioners.

Ofrit Liviatan is a lecturer at the Department of Government, Harvard University, and an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where she co-chairs the Religion and Society Seminar. She received her PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Her scholarship focuses on the constitutional relationship between state and religion and the effects of legal structures on religious freedom, religious identities and the relationship among different social groups.

June Macdonald is currently president of Fair Vote Ontario, a provincial branch of Fair Vote Canada, a group that advocates for proportional representation for Canada. She has been a member of Fair Vote since its inception in 2000 and has been active in many roles in the organization. Her particular interest in reform is the potential of seeing more women nominated and elected under proportional systems.

Jane Mansbridge is the Adams Professor at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She is the author of Beyond Adversary Democracy and Why We Lost the ERA, editor of Beyond Self-Interest, co-editor, with Susan Moller Okin, of Feminism, and co-editor, with Aldon Morris, of Oppositional Consciousness: The Subjective Roots of Social Protest. She is currently working on 1) the “everyday activism” of the non-organizationally connected members of a social movement, 2) the place of self-interest and negotiation in deliberative democracy, and 3) a “selection model” of principal-agent relations and political representation.

Daniel Munro received his PhD in political science from MIT in 2006 and held the 2006-2007 Democracy and Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University. His research investigates the normative and practical issues that emerge at the intersection of democratic theory, multiculturalism, and legal and political institutional design. He has worked as a senior analyst with the Council of Canadian Academies and is currently a senior research associate with the Conference Board of Canada.

Eleanor Neff Powell is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Government and a Graduate Student Affiliate of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Before coming to Harvard, she received an A.B. in Politics and a Certificate in Political Economy from Princeton University. Her research interests include American Politics, the U.S. Congress and Political Methodology. Her dissertation research focuses on the role of partisan entrepreneurship activity in the selection of congressional leaders.

Neil Nevitte is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. He is a co-investigator of the Canadian Election Study and the principal investigator of the Canadian World Values Surveys and has published a number of books including most recently: A Question of Ethics: Canadians Speak Out (2006) The Democratic Audit of Canada: Citizens (2004), Anatomy of a Liberal Victory (2002), Value Change and Governance (2002), Unsteady State (2000), The Challenge of Direct Democracy (1996) and Decline of Deference (1996). He has contributed to a variety of academic journals. His research interests are in public opinion, voting, value change and the problems associated with transitional elections.

 

Pippa Norris is the McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Last year, she also served as director of the Democratic Governance Group at UNDP in New York. Her work compares democracy, elections and public opinion, political communications, and gender politics in many countries worldwide. A well-known public speaker and prolific author, she has published almost three-dozen books. This includes a series of volumes for Cambridge University Press: A Virtuous Circle (2000, winner of the 2006 Doris A. Graber award), Digital Divide (2001), Democratic Phoenix (2002) and Rising Tide (with Ronald Inglehart, 2003), Electoral Engineering (2004), Sacred and Secular (with Ronald Inglehart, 2004, winner of the Virginia Hodgkinson prize), and Radical Right (2005). Her most recent books are Driving Democracy: Do power-sharing institutions work? (for CUP) and an edited volume for UNDP, Making Democracy Deliver: Governance for Human Development.

Robert Pastor is professor at American University (AU) and the founder and co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management. From 1985 to September 2002, when he moved to AU to become vice president of international affairs and establish two centers, Dr. Pastor was Professor at Emory University and fellow and founding director of the Carter Center's Latin American and Caribbean Program, the Democracy Project. He organized Election-Monitoring Missions to more than thirty countries around the world. He was national security advisor for Latin America from 1977-81, a Fulbright Professor in Mexico, the Ralph Strauss Visiting Professor at Harvard, and was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be Ambassador to Panama. He served on the National Governing Board of Common Cause, was former President Jimmy Carter’s representative to the Carter-Ford Commission on Federal Election Reform, and was the executive director and a member of the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform. Dr. Pastor received his M.P.A. from the Kennedy School of Government and his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He is the author or editor of 16 books, including Democracy In the Americas: Stopping the Pendulum (1988) and Democracy and Elections in North America: What Can We Learn From Our Neighbors? Election Law Journal (2004).

 

Dr. Thomas Ponniah is a lecturer on social studies at Harvard University. He is the co-editor of Another World is Possible: popular alternatives to globalization at the World Social Forum as well as one of the co-authors of Unholy Trinity: the IMF, World Bank and WTO. He is currently co-editing the volume The Revolution in Venezuela, to be published by Duke University Press. His research is focused on globalization, development, social theory and social movements.

Frederic Charles Schaffer is a lecturer on social studies at Harvard University and a research associate at the Center for International Studies at MIT. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and his current research focuses on comparing how elections are administered in countries around the world. He is the author of Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture (Cornell University Press, 1998) and editor of Elections for Sale: The Causes and Consequences of Vote Buying (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007). His latest book, The Hidden Costs of Clean Election Reform (Cornell University Press), will appear in June 2008.

Richard Simeon is the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor Canadian Studies at Harvard University in 2006-7 and 2007-8. He previously served in this post in 1998. A graduate of the University of British Columbia (BA, 1964) and of Yale University (Ph.D., 1968), he is Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of Toronto. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2004. An award-winning author on Canadian federalism and intergovernmental relations, his current interests focus on the management of difference in divided societies. He has previously served as Director of the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations and School of Public Administration at Queen's University, and has also advised governments on questions of federalism and constitutional reform.

Beth Simmons is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University and the director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She received her PhD. from Harvard University in 1991 in the Department of Government. She has taught international relations, international law, and international political economy at Duke University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard. Her book, Who Adjusts? Domestic Sources of Foreign Economic Policy During the Interwar Years, 1924-1939, was recognized by the American Political Science Association as the best book published in 1994 in government, politics, or international relations. She has worked at the International Monetary Fund with the support of a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship (1995-1996), has spent as year as a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (1996-1997), and a year in residence at the Center for Advanced study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. She is currently finishing a book on the effects of international law on human rights practices.

J.H. Snider is a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and president of iSolon.org. He edits the Citizens Assembly News Digest (available at iSolon.org), which provides news and commentary for scholars and practitioners interested in citizens assembly based democratic reform. He was research director for the New America Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. His current research focuses on the politics of democratic reform, with a particular focus on the politics of legislative transparency. His books include Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick: How Local TV Broadcasters Exert Political Power (2005) and Future Shop (1992). Snider has a Ph.D. in American Government from Northwestern University, an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, and an undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Harvard College.

Jennifer Steen is an assistant professor of political science at Boston College, studying dynamics of the electoral process in the United States. She is the author of Self-Financed Candidates in Congressional Elections (University of Michigan Press, 2006.) A former political consultant, Professor Steen's theoretical and empirical work is complemented by her background in the rough-and-tumble world of political campaigns. Prior to pursuing her doctorate (at U.C. Berkeley) she worked for candidates in local, state and federal elections. Professor Steen was also active in party politics, serving as a county precinct captain, national convention delegate and member of the Electoral College.

Patti Tamara Lenard is a Lecturer in the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University. She received her DPhil from Oxford University, for work that focused on the role of trust in multicultural democracies. She moved to the United States to take up a Canada-US Fulbright Fellowship, during which she compared the challenges posed by immigration in Canada and the United States. She is continuing her research into the challenges posed by immigration, and is now also considering the feasibility of attempts to transfer principles of justice developed in the domestic sphere to the global sphere. Her work has been published in Political Studies, Contemporary Political Theory, and Canadian Foreign Policy. She is presently working on an edited volume titled Trust, Deliberation and Democratic Practice.

Daniel J. Tichenor is a research professor at the Eagleton Institute of Politics and associate professor of political science at Rutgers University. His research and publications examine the American presidency, public policy, civil liberties, social movements, and immigration. His book, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton University Press), won the American Political Science Association's Gladys Kammerer Award for the best book in American public policy. He also received the Jack Walker Prize and the Mary Parker Follett Award for work in American political development. His forthcoming scholarship includes Presidential Prerogatives: Liberty, Power and Leadership in Wartime and Faustian Bargains: The Origins and Development of America’s Illegal Immigration Dilemma. He has been a Faculty Scholar at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics and the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University, a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a visiting scholar at Leipzig University. In the fall, he will be joining the University of Oregon as the Philip H. Knight Professor of Social Science and Senior Scholar at the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics. He currently is researching a book on the U.S. presidency, social movements, and the quest for democratic inclusion.

Rob Vipond is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He has written extensively on Canadian and American federalism and constitutionalism, including Liberty and Community: Canadian Federalism and the Failure of the Constitution (SUNY, 1991). His most recent project involved co-editing and contributing to Linda White, et al, The Comparative Turn in Canadian Political Science (UBC, 2008). From 1996-2006, Vipond served as chair of political science at the University of Toronto, with one year out (2002-2003) for good behaviour to be the William Lyon Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University. He is also the founding director of the Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS) at Toronto.

Mark E. Warren teaches political theory at the University of British Columbia, where he holds the Harold and Dorrie Merilees Chair for the Study of Democracy. His current research interests include new forms of citizen participation and democratic representation, the relationship between civil society and democracy, and political corruption. He is author of Democracy and Association (Princeton University Press, 2001), winner of the Elaine and David Spitz Book Prize from the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, and the Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA). He is co-editor of Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and editor of Democracy and Trust (Cambridge University Press, 1999). Warren’s research has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, and Political Theory.

Graham White is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. His teaching and research focus on Canadian governmental institutions, especially at the subnational level. His most recent book is Cabinets and First Ministers (UBCPress, 2005) in the Canadian Democratic Audit series. In addition to numerous writings on legislatures, cabinets and bureaucracies in the Canadian provinces and in Ottawa, he has been visiting the Canadian Arctic and writing about its governance for two decades. He asserts with confidence that he is the only member of his department to have spent a morning interviewing government officials about policy processes followed in the afternoon by a snowmobile trip with Inuit hunters to the floe edge of the Arctic Ocean. His current research includes a book on the comanagement and environmental regulation boards established under the Northern comprehensive land claims agreements and a book on the decentralization of the Nunavut Government.

Pam Wilmot is executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of Common Cause, a national non-partisan organization that lobbies for a wide range of democratic reforms. Pam has been an advocate for government reform and consumer and environmental issues for over 20 years. A frequent commentator on public affairs, Pam is quoted in the Massachusetts media on nearly a daily basis. She is a graduate of Brown University, Northeastern University School of Law, and Smith College School for Social Work.

Lisa Young is associate professor and graduate coordinator in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary. Her recent publications and co-publications include Advocacy Groups, Rebuilding Canadian Party Politics, Feminists and Party Politics and Regionalism and Party Politics in Canada, as well as articles in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Party Politics, Political Research Quarterly and the Journal of Canadian Studies. Her current research projects include a study of the impact of new campaign finance regulations on political party organization in Canada, and an attitudinal survey of women in English Canada.