Kenneth Newton - Evaluating Democratic Innovations: Curing the Democratic Malaise?

David Beetham is Professor Emeritus, University of Leeds, and Honorary Fellow, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. He contributed to the development of the democratic audit methodology used in the UK and internationally, and has acted as consultant to many audits overseas. He has written a guide to good democratic practice for parliaments for the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Geneva, and co-authored a guide to democracy assessment for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm. Recent books include Democracy: a Beginners Guide (Oneworld Publications 2005).

Ian Budge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He has made major contributions both to cumulative research on democracy and to organizational developments in the discipline. His earliest research on Glasgow and Belfast focused on causes of democratic breakdown. After a period of studying elections, voting behaviour and party competition, he turned to public policy and how it might become responsive to popular preferences a central democratic dilemma. His research covers both direct and representative democracy. He founded the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis in 1968. He was Executive Director of the European Consortium in Political Research between 1979 and 1983. Among his recent publications are (with Klingemann, Volkens, Bara and Tanenbaum) Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electorates and Governments 19451998 (Oxford University Press 2001); (with Michael D. McDonald) Elections, Parties, Democracy: Conferring the Median Mandate (Oxford University Press 2005); and (with David McKay, Kenneth Newton and John Bartle) The New British Politics (Pearsons Education Limited 2007).

James S. Fishkin directs the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University where he teaches Communication and Political Science. He holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford and is Chair of the Department of Communication. He recently wrote When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford University Press 2009) as well as a number of earlier books including Democracy and Deliberation (Yale University Press 1991) and The Voice of the People (Yale University Press 1995) and (with Bruce Ackerman) Deliberation Day (Yale University Press 2004). His Deliberative Polling projects have provided a new method of public consultation in countries around the world ranging from the US and Canada to Britain, Italy, Bulgaria, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Argentina, China, Thailand, Japan, Northern Ireland, Denmark and European wide. More details can be found at the Center for Deliberative Democracy site, http://cdd.stanford.edu.

Brigitte Geissel , full Professor of Political Science and Political Sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, held research and teaching positions at various universities/institutes such as Harvard Kennedy School (USA), Social Science Research Center Berlin, Center of Excellence on Democracy at bo Akademi (Finland), the Universities of Mnster, Berlin, and Illinois (USA) as well as the Vietnamese German University, Saigon. Her research interests include democratic innovations, new forms of governance and political actors (new social movements, associations, civil society, parties, political elites, citizens). Recent publications have been published in, for example, Comparative Sociology , West European Politics , European Journal of Political Research .