TOMILA V. LANKINA is a research fellow with the Local Governance Research Unit, Faculty of Business and Law, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. She is the author of Governing the Locals: Local Self-Government and Ethnic Mobilization in Russia (2004). Her current research focuses on comparative local governance and on the impact of transnational and supranational actors on local democracy in ... Read moreCentral and Eastern Europe ANNEKE HUDALLA is a scholar and journalist specializing on the politics of the Czech Republic. She is the author of Außenpolitik in den Zeiten der Transformation: Die Europapolitik der Tschechischen Republik 1993-2001 (Foreign Policy in the Time of Transition: European Policy of the Czech Republic, 1993-2001). HELLMUT WOLLMANN is Emeritus Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy, Institute for the Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. He is coeditor of Local Democracy in Post-Communist Europe and co-author of Governing after Communism: Institutions and Policy-making. Show Less