Lisheng Dong is Professor and Dean of the Department of Government Policy and Public Management of the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. He has published numerous books, refereed articles and book chapters in the fields of public administration and governance, political integration in East Asia, as well as on government reforms in China. He is the lead editor of China and the European Union (Routledge, 2013), and the 2012 co-recipient of the Pierre de Celles Award of the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration.

Hanspeter Kriesi holds the Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence. Previously he taught at the universities of Amsterdam, Geneva and Zurich. He was the director of the Swiss national research program Challenges to democracy in the 21st century from 2005-2012. He is the lead author of Democracy in the age of globalization and mediatization (Palgrave McMillan, 2013) and has published numerous books, journal articles and book chapters on political communication, social movements, as well as comparative politics.

Daniel Kübler is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Democracy Studies at the University of Zurich. Since 2012, he has been the director of the Swiss national research program Challenges to democracy in the 21st century. He has co-edited The Political Ecology of the Metropolis (ECPR Press, 2013) and authored numerous articles and book chapters related to questions of metropolitan governance, urban democracy, public administration and public policy analysis.