Mark Garnett is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University. He has published numerous books and articles on the Conservative party and the relationship between ideas and politics in the UK. His most recent books are Principles and Politics in Contemporary Britain (2nd edition, Imprint Academic, 2006), and Exploring British Politics (Pearson Longman, 2006, with Philip Lynch).
Tim Haughton is Senior Lecturer in the Politics of Central and Eastern Europe at Birmingham University. He is the author of The Constraints and Opportunities of Leadership in Post-Communist Europe (Ashgate, 2005). His research interests encompass the domestic politics of East-Central Europe, the consequences of the 1989 revolutions, why countries take neoliberal turns and the impact of EU membership on Slovakia.
Colin Hay is Professor of Political Analysis at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of a number of books, including most recently Why We Hate Politics (Polity, 2007), European Politics (Oxford University Press, 2007, edited with Anand Menon), The State (Palgrave, 2006, edited with Michael Lister and David Marsh), Developments in British Politics 8 (Palgrave, 2006, edited with Patrick Dunleavy, Richard Heffernan and Philip Cowley) and Political Analysis (Palgrave, 2002). He is a founding co-editor of the journals British Politics and Comparative European Politics.
Simon Jenkins is a journalist and author. He writes a column twice weekly for The Guardian and weekly for The Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC. He was Journalist of the Year in 1988 and Columnist of the Year in 1993. His books include works on the press, politics and architecture, including England's Thousand Best Churches (1999) and Thousand Best Houses (2003). Most recently, Thatcher and Sons was published in October 2006 by Penguin.
Diana Schmidt is a Research Associate at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany. Her current research interests include practical and methodological questions related to corruption and crime prevention. She has extensively researched on anti-corruption efforts at the international level as well as in post-communist Eastern Europe, focusing in particular on the changing practices of multilateral assistance, good governance promotion and civil society mobilisation.
