Rolf Alter
Rolf Alter is an experienced economist and Senior Fellow at the Hertie School. He spent over 25 years at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. In 2006, he was appointed Chief of Staff to the OECD Secretary-General, and in 2009 he became Director of Public Governance. Alter built a team of over 200 staff to support governments in improving their public sector performance for inclusive growth and economic competitiveness. He previously also worked for the IMF in Washington, DC, and for the German Ministry of Economy in Bonn. For the last several years, he has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Risks Report of the World Economic Forum. He holds a doctorate from the University of Göttingen. In 2013, he received a doctorate h.c. from the National University of Hungary and in 2016 was awarded the O.P. Dwivedi Award by the International Association of Schools and Institutes of Administration (IASIA) for his outstanding contribution to public administration and policy. In July 2021, the UN Economic and Social Council approved Rolf’s appointment to the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration (UNCEPA) following his nomination by the UN Secretary-General for a four-year term. UNCEPA provides expert policy advice and programmatic guidance to the UN Economic and Social Council on issues relating to governance, public administration structures and processes. The Committee plays a key role in supporting the implementation of the SDGs of the UN Agenda 2030.
Prof. Larry Diamond
Larry Diamond is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), where he directs the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and a senior consultant to the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. At Stanford University, he is the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service and also professor by courtesy of political science and sociology. Diamond has edited or co-edited some 36 books on democracy, including the recent titles The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World, Democratization in Africa, How People View Democracy, How East Asians View Democracy, Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy, Political Change in China: Comparisons with Taiwan, and Assessing the Quality of Democracy. Among his other published works are Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999); Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995); and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He also edited the 1989-90 series Democracy in Developing Countries, with Juan Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset.
Prof. Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He was previously professor of International Political Economy and director of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)’ International Development programme at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of The American Interest, which he helped to found in 2005. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy, and member of the advisory boards for the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and The New America Foundation. Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to democratisation and international political economy. His book The End of History and the Last Man, published by Free Press in 1992, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, was published in September 2018. Other books include America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (2006); Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States (2008); and The Origins of Political Order (2011).
Stephan Holmes has taught at several renowned universities, including Yale, Wesleyan, Princeton, Harvard and University of Chicago, before joining the New York University School of Law, where he is currently Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and faculty co-director of the Center on Law and Security. At Chicago and NYU he also served and as editor-in-chief of the East European Constitutional Review (1993-2003). In addition, he has also been the Director of the Soros Foundation programme for promoting legal reform in Russia and Eastern Europe (1994-96). Holmes’ research centres on the history of European liberalism, the disappointments of democracy and economic liberalisation after communism, and the difficulty of combating international Salafi terrorism within the bounds of the Constitution and the rule of law. Besides numerous articles on the history of political thought, democratic and constitutional theory, state-building in post-communist Russia, and the war on terror, his publications include Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (1984); Anatomy of Antiliberalism (1993); Passions and Constraint: The Theory of Liberal Democracy (1995); The Cost of Rights, co-authored, with Cass Sunstein (1998); and Matador’s Cape: America’s Reckless Response to Terror (2007).
Prof. Michael Johnston
Michael Johnston is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science and former Division Director for the Social Sciences at Colgate University, specialized in comparative and American politics, public policy, corruption, democratization, and development. His book Syndromes of Corruption: Wealth, Power, and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2005) won the 2009 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, presented by the University of Louisville. He has studied political and administrative corruption since 1975, and from 1985 through 1996 was a founding co-editor of the journal Corruption and Reform. He has been a consultant to many international organisations and development agencies, including the World Bank, OECD, the Asia Foundation, the New York State Commission on Governmental Integrity; USAID, and the United Nations. His publications include Public Sector Corruption; Civil Society and Corruption: Mobilizing for Reform (edited volume, 2005); Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts (co-edited with the late Arnold J. Heidenheimer, 2002); Political Corruption: A Handbook (co-editors Arnold J. Heidenheimer and Victor LeVine, 1988); Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Government (co-editor Jerome B. McKinney, 1986); and Political Corruption and Public Policy in America (1982). Johnston’s newest book, The Conundrum of Corruption (with Scott A. Fritzen), was published by Routledge in December 2020.
Robert Klitgaard is a Professor at Claremont Graduate University, where he served as the President from 2005 to 2009. He was the Dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, Santa Monica, California, where he is also the Ford Distinguished Professor of International Development and Security. He previously served as Professor of Economics at the University of Natal, Durban; Lester Crown Professor of Economics at Yale’s School of Management; and Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Klitgaard has been an advisor to many governments on economic strategy and institutional reform, and his consulting work and research have taken him to more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In the past years, he has served on the faculty of the World Economic Forum, the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Literature and Theoria, and the Board of the International Development Evaluation Association. Among his main publications are Corrupt Cities: A Practical Guide to Cure and Prevention (ICS Press and World Bank Institute, 2000); Adjusting to Reality: Beyond “State versus Market” in Economic Development (ICS Press and International Center for Economic Growth, 1991); and Controlling Corruption (University of California Press, 1988).
Claus Offe teaches Political Sociology at the Hertie School of Governance. He completed his PhD at the University of Frankfurt and his Habilitation at the University of Konstanz. In Germany, he has held chairs for Political Science and Political Sociology at the Universities of Bielefeld (1975-1989) and Bremen (1989-1995), as well as at the Humboldt-University of Berlin (1995-2005). He has worked as fellow and visiting professor at, among others, the Institutes for Advanced Study in Stanford, Princeton, and the Australian National University as well as Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and the New School University, New York. His work encompasses the areas of social policy, theories of the welfare state, political sociology, democracy theories and transition studies on post-communist countries. Among his numerous publications are Strukturprobleme des kapitalistischen Staates. Aufsätze zur politischen Soziologie (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1972; new edition Frankfurt/Main: Campus 2007); Contradictions of the Welfare State (Hutchinson, 1984); Disorganized Capitalism (Oxford: Polity Press 1985); Varieties of Transition (Polity Press, 1996).
Christopher Pollitt is Research Professor of Public Management at the Public Management Institute, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Previously he was Professor of Government and Dean of Social Sciences at Brunel University in London (1990-1998) and Professor of Public Management at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (1999-2006). In 2004 he received the Hans Sigrist Prize for ‘outstanding comparative research in the field of governmental reform’ and in 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Vaasa as ‘one of the world’s most well-known researchers in the field of public administration’. Christopher is the author of more than 50 scientific articles and author or editor of more than a dozen scholarly books, among which Managerialism and the Public Services (1990), The Essential Public Manager (2003), and The Oxford Handbook of Public Management (with Ewan Ferlie and Lawrence Lynn Jnr., 2005). Since 2005, he has been editor of the International Review of Administrative Sciences. He has also undertaken extensive consultancy and advice work for a wide variety of organisations, including the European Commission, the OECD, the World Bank, and the Dutch Ministry of the Interior.
Prof. Donatella della Porta
Donatella della Porta is professor of Sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute since 2003. She is on leave of absence from the University of Florence, where she was full professor of Political Science, president of the corso di laurea in Administrative Sciences, and Director of the Department of Political Science and Sociology. Professor Della Porta received a Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales of Paris and a PhD in political and social sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. She directs the EU FP6 DEMOS project (Democracy in Europe and the Mobilisation of the Society). She has conducted research also at Cornell University, Ithaca N.Y. and at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB). Her main research interests concern social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, police and policies of public order. She is currently involved in several comparative projects on citizenship and social movements. She is also co-editor of the European Political Science Review.
Gunnar Folke Schuppert holds the Research Professorship “New Forms of Governance” at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB) since 2003. He is currently also Managing Director of the Rule of Law Centre at the WZB. Before joining the WZB, he taught Public Law and Administrative Science at the universities of Hamburg and Augsburg as also at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He conducts research in the fields of contract governance, governance and religion and rule of law and transnational rule-making. Some of his recent publications include Staat als Prozess: Eine staatstheoretische Skizze in sieben Aufzügen (Campus, 2010) and Politische Kultur (Nomos, 2008).