Mark Turner is Visiting Professor at The University of New South Wales, Australia, and Emeritus Professor of Development Policy and Management, the University of Canberra, Australia. He has written extensively on public sector management and the policy process in many countries of the Asia-Pacific as well as on various aspects of politics in the region. He has also acted as consultant to a number of major multilateral and bilateral organizations involved in development, as well as to developing country governments and NGOs.

David Hulme is Professor of Development Studies and Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute, at the University of Manchester, UK. He has worked on issues of rural development, poverty and poverty reduction, microfinance, the role of NGOs in development, environmental management, social protection and the political economy of global poverty for more than 30 years. His main focus has been on Bangladesh but he has also worked extensively across South Asia, East Africa and the Pacific.

Willy McCourt is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK, and works as a governance and management consultant. Previously he has held posts as a Senior Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank, and as the Director of the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester. Willy is the author of The human factor in governance: Managing public employees in Africa and Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and he has written and edited numerous articles in, and special issues of, leading development, management and public administration journals.