SARAH BIRCH is Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. She is the author of Elections and Democratization in Ukraine and a number of articles on Ukrainian politics and post-communist studies.

FRANCES MILLARD is Reader in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. Her books include Polish Politics and Society and The Anatomy of the New Poland. She has written widely on communist and post-communist political and social developments, particularly in Poland.

MARINA POPESCU was Research Officer for the ESRC-funded Project on Political Transformation and the Electoral Process in Post-Communist Europe from 1999 to 2002 after which she resumed her work as a full-time PhD student at the University of Essex.

KIERAN WILLIAMS is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He is the author of The Prague Spring and its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics, 1968-1970 and co-author (with Dennis Deletant) of Security Intelligence Services in New Democracies: The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.