John Loughlin is author and editor of over twenty books and numerous articles and book chapters on European territorial governance. He is an expert of the Council of Europe's Committee of Independent Experts on Regional and Local Democracy and chaired the Advisory Committee of Experts on Effective Decentralization of UN-Habitat. He has acted as advisor on territorial governance to the European Union, the UK government and other agencies. In 2009 he was invited by the French Senate to contribute to its reflections on reform of French subnational government. He is Professor of European Politics at Cardiff University. He also holds Visiting positions at Oxford, Cambridge, Umeå University, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques Aix-en-Provence as well as numerous other appointments. Frank Hendriks deals with cross-border comparison of policies and governance systems, including the comparative analysis of democratic and decisionmaking models at the national and the subnational level. He has conducted extensive research, partly commissioned by public bodies, on governance and democracy at the local, regional, national, and European level. He is member of various (international) research networks and editorial boards. He has published in international journals such as Public Administration; Democratization; International Journal of Public Administration; Innovation; Local Government Studies; Administrative Theory and Praxis; GeoJournal; Dutch Crossing; Verwaltungsarchiv; Journal of Crises and Contingencies, International Review of Administrative Sciences. He is Professor of Comparative Governance at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. Anders Lidström's research focuses on local politics and government, comparative politics, and education policy. This includes studies of local democracy and self-government, both within Sweden and in a comparative perspective. Current research includes comparative studies of local government systems, and studies of democracy and political participation in city-regions. He has also carried out research on education policy, with a particular focus on how this is shaped at the local level. He is Professor of Politics, University of Umeå, Sweden.