Aadne Aasland is a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. He has conducted research on local government reform in Ukraine since 2008 and is leader of the ARDU project: Accommodation of Regional Diversity in Ukraine. He has a large number of refereed publications on social and political developments in post-Soviet countries. His recent publications include the book Governance in Russian Regions (co-edited with S. Kropp et al., 2018).
Sabine Kropp is Professor of Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her research areas include comparative federalism, public administration, and parliamentary studies, with a focus on the political system of Germany and East European politics, particularly in the post-Soviet space. She has conducted several projects on Russian decentralization, Russian regional politics, and German federalism. She published extensively on these issues, including the book Governance in Russian Regions (co-edited with A. Aasland et al., 2018).