Gideon Maltz is studying the role of presidential term limits in advancing democracy, strategies for more effectively enforcing term limits, and the question of term limits in the context of parliamentary systems. Maltz has worked as a Junior Fellow in the Democracy & Rule of Law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as a Business Analyst at McKinsey & Company. He has also spent time working on comparative constitutionalism as a part-time consultant at the National Endowment for Democracy, on Sudan and Zimbabwe at the International Crisis Group, and on international trade at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson.

Maltz is a pre-doctoral (law) fellow at CDDRL in 2005-2006.

Kent Eaton is Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. A political scientist by training, Dr. Eaton is interested in political institutions and comparative political economy. He is the author of Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies and Politics beyond the Capital: The Design of Subnational Institutions in South America. Currently Dr. Eaton is conducting research on police reform and on the relationship between decentralization and security in Latin America.

Peter Lorentzen's research addresses informal institutions that arise where formal institutions are absent. The paper to be presented at the seminar considers the high levels of popular unrest in contemporary China. Lorentzen argues that "regularized rioting" serves as a useful tool of the central government in solving two important information problems - it helps to monitor and limit corruption by local officials, and it helps the government to identify discontented groups, resolve their concerns, and maintain political stability.

Peter Lorentzen is a pre-doctoral Fellow at CDDRL in 2005-2006.

Professor Kotkin is involved in a number of Princeton, academic and corporate activities. At Princeton, Professor Kotkin is currently the director of the Program in Russian Studies, Princeton University. He is also a member of the Advisory Board, Center of International Studies (2002), the Editorial Board and Trustees, Princeton University Press (2003) and a host of other organizations on campus.

In the academic field he is a member of the Social Science Research Council, Committee on Russia and Eurasia (2001) and has long been an editorial board member for International Labor and Working Class History (ILWCH, 1994), as well as acting in a number of other positions in Rem Koolhass Harvard Project on the City (2001), Kritika: Explorations in European and Eurasian History (1999), and many other organizations.

He is currently writing a book entitled Lost in Siberia: Dreamworlds of Eurasia. It's a study of the Ob River valley -- which runs from the Altai Mountains to the Arctic -- over seven centuries, based on local archives, and it combines approaches from the Annales school and from the twentieth-century avant-garde. His research interests range across Eurasia, from Japan to Britain, in the modern period, and include topics such as empire, nation building, political corruption, modernity and modernism.

Trygve Olson is a political and public affairs professional who brings nearly twenty years of experience, working on five continents, to his profession. He has served in his present capacity since January 2001, and also served as IRI's Resident Program Officer in Lithuania in 1997.

Prior to rejoining IRI in 2001, Mr. Olson was a founding partner in the grassroots lobbying, political consulting and public affairs firm Public Issue Management, LLP. While a partner at Public Issue Management, Trygve managed a number of high profile grassroots lobbying campaigns for clients in the aviation, technology, and healthcare sectors. For two years he co-managed the grassroots side of a national campaign on behalf of several of America's largest technology companies and the Computer and Communications Industry Association. Also during this prior Mr. Olson served as the primary campaign consultant to a coalition that was victorious in the 2000 Lithuanian Parliamentary elections.

A native of Wisconsin, Trygve worked in the Administration of then-Governor Tommy Thompson and also ran a number of Congressional, State Senatorial and State Legislative campaigns during the early and mid 1990's. Over the course of his career in politics, Mr. Olson has worked on in excess of 100 campaigns for all levels of public office from the local to national level. Since first volunteering for IRI in 1995 -- when he went to Poland to run a get out the vote campaign for young people -- Mr. Olson has helped advise political parties and candidates in numerous countries throughout the world including nearly all of Central and Eastern Europe, Indonesia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Serbia.

Trygve is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin. He currently makes his home in Vilnius, Lithuania with his wife, Erika Veberyte, who serves as the Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament.