Rico Isaacs is Associate Professor in Politics at the University of Lincoln, UK, and the editor of Central Asian Survey. His recent books include, among others, Party System Formation in Kazakhstan (2011), Nation-Building and Identity in the Post-Soviet Space (with A. Polese, 2016) and Politics: An Introduction, 3rd edition (with B. Axford, V. Browne and R. Huggins, 2018), also published by Routledge.

Erica Marat is Associate Professor at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defence University, Washington, D.C. Her research focuses on violence, mobilisation and security institutions in Eurasia, India and Mexico. She is also the author of The Politics of Police Reform: Society against the State in Post-Soviet Countries (2018).