Steven J. Balla is Associate Professor of Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration, and International Affairs, and a Senior Scholar at the George Washington Regulatory Studies Center.  He researches public participation in policymaking in the United States and China.  He has served as a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States, drawing on his research on public commenting in the U.S. rulemaking process to make recommendations for how to improve stakeholder engagement in regulatory policymaking.  He has served as a Fulbright Scholar in China on two occasions, at Peking University in Beijing and Nankai University in Tianjin.  He is currently working on a project on mass comment campaigns in American rulemaking and a book on the Internet and political reform in China.