The genesis of this book was in an April 2005 conference held at Hong Kong University, onComparativeNational Experiences ofAutonomy:Purpose, Structures and Institutions. The conference was held under the auspices of the Hong KongUniversity Faculty of Law’sCentre forComparative and Public Law,which also provided support to this event. The stimulating conversations at this conference generated an enthusiasm that kept the project alive in the many years since then. As well as hearing papers by some of the authors in this book, we were lucky enough to have many other fascinating contributions at this conference, including from Lord David Steel, first presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament; the Rt. Hon. Robert Rae, currently acting leader of the Canadian Liberal Party; Ao Junde, an eminent scholar on China’s system of ethnic regional autonomy; Benedicto Bacani, an expert on autonomy in Mindanao; and Stephen Lam, then Secretary for Constitutional Affairs in Hong Kong. We are grateful to all those who participated in this conference, and especially to those who contributed to its organisation, in particular Lison Harris, Monnie Leung and Flora Leung. Some of the papers from the conference became chapters in this book; others were commissioned subsequently to fill perceived gaps in the geographical coverage and thematic range of the book. We offer our sincere thanks to all our contributors for their patience and willingness to update their chapters, in some cases many years after the original papers had been delivered. The background work for the project formed part of Yash Ghai’s research as Sir Y. K. Pao Professor of Public Law at the University of Hong Kong. It was supported by his 2001 Distinguished Researcher Award from Hong Kong University,withoutwhich the bookwould not have been brought to completion. A grant from the Centre of Comparative and Public Law at the later stages of editing the manuscript enabled us to finish the project. We are grateful for the patience of our editors at Cambridge, who have put up with many delays in finishing the book.