Prof. Tamás Horváth M. is a lawyer and researcher. He was born in 1960, and obtained his degree from the Faculty of Law at ELTE University of Budapest. In the 1980s he worked within the Soviet model of public administration, and later became a researcher at the Hungarian Institute for Public Administration. His research fields include the studying of self-governments, the organization of the state-run public duties, and the management of public services. As a researcher, he worked for the National University of Public Administration until 2007.

His main fields of interest are public management, decentralization, local finance, and management of public services. His main comparative research projects involved: the comparative description of new decentralized systems of East-Central European countries (Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative, Open Society Institute 1998–2000, formerly 1993–94: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary); several projects of the British Know How Fund on local democracy and public service delivery (1995–1998); and local democracy and innovation. His research interests are public management reforms, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and public companies.