Larry Diamond

Co-Chair, International Forum for Democratic Studies Research Council

Larry Diamond is the founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy and the co-chair of the Research Council of the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. At Stanford University, Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directed the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law from 2009–2015.

During 2002–3, Diamond served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

Diamond is also professor by courtesy of political science and sociology at Stanford, where he teaches courses on comparative democratic development and postconflict democracy building, and advises many Stanford students. In May 2007, he was named “Teacher of the Year” by the Associated Students of Stanford University for teaching that “transcends political and ideological barriers.” At the June 2007 commencement ceremony, Diamond was honored by Stanford University with the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education. Diamond has lectured, taught, and conducted research in more than 25 countries. During 1982–83, he was a Fulbright visiting lecturer at Bayero University in Kano, Nigeria. In 1997–98, he was a visiting scholar at the Sun Yat-Sen Institute of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. His research and policy analysis are focused on the relationship between democracy, governance, and development in poor countries, particularly in Africa.

Diamond is the author of The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008); Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (2005); Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999); Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995); and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1988). He has edited more than twenty Journal of Democracy books with Marc F. Plattner, including recentlyDemocracy: A Reader; How People View Democracy; Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy (also with Diego Abente Brun); The State of India’s Democracy (also with Sumit Ganguly); and Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (also with Daniel Brumberg). His other twenty edited books include the series Democracy in Developing Countries, with Juan Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, and Political Change in China: Comparisons with Taiwan, with Bruce Gilley.

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