Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor by courtesy of political science and sociology at Stanford University, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and serves as faculty co-director of the Haas Center for Public Service. He is the author and editor of more than 30 books on democratic development and international affairs. His book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the future prospects of democracy.

During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Times Books, 2005) was one of the first books to detail and condemn the Bush Administration’s blunders in Iraq. Since then, he has lectured and written on U.S. policy in Iraq and the wider challenges of post-conflict reconstruction.

Diamond is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and has worked with and advised numerous governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations, including the National Endowment for Democracy, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the State Department.

At Stanford University, he teaches courses on democratic development and coordinates the democracy program of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. In 2007, he was named “Teacher of the Year” by the Associated Students of Stanford University for teaching that “transcends political and ideological barriers.” That year he also received Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Award for “his inspired teaching and commitment to undergraduate education” and “for the example he sets as a scholar and public intellectual.”

Among his other published works are Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). His recent edited books include Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (with Marc F. Plattner and Daniel Brumberg), Assessing the Quality of Democracy (with Leonardo Morlino), The State of India’s Democracy (with Marc Plattner and Sumit Ganguly), and Democracy in Developing Countries, with Juan Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset.