Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is a leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. He is presently a Professor of Sociology and Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. At Stanford, he teaches courses on democratic development and supervises the democracy program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He has published extensively in the fields of foreign policy, foreign aid, and democracy.

In early 2004, Diamond was a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He is an advisory board member for the Roosevelt Institution and a founding Co-Editor of the National Endowment for Democracy's Journal of Democracy. He is also a coordinator of Hoover Institute's Iran Democracy Project, along with Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul. [http://www.stanford.edu/~ldiamond] In 2006, Professor Diamond was among the people interviewed by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. [http://www.usip.org/isg/isg_meetings.pdf] Diamond has served as an advisor to numerous governmental and international organizations at various points in his life, including the State Department, United Nations, World Bank, and U.S. Agency for International Development. [http://www.hoover.org/bios/diamond.html]

His books include:
*"The Spirit of Democracy" (Times Books, 2008)
*"Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq" (Owl Books, 2005, ISBN 0-8050-7868-1)
*"Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation"
*"Promoting Democracy in the 1990s"
*"Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria"
*"Political Culture and Democracy in developing Countries" ed.

Quotes

*"I was, frankly, shocked and appalled by the lack of resources and equipment. Many of my colleagues were deeply frustrated, if not enraged, by it. I think we lost lives because of it."
*"If we had listened to the various reports and analyses that had been prepared, many of them from within the U.S. Government, in advance of the war, we would have realized that Iraqis would not stand for an occupation, and certainly not one combining in its authority two countries they deeply distrusted and resented, the United States and Britain (Iraq's former colonial ruler)."

External references

* [http://www.stanford.edu/~ldiamond Larry Diamond Biography] provided by Stanford University

;Interviews
* [http://www.uncommonknowledge.org/900/922.html "What to do about Iran's nuclear revolution?"] Abbas Milani Interviews Larry Diamond. (December 13, 2004)
* [http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050801/rieff "No Exit Strategy"] - David Rieff reviews Diamond's book in "The Nation" magazine.
* [http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://streaming.scmp.com/podcasting/upload/news_today_september19.mp3 "South China Morning Post" podcast] in which Larry Diamond shares his views on Hong Kong political reforms in a podcast interview with [http://www.scmp.com scmp.com] reporter, James Moore, on September 19, 2006. Interview 3mins 43secs into podcast.