Assessing the Quality of Democracy

by Larry Diamond (Editor)

The latest volume in this popular series focuses on the best ways to evaluate and improve the quality of new democratic regimes. The essays in part one elaborate and refine several themes of democratic quality: the rule of law, accountability, freedom, equality, and responsiveness. The second part features six comparative cases, each of which applies these thematic elements to two neighboring countries: Brazil and Chile, South Africa and Ghana, Italy and Spain, Romania and Poland, India and Bangladesh, and Taiwan and Korea. Contributors: David Beetham, University of Leeds; Yun-han Chu, National Taiwan University; Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution; Sumit Ganguly, University of Texas–Austin; E. Gyimah-Boadi, Center for Democratic Development, Ghana; Frances Hagopian, University of Notre Dame; Robert Mattes, University of Cape Town; Leonardo Morlino, University of Florence; Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Romanian Academic Society; Guillermo O'Donnell, University of Notre Dame; Marc F. Plattner, International Forum for Democratic Studies; G. Bingham Powell, Jr., University of Rochester; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Brown University; Philippe C. Schmitter, European University Institute, Florence; Doh Chull Shin, University of Missouri at Columbia.

328 pages, Paperback

First published October 10, 2005

About the author

Larry Jay Diamond (born October 2, 1951) is a political sociologist and leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. He is a professor of Sociology and Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative policy think tank. 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.

Diamond is also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which is Stanford University’s main center for research on international issues. At the Institute Diamond serves as the director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The CDDRL’s most recent accomplishment came in the spring of 2011 by building a technological community between Tahrir Square (Cairo, Egypt) and Silicon Valley (California Bay Area). This community was fully focused on helping mobilize protesters in Egypt who eventually helped in the downfall of autocratic president Hosni Mubarak.

Diamond has served as an advisor to numerous governmental and international organizations at various points in his life, including the United States Department of State, United Nations, World Bank, and U.S. Agency for International Development. He is a founding co-editor of the National Endowment for Democracy's Journal of Democracy. He is also a coordinator of the Hoover Institution's Iran Democracy Project, along with Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul.