Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences With Democracy

by Larry Diamond, Juan Linz

This text presents case studies of experiences with democracy in Asia, Affrica, Latin America and the Middle East, along with the editor's synthesis of the factors that facilitate and obstruct the development of democracy around the world. This second edition includes a chapter on South Africa. The recent developments covered in the book the re-emergence of democratic politics in Chile; the impeachment of General Collor and the crisis of democracy in Brazil; the growing pressure for substantive democratisation in Mexico; the 1994 elections in Chile, Brazil, and Mexico; the leadership transition in Turkey following the death of President Ozal; the growing religious and ethnic strife in India; the overthrow and re-emergence of democracy in Thailand and the country's economic boom; the quest for democratic consolidation in South Korea under new President Kim Young Sam; the political and economic crisis in Nigeria; the difficulties facing the one-party dominant regime in Senegal following the 1993 elections; the 1994 elections and democratic transition in South Africa.

Genres: Politics

503 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1990

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.