Larry Diamond

Larry Diamond is a professor, lecturer, adviser, and author on foreign policy, foreign aid, and democracy. In early 2004, he was a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He presently serves as Professor of Sociology and Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he is an advisory board member for the Roosevelt Institution. He is also a 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.[1] In 2006, Professor Diamond was among the people interviewed by the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group.[2]

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.

[edit] 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)."

Interviews

"What to do about Iran's nuclear revolution?" Abbas Milani Interviews Larry Diamond. (December 13, 2004)
"No Exit Strategy" - David Rieff reviews Diamond's book in The Nation magazine.
South China Morning Post podcast in which Larry Diamond shares his views on Hong Kong political reforms in a podcast interview with scmp.com reporter, James Moore, on September 19, 2006. Interview 3mins 43secs into podcast.