Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation - Softcover

Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is codirector, with Marc Plattner, of the International Forum for Democratic Studies. He is also coeditor, with Marc Plattner, of the Journal of Democracy and of other collections of essays available from Johns Hopkins, including The Global Resurgence of Democracy and Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies.

"[A] systematic account of the political realities that make democracy promotion so challenging. Diamond... marshals an impressive array of cross-cultural social-science evidence."

"Offers a realistic description of the political discontents of our time and how these discontents are reduced... by the development of democratic practice."

"Larry Diamond has written the authoritative book on the democratic experience―lucid and discriminating in its theoretical grasp, and masterful in its presentation of evidence."

"Larry Diamond has built a cumulative record of outstanding scholarship on democracy. This book flows logically from his earlier contributions. It illuminates brilliantly the problems and opportunities of emerging democracies, especially the critical phase of democratic consolidation. In a world struggling to find ways of establishing durable democracies, this book is at once a timely and fundamental contribution."

"Larry Diamond's Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation is for our time the definitive assessment of the third wave of democratization that began in 1974. It is comprehensive in its research, penetrating in its analysis, and balanced in its judgments. Diamond highlights both the progress that has been made and yet the extent to which so many new democracies are illiberal 'hollow democracies.' Making full use of the recent immense literature on democratization, he persuasively analyzes the impact of economic growth, decentralization, political culture, and civil society on the prospects for the consolidation of third wave democracies and for a fourth wave of democratic development. This is an indispensable volume for both scholars of democracy and promoters of democratization."

"This book is a splendid tour de force. Diamond commands and skillfully organizes an amazing amount of knowledge and information, while at the same time discussing, in a subtle and penetrating but also very readable manner, the complex theoretical issues raised by processes of democratization, East and South. Clearly, this book is the product not only of great talent and dedication but also of deep personal commitment to the humane values that, as Diamond persuasively argues, undergird the emergence and the expansion of democracy. This is an indispensable book for practitioners, scholars, and students of democracy and democratization; they will find in it not only illuminating analyses of past and ongoing processes but also careful arguments against facile conformism about the present situation and the prospects of many of the emerging democracies."