Thomas Carothers

Thomas Carothers is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He directs the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and oversees several other Carnegie programs, including Carnegie Europe in Brussels, the Energy and Climate Program, and the D.C.-based Europe Program. Carothers is a leading authority on international support for democracy, human rights, governance, comparative democratization, and U.S. foreign policy relating to democracy and human rights. He has worked on democracy-assistance projects for many organizations and carried out extensive field research on aid efforts around the world. He also has broad experience relating to human rights, rule of law development, civil society building, and think tank development in transitional and developing countries. He is the author of six critically acclaimed books and many articles in prominent journals and newspapers. He has worked extensively with the Open Society Foundations (OSF), previously serving as chair of the OSF Global Advisory Board and currently serving as a board member of the Open Society Initiative for Europe. He is a distinguished visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest and was previously a visiting faculty member at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS. Prior to joining the Endowment, Carothers practiced international and financial law at Arnold & Porter and served as an attorney adviser in the office of the legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State. His recent publications include “Democracy Aid at 25: Time to Choose” (Journal of Democracy, January 2015), Closing Space: International Support for Democracy and Human Rights Under Fire (2014), and Development Aid Confronts Politics: The Almost Revolution (with Diane de Gramont, 2013).