printable versionSouth American democracy focus of talk
Alejandro Toledo
Larry Diamond
Alejandro Toledo, Peru's president from 2001 to 2006, and Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, will discuss "Can Democracy Reach the Poor? A Presidential Perspective on Education, Poverty and Democracy in Latin America" at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 16, in the School of Education's Cubberley Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
Toledo, the Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), earned two master's degrees in 1972 and 1974 and a doctorate in 1993 from Stanford. Last year, he returned to campus as a distinguished fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Diamond is coordinator of the Democracy Program at FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. He has edited or co-edited more than 30 books on democratic development in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. He earned his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees from Stanford.
During the last quarter century, Latin America has experienced the longest and most robust series of democratic reforms in its history. Yet most of the region's countries are mired in poverty, inequality and social exclusion, which threaten the sustainability of economic growth and democracy itself. Next week's discussion will explore the effectiveness of political democracy, which Toledo believes depends largely on providing quality education, nutrition, health care and dignified jobs for the poor. Toledo also argues that success depends on strong democratic institutions, including effective and independent judicial and congressional systems, freedom of the press and a civil society.