Plattner, Marc F.

Plattner, Marc F. is founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy, vice-president for research and studies at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and director of the International Forum for Democratic Studies. Plattner graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and received his Ph.D. in government from Cornell University, where his principal area of study was political philosophy. He is the author of Democracy Without Borders? Global Challenges to Liberal Democracy (2008) and Rousseau's State of Nature (1979), a study of the political thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau. His articles on a wide range of international and public policy issues have appeared in numerous books and journals. Over the past two decades, he has coedited with Larry Diamond more than twenty books on contemporary issues relating to democracy in the Journal of Democracy book series. The most recent are Debates on Democratization (2010, also with Philip J. Costopoulos); Democratization in Africa: Progress and Retreat, 2nd edition (2010); Democracy: A Reader (2009); How People View Democracy (2008); Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy (2008, also with Diego Abente-Brun); The State of India Democracy (2007, also with Sumit Ganguly); and Electoral Systems and Democracy (2006).