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Statement
of Purpose |
Panelist Biography
Harry
W. Blair
“Research
and Practice in Democratization:
Cross-fertilization or Cross Purposes?”
Harry Blair currently
serves as Senior Democracy Specialist at the US Agency for International
Development's Center for Democracy and Governance and as Visiting Professor
of Political Science at Rutgers University. At USAID, he is presently
finishing an assessment of civil society strategies involving seven countries,
and has recently completed an analysis of civic education programs in
three other nations. He has also worked on assessing democratic decentralization,
rule of law programs and “results management” in the democracy
sector. At Rutgers he is teaching a course on donors and democratization.
Prof. Blair's earlier
work centered mainly on the areas of political behavior, rural development
and natural resources management, principally in South Asia. In addition
to Rutgers, he has held academic appointments at Bucknell, Colgate, Columbia,
Cornell and Yale Universities. On the applied development side, he has
served as consultant to the Ford Foundation, the Swedish International
Development Authority, the United Nations Development Programme, and the
World Bank, as well as USAID. He has an A.B. from Cornell University and
a Ph.D. from Duke University.
Two of his recent
essays that would be of interest to conference participants are "USAID
and Democratic Decentralization: Taking the Measure of an Assistance Program,"
in Peter Burnell, ed., Democracy Assistance: International Co-operation
for Democratization (London: Frank Cass, 2000) and "Civil Society,
Empowerment, Democratic Pluralism and Poverty Alleviation: Delivering
the Goods at National and Local Levels," in David Lewis and Tina Wallace,
eds., New Roles and Relevance: Development NGOs and the Challenge of
Change (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian, 2000).
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