Thomas Carothers is co-director of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program and holds the Harvey V. Fineberg Chair for Democracy Studies. at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Carothers is a leading authority on comparative democratization and on international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. He has worked on democracy support policies and programs for many organizations and carried out extensive field research on democracy support efforts around the world.

He is the author of six critically acclaimed books and many articles in prominent journals and newspapers. He has been a visiting faculty member at the Central European University in Budapest, 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 most recent book is Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization, co-edited with Andrew O’Donohue (2019).