Dr Kevin Casas-Zamora has been the Secretary-General of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), a Stockholm-based intergovernmental organization with a mandate to advance democracy, since August 2019. He is also Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy research centre in Washington, D.C. Casas-Zamora has over 30 years of experience working on democratic governance issues as a public official, academic and international consultant.
Previously, he was Costa Rica’s Second Vice President and Minister of National Planning; Secretary for Political Affairs at the Organization of American States; Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and National Coordinator of the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report.
He has taught at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and the University of Texas in Dallas, among many higher education institutions. He holds a Law degree from the University of Costa Rica, a Masters in Government from the University of Essex, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Oxford. He has authored several studies on political finance, elections, democratization, citizen security and civil-military relations in Latin America.