Awards

Congratulations to Professor Terry L. Karl, Winner of the 2023 Guillermo O’Donnell Democracy Award and Lectureship

Please join is in congratulating former CLAS Director Professor Terry L. Karl for being awarded the 2023 Guillermo O’Donnell Democracy Award and Lectureship by the Latin American Studies Association. 

The Guillermo O’Donnell Democracy Award and Lectureship honors the distinguished career and pioneering intellectual leadership of the late Guillermo O’Donnell. This annual, Association-wide award and lectureship recognizes either outstanding scholarship in the field of democracy studies or particularly meritorious public service that promotes democracy and democratic values in Latin America and the Caribbean. The recipient is invited to give a keynote lecture at each LASA Congress at which the award is made.*

Professor Karl has published widely on comparative politics and international relations, with special emphasis on the politics of oil-exporting countries, transitions to democracy, problems of inequality, the global politics of human rights, and the resolution of civil wars. Her works on oil, human rights and democracy include The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (University of California Press, 1998), honored as one of the two best books on Latin America by the Latin American Studies Association, the Bottom of the Barrel: Africa's Oil Boom and the Poor (2004 with Ian Gary), the forthcoming New and Old Oil Wars (with Mary Kaldor and Yahia Said), and the forthcoming Overcoming the Resource Curse (with Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs et al). She has also co-authored Limits of Competition (MIT Press, 1996), winner of the Twelve Stars Environmental Prize from the European Community. Karl has published extensively on comparative democratization, ending civil wars in Central America, and political economy. She has conducted field research throughout Latin America, West Africa and Eastern Europe. Her work has been translated into 15 languages.

Karl has a strong interest in U.S. foreign policy and has prepared expert testimony for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, and the United Nations. She served as an advisor to chief U.N. peace negotiators in El Salvador and Guatemala and monitored elections for the United Nations. She accompanied numerous congressional delegations to Central America, lectured frequently before officials of the Department of State, Defense, and the Agency for International Development, and served as an adviser to the Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States Congress. Karl appears frequently in national and local media. Her most recent opinion piece was published in 25 countries.

*Description is taken from the LASA webpage here