Kevin Casas-Zamora is the Secretary-General of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and a Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington DC-based policy research centre.

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 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 campaign finance, elections, democratisation, citizen security and civil-military relations in Latin America.