Kevin Casas-Zamora is a non-resident senior fellow with the Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program at the Inter-American Dialogue. He is the secretary-general of International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization that supports sustainable democracy worldwide. He was previously the director of the Inter-American Dialogue’s Rule of Law Program, the secretary for political affairs at the Organization of American States, and a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Program’s Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution. From 2006 to 2007, Casas-Zamora served as second vice president and minister of national planning under the administration of Óscar Arias. He was also general coordinator of Costa Rica’s award-winning National Human Development Report for the United Nations Development Program. 

Casas-Zamora has been a consultant to numerous international and non-profit organizations. He is the author of highly regarded studies on campaign finance, elections, democratic governance, and citizen security in Latin America. His doctoral thesis, “Paying for Democracy in Latin America: Political Finance and State Subsidies for Parties in Costa Rica and Uruguay,” won the 2004 PhD Prize of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and was published in 2005 by the ECPR.

In 2007, Casas-Zamora was selected as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has been a member of the Bretton Woods Committee since 2013. 

Casas-Zamora holds a law degree from the University of Costa Rica, a masters in political science from the University of Essex, and a doctorate in political science from the University of Oxford.