Scott Mainwaring, born on January 1, 1954, is an American political scientist and Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, where he joined the faculty in 1983. He holds the Eugene H. Conly Professor of Government and International Studies and served as former director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. He earned his B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1976, followed by an M.A. in 1979 and a Ph.D. in 1984, both from Stanford University. Mainwaring is a leading scholar of democratization, political parties, and authoritarianism in Latin America.