[4] Together with his colleague, James Christoph, he "established Indiana University as a major site of the study of European culture, society and politics".
[5] John D. Martz called the works of Maurice Duvergier, Sigmund Neumann and Diamant that focus on the study of political parties "Western European-oriented classics".
His focus on the anti-democratic developments in pre-WWII Europe is apparent in a number of large studies and minor contributions that he wrote since the 1950s.
Diamant analyzed the role of Conservative political catholicism in Austria and its contribution to the rise of the clerical fascist Dollfuss regime.
[12] Such works were motivated by a desire to enlighten people concerning the root causes and to prevent a return of what had occurred, no matter whether it might reappear in the form of a tragedy or as a farce.
[14] Another article published in the 1950s in The Western Political Quarterly also reflects his democratic commitment, arguing in favor of improved local government.
[15] Similarly, he defended the right of Vietnam War opponents to dissent in an article jointly written with two colleagues and published in the New York Times in 1965.
Max Weber, the conservative he initially looked at without much sympathy, was now critically received and his writings were adapted to fit the needs of a democratic societal project.
Diamant "evaluates, relates, and classifies; and ends up by setting forth proposals 'for the comparative analysis of bureaucracies; using the Weberian ideal-type'" – as he had modified it.
Referring to Weber's ideal-type of bureaucracy, E. N. Suleiman observes, "Some saw in his model a rigid, Prussian-inspired influence that had but a tangential relationship to reality".
Suleiman points specifically to Diamant,[20] who did view Weber as a functional academic, whose writings on the workings of bureaucracies served the interests of the Wilhelminian authoritarian nation-state.
Therefore, it is not surprising that "Diamant makes a valiant effort to defend and 'resurrect' Weber from the telling criticisms of scholars like Presthus, Beck and Berger.
It is well known that in the 20th century, several sociologists and political scientists "have sought to construct typologies that are closer approximations of the mixes or dualities existing in the real world.
"Among scholars who have contribute to the comparative studies of bureaucratic systems ... Monroe Berger, Alfred Diamant, Ferrel Heady, Robert Presthus and Michael Crozier" are singled out as particularly noteworthy by Pardeep Sahni and Etakula Vayunandan.
[25] Diamant's grasp of European political cultures and his knowledge of American paradigms made a comparative orientation plausible.
[27] They could also serve to elucidate the positive and negative traits of French public administration, as a state bureaucracy subjected to dual political control.
In his critique of Austrian conservatism, Diamant had "defined … European political Catholicism as a reaction of both clerics and laymen to the challenges of the French Revolution respectively the modern (liberal) state of the 19th century that was based on it.
[31] They quote Diamant, "The French experience would indicate that, in fact, during periods of political indecision, the grand corps do not really govern the country, they simply continue routine operations, maintain the status quo, and protect their own interest".
[37] This was the period when "the CAG became a forum for intellectuals attempting to understand in a systematic [way] why administrative practices in non-Western countries diverged so widely from what were thought to be good and universal principles".
[38] As a member of the Comparative Administration Group, based at Indiana University like Riggs, Diamant applied himself to Third World Studies.
The apartheid regime was confronted by a liberation movement (Nelson Mandela's African National Congress) that was branded as terrorist by various governments.
Diamant was convinced that if bureaucracies were unavoidable, at least they should not work against us or limit civil rights and the freedom of citizens unnecessarily; on the contrary, they should better our lot.
Discussing the German model which allowed trade-union representatives to sit on the board of corporations in the name of joint decision-making or co-determination ('Mitbestimmung'), P. Bachrach and A. Botwinick observed that Diamant provided a "thorough and perceptive study".
[47] Guerrero further describes Diamant's position in this way: "A political system is engaged in a process of development if it can increase its capacity to attain successfully and continually new social goals and the creation of new types of organization.
[48] Such political development that leads to new institutional frameworks which allow the population to address social grievances in a new way is currently characteristic of a number of societies in South America.
Keith R. Legg termed Diamant's approach that "view[ed] political development … as 'a generic process of successfully sustaining new demands, goals and organizations in a flexible manner'" as being "most useful".