Governments of the leading industrialized democracies remain the most important and resourceful promoters of democracy, but they increasingly share the arena with a wide variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Official democracy assistance comes from countries with long histories and lingering ties of colonialism (especially Britain and France) and of foreign intervention and occupation in the name of democracy (especially the United States), as well as from countries wishing to develop or deepen trading partnerships by promoting democracy among their neighbors (Japan). However, a number of smaller democratic countries have given the promotion of democracy and human rights a more and more prominent place in their foreign policy and foreign aid--Canada, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands. The Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA), for example, has a carefully conceptualized program of support for democracy and human rights. Moreover, the first country to establish explicit institutions for democratic assistance, and still one of the largest donors for this purpose relative to its GNP, is a postwar democracy with a traumatic authoritarian history, Germany.
Established democratic states are engaged in democracy promotion through diplomatic pressure and initiatives, through the mobilization and conditioning of multilateral policies and resources, and through their official overseas development or aid agencies. I will leave for later consideration the first two dimensions and consider here state actors in the aid relationship.
Almost certainly the largest official democratic assistance program today in terms of both scope and funding is that of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). By one estimate, AID spent some $400 million in fiscal year 1994 on democracy assistance programs around the world, but any such estimates involve a good deal of judgment because a multipurpose organization like AID has many programs that serve multiple goals.12 U.S. government funding for democratic assistance programs (by AID and other agencies as well) is also quite unstable; while it rose dramatically in the early 1990s, it is now threatened with a steep decline as a result of congressional initiatives that would sharply reduce spending on foreign aid and international operations.
Since its creation in 1961, AID has been engaged in activities that serve democratization indirectly (such as strengthening independent educational and research institutions and enhancing political participation at the local level), but until 1990 its focus was mainly on social and economic development (including health, population, and environment). From modest beginnings with human rights projects in the late 1970s, AID programs expanded during the 1980s to assist the administration of justice, the conduct of democratic elections, and dialogue between civilians and the military (mainly in Latin America).13 With the announcement of its "Democracy Initiative" in December 1990, AID launched a historic reorientation of its mission. The initiative established the promotion of democracy as one of the agency's central aims and involved it extensively in assistance programs for free and fair elections, constitutional drafting, legislatures, judicial systems, local government, anticorruption efforts, regulatory reform, civic education, and independent organizations and media in civil society (including human rights, legal aid, women's, professional, and church groups). AID's involvement in democracy promotion was deepened further with the inauguration of President Clinton, who had featured the promotion of democracy worldwide as one of the few foreign policy themes of his 1992 campaign14. For Africa alone, AID funding for democratic governance programs increased from $5.3 million in 1990 to $119 million in fiscal year 1994.15
The U.S. government has also been involved for some time in democracy promotion through the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). During the Cold War, USIA (and the associated anti-Communist Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe) did much to puncture the totalitarian lid of secrecy and advance pluralist, democratic ideas. Today USIA administers a wide range of activities to explain and advocate the concept of democracy; to provide information and counsel on institutional and policy options to those trying to consolidate democracy; and to facilitate links with American institutions toward those goals. In addition to its Fulbright scholarly exchanges, USIA brings hundreds of foreign professionals to the United States each year for month-long visits; places "professionals in residence" for limited periods (up to six months) to help establish democratic legislatures, media, and judicial systems; sponsors lecture tours and consultations by American experts (which often highlight relevant aspects of American experience); helps train Eastern European journalists; and provides educational and civic organizations in post-Communist and developing countries with books on the theory and practice of democracy. Thematic foci include elections administration, rule of law, constitutional reform, civil society, transparency and government ethics, conflict resolution, and economic reform. By 1992 USIA missions in 85 countries had undertaken 132 major projects under the agency's initiative for "Building Democratic Institutions," as well as another 215 projects addressed to related themes such as market-oriented economic reform and the free flow of information.16 Almost all of USIA's Africa posts listed democracy programming as the number one theme in their FY95 country plans.17
The U.S. Defense Department has also devoted increasing attention to fostering democratic civil-military relations abroad. In 1993, with support from the U.S. Congress and the German Government, the U.S. Secretary of Defense established the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Bavaria as an element of the U.S. European Command. In addition to promoting defense cooperation and partnership with the emerging democracies of Eastern and Central Europe, the defense training programs of the center (for both military and civilian defense officials) include extensive curricula in "democratic defense management," such as the role of executive and legislative oversight, the professional role of the military in democracies, and reconciling intelligence systems with the need for openness in a democratic society.18
Among the European official aid agencies, SIDA, DANIDA (the Danish International Development Agency), and NAD (the Norwegian Agency for Development) have been particularly active in providing assistance to strengthen various types of civil society groups, including trade unions, human rights and legal assistance organizations, journalism associations and trusts, women's and civic education groups, and public policy and election monitoring organizations. In this sense, as well as in their lower profile, they resemble more some of the major nongovernmental democracy assistance organizations and foundations in the United States. They are less involved than AID in developing formal governmental institutions.19
Nongovernmental organizations (or NGOs, some of which are called "quasi-governmental" because they are primarily publicly funded but independently operated and directed) have long been engaged in the provision of financial and technical assistance for democratic development. Over the pas two decades these efforts have achieved a breathtaking diversity.
The earliest explicit effort at nongovernmental (or quasigovernmental) assistance for democracy came in the 1950s with the creation of the German party foundations or Stiftungen: the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the Hans Seidel Foundation (each affiliated with a major German political party). Like USIA and AID, these organizations have a number of purposes (including fostering educational exchanges, providing scholarships, and promoting international understanding). But democracy promotion abroad has long figured prominently (if not always explicitly) in their work. In fact, until the early 1990s the combined annual spending of the four foundations on assisting democratic associations, trade unions, media, and political institutions abroad equaled or exceeded that of all U.S. publicly funded institutions.20 For example, in 1991 the Friedrich Ebert Foundation alone disbursed DM88.5 million (about $55 million) in 67 countries in the developing world, with the assistance of 97 German experts abroad and more than 500 local personnel.21 Many of these projects were devoted to supporting autonomous civil society organizations, decentralized and democratic local government structures, enhanced citizen participation, more effective trade unions, market-oriented economic development, and other activities that were more or less related to democracy promotion. The other Stiftungen have similar training, education, and institutional assistance programs.22
Influenced to some extent by the model of the German Stiftungen, the Reagan administration in 1983 established the National Endowment for Democracy (NED); NED receives congressional funding but has an independent, bipartisan board of directors.23NED's explicit mandate is to promote and assist democracy abroad. It received $35 million in appropriations for this purpose in FY94, when it made more than 300 grants in some 80 countries. NED makes grants directly (through its "discretionary" program) and through four "core" grantees that receive about two-thirds of its annual program funding and have their own independent boards and staffs. These four core grantees are the two party institutes--the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI)--the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).24 FTUI is affiliated with the main U.S. labor federation, the AFL-CIO; and CIPE is affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. While labor already had several active regional institutes before the creation of NED, the other three core grantees were established in 1984 after the creation of NED.25
Despite its relatively small size and small budget,26 NED has been on the cutting edge of democratic change in many countries over the past decade. Its extensive efforts in Poland, Chile, and Nicaragua provided critical support to the democratic movements that brought down dictatorships in these countries. Throughout Eastern Europe NED helped to build the independent civic infrastructure that undermined Communism in the late 1980s (most notably, through sizable assistance to Poland's anti- Communist trade union, Solidarity). NED also played an important role in facilitating the transitions to democracy in Namibia, Haiti, Zambia, and South Africa, in part through international election-observing efforts. While most governmental and publicly funded democracy promotion organizations now focus mainly or exclusively on assisting the consolidation of new or partial democracies, NED continues to devote substantial funds (mainly through its discretionary grants) to supporting beleaguered democratic movements in (and in exile from) authoritarian and closed societies. It has become a major (sometimes the primary) source of funding for human rights and prodemocracy groups and for the independent flow of information in numerous countries, including China, Tibet, Burma, Vietnam, Serbia, Bosnia, Cuba, Iraq, Egypt, Zaire, Sudan, Nigeria, Liberia, and Kenya.
The NED family also funds a wide variety of grants that aim to consolidate democratic political institutions and civil societies in the post-Communist and developing worlds. In several dozen new or partial democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, it provides training, capacity building, infrastructure, and (in some instances) operational resources for democratic political parties, legislatures, election monitoring and administration, and local governments; it also supports independent social movements, civic education and human rights organizations, policy publications and research institutes, conflict resolution efforts, anticorruption and accountability initiatives, mass media, and democratic trade unions. Among the NED's civil society grantees in 1994 were the Moscow Human Rights Research Center, a network of 15 human rights groups in Moscow and ten other Russian cities that offers citizens legal counseling, advises the government on legislation and policy, and monitors implementation of the law; GERDDES, a Benin-based citizens' organization, with contacts in more than 30 African countries, that promotes civic education, election monitoring, and democratic development across the continent27; and Mexico's Civic Alliance, whose unprecedented election-monitoring efforts-- compelling more balanced media treatment, fielding some 12,000 Mexican observers, and organizing an independent "quick count" of the vote--resulted in the least fraudulent presidential election Mexico has had in decades.28
Through CIPE, NED supports innovative efforts in many countries to demonstrate the need for economic reform, advise legislatures on economic issues, train economic and business journalists, enhance the skills of business associations, improve corporate governance and accountability, strengthen the codes and enforcement of business and commercial law, and promote the teaching of private entrepreneurship and modern business management. In its first decade, CIPE has sponsored more than 100 projects in some 48 countries. By broadening the base of understanding of and participation in the economic reform process (and the market economy more generally), such training and capacity-building programs lessen the presumed tensions between democratization and market reform, thereby exploding the myth that it takes a Pinochet or a Chinese-style dictatorship to accomplish such reform.29
In its work in the post-Communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, FTUI seeks to increase the capacity of democratic trade unions, which were born with enormous structural disadvantages vis-a-vis the power of the old Communist trade unions and the managerial nomenklatura (which are often closely allied with one another). Early on after the fall of Communism, it rushed in "liberation technology" (computers, local-language software programs, printers, fax machines) and then printing equipment. It has also supported democratic newspapers and radio and TV shows; offered courses on the role and responsibilities of free trade unions, the techniques of labor organizing and collective bargaining, and the mechanics of financing and democratically governing a trade union; encouraged (on a nonpartisan basis) voter participation; provided advanced training for union organizers; and facilitated cross-country interaction among free trade union leaders from throughout the region. In Russia, FTUI's rule-of-law project is helping to build the legal infrastructure of democratic trade unionism by supporting the work of Russian lawyers on labor legislation and by assisting unions with registration, local disputes, and illegal dismissals or privatization schemes. In Poland, FTUI has given technical and financial support for the Solidarity trade union's network of Consulting and Negotiating Bureaus, which seeks to safeguard worker rights during the economic reform process by exposing corruption, assisting management in enterprise restructuring, and assisting local unions in negotiating equitable contracts.30 Similar programs by FTUI's regional affiliates seek to strengthen the democratic capacities (for advocacy, organization, and coalition building) of independent trade unions in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The two NED party institutes are heavily involved in institutional development in new and emerging democracies. By 1994, NDI had sponsored political party training in 27 countries, legislative strengthening in 13 countries, local government programs in 5 countries, civil-military dialogues in four Latin American countries, and civic and voter education efforts in 29 countries.31 Its efforts draw on 20 field offices throughout the developing and post-Communist worlds, a staff of regional and functional experts in Washington, and democratic politicians, civic organizers, election monitors and other practitioners from more than 70 countries who are recruited to volunteer their time to share their experiences. (In this important respect, nongovernmental organizations like NDI, IRI, NED, and the Asia Foundation have the flexibility, which USIA does not, of using non-American teachers and trainers to promote diffusion of democratic knowledge and enable developing democracies to learn from one another. The international democratic networks they thereby generate constitute one of the most important results of their work.)
Supporting free and fair elections, through monitoring and voter education, and strengthening political parties and institutions have also figured prominently in the mission of IRI, which has 11 field offices (mainly in the former Communist countries, including Cambodia) and projects in some 50 countries around the world. From 1990 to 1993, IRI organized 18 international election-observing missions during the first rounds of post-Communist elections, and it has also observed in Africa and other regions. With NDI and others, it sponsored the highly successful South African Election Support Project that assisted parties and civic organizations with voter education, registration, communication, and poll watching for the historic April 1994 elections. Unlike NDI, IRI will occasionally assist democratic institution building in nondemocratic systems--for example, it has programs in China to assist the National People's Congress with economic reform legislation and to aid the process of instituting competitive, secret-ballot elections for local village and township officials.32
A number of other private, nonprofit U.S. organizations also have independent identities and structures of governance, though they rely heavily or almost entirely on public funds in performing a variety of democracy promotion functions. For example, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), established in 1987, monitors, supports, and strengthens the mechanics of the election process in emerging democracies. It offers technical assessments of the electoral process in particular countries, on- site technical assistance (for example, in voter registry and design of electoral laws and administration), training of poll workers, voter and civic education, and assistance with monitoring and administration on election day. During its first five years, IFES sent more than twenty teams to survey pre-electoral conditions on five continents, and it aided the electoral administration commissions of nine (mainly newly emerging) democracies.
The Asia Foundation, founded in 1954 and based in San Francisco, now devotes more than half of all its grant spending (about $8 to 10 million per year during fiscal years 1993 to 1995) to democracy promotion in one form or another. These activities, which serve about 16 countries throughout East, Southeast, and South Asia (plus others in the Pacific Islands), cluster in five areas: building the institutional capacities of legislatures and promoting more effective citizen participation in and monitoring of legislative processes; developing an effective justice system, through training and technical support for governmental institutions and through aid to human rights organizations, bar associations, and legal assistance programs; supporting journalism training programs, journalists' associations, and liberalizing reforms of media laws; aiding the development of nongovernmental organizations through start-up support, staff training, research and publication projects, and encouragement of indigenous philanthropy; and strengthening democratic governance in several dimensions, such as electoral administration, local government, civil-military relations, and public accountability and probity at all levels. With a total cash budget of $41.7 million in FY94, the foundation is considerably larger than the NED discretionary grant program and has the advantage of some 14 field offices in Asia, which give it intimate knowledge of each country, sensitivity to its culture, and a long-term presence that allows for an emphasis on incremental change.33
Similarly straddling the boundary between public and private is the Eurasia Foundation, established in 1993 with funding from AID to support economic reform and democratic institution building in the New Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. Based in Washington, with field offices in Moscow, Kiev, Saratov, Tashkent, and Vladivostok, the Eurasia Foundation makes grants in four areas: economic reform, governmental reform, the nonprofit (civil society) sector, and mass media and communications. In its first year of operation, it awarded about $7.5 million in grants (some of them quite small, but with an average grant size of $52,000). Among the projects supported were the conversion of military plants to peacetime production, business and management training, public opinion polling, new education for public administration, strengthening NGOs, book distribution, and electronic publishing.34 One of the foundation's current priorities is to expand access to computer communications (electronic mail, on-line services, and electronic databases) and to support new E-mail networks throughout the former Soviet Union.35
Outside the United States, the NED example has inspired the creation of at least two counterpart organizations, both of which also are funded almost entirely by annual parliamentary appropriations. The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development was established by the Canadian Parliament in 1988 and operates on an annual federal grant of $5 million (Canadian, or about $3.6 million U.S.). The centre's mission is both narrower than NED's, in that it focuses on promoting human rights and democratic societies, and broader, in that it gives "equal emphasis" to social, economic, and cultural rights and to civil and political rights. It provides financial, political and technical support primarily to nongovernmental organizations, such as human rights and women's organizations and independent trade unions, that are struggling for such goals as due process, press freedom, and elimination of child slavery and violence against women. Unlike NED, it is also an advocacy organization, lobbying governments, multilateral institutions, and regional organizations on human rights and democracy issues (such as the promotion of women's rights). It works with more than 300 partners and projects primarily in 13 countries in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.36
Established in 1992 by Royal Prerogative of the British Government, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) follows more closely the American NED model of sponsorship by the principal political parties (in this case three), which (as with NED) are represented on the foundation's governing board along with nonparty figures from business, the trade unions, academia, and civil society.37 About half the foundation's annual budget (£2 million in 1993-94, twice the initial grant) is directed through British political parties, and the other half is allocated to all-party or nonpartisan projects. Even more than NED, Westminster seeks to leverage its limited resources with many small grants (some only a few thousand pounds). Thus it was able to fund 230 new projects in 1993-94 (April 1-March 31). Westminster also focuses its grants regionally: in 1993- 94 fully three-quarters were in Central and Eastern Europe (58 percent) and the former Soviet Union (17 percent), and another 16 percent were in (Anglophone) Africa. Most of its projects, which are channeled through the British parties, support development, campaign training, and media assistance for like- minded political parties; other grants support civic education, civil society organizations (including free trade unions), mass media development, rule of law, and other programs similar to NED's.38 As with other European democracy assistance programs, funding for the Westminster Foundation has been slowly growing, to £2.2 million in 1994-95 and £2.5 million in 1995-96, and it gains further leverage through collaboration and cost-sharing with other donors, such as the European Union.
A large amount of U.S. financial and technical assistance that originates with governmental organizations like AID is channeled through nongovernmental organizations (including NED affiliates). Some of these, like Freedom House (which publishes the annual survey of "freedom in the world"), the African-American Institute, and the Asia Foundation, have been involved in political assistance and institution building for decades, and are now engaged in a wide range of democratic assistance projects (some funded by NED; see Table 1). Some have more narrowly focused democracy promotion aims, such as the defense of human rights or press freedom.
The Law
A number of organizations of varying size are working, typically in close partnership with institutions in the recipient countries, to defend human rights, develop legal systems, and build the institutional and cultural foundations of a rule of law. The American Bar Association provides pro bono legal assistance to emerging democracies throughout the world. Its Central and East European Law Initiative linked each law school in the region with at least three American schools, conducted numerous legal assistance workshops, assessed more than 172 draft laws, and provided over $20 million worth of legal expertise by volunteer lawyers, judges, academicians, and interns.39 With a tiny staff based in Boulder, Colorado, the Center for Human Rights Advocacy has launched several endeavors to protect minority rights in the former Soviet Union and to promote reform of Russia's criminal justice system. These include human rights professional education for Russian judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and law professors and students; investigation of barbaric prison conditions and campaigning for their reform; and legal advocacy for oppressed minorities seeking emigration and political asylum. The Institute of European Law in the United Kingdom provides human rights law training to lawyers and judges in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition, monitoring organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have not only had some success in pressuring for release of individual detainees but have also helped to generate political and diplomatic pressure on offending regimes.
The Press
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI) both monitor the state of press freedom in the world, exposing and protesting abuses of press freedom and pressuring for openness and change.40 Established in 1984 and funded mainly from the private sector, the Center for Foreign Journalists (CFJ), based in Virginia, offers foreign journalists and news executives advanced training and consultation in the United States and in their own countries, donates textbooks, and operates related support services. In 1993, CFJ initiated a fellowship program for U.S. news media professionals to locate abroad (for up to nine months) to provide practical journalistic, management, business, and technical assistance to the developing independent press in the former East Bloc countries. Press training programs are also conducted by IPI; by numerous press fellowship programs, such as the U.S.-based Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships and the Paris-based Journalists in Europe (which offers eight-month programs for young Russian journalists); and by the Independent Journalism Foundation (IJF), which operates Centers for Independent Journalism in Prague, Bratislava, and Bucharest and publishes KMIT, a journalism quarterly for the region.41
Strengthening Democratic Values and Institutions
A similar panoply of private assistance efforts focuses on democratic civic education and strengthening civil society. The Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe (IDEE) makes grants and facilitates communication to support NGO activity in the former Soviet bloc. In cooperation with its sister organization (IDEE Warsaw) it coordinates the flow of information and ideas among eleven "Centers for Pluralism" in ten countries. The American Federation of Teachers (a U.S. trade union) conducts "education for democracy" workshops and numerous other civic education programs; it is now preparing a database of some 300 groups worldwide that are engaged in civic education for democracy. The Washington-based National Institute for Citizen Education in the Law educates students in more than a dozen countries (including the United States) about laws, the legal system, and civic rights and responsibilities by showing young people the connection between their daily lives and the law, and by promoting "cooperative learning, critical thinking, and positive interaction between young people and adults." The London-based Charity Know-How helps voluntary organizations in the former East Bloc countries to develop the legal, financial, and regulatory frameworks, coordinating bodies, and other skills they need to operate effectively. The Network of East-West Women (linking more than 700 women activists in more than 20 countries in Eastern and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the West) supports the formation of independent women's movements to advance women's participation in public life and their human and political rights. Building upon its efforts to strengthen civil society organizations in Poland, the American Committee for Aid to Poland is now working to draw NGOs from throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics into a cooperative, information-sharing network.42
One of the most energetic private-sector endeavors in democracy promotion has been undertaken by the Carter Center of Emory University. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter has been instrumental in organizing a council of former elected heads of state in the Americas. In collaboration with them, and with a wide variety of other prominent individuals and organizations, he has observed elections in more than a dozen countries around the world, and in several countries--including Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Liberia--the center has played a pivotal role in mediating between conflicting or warring parties.
Private foundations have also been devoting an increasing share of their resources to building democratic institutions and civil societies (although these goals often overlap with other developmental objectives). Carnegie Corporation of New York lists several sizable grants it has made under the rubric of "strengthening democratic institutions." Among its recent recipients are the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights to monitor, analyze, and assist legal reform in Russia; Helsinki Watch, for human rights monitoring and training in the former Soviet Union; the Kennedy School of Government, for programs on democratizing civil-military relations and advising on economic reform and political decision making at all levels of government in the former Soviet Union and for scholarly exchanges between the United States and the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.43 In addition to its support for individual scholars, the MacArthur Foundation made grants in 1992 to support democratic legal and institutional reform, including increased accountability of police and military, in Central America, and to advance human rights and democracy in Latin America.44 The Ford Foundation has long had an extensive program of grants in this field. In 1992 it made 15 grants for human rights work to U.S. and European organizations (totaling almost $3 million) and another 19 grants in developing countries (totaling about $2.25 million). A large number of other Ford grants go to support independent research institutes and foundations in civil society, such as the Democracy after Communism Foundation in Hungary. In all, the total of Ford Foundation grants to support human rights and democratic development probably equals the discretionary grant program of NED.
Founded in 1972 with a gift from the German people to support more traditional types of exchanges between the United States and Europe, the German Marshall Fund of the United States in 1989 initiated a Political Development Program to support democratization in seven Central and Eastern European countries. From an initial focus on building independent judiciaries, representative legislatures, and democratic political parties, the program shifted emphasis in 1992 to civil society. Its grants (many with AID funding) now support the independent press, NGOs, citizenship training, and efforts to counter discrimination against ethnic minorities. Among other things, these grants seek to alter entrenched cultural patterns of distrust, cynicism, passivity, and deference to authority; to encourage active citizen and NGO engagement with local government; to help NGOs to become effective public advocates for human rights (including minority rights), governmental transparency, and public access to information; and to foster accurate, readable, fact-based reporting.45
The boldest and most far-reaching private effort has been the network of Soros Foundations established by Hungarian ÈmigrÈ financier George Soros, who contributed more than $15 million in 1990 alone to democratic dissidents and organizations throughout Eastern Europe.46 Begun in Hungary in 1984 and now operating in some 22 countries, from Poland and Russia to South Africa and Burma, the Soros Foundations seek to promote an "open society" based not only on democracy and the market economy but on tolerance, the rule of law, historical truth, and respect for minorities. Democracy-building projects support human rights (especially the rights of ethnic and national minorities), legal reform, expanded access to electronic mail and the Internet, revision of Communist-era school curricula, and mass media training and development. The intellectual centerpiece of the foundations network, the Central European University in Budapest and Prague, has, since its founding in 1990, rapidly become perhaps the most influential institution of higher learning in the post-Communist world. Soros's Open Society Institute, based in New York, also administers numerous projects to research public policy issues, encourage pluralism and debate, and assist other institutions of higher learning in Central and Eastern Europe.47
Beyond these grant-making institutions, an increasingly wide range of civic organizations is becoming involved in democracy promotion efforts, as suggested by the list in Table 1 of selected U.S. organizations that were administering NED grants for democratic groups abroad in 1992 and 1993. The presence on the list of nongovernmental organizations historically concerned with economic development, peace, and international exchange issues is noteworthy. So is the involvement of civic and lobbying organizations, like the League of Women Voters and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, whose traditional focus has been on American politics. This not only broadens the base of political support for democracy promotion in the established democracies,48 it also multiplies the points of independent interchange between developed and developing democracies.
It is sadly ironic that at a moment of unprecedented democratic ferment and uncertainty in the world, and after a decade in which international democracy assistance organizations have often demonstrated remarkable cost-effectiveness, U.S. organizations that blazed the trail in democracy promotion in the 1980s and early 90s are in danger. As pressure intensifies to cut spending to eliminate chronic budget deficits, and as support for liberal internationalist engagement declines, AID and USIA are being targeted by some Congressional budget cutters. There is also growing sentiment for cutting or eliminating funding for NED, the Asia Foundation, and similar publicly funded NGOs. Some critics maintain that democracy promotion is not a vital interest of the United States. Others seek to scale back international assistance in general. Still others contend that the NED network duplicates what AID does and is therefore superfluous.
There are several reasons why nongovernmental organizations like NED and the Asia Foundation must remain vigorously engaged in democracy promotion, with public funding directly appropriated by Congress and not tied to specific projects. Each type of effort has its own strengths and weaknesses. AID can be effective at long-term institution building, particularly with respect to the governmental structures of democracy and large-scale assistance projects.49 With its years of experience in economic and social development, AID also is well positioned to offer assistance at the nexus between those sectors and the political, for example to universities, and to NGOs and research institutes concerned with development, the environment, economic reform, and the status of women. However, as with any large government bureaucracy, AID's elaborate decision mechanisms and reviewing, reporting, and auditing procedures make it unable to respond quickly to crises and new opportunities, less prone to take risks, and less effective in dealing with smaller and less formal organizations.50 Because it lacks extensive political development expertise, much of AID's work in this area must be contracted out, and when large amounts of money must be disbursed quickly, some contract recipients are bound to be less experienced, less cost- effective, and less committed to the substance of democracy promotion than others. NGO donors can be more cost-effective in providing small grants for a wide range of projects, not only because their administration is more compact but because they are able to mobilize volunteer and pro bono expert participation.51 In addition, it is much more difficult for AID to provide assistance, even to NGOs, in countries where governments have come to power through coups, are in arrears in repaying debts to the United States, or lack diplomatic relations with Washington, and it also no longer operates in many of the more economically developed newly emerging democracies, such as South Korea and Taiwan.
These problems of increased administrative burdens and reduced flexibility and cost-effectiveness apply as well when NGOs receive AID grants to promote democracy abroad, as do most of the major U.S. nongovernmental democracy promotion organizations.52 Heavy dependence on project-specific AID funding also makes it more difficult for NGOs to maintain their own methods and institutional identity, and to engage in long-term financial and program planning and staff development, since they cannot know what their budgets will be from year to year.53 In terms of both cost efficiency and effectiveness in democracy promotion, it would make more sense to increase--rather than eliminate--direct congressional funding for these NGOs, by converting into general public grants most of the project-specific funds they are now receiving from AID. This would still leave the bulk of U.S. public funding for democracy promotion under AID control but would generate greater pluralism of strategy and approaches. The case against shifting more democracy promotion funding into direct NGO appropriations appears mainly political, in that it would reduce centralized control over U.S. democracy promotion projects by the executive branch agencies and the Congress.
Other considerations also underscore the need to limit the direct role of U.S. governmental agencies in democracy promotion. "In countries where one of the issues being addressed is the paucity of autonomous civic and political institutions, the fundamental idea that government ought not control all aspects of society is undermined by a too-visible U.S. government hand in the development and implementation of these programs."54 Furthermore, as agents of the U.S. foreign policy establishment that must serve overall U.S. government interests, both AID and USIA have less scope to assist political opposition forces and groups in civil society that might expose corruption or press for reform of a government with which the U.S. seeks warm bilateral relations. For a big power in the world, this is a big problem: It must have nongovernmental instruments that can react quickly and engage civil society actors who might be suspicious of official big-power aid agencies, or who might become the object of diplomatic friction between the big power and a hostile host government. Particularly in authoritarian situations, prodemocracy groups are exposed and vulnerable, at greater risk of being discredited (or punished) as tools of foreign interests when they accept government money from a superpower like the United States, or a regional power like Japan, or a former colonial ruler like Britain or France. There is less risk and suspicion when funding comes from a nongovernmental agency, which is not bound by the political direction or constraints that may be imposed by the local American embassy, or from the official aid agencies of a smaller country, like Canada or Sweden, which are less likely to have (or to be seen to have) geostrategic interests at stake (and which have more of the flexible, cutting-edge, challenging character of the publicly funded democracy promotion NGOs in the U.S.). In authoritarian countries, NED has particular freedom of action because (unlike the Asia Foundation and the Ford Foundation in some countries) it does not have to worry about preserving an in-country presence, with a local office and expatriate staff.
As a general rule, assistance to civil society groups that are challenging in some way the established social or political order should therefore be left to nongovernmental foundations and organizations and to the aid agencies of smaller countries. The big official development organizations, especially AID, should concentrate on helping to develop formal institutions and civil society sectors that are less controversial or explicitly political. Some of the funds that AID is now expending to assist democratic NGOs abroad should probably be directly allocated by the U.S. Congress to groups like the Asia Foundation and NED.
In an endeavor such as democracy promotion, where the challenges are diverse in character, scale, countries, and cultures, there is value in pluralism of approaches and donor organizations. For countries whose overcentralization of government and public life retards democratic development, centralizing the provision of U.S. (not to mention international) democratic assistance through a single agency would hardly provide a useful model or message. Vigorous pluralism of U.S. democracy promotion actors exposes democratic forces abroad to the diversity (and tolerance of diversity) intrinsic to democracy and creates a richer repertoire of donors and methods that are able to relate effectively to a wider range of potential recipients.55
Globally as well, having donors from a wide range of countries and approaches increases the legitimacy of democracy promotion as a political task, provides a broader array of funding sources from which the potential aid recipients can choose, and gives civil society organizations the opportunity to shield themselves from political retaliation and reduce future funding uncertainty by broadening their bases of support. As we have seen, some organizations, like NED, still work to foster democratic transitions, while some focus only on consolidation. Some work on a larger scale, some on a small scale. Some focus mainly on democratic governance, some on human rights more broadly, some on multiple dimensions of development (including conventional economic ones that make them appear less threatening to authoritarian regimes). Some have the deep country expertise that comes with regional focus, others have the comparative breadth that comes with a global network and reach. Some have an in- country presence that enhances understanding of local conditions, actors, possibilities and risks, and facilitates closer monitoring and evaluation of grants. Others have the added freedom of not having to protect an in-country presence when they award grants. Official aid bureaucracies move slowly and may need to respond to multiple and conflicting policy goals, but they but can commit large amounts to institution building and sustain them over long periods of time. Nongovernmental organizations like NED, Canada's Centre, and the Soros Foundations can respond rapidly to urgent needs and surprise opportunities; emergency help from NED, for example, kept the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje publishing, as a source of truth and hope, through the brutal winter of 1994. Certainly, it makes sense to have donors like NED and Westminster that are able to offer relatively small grants for limited or short-term projects, or for seed purposes, or for informal organizations; often these smaller grants are the most cost-effective, though unfortunately they are also the most difficult to audit cost-effectively.56
The enormous variety of organizations involved in democracy promotion has permitted the development (both deliberately and coincidentally) of widely different strengths and areas of expertise-- functionally, thematically, and regionally. At first glance, this may appear a welter of confusion and duplication. In fact, it increasingly represents the same overlapping, reinforcing, integrating pluralism that marks a healthy democratic civil society within a country. In the spirit of democracy, such pluralism should remain--full of eclecticism and experimentation, and free of central direction. What would be useful, however, to keep such pluralism from running wild, and to keep assistance working to maximum benefit, is regular communication and closer coordination among the various donors. Today, such communication and coordination works much better (but still not always well) within countries than across them.
In addition to states and NGOs, international and regional organizations have also become involved in democracy promotion in recent years.
Periodically over the years, and quite rapidly since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has been developing a concern with and capacity to assist the administration of free and fair elections--which Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates as the means for determining "the will of the people," which "shall be the basis of the authority of government." The UN's supervision of the 1989 Namibian elections marked a turning point: its last major observing role as a territorial trustee and its first engagement in a new, broader type of democratic intervention that included not only extensive election monitoring but peacekeeping forces, civilian police, civic education, and postelection assistance in institutional development. In February 1990, the UN mounted its first electoral observation mission in a member state, Nicaragua, a comprehensive effort that began six months before the voting and continued after it. A comparable mission to Haiti followed later in the same year. In Haiti, the UN's willingness for the first time to justify its intervention on the basis of a country's internal needs (rather than maintenance of international peace and security) marked a sharp departure from the past. UN engagement was soon institutionalized with the creation of an Electoral Assistance Unit and was then tested with major new missions in El Salvador, Cambodia, Angola, and the Western Sahara.57
The first UN mission in Angola failed (with the resumption of civil war after the September 1992 elections), largely because of the lack of adequate human and financial resources.58 However, its mission in El Salvador (Onusal)--which included monitoring of human rights and a ceasefire, as well as peacekeeping and civil policing assistance--did provide a crucial mediating framework for the termination of the civil war and incorporation of the rebels into the constitutional process. The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was successful in bringing about a peaceful transition to a multiparty, formally democratic system (although it failed to demobilize the Khmer Rouge, control corruption, and prevent campaign violence and malpractices). After a year and a half of what can only be described as UN "occupation," almost 90 percent of voters turned out to the polls, in a surprisingly peaceful and free election that defied enormous logistical obstacles and a daunting legacy of fear and horror. A new coalition government resulted. The most ambitious such undertaking in UN history-- representing an investment of $2 billion, 16,000 troops, more than 3,000 police officers, and some 3,000 civilian officials who assumed control of key ministries--UNTAC became the epitome of the UN in the "New World Order." It illustrated the inseparable connections between traditional UN functions--such as peacekeeping, disarmament, and repatriation of refugees--and the new democracy-building functions of electoral administration and monitoring, political mediation, and institutional reconstruction.59
The European Community
Of the regional organizations, the European Community (now the European Union, or EU) was the first to take democracy seriously by imposing as a condition for membership that states manifest "truly democratic practices and respect for fundamental rights and freedoms." This conditionality provided "an important incentive for the consolidation of democratic processes in the Iberian peninsula," Greece, and (more recently and less successfully) Turkey.60 It is today a powerful incentive against backsliding into authoritarianism in Eastern Europe, particularly in those more economically advanced countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia) whose admission in the near future is most plausible. Indeed, the possibility of their admission was specifically included--with very explicit democratic conditionality--in the Europe Agreements of 1990.61 Similar conditions--democratic pluralism, the rule of law, and protection of human rights--are placed on membership in the Council of Europe, which several East European democracies have recently obtained, and which the former Communist countries view not only "as desirable in its own right" but "as an important step toward the grand prize of membership in the European Community."62
The general EC/EU approach to encouraging democratization has been through support for market reform, on the principle that if Eastern Europe's markets become developed, like those in the West, its governments will become more democratic, like those in the West. Since 1990, the EU and the G-24, together with the IMF, have thus given the Central European countries, plus Bulgaria and Romania, $1 billion each in aid; Poland also received a $16 billion debt write-off.63 The EU and G-24 have also provided humanitarian aid of food and medicines to ease the shock of economic adjustment, and, through the Phare program, technical and administrative advice, training, and support on building market institutions amounting to some $3 billion per year for the region.64
Phare is one dimension of an ambitious set of European Union initiatives to help consolidate the economic and political transitions in Central and Eastern Europe. In addition to humanitarian aid and balance-of-payments support, the EU provides investment capital to advance market transitions through the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Most importantly, perhaps, Phare assistance is now explicitly identified as a means to help prepare the eleven partner countries for eventual membership in the European Union. Six of these countries-- Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia--have signed association agreements (known as "Europe Agreements") with the EU expressly to prepare them for membership. The other five countries--Albania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia--have been given more general Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreements, but the latter four are expected to be offered association agreements soon.65 As with Spain, Portugal, and Greece, it is likely that the process of integration into a democratic Europe will be one of the most powerful factors locking the post-Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe into democratic forms of governance and making blatant authoritarian reversals unthinkable.
In 1992 Phare and its counterpart for the former Soviet Union, Tacis, initiated democratic assistance programs, which have been managed since 1994 by the European Human Rights Foundation. Each has ECU10 million (ECU1 = $1.33 as of July 1995) in funding in the current fiscal year, which (unlike the American programs) is likely to increase next year. In contrast to the bulk of Phare/Tacis assistance, which goes to governments, these programs target "non-state, non-profit making bodies" in civil society, offering grants that are smaller in scale and that result as much as possible from the initiative of indigenous actors in the post-Communist countries. A new "micro-projects" facility for Central and Eastern Europe makes available very small grants (of about $3,000 to $10,000) with a minimum of bureaucracy (unlike larger projects, an EU partner is not required); the goal is to stimulate activity more deeply at the grass roots and to enhance the development of a wider range of NGOs.
Recently approved Phare/Tacis projects are helping to establish a legal information and assistance program in Hungary, a network of trade union education centers in Russia, organizations to promote consumers' rights in Romania and Slovenia, NGOs to monitor and improve prison conditions in Ukraine, Estonia, and Lithuania, a system to monitor violent racist acts and speech in Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania, and a new Russian radio series to show the importance of local government and NGOs. Phare/Tacis democracy projects also provide support for a variety of NGOs working for human rights, civic education, conflict resolution, interethnic tolerance, and the rights of gays, lesbians, minorities, and the disabled. Other projects support a vast array of training programs for lawyers, journalists, public opinion analysts, trade union educators, women's rights activists, local administrators, employer association managers, civilian specialists in defense and security issues, and many other sectors of civil society.66 An additional value of these programs is that they link (as a requirement for funding) the participating NGOs in the post-Communist countries with a vast array of partners from across the European Union. These proliferating ties across the former Cold War divide help to diffuse not only hard skills and resources but a culture of democracy, while gradually building at the nongovernmental level some of the organizational basis for a pan-European society.
The European Parliament of the EU also has a modest program of its own to train the elected members and professional staffs of parliaments in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It focuses on such functions as budgetary management, press relations, and research and library support. (The U.S. Congressional Research Service has also been actively involved in parliamentary assistance programs in this region.)67
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
The twenty-year-old Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) (OSCE; formerly CSCE) is more directly engaged than the EU in democracy promotion activities in the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Building upon its historic (but limited) concern for human rights in that broad region, the CSCE (in its June 1990 Copenhagen meeting) declared "democracy and the rule of law" to be "essential for ensuring respect for all human rights and fundamental freedoms"; defined those various concepts in unprecedentedly explicit and comprehensive detail (incorporated later that year into the Charter of Paris for a New Europe); and imposed sanctions against states responsible for flagrant human rights abuses.68 The EU has also imposed sanctions: a trade agreement with Bulgaria was suspended after the regime's abuse of its Turkish minority in 1989; Phare assistance to Romania was suspended following the violent repression in 1990; and the aid program for the Soviet Union was suspended following its action against the Baltic states in 1991.69
Since the downfall of Communism and the transformation of its role in 1990, the CSCE has also established a number of new permanent institutions, including an Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in Warsaw with a mandate to aid the development of democracy in more than 20 post-Communist CSCE countries. Though lean in staff and funding (with a 1993 budget of $2.4 million), the ODIHR has been active, organizing electoral advice and assistance for new democracies, missions to assess minority rights and interethnic relations in Moldova and Estonia, and seminars on such issues as developing tolerance and drafting constitutions.
The Council of Europe
Since its founding in 1949, the Council of Europe has been explicitly concerned with the advancement of pluralist democracy and human rights as key foundations for building European unity. Toward that end, it has established a human rights regime among its membership (which now includes several Central and East European countries) that encompasses a European human rights convention, commission, and court independent of other international structures. Following the institutionalization of the CSCE in 1990, the council became the official coordinator of human rights issues for that body.
In 1990 the council established its own set of democracy promotion activities in Central and Eastern Europe, with a view toward facilitating the eventual integration of these countries into the council. With a budget of 54 million francs (about $10 million) in 1994, plus voluntary contributions from member states, the council's Demosthenes project provides practical assistance in many areas, such as the drafting of legislation on human rights, the mass media, and local government; the prosecution of human rights violations and protection of ethnic minorities; the technical aspects of broadcasting; local finance procedures; and seminars on the role of NGOs in a democratic civil society.
Organization of American States
Since its founding in 1948, democracy has also been an explicit concern of the Organization of American States (OAS). This rhetorical commitment has been periodically strengthened over time, yet always with equivocation about national sovereignty. Not until the historic June 1991 Santiago meeting was this ambivalence pierced to some extent with the adoption of Resolution 1080, which mandated an immediate meeting of the Organization's Permanent Council following the overthrow of democratic rule anywhere in the region, and the adoption of "efficacious, timely, and expeditious procedures to ensure the promotion and defense of representative democracy."70
Until the 1990s, OAS action to enforce the democratic commitment implicit in its charter had been modest and episodic at best, showing the difficulty that any regional organization would face in effectively promoting democracy when most of its member states are not democratic. Only when the region had become overwhelmingly democratic and had passed the Santiago resolution did the OAS begin to take more concerted action, effectively monitoring elections in Haiti, El Salvador, Paraguay, and Suriname; imposing sanctions after the coups against democracy in Haiti (in September 1991) and Peru (in April 1992) and helping to reverse the attempted executive coup against democracy in Guatemala in May 1993. In the case of Haiti, the member states of the OAS cut off all nonhumanitarian aid and imposed a general trade embargo, but this had little impact on the ruthless ruling elite, and OAS mediation (in conjunction with the UN) produced an agreement that would have restored President Aristide without dismantling the thoroughly corrupt military (and associated elite structures) that had overthrown him and that had repeatedly terrorized the nation (the military leaders subsequently refused to honor the agreement). In the end, only the prospect of an imminent U.S. invasion induced the generals to accept a negotiated exit at the final hour. The milder OAS diplo matic pressure on Peru may have helped persuade President Fujimori to abandon plans for a plebiscite to legitimize his autogolpe (executive coup, or, literally, "self coup") and instead to hold OAS-monitored elections for a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. But human rights abuses continued.71
As Peter Hakim has argued, a principal reason (beyond deep-seated distrust of the United States) why the OAS is so notoriously weak and immobile--even more than the UN--is its structure, which provides for no independent institutional authority, other than the 34 member governments sitting collectively, to manage its affairs. There is no equivalent to the UN Security Council (which Hakim believes is badly needed), and the OAS Secretary-General has far less authority and autonomy than his UN counterpart. On the other hand, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS, with a self-activating enforcement mechanism and an independent governing board and mandate, has achieved "a distinguished record of investigating and disclosing abuses and recommending remedial action in many countries of the hemisphere."72 A few years ago the OAS established a Democracy Unit "to provide program support for democratic development," but it needs more staff resources and broader analytical capabilities. As with the UN, funding constraints are severe (the OAS today spends less than half of what it did twenty years ago).73
Organization of African Unity
Much less effective still at democracy promotion has been the Organization of African Unity. Its history shows even more graphically the constraints imposed on a regional organization when most of its member states are authoritarian. Anticolonialism, defense of sovereignty, and regional cooperation were its founding purposes--not democracy or human rights. In 1981, a meeting of OAU heads of state unanimously adopted an African Charter on Human and People's Rights, which came into force in October 1986 with 48 countries as signatories. The charter was riddled with contradictions and qualifications, however, and lacked any serious enforcement mechanisms. Most member states ignored even its most mild procedural provisions, and the commission it established to research, investigate and receive charges of violations has proved timid and ineffectual, with no real power.74 This contrasts sharply with its OAS counterpart, which has greater structural independence and is backed by the more forceful, prodemocratic charter of the parent organization.
Recently, beginning with the historic 1991 Zambian election, the OAU has begun to undertake small electoral observation missions (including ambassadors from member countries and OAU staff). However, these have been initiated only by invitation from the country, and they have been hampered by the small size of the team, their narrow mandate, excessive reliance on host governments, the briefness of their stay in country, and the fact that their findings are reported privately to the Secretary-General and not made public.75
Clearly, there is a growing international architecture of collective institutions and formal agreements enshrining both the principles of democracy and human rights and the legitimacy of international action to promote them. The world community is increasingly embracing a shared normative expectation that all states seeking international legitimacy should manifestly "govern with the consent of the governed"--in essence, a "right to democratic governance" is seen as a legal entitlement.76 Already effectively implied by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, this right to democratic governance has been articulated more and more explicitly in the documents of regional organizations like the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and the OAS and affirmed by the growing number of interventions by those organizations and by the UN. For some, this suggests the world is moving (and should move) toward establishing a global guarantee of constitutional democracy to every nation (similar to the clause in the U.S. Constitution that requires the federal government to "guarantee to every State a Republican form of government").77 Such a universal guarantee (in anything more than principle) is no doubt years away, at least. But significant erosion of the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of a country is already discernible (even in Africa). At a minimum, this evolution has done two things. First, it has lowered the political threshold to intervention, not only for the multilateral actors but for states and NGOs as well; and second, it has emboldened domestic advocates of democracy and human rights. If the world has not yet recognized a universal legal entitlement to democracy, it has at least advanced cultural norms and expectations of its moral worth.