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Doing More with Less
In this context, the best we can hope for in the period immediately ahead is to maintain our budget at its current level of $30 million. Even if Congress sustains the Administration's request of $30 million for FY1998 and 1999, this will still mean a continuing decline in our budget in real terms and further reductions in our grants program.
Thus, if the Endowment is to remain a dynamic and increasingly influential center for the promotion of democracy around the world, it will have to devise methods to do more with less. Doing so will depend upon our ability to utilize our diversity to maximum effect. The NED family consists of many different networks and structures. As we have already seen, coordination ' with the four institutes has grown, as called for in the previous Strategy Document. But other forms of coordination exist and can be further developed.
The Endowment grants program, for example, is divided by j region, with each consisting of its own activist networks that operate both informally and through organizations such as GERRDES in Africa and the Forum of Democratic Leaders in the Asia-Pacific. Examples of cross-border and intra-regional work include three Warsaw-based initiatives: the Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation, which provides training in desktop publishing for activists from the former Soviet Union; the Foundation for Education for Democracy which provides civic education and leadership training in the same region; and the Centers for Pluralism, which promote joint projects among numerous pro-democracy centers throughout Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Other regional efforts have been undertaken by the institutes, such as NDI's joint program with the National Citizen's Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) in the Philippines to develop election-monitoring civic organizations in Asia, and CIPE'S program with the Manila-based Asian Institute of Management to support independent media and professional economic reporting in the region.
NED also has the ability to operate inter-regionally. NDI typically brings activists from one region to another to share their knowledge or to learn from more experienced groups. Discretionary projects have discreetly brought dissidents in Cuba and China into contact with experienced former dissidents from Eastern Europe and Russia. NED and the institutes are working together to strengthen cross-regional cooperation among grantees working in predominantly Islamic settings in the Middle East, the Balkans, Central Asia and the Caucasus, northern Africa, and South and Southeast Asia.
As the Warsaw- and Manila-based initiatives mentioned above suggest, there is also great potential in encouraging the more consolidated "third wave" democracies to aid democratic groups beyond their borders. Through the grants program NED can help build indigenous institutions that have the will and ability to become regional centers for the promotion of democratic values. Such centers could eventually evolve into formal NED-like institutions that provide grant support and training both within and beyond their own regions. Poland and the Philippines would be natural centers for such regional democracy-promotion institutions.
The development of such institutions can also be encouraged through the work of the International Forum. On the basis of two conferences previously organized with Taiwan's Institute for National Policy Research (INPR), a jointly sponsored international meeting will be held in October 1997 in Taipei aimed at stimulating the growth of democracy-promotion institutions in Asia. A similar meeting in Latin America may look toward the creation of such an institution in this hemisphere.
The International Forum also offers a way to engage the established democracies in the work of democracy- promotion. Its jointly sponsored lecture series with Portugal's Mário Soares Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation could help spur the creation of a Portuguese NED. Portuguese officials, many of whom are familiar with democracy programs owing to their participation in NDI training missions in Central and Eastern Europe and Africa, are considering the idea of such an institution.
The Forum is also engaged with other established democracies. The 1996 East Asia democracy conference, jointly sponsored with the Japan Institute of International Affairs and a policy institute in Thailand, was the first instance of cooperation between the Endowment and a Japanese organization. The Forum has now accepted a proposal to host a Japanese fellow who wishes to examine the practical aspects of democracy-promotion and the policy issues that Japan must consider if it chooses to enter this field. Researchers from Australia and other countries considering NED-like initiatives may also seek to examine these issues as visiting fellows at the Forum. Finally, the Forum is planning to hold a conference on India in the fall of 1997 on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Indian democracy. H successful, it could lead to other forms of cooperation between the Endowment and ~ Indian research institutes, with the possibility that the world's largest democracy might also take an interest in the field of democracy-promotion.
Obviously, one objective of this approach is to leverage limited resources. Stimulating the creation of new partners among the democracies at a time when our own resources are shrinking makes sense from a practical point of view. But the central purpose is more far-reaching, namely, to create a community of democrats, drawn from the most developed democracies and the most repressive autocracies as well as everything in between, and united by the belief that the common interest is served by the gradual expansion of systems based on freedom, self-government, and the rule of law.
The goal of these diverse initiatives is the globalization of the democracy movement, a means of magnifying the impact of the grants program by fostering new linkages and forms of sharing across national and regional boundaries; developing new capacities like the Forum that deepen understanding of democracy and create a framework for a common global discussion of this fundamental issue; and broadening participation in the overall effort to nurture democratic institutions and values.
The globalization of the democracy movement also offers new possibilities for strengthening the overall support for NED. America's population is drawn from countries throughout the world and increasingly reflects the diversity of the international community. As we engage with Portugal, Taiwan, India, and other countries as partners in the promotion of democracy, their friends will become more knowledgeable about the NED and supportive of our objectives.
There are a number of examples of how we are already maximizing the impact of our diverse assets and associations. Our evolving approach to China is a case in point. At present, the grants consist of discretionary and labor programs supporting various pro-democracy networks, and CIPE and IRI programs targeting opportunities created by official reform policy in the areas of economic modernization and local elections. Significantly, the CIPE and IRI programs have been endorsed by a wide range of pro-democracy groups and activists. To this mix should be added the grants supporting the Tibetan and Hong Kong democracy movements and the role of Taiwan as both a Chinese model of successful democratization and a potential participant in the field of democracy-promotion. The Forum conference on China and a number of valuable articles published in the Journal have added still another dimension to our work in this key country.
Other places where this "integrative" approach is applicable include Burma, where European, Asian and Canadian support complements the comprehensive programs of NED and all four institutes; Latin America, where the Forum, by identifying obstacles to further democratization, can both complement and strengthen the grants program; and the Middle East, where collaboration among moderate Islamists, secular liberals, and Western friends is needed to overcome the Isolation of democrats and to meet the fundamentalist challenge.
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