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Building upon the Past
In January 1992, NED's Board of Directors approved a strategy Document intended to provide guidance for e organization for a period of three to five years. We have now come to the end of that period, it seems an appropriate moment to review and update e strategy in the context of our present situation.
Strategy Document marked the end of one period the Endowment's evolution and the beginning of other. During the first period, spanning the funding of NED in 1983 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Endowment and its core Institutes established their principles and procedures, developed a significant operational capability, and aided momentous democratic struggles in the USSR, Chile, Poland, Nicaragua and many other countries. NED'S appropriation averaged under $20 million during these years (it was supplemented by special earmarks of AID funds for several key countries), but the organization's role as the chief provider of democracy assistance was uncontested, d its support in Congress grew as it rode the crest of democracy's "third wave."
The communist collapse in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and the fall elsewhere of many noncommunist dictatorships affected NED in two basic ways. First, at a time when democracy seemed have swept most of the world, NED had to demonstrate that it remained at the "cutting edge" democratic change. Second, as AID and other government agencies developed their own programs to promote democracy (a circumstance at NED'S success helped bring about) NED came under greater pressure to demonstrate why its contribution was unique.
The Board addressed this new situation by adopting a three-point strategy of comparative advantage. First, NED would exploit its nongovernmental status by directing more support to democratic forces in "pre-breakthrough" countries where government agencies could not operate effectively. Second, it would take advantage of its multi-sectoral structure by strengthening coordination with the four affiliated institutes (i.e. CIPE, FTUI, IRI, NDI), even where most of their programs were being funded by AID. Finally, with its exclusive focus on democracy-promotion, the Endowment would expand its efforts in the realm of ideas and information by developing an "international forum" aimed at promoting interchange and solidarity among democratic forces around the world.
It speaks well for the coherence and practicality of the Strategy Document that it has, in fact, served as an effective guide for NED policies over the last five years. This is certainly true with respect to the first strategic priority of emphasizing more strongly support to democratic forces in "pre-breakthrough" countries. If one defines as "pre-breakthrough" the countries categorized as "not free" in the annual Freedom House survey (the other two categories being "free" and "partly free"), the percentage of NED funding in such countries rose steadily over the period, from 20 percent in 1992 to 47 percent in 1996 (see Table 1). This reflected a doubling of the resources spent in Asia (primarily China, Burma and Cambodia) and a tripling of the resources spent in the Middle East. It also reflected substantial increases in funding for programs in Central Asia and the former Yugoslavia. Thus, NED remained a "cutting edge" institution in the post-Cold War era by focusing increasingly on Asian autocracies and Islamic countries, as well as on the war-torn Balkan region.
| Table 1: Proportion of NED resources spent in Free, Partly Free, and Not Free countries (according to the Freedom House catagorization), 1992-96: |
| |
Free |
Partly Free |
Not Free |
Total Spent |
| FY1992 |
$5,262,080 |
$13,095,253 |
$4,657,948 |
$23,015,281 |
| |
23% |
57% |
20% |
|
| FY1993 |
$3,986,264 |
$12,799,207 |
$6,614,258 |
$23,399,729 |
| |
17% |
55% |
28% |
|
| FY1994 |
$6,560,022 |
$13,932,741 |
$9,799,172 |
$30,291,935 |
| |
22% |
46% |
32% |
|
| FY1995 |
$4,460,623 |
$12,529,717 |
$11,249,576 |
$28,239,914 |
| |
16% |
44% |
40% |
|
| FY1996 |
$4,015,151 |
$10,702,890 |
$12,897,178 |
$27,615,219 |
| |
14% |
39% |
47% |
|
Implementation of the second strategic priority-enhanced coordination with the institutes-is harder to quantify, since coordination has always been an inherent aspect of NED programming. Here too, though, it is possible to demonstrate results. Board Members have convened regular meetings of NED and the institutes to review existing programs for specific regions and to plan future programming strategies. Coordinating meetings have been held on key countries such as China, Russia, Nigeria and Mexico, among others. NED and the institutes share networks, information and materials as a matter of course, most importantly when one member of the NED family is about to enter a country where another has already been active. There is also an informal division of labor, as when one or both of the party institutes provide technical help to a group (or to people drawn from a group) that is receiving a direct grant from the Endowment. Such collaboration has occurred, for example, in Egypt, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Mexico, as well as in the case of the African group GERRDES that draws volunteers from 20 countries.
NED implemented the third strategic priority by launching the International Forum for Democratic Studies in 1994. In a very short time the Forum, using mostly private funds, has established itself as the preeminent center in the world for comparative research on democracy. The Journal of Democracy has continued to grow in prestige and circulation, its impact magnified by the publication of six books based on Journal articles. The Institute has held major conferences on such critical subjects as the relationship between economic reform and democracy, civil-military relations, political parties, East Asian democratization, and the democratic "third wave;" as well as smaller country-specific conferences on China, Nigeria, Mexico, Egypt, Taiwan, Korea and Russia. A Democracy Resource Center has been established consisting of a library and archives on democracy, a World Wide Web site called "DemocracyNet," and a democracy-promotion grants information database. And a new Visiting Fellows Program has already enabled over a dozen democratic activists, scholars and journalists from around the world to spend time in residence at NED.
The Endowment has clearly advanced in the last five years in terms of the scope and effectiveness of its grant making j and of its ability to serve as a unique focal point for the collaboration of democratic activists and intellectuals throughout the world. NED has progressed in other respects as well. Its Board Members, all of whom joined after the founding of the Endowment, are closely involved in the review of programs and extremely helpful in making NED'S case to the Congress, the Administration and the public. (The practice of designating a Member to review and report on all programs in a particular region has been particularly valuable.) Program staff of both NED and the four institutes consist of seasoned practitioners who have an unparalleled knowledge of democratic movements throughout the world. Finally, the Endowment's oversight procedures have been strengthened and streamlined, even to the point where NED has provided innovative guidance to the OMB on reforming audit practices.
While the Endowment has survived and, indeed, become a stronger organization over the last five years, its budget has nonetheless continued to be challenged in Congress. And it is unrealistic to assume that we can avoid challenges to the NED budget in the future. All publicly funded agencies and institutions have been and will continue to be affected by the budget crisis.
1. The "partially free" category consists of countries such as Russia, Nicaragua, Turkey and Ghana, which are electoral-but not liberal- democracies. These correspond to the "post-breakthrough" category of the Strategy Document. The "free" countries where NED works (for example, South Africa, Lithuania, and Bulgaria) are really unconsolidated democracies and, thus, also belong in the "post- breakthrough" category. Some of the figures in Table 1 are misleading. For example, expenditures to groups in Poland have been listed in the "free" category, even though the grants are targeted at helping democrats in "not free" and "partially free" countries farther to the east.
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