IMPROVING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE: Building Knowledge through Evaluations and Research

Over the last 25 years, the United States has made support for the spread of democracy to other nations an increasingly important element of its national security policy. Many other multilateral agencies, countries, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are also involved in providing democracy assistance. These efforts have created a growing demand to find the most effective means to assist in building and strengthening democratic governance under varied conditions. The USAID Office of Democracy and Governance asked the National Research Council for help in developing improved methods for learning about the effectiveness and impact of its work, both retrospectively and in the future.

In the course of its work, the Committee on Evaluation of USAID Democracy Assistance held a number of meetings, as well as two special workshops, one on improving measurements of democracy and another, co-sponsored with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law of Stanford University, on what lessons historical case studies about democratic transitions and consolidations might offer for democracy assistance. View Committee member biographies and information about committee meetings and workshops.

The Committee also commissioned three field teams to visit USAID missions – in Albania, Peru, and Uganda to:

View the prepublication copy of the Committee’s final report

Sponsor: United States Agency for International Development
Responsible Staff Officer: Jo L. Husbands, Ph.D., Senior Project Director, Program on Development, Security, and Cooperation.

For more information about this project, contact Jo Husbands, Program Director (jhusbands@nas.edu)