![]() | |
Abbreviation | NDI |
---|---|
Formation | 1983 |
Type | Non-profit non-governmental organization |
Headquarters | 455 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., U.S. |
President | Tamara Cofman Wittes |
Website | www |
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) [lower-alpha 1] is a non-profit American non-governmental organization whose stated mission is to "support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability". [1] It is funded primarily by the United States and other Western governments, by major corporations and by nonprofits like the Open Society Foundations.
The NDI was founded in 1983, shortly after the United States Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). [2] The NED's creation was followed by the establishment of three related institutes: the Center for International Private Enterprise, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and the National Republican Institute for International Affairs, later renamed the International Republican Institute (IRI). NED provides funds to these three institutes and an expanding number of private sector groups so that they are able to carry out their programs abroad. [3]
While headquartered in Washington, D.C., NDI operates exclusively outside of the United States, promoting democratic civil participation, elections, debates, democratic governance, democracy and technology, political inclusion of marginalized groups, and gender, women and democracy, peace and security, political parties, and youth political participation worldwide. [4] [5] Officially non-partisan, NDI takes no position on U.S. elections, though maintains a loose affiliation with the Democratic Party and is an associated partner of the social-democratic Progressive Alliance [6] , a "cooperating organization" with Liberal International and an affiliated organisation of Centrist Democrat International. [7] [8] [9]
In January 2024, NDI announced the appointment of Tamara Cofman Wittes (who served on NDI's board from 2014 to 2022) as its new president, effective March 15, 2024, succeeding Mitchell. [10] In January 2018, NDI announced the appointment of Derek Mitchell as its president, succeeding Kenneth Wollack. [11]
As of December 2023, NDI's board of directors includes: Thomas A. Daschle (chair), Harriet C. Babbitt (vice chair), Robert G. Liberatore (treasurer), Frank M. "Rusty" Conner (secretary), Stacey Abrams, Bernard W. Aronson, J. Brian Atwood, Donald A. Baer, Rye Barcott, Donna Brazile, Johnnie Carson, Dean Falk, Sam Gejdenson, Bonnie S. Glaser, Caryn Halifax, Kathryn Hall, Karl F. Inderfurth, Shanthi Kalathil, Eric Kessler, Peter Kohler, David C. Leavy, Michael McFaul, Nancy H. Rubin, Dana Shell Smith, Michael R. Steed, Maurice Templesman, Clyde C. Tuggle, Toni G. Verstandig, and Maureen White. [12] Madeleine K. Albright served as board chair until her death in 2022. [13]
NDI started its activities in Chile in 1985. Its programs promoted free elections, working together with opposition leaders. In 1988, it participated in the United States campaign for the No at the Chilean national plebiscite. The United States Congress budgeted this campaign with US$1 million that the National Endowment for Democracy distributed through the NDI, the International Republican Institute, Free Trade Union Institute, and the Center for International Private Enterprise. NDI participated in organizing seminars, sending political consultants, and an election observation mission. [14] [15] [16]
In the 1980s, NDI participated in the broader National Endowment for Democracy programs against the Nicaraguan Revolution. [17]
In the 1980s, NDI provided support to the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland to strengthen its democratic principles. [18]
In April 2020, NDI released the documentary “Canary in the Digital Coalmine” exploring Taiwan's civil society response to counter disinformation and misinformation amid national elections. [19] [20] NDI announced the decision to open its first field office in Taiwan in October 2020 and hired former Taiwan diplomat Alfred Wu as its inaugural field director in March 2021. [21] [22] Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen spoke at NDI's Celebration of Democracy gala in December 2020. [23]
NDI states it has worked with civil society partners in Hong Kong since 1997 and that it has been supporting Hong Kong's democratic development since then. [24] It published The Promise of Democratization in Hong Kong Reports 1997 - 2016 in September 2016 and Fright & Flight: Hong Kongers Face the Demise of Democracy in September 2021. [25] [26]
NDI former president Derek Mitchell testified at the US House Foreign Affairs Committee Asia Subcommittee's hearing titled “Stemming a Receding Tide: Human Rights and Democratic Values in Asia” in September 2020. [27]
NDI began collaborating with South Korean civil society organizations in 2011 to advance democratic governance in North Korea. [28]
In the 2000s, NDI worked with election monitoring organizations such as the Committee of Ukrainian Voters to provide financial and technical assistance to develop election monitoring capabilities. This monitoring played a salient role in popular uprising against electoral fraud during the Orange Revolution. [29]
They are partnered with Gov2U [30] an organization acquired by Scytl. [31]
According to an article in the American socialist magazine Jacobin , after the death of Hugo Chávez, the NDI provided funding and training to the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition of opposition parties in Venezuela. The MUD used the NDI's assistance to create a voter database and target swinging voters through Facebook. In 2015, the opposition won a majority in the Venezuelan National Assembly for the first time since 1999 and the magazine states that the NDI said a "determining factor in the success of the coalition in the parliamentary elections of 2015 was a two-year effort prior to the elections to raise awareness, train and align national and regional structures of communication of all the parties that conform the MUD". [32]
NDI receives financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy, [33] the US Agency for International Development, [34] the US Department of State, [35] and the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening. [36] The NDI also receives contributions from governments, foundations, multilateral institutions, corporations, organizations, and individuals. Some of these institutions include the Government of Australia, [37] Government of Denmark, [38] Government of Belgium [39] and the Open Society Foundations. [40]
The socialist magazine Monthly Review stated that the terms democracy assistance, democracy building, and democracy promotion are rhetorically employed to overpower nationalist and socialist resistance to US economic and cultural domination, particularly in Russia and nearby states. [51]
The NDI provided funding to the Cambodian opposition party Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and was expelled from Cambodia in August 2017. [52] [53]
In August 2020, Beijing announced sanctions over NDI and NDI president Derek Mitchell. [54] In December 2020 the Chinese government announced additional sanctions over three members of the institute, including Asia-Pacific regional director Manpreet Singh Anand. [55] NDI responded by stating that "While it remains unclear what this announcement means in practice, NDI will not waver in its commitment to support fundamental democratic principles transparently and legally across Asia and elsewhere." [56]
Richard Falk, former United Nations special rapporteur, says that NDI and IRI, although stating they are non-partisan, "are explicitly affiliated with each of the two political parties dominant in the United States" and that they are "overtly ideological in their makeup, funding base and orientation." [57]
Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 64th United States secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the first woman to hold that post.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization in the United States founded in 1983 with the stated aim of advancing democracy worldwide, by promoting political and economic institutions, such as political groups, trade unions, free markets, and business groups.
Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a US-based grantmaking network founded by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with the stated aim of advancing justice, education, public health and independent media. The group's name was inspired by Karl Popper's 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies.
The International Republican Institute (IRI) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 1983 and funded and supported by the United States federal government. Most of its board is drawn from the Republican Party. Its public mission is to advance freedom and democracy worldwide by helping political parties to become more issue-based and responsive, assisting citizens to participate in government planning, and working to increase the role of marginalized groups in the political process, including women and youth. It has been repeatedly accused of foreign interference and has been implicated in the 2004 Haitian coup d'état. It was initially known as the National Republican Institute for International Affairs.
The Solidarity Center is a non-profit organization aligned with the AFL–CIO labor federation. It is one of the core grantees of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Robin Colleen Carnahan is an American businesswoman, lawyer, and politician, who previously served as the Missouri Secretary of State and currently serves as the Administrator of General Services in the Biden administration. She is the daughter of Missouri politicians Mel and Jean Carnahan. In 2010, she was the Democratic nominee in the U.S. Senate election in Missouri to replace retiring Republican Senator Kit Bond but lost to Roy Blunt. She was then a senior advisor at the global strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group. In 2013, Carnahan was named a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. In February 2016, she joined the General Services Administration as the director of the state and local practice at 18F, a role she held until January 2020. She then became a fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) is an international, non-profit organisation founded in 1987. Based in Arlington, Virginia, United States, the organization assists and supports elections and electoral stakeholders. Since 1987, IFES has worked in 145 countries and has programs in more than 50 countries throughout Asia-Pacific, Africa, Eurasia, the Middle East, and North Africa, and the Americas.
Larry Jay Diamond is an American political sociologist and leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. Diamond is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University's main center for research on international issues. At the Institute Diamond served as the director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law from 2009-2016. He was succeeded in that role by Francis Fukuyama and then Kathryn Stoner.
Elizabeth Frawley Bagley is an American diplomat, attorney, political activist and philanthropist who is the United States ambassador to Brazil in the Biden administration. She previously served as the United States ambassador to Portugal from 1994 to 1997.
Tamara Cofman Wittes is an American writer and public figure. She became the fourth president of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in 2024. Before joining the Institute, she served as Director of Foreign Assistance for the US State Department. Until November 2021, she was a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. She directed the Center from March 2012 through March 2017. From November 2009 through January 2012, she was a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs at the United States Department of State. Wittes has written about U.S. foreign policy, democratic change in the Arab world and about the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Carl Gershman served from 1984-2021 as the founding president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a private, congressionally-funded, grant-making institution that supports non-governmental groups working for democracy around the world. During his presidency, NED’s annual congressional appropriation grew from $18.5 million in 1984 to $300 million a year in 2021, when it funded nearly 2,000 projects in 100 countries.
Derek James Mitchell is an American diplomat with extensive experience in Asia policy. He was appointed by President Barack Obama as the first special representative and policy coordinator for Burma with rank of ambassador, and was sworn in by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on October 2, 2011. On June 29, 2012, the U.S. Senate confirmed him as the new United States Ambassador to Burma. On September 4, 2018, Mitchell succeeded Kenneth Wollack as president of the National Democratic Institute, a position he served until September 2023.
Anocracy, or semi-democracy, is a form of government that is loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a "regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features". Another definition classifies anocracy as "a regime that permits some means of participation through opposition group behavior but that has incomplete development of mechanisms to redress grievances." The term "semi-democratic" is reserved for stable regimes that combine democratic and authoritarian elements. Scholars distinguish anocracies from autocracies and democracies in their capability to maintain authority, political dynamics, and policy agendas. Anocratic regimes have democratic institutions that allow for nominal amounts of competition. Such regimes are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict and unexpected or adverse changes in leadership.
This list of recipients of the Democracy Service Medal covers recipients of the National Endowment for Democracy's Democracy Service Medal. The Medal was established in 1999 and awarded annually, sometimes to more than one person.
Hodan Ahmed is a Somali political activist. She helped form the Somali Women Parliamentary Association the Transitional Federal Parliament of Somalia, which was succeeded by the Federal Parliament of Somalia. She serves as a Senior Program Officer at the National Democratic Institute.
Anita M. Vandenbeld is a Canadian politician, who was elected to represent the riding of Ottawa West—Nepean for the Liberal Party of Canada in the House of Commons of Canada in the 2015 Canadian federal election. She was re-elected in the same riding in 2019, and re-elected in 2021. Vandenbeld currently serves as Parliamentary secretary to the Minister of International Development.
GLOBSEC is a non-partisan, non-governmental organisation based in Bratislava, Slovakia. One of its main activities is the annual GLOBSEC Bratislava Global Security Forum, in existence since 2005. Other projects include the Tatra Summit conference on European affairs or Chateau Béla Central European Strategic Forum. Its think-tank called GLOBSEC Policy Institute boasts a wide research area based on four pillars. Its main outputs are policy papers and analyses on different topics in the area of international politics and security issues. Since 2016, GLOBSEC is not only the name of one of the top forums on international security worldwide, but also of the legal entity and organiser of the Forum.
The Alliance of DemocraciesFoundation (AoD) is a non-profit organisation dedicated to the advancement of democracy and free markets across the globe. It was established in December 2017 by former NATO Secretary General and former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen together with businessman Fritz Schur and lawyer Klaus Søgaard.
Eric Bjornlund is an American expert in democratization assistance and election observation and co-founder and president of Democracy International and the author of Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy. Bjornlund is also a lawyer and adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
The Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs is an international studies institute based at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The Albright Institute was established by former United States Secretary of State and Wellesley College alumna Madeleine Albright in 2009 to support the interdisciplinary study of global issues within a liberal arts framework.