Electing to Evaluate: A Review of <i>Evaluating Democracy Assistance</i>

Over forty years ago, foundations run by West Germany’s political parties successfully helped Spain and Portugal’s transition to democracy by providing training and funding for democratic groups in those countries (Pinto-Duschinsky 1991). The National Endowment for Democracy, the United States’ first organization dedicated to supporting democracy around the world, was founded in 1983 and was designed to emulate the German foundations’ model. The field of democracy assistance, where international actors seek to develop and deepen democracy in other countries, was born. Since then, promoting democracy has become a key component of the United States’ and Europe’s foreign policies and funding for democracy assistance has steadily increased. In 2014, the United States alone allocated over $2.8 billion to support democracy, good governance, and human rights overseas. Despite decades of concerted effort by democracy promoters, prominent scholars and essayists argue that the world today is in a democratic recession (Plattner 2015). The failures of the Arab Spring in 2011 have led to instability and war, along with the collapse of state institutions, in the Middle East and North Africa. In West Africa, weak democratic institutions are hard-pressed to deal with health crises and Islamic radicalism. Russia, China, and other authoritarian states are increasing their repression of civil society and the media. Whether the world is actually experiencing a marked democratic decline or not (and there remains a significant debate about this), many in the democracy assistance community have taken a step back, reappraising their strategies and the global operating environment for their work. The effective evaluation of democracy assistance has never been needed more than it is today. Though the strategies and methods of democracy promoters have been studied extensively, little has been written on evaluating democracy assistance. Krishna Kumar, in Evaluating Democracy Assistance, seeks to fill this gap by overviewing the evaluation landscape for democracy assistance. The Senior Evaluation Adviser in the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance Resources Electing to Evaluate: A Review of Evaluating Democracy Assistance