Improving Democracy Assistance : Building Knowledge Through Evaluations and Research

Over the past 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.

These efforts have created a growing demand to find the most effective means to assist in building and strengthening democratic governance under varied conditions. Since 1990, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has supported democracy and governance (DG) programs in approximately 120 countries and territories, spending an estimated total of $8.47 billion (in constant 2000 U.S. dollars) between 1990 and 2005. Despite these substantial expenditures, our understanding of the actual impacts of USAID DG assistance on progress toward democracy remains limited-and is the subject of much current debate in the policy and scholarly communities. This book, by the National Research Council, provides a roadmap to enable USAID and its partners to assess what works and what does not, both retrospectively and in the future through improved monitoring and evaluation methods and rebuilding USAID's internal capacity to build, absorb, and act on improved knowledge. Table of ContentsFront MatterSummary1 Democracy Assistance and USAID2 Evaluation in USAID DG Programs: Current Practices and Problems3 Measuring Democracy4 Learning from the Past: Using Case Studies of DemocraticTransitions to Inform Democracy Assistance5 Methodologies of Impact Evaluation6 Implementing Impact Evaluations in the Field7 Additional Impact Evaluation Designs and Essential Tools forBetter Project Evaluations8 Creating the Conditions for Conducting High-Quality Evaluationsof Democracy Assistance Programs and Enhancing OrganizationalLearning9 An Evaluation Initiative to Support Learning the Impact ofUSAID's Democracy and Governance ProgramsGlossaryAppendixesAppendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee MembersAppendix B: Committee Meetings and ParticipantsAppendix C: Measuring DemocracyAppendix D: Understanding Democratic Transitions and Consolidationfrom Case Studies: Lessons for Democracy AssistanceAppendix E: Field Visit Summary ReportAppendix F: Voices from the Field: Model Questionnaire