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The National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, is non-profit organization which claims to help train people in democracy and manages money grants to that effect, which was founded in 1983. Although administered by a private organization, its funding comes mostly from a governmental appropriation by the United States Congress. The NED is sometimes referred to as "Project Democracy," an appellation favored by Lt. Colonel Oliver North.

Founding of the NED

The NED was first funded by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 and was shaped by an initial study undertaken by the American Political Foundation.

NED was created with the aim of subverting left wing governments continuing the work of the CIA in that area because, due to widespread criticism of the CIA's role in subverting sovereign nations by using criminal and underhand methods, the CIA's position had become untentable. NED was created with a view to creating a broad base of political support for the organization. NED received funds from the US government and distributes funds to four other organizations – one each created by the Republican Party and Democratic parties, one created by the business community and one by the labor movement.

The four affiliated organizations are Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the Free Trade Union Institute (parent organization for American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)).

Funding of foreign political parties

According to left-wing critics, the NED regularly provides funding to opposition candidates in elections in countries other than the USA. The does not directly fund any political party, as this is forbidden by law.

It was also alleged that the NED only supports candidates with strong ties to the military and who support the rights of U.S. corporations to invest in those countries, and that the NED does not support candidates who oppose investments by US corporations or who promise restrictions on investment rights of US corporations. For example, Bill Berkowitz of Working for Change claims that, "The NED functions as a full-service infrastructure building clearinghouse. It provides money, technical support, supplies, training programs, media know-how, public relations assistance and state-of-the-art equipment to select political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, and other media. Its aim is to destabilize progressive movements, particularly those with a socialist or democratic socialist bent."

Supporters of the NED claim that the NED in fact supports a myriad of groups of social-democratic and liberal orientation everywhere in the world. NED also supports, provides training, and consults openly anti-American groups as far as they are committed to the norms and principles of democracy in countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. The NED contends it focuses funding on democracy-minded organizations rather than opposition groups; however it does not support groups that openly advocate communism, fundamentalism, or any other dictatorships. Michael McFaul, in an article for the Washington Post, argues that the NED is hardly an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. As an example of this he states that the NED was willing to fund pro-democratic organizations even as the U.S. government was reluctant and has been supportive of non-democratic governments in the region.

John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote that before the 1990 elections in Nicaragua, "President George H. W. Bush sent $9 million in NED, including a $4 million contribution to the campaign of opposition presidential candidate Violeta Chamorro". Chamorro's party won 55 percent of the vote.

NED also funded political groups in the democracies of Western Europe in the 1980s. The French newspaper Libération published a report which claimed that the U.S. funded the National Inter-University Union. The United States government disassociated itself from these actions.

In the 1990 elections in Haiti the NED supported Marc Bazin, providing a big fraction of his total $36 million in campaign funds. Despite this funding, he only obtained 12% of the vote. Marc Bazin had earlier been a World Bank official.

According to the critics, during the 1990s, NED invested millions of dollars in Eastern Europe to support its vision of economics and the shock therapy program. The NED itself does not fund economic reform programs; the Center for International Private Enterprise indeed supports programs aimed at development of private enterprise but this does not account for monetary stabilization programs.

In 2004, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez publicized documents which purported to show that the NED funded opposition groups in the country, including a tripling of funding from about $250,000 to nearly $900,000 between 2000 and 2001 in the lead up to an attempted coup in 2002. NED also sponsored exit polls for the recall referendum; the exit poll predicted that Chávez would lose by 20%, whereas the election results showed him to have won by 20%. This was used by the opposition party as the basis of a claim of election fraud, but the election results were endorsed by Jimmy Carter and were later audited successfully.

Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Slovakia

The NED played a significant role in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election in Ukraine. In an article in the Washington Post, NED director Nadia Diuk acknowledged that there was a controversy surrounding the involvement of the NED: "Some have sought to portray the events in Ukraine as orchestrated in the West, a model executed with the support of Western pro-democracy foundations.' Comparing this to similar recent interventions in Slovakia, Serbia and Georgia, she writes, "Some commentators believe that the similarity of their actions proves they are part of a U.S.-sponsored plot, an effort to extend American influence throughout the world." Diuk states that critics are overlooking a genuinely "home-grown" aspect to the "election revolts" in these Eastern European countries. She also stated that, "...there was a massive effort by nongovernmental organizations to monitor the vote, whether through parallel vote tabulations, exit polls or reports from domestic observers. These strategies were supported by the reports of Western election observers," and that "all these breakthrough elections have been accomplished with the vigorous participation of civic groups that support free and fair elections by monitoring the media, carrying out voter education, publicizing the platforms of candidates in the absence of a free press, training election observers, conducting polls and so on."

Source of Funding

The NED receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. budget and is subject to congressional oversight even as a non-governmental organization. In the financial year to the end of September 2002 NED had a budget of $48.5 million.

The NED also receives funding from various foundations. The Bradley Foundation has provided the most to date, nearly $1.5 million in the past 18 years to support the Journal Of Democracy.

Links with other think tanks

Current directors of the endowment's Board include Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group, General Wesley Clark, Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Dr. Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins SAIS, and U.S. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.

See also

• American Enterprise Institute
• Research Triangle Institute
• National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
• International Republican Institute
• Students for Global Democracy

External links

• http://www.ned.org - NED website

Washington Post article by Michael McFaul on democracy in Ukraine

• Collection of critical articles on NED, Media Transparency
• Loose Cannon: The National Endowment for Democracy, a critical report from the Cato Institute
• 1990s NED involvement in Eastern Europe
• analysis by Bill Berkowitz, Working for Change
• NED funding of Venezuelan organizations, late 1990s
• "In Ukraine, Homegrown Freedom" - Article by NED director Nadia Diuk