The National Democratic Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.

Michael Scharff, a senior research specialist at Princeton University, describes how Liberia achieved peaceful elections in 2005 following the 2003 peace agreement that ended the civil war that had devastated the country since the late 1980’s. The peace agreement resulted in an interim government, which set clear electoral laws and appointed a new election commission tasked with establishing public trust and ensuring peaceful elections. A UN peacekeeping mission was also deployed to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement.

This article was originally published on the NDItech DemocracyWorks blog.

Marlon Zamora

Alumni from Nicaragua's leadership schools identify shared priorities.

Silvia Gutiérrez has been an active member of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista, MRS) since she joined the party as a pollwatcher for Nicaragua’s 2006 presidential elections. After her bid for city council in her hometown of Managua in 2008 was cut short when her party was denied participation, she decided to improve her leadership and communication skills by attending a training program aimed at getting more young people involved in politics and civic life.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Kostas Vaxevanis, a Greek magazine publisher and TV journalist, describes the Greek crisis as a “battleground of interests and ideologies.” Vaxevanis argues that Greek democracy has been broken since the collapse of the military junta in 1974 resulted in a “hybrid, diluted form of democracy” that gives real power only to members of the political elite. “Democracy is like a bicycle," he said. "If you don’t keep pedaling, you fall.

with

Dr. Franklin Oduro
Head of Research and Programs and Deputy Director,
Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana)

Richard Klein
Senior Advisor, Elections and Political Processes, NDI

Chris Doten
Program Manager, Information and Communication Technology, NDI

moderated by

Mexican women made historic strides last year in securing seats in the country’s national legislature, where they account for more than 36 percent of the membership. But political parties are still struggling to realize similar gains at the state level where just 6.1 percent of the nation’s 2,400 municipal presidents are women.

Oumou Sall Seck, the mayor of Goundam in northern Mali, gives a personal account of the change that has taken place in her town and the rest of the northern region after it was taken over by rebel extremists.

Though technology has enhanced communication and individual liberty for many around the world, in Saudi Arabia it is being used to modernize a system that suppresses women’s rights, according to Minky Worden, director of global initiative for Human Rights Watch. The country is now using SMS to make it more convenient for women—who are treated as minors—to be monitored by their male “guardians.” However, some women are also using Internet-based communication like Twitter to demand equal treatment and make the world more aware of their situation.

John Sullivan, executive director of the Center for International Private Enterprise, writes that while political transition varies widely in different countries, it is never a “one-off event.” Citing examples such as Egypt, Tunisia and Burma, Sullivan argues that transition is often a long and difficult process toward meaningful change. Though corruption is often a driving force behind political change, it also doesn’t disappear after a revolution has ended.