National Democratic Institute | NDI

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Our Perspectives

Commentary from experts on the directions and challenges of democracy assistance programs.


02/08/2010	Election Monitoring, Citizen Reporting and Mobile Phones MobileActive NDI and MobileActive are hosting "New Tools for Better Elections", a conference on Feb. 26 on new technologies for fair, representative and equitable elections. In preparation for the event, MobileActive sat down with Ian Schuler, senior manager of information and communications technology programs at NDI. Schuler breaks down not only the differences between election observation, citizen reporting, and crowd-sourcing, but also explains why these distinctions matter and how mobile technology is changing the way elections are held. Read More
02/03/2010	Yemen on the Brink House Foreign Affairs Committee Leslie Campbell, NDI’s senior associate and regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, testified at a hearing in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on “Yemen on the Brink: Implications for U.S. Policy,” in which he said, “Governance is part of Yemen’s problem – and part of the solution.” Read More
02/03/2010	Fragility and Extremism in Yemen Bipartisan Policy Center's Stabilizing Fragile States Project Although its notoriety may be newfound, Yemen's fragility is not. Nor is the presence there of threats to U.S. and international security. For these reasons, Yemen has proven a constructive case study for the Bipartisan Policy Center's Stabilizing Fragile States project, which considers how to revise and restructure U.S. policy towards weak states. NDI's director for Middle East and North Africa, Les Campbell, participated in this event. Read More
01/11/2010	An Antidote to Yemeni Frailty The Globe and Mail Yemen’s presence in the headlines has skyrocketed recently, but Leslie Campbell, NDI’s senior associate and regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, writes in a recent op-ed that Yemen’s status as an unstable terrorist haven “is not a new phenomenon nor as difficult to address as it might seem.” Read More
12/10/2009	Chris Fomunyoh on the State of Democracy in Africa University of Denver At the University of Denver, senior associate for Africa Chris Fomunyoh addressed students on the issues of freedom, democracy and development in African countries. He identified the major challenges to democracy in Africa as threefold: poverty, the "oil curse," and poor management of resources both natural and human. Despite these challenges, he sees the demand for democracy growing in Africa. Read More
12/07/2009	Afghanistan's Anti-Corruption Efforts Should Begin with Election Reform Huffington Post NDI’s Asia Director, Peter Manikas, calls for a commission of inquiry to review the conduct of the recent presidential election in Afghanistan. Such a review is necessary as a credible first step in the new government’s anti-corruption campaign. Read More
11/08/2009	We Must Keep Freedom Alive Parade Magazine NDI Chairman Madeleine Albright looks back at the last twenty years of the progression of democracy and freedom since the Berlin Wall fell, and surveys the current state of freedom and democracy around the world. Read More
11/06/2009	Challenges to Democracy in Serbia America.gov Rob Benjamin, regional director of Central and Eastern Europe at NDI, shares his impressions of how Serbia has changed since he began to frequent the country in 1995. Benjamin talks about the effect of Slobodan Milosevic and the challenges that Serbia faces as it continues to democratize. Read More
10/21/2009	Cameras and Invisible Ink New York Times Karin von Hippel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of NDI's observer delegation for Afghanistan's Aug. 20 elections joins the debate at the New York Times about whether a fair election is possible in Afghanistan. Von Hippel lays out four points that she believes will help toward a peaceful and accurate vote for the runoff. Read More
10/21/2009	Never Enough Observers New York Times Former Senator Gary Hart, a member of NDI's observer delegation for Afghanistan's Aug. 20 elections, adds his opinion to the New York Times' question, "is a fair election in Afghanistan possible?" Hart stresses the need for increasing the number of international observers, to limit the opportunities for fraud. Read More