National Endowment for Democracy

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an American organization founded in 1983 whose primary goal was to advance democracy in other countries by promoting political and economic institutions such as political groups, trade unions, free markets and business groups. The NED is funded primarily by an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress. The NED was created as a bipartisan, private, non-profit corporation, and in turn acts as a grant-making foundation. In addition to its grants program, the NED also supports and houses the Journal of Democracy, the World Movement for Democracy, the International Forum for Democratic Studies, the Reagan–Fascell Fellowship Program, the Network of Democracy Research Institutes, and the Center for International Media Assistance. The National Endownment for Democracy has been a target of accusations by political activists, groups and governments around the world of being an agency for regime change and/or an instrument of US foreign policy following the particular ideologies and interests of the United States government. The history of the organization shows that it was created in order to assume some activities the CIA used to formerly undertake around the world. The National Security Decision Directive 77 was instrumental for the creation of Project Democracy and its offspring NED. In a 1982 speech at the Palace of Westminster, President Ronald Reagan proposed an initiative, before the British Parliament, "to foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities." This intersected with previously-formulated plans by the American Political Foundation, an NGO supported by some members of the Republican and Democratic parties, together with scholars based at CSIS, to create a government-funded but privately-run democracy promotion foundation to support democratic civil society groups and parties.