National Endowment for Democracy

The National Security Decision Directive 77 was instrumental for the creation of Project Democracy and its offspring NED.[11]

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."[12][13] 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. The idea was strongly championed by the State Department, which argued that a non-governmental foundation would be able to support dissident groups and organizations in the Soviet Bloc, and also foster the emergence of democratic movements in US-allied dictatorships that were becoming unstable and in danger of experiencing leftist or radical revolutions, without provoking a diplomatic backlash against the US government. After some initial uncertainty over the idea from Reagan Administration hard-liners, the U.S. government, through USAID (United States Agency for International Development), contracted The American Political Foundation to study democracy promotion, which became known as "The Democracy Program".[14] The Program recommended the creation of a bipartisan, private, non-profit corporation to be known as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). NED, though non-governmental, would be funded primarily through annual appropriations from the U.S. government and subject to congressional oversight.[15]

In 1983, the House Foreign Affairs Committee proposed legislation to provide initial funding of $31.3 million for NED as part of the State Department Authorization Act (H.R. 2915), because NED was in its beginning stages of development the appropriation was set at $18 million. Included in the legislation was $13.8 million for the Free Trade Union Institute, an affiliate of the AFL–CIO, $2.5 million for an affiliate of the National Chamber Foundation, and $5 million each for two party institutes, which was later eliminated by a vote of 267–136. The conference report on H.R. 2915 was adopted by the House on November 17, 1983, and the Senate the following day. On November 18, 1983, articles of incorporation were filed in the District of Columbia to establish the National Endowment for Democracy as a nonprofit organization.[15]

An analysis by political scientist Sarah Bush found that while NED activity in the 1980s focused on direct challenges to autocrats by funding dissidents, opposition parties, and unions, the majority of 21st-century NED funding goes to technical programs that are less likely to challenge the status quo, with the proportion of NED funding for "relatively tame programs" increasing from roughly 20% of NED grants in 1986 to roughly 60% in 2009.[16] Political scientist Lindsey A. O'Rourke writes that, "Today, NED programs run in more than ninety countries. Although the number of US-backed democracy promotion programs have grown, most of today's programs pursue less aggressive objectives than their Cold War counterparts."[16] According to an interview founder Allen Weinstein gave the Washington Post in 1991, he declared: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

During the 1984 Panamanian general election the American Institute for Free Labor Development and the NED provided around $20,000 in support of activists involved with Ardito Barletta's campaign.[17][18]

The NED played a role in supporting the Arab Spring of 2011. For example, the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and individual Yemeni activist Entsar Qadhi received training and finances from the NED.[19][20] In Egypt, between 2008 and 2012, it also supported Colonel Omar Afifi Soliman, an exiled police officer who opposed both Hosni Mubarak's and Mohamed Morsi's presidencies, as well as secularist activist Esraa Abdel-Fatah's Egyptian Democratic Academy in 2011.[21]

Since 2004 it has granted US$8,758,300 to Uyghur groups including the World Uyghur Congress, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the Campaign for Uyghurs and The Uyghur Transitional Justice Database Project.[22] It has also supported Chinese dissidents. For example, between 2005 and 2012 it gave small grants to the China Free Press NGO[23] and in 2019 it gave about $643,000 to civil society programmes in Hong Kong.[24] In response, in 2020 China imposed sanctions on NED president Carl Gershman and Michael Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House.[25]

The NED receives an annual appropriation from the U.S. budget (it is included in the chapter of the Department of State budget destined for the U.S. Agency for International Development-USAID) and is subject to congressional oversight even as a non-governmental organization.[28]

From 1984 to 1990 the NED received $15–18 million of congressional funding annually, and $25–30 million from 1991 to 1993. At the time the funding came via the United States Information Agency. In 1993 the NED nearly lost its congressional funding, after the House of Representatives initially voted to abolish its funding. The funding (of $35 million, a rise from $30 million the year before) was only retained after a vigorous campaign by NED supporters.[29]

In the financial year to the end of September 2009 NED had an income of $135.5 million, nearly all of which came from U.S Government agencies.[28] In addition to government funding, the NED has received funding from foundations, such as the Smith Richardson Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and others. The Bradley Foundation supported the Journal of Democracy with $1.5 million during 1990–2008.[30]

In 2018, President Donald Trump proposed to slash the NED's funding and cut its links to the Democratic and Republican Institutes.[31][32]

NED's current president is Damon Wilson. His predecessor was Carl Gershman, serving between April 30, 1984[33] and July 2021. Carl Gershman was a former Senior Counselor to the United States Representative to the United Nations and former executive director of Social Democrats, USA.[34][26]

In the 2020 Thai protests, pro-government groups cited NED support for protester-sympathizing groups to assert that the US government was masterminding the protests. The United States Embassy in Bangkok formally denied allegations of funding or supporting protesters.[70]

In August 2021, Malaysian human rights activist and Suaram adviser Kua Kia Soong criticized the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan for accepting funding from the National Endowment of Democracy, which he described as a "CIA soft power front". Citing the US track record of supporting regime change abroad and racial discrimination against Black and Asian Americans, Kua urged Malaysian civil society organizations to stop accepting funding from the NED since it undermined their legitimacy, independence, and effectiveness. Kua's statement came after Daniel Twining, the president of the NED affiliate International Republican Institute, had made remarks in 2018 acknowledging that the NED had financially supported Malaysian opposition parties since 2002. Following the 2018 Malaysian general election Twining had also praised the newly-elected Pakatan Harapan government for freezing Chinese infrastructural investments.[71][72]

Russian government officials and state media have frequently regarded the NED as hostile to their country.[73] In 2015, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti blamed NED grants for the Euromaidan mass protests that forced Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power.[73] In July 2015, the Russian government declared NED to be an "undesirable" NGO, making the endowment the first organization banned under the Russian undesirable organizations law signed two months earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin.[73]

During the 2014 Hong Kong protests, a Chinese newspaper accused the US of using the NED to fund pro-democracy protesters. Michael Pillsbury, a Hudson Institute foreign policy analyst and former Reagan administration official, stated that the accusation was "not totally false".[74][75] In 2019, the government of the People's Republic of China sanctioned the NED in response to the passage by the U.S. Congress of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.[76] The Chinese government stated that the NED and CIA worked in tandem to covertly foment the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests,[77][76] and that NED acted as a U.S. intelligence front.[76][78] NED was one of several U.S.-based NGOs sanctioned by the Chinese government; others included the Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute.[79][80] China also already tightly restricted the activities of foreign NGOs in China, particularly since 2016, and the NGOs sanctioned by China typically do not have offices on the mainland; as a result, the sanctions were regarded as mostly symbolic.[79] NED grant recipients in Hong Kong included labor advocacy and human rights groups such as the Solidarity Center and Justice Centre Hong Kong.[77] The Chinese government said that the sanctioned organizations were "anti-China" forces that "incite separatist activities for Hong Kong independence";[78] a U.S. State Department official said that "false accusations of foreign interference" against U.S.-based NGOs were "intended to distract from the legitimate concerns of Hongkongers."[80][75] NED has denied it provided aid to protestors in 2019.[24]

In August 2020, the Chinese government sanctioned NED chairman Carl Gershman, together with the heads of four other U.S.-based democracy and human rights organizations and six U.S. Republican lawmakers for supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests. The unspecified sanctions were a tit-for-tat measure responding to the earlier sanctioning by the U.S. of 11 Hong Kong officials in response to the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law in June 2020.[81]

In December 2020 China sanctioned the senior director of the NED, John Knaus, saying he "blatantly interferes in Hong Kong affairs and grossly interferes in China's domestic affairs".[82]

In May 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused NED of funding separatists to undermine the stability of target countries, instigating color revolutions to subvert state power, and meddling in other countries' politics.[83]

Other governments that have objected to NED activity include Iran,[84] Egypt,[19] India,[85] and Venezuela.[76]