Friends of the Forum,
We’re writing to let you know that, due to the inability to access Congressionally appropriated funds for NED, the International Forum for Democratic Studies will be suspending activities as of March 1.
Founded thirty years ago, the Forum serves as a bridge between the expert and civil society communities to drive thought leadership on evolving challenges to democracy.
Since Congress directed NED to tackle emerging challenges to democracy in 2017, the Forum’s ideas incubator workshops and multimedia publications have accelerated learning on building resilience to global authoritarian influence, advancing the fight against kleptocracy, challenging authoritarian censorship and defending free expression, and addressing the opportunities and threats posed by emerging technologies, among other areas.
These challenges facing people fighting for their freedoms around the world aren’t going away. They’re becoming even more difficult and complex.
We affirm that people living in democracies are more secure, prosperous, and safe than those in unfree settings—and that declines in freedom lead to declines in prosperity and security that create a more dangerous world.
The evidence is clear:
- Democracies are more secure: A large body of research supports the democratic peace axiom that democracies do not fight wars with each other. They are also less prone to civil war compared to autocracies because they are better at absorbing and channeling discontent through legal institutional means that lower the risk of domestic conflict.
- Democracies are more prosperous: The link between greater freedom and economic well-being has been well documented:
- Countries with greater freedom in 1995 tended to be more prosperous decades later, even if the path was not always linear.
- Since 1995, Russia has continually scored far below the former-Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the Atlantic Council’s Prosperity Index. Similarly, China has consistently ranked well below its democratic neighbors like Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
- Venezuela’s decline in freedom since 1999 under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro has resulted in one of the steepest economic collapses in the world, rivaled only by Syria, Belarus, and Russia.
- Democracies are safer: As Amartya Sen observed, there are “no famines in democracies,” because free societies are better equipped to make course corrections that dictatorships cannot. The Freedom and Prosperity Index shows that democracies consistently outperform autocracies on all human development metrics, including health and education.
- This observation holds among low-income countries as well, where democracies rank seventeen places higher than autocracies on the Human Development Index, with 25% lower infant mortality rates and children attending two additional years of school on average.
We are deeply grateful for your support and collaboration. Even as we adapt, we remain hopeful to build new opportunities to continue working together in common cause. You can reach us at forum@ned.org in the interim.
Please stay tuned.
The Forum team
