A Quarter-Century of Promoting Democracy

On 8 June 1982, U.S. president Ronald Reagan gave a historic address to the British Parliament in which he contended that history had reached a "turning point": The world was witnessing a "great revolutionary crisis," but it was taking place "not in the free, non-Marxist West but in the home of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union." Marxism-Leninism, he predicted, would be left on the "ash heap of history" by the "march of freedom and democracy." In this same speech Reagan also noted the planning then under way for a new U.S. initiative aimed at "strengthening democracy around the world," and pledged that he would work with Congress, business, labor, and the two major political parties to bring it to fruition. The result was the creation in 1983 of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Congressionally-funded, bipartisan, nongovernmental organization dedicated to supporting democrats abroad.

On 7 June 2007, NED commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of what has become known as the "Westminster Address" with a panel discussion and reception in Madison Hall at the Library of Congress. (On the same occasion, an agreement was formally signed between NED and the Library of Congress making the latter the official repository for NED's historical archives.) Speakers at the reception included numerous current and former members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and former Senator and NED board chairman Bill Brock, as well as Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, NED president Carl Gershman, and Jim Hutson and John Earl Haynes of the Library of Congress.

The panel discussion preceding the reception was entitled "The Legacy of Westminster: Democracy Assistance Since the Founding of NED and the Challenges Ahead." It featured brief presentations by three eminent U.S. scholars—Thomas Carothers, NED Board member Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Journal of Democracy coeditor Larry Diamond—and by two eloquent and thoughtful democratic activists, Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia and Zainab Hawa Bangura of Sierra Leone. These presentations, though consisting of informal remarks rather than prepared papers, included some extremely interesting reflections not just on the past accomplishments and future prospects of democracy assistance but also on the new dangers confronting democracy itself. Consequently, we decided to ask the speakers to review the transcripts of their talks and to revise them modestly for publication (but not to feel any need to disguise the fact that they originated as oral presentations). We hope that our readers will find the short essays in the pages that follow to be worth preserving in print and being made available to a wider audience.