A.I.D.'s Experience with Democratic Initiatives: A Review of Regional Programs in Legal Institution Building

摘要

The discussion paper on legal institution building makes it clear that, given the rapid pace of political and other changes and the accompanying difficulty of predicting those changes, the Agency for International Development (A.I.D.) can play only a limited role in influencing democratic institutional development. While institutional impact is difficult to observe, the more ambitious goals of legal reform or transformation of judicial systems have simply not been met. Much the same is true of human rights improvements: significant attitudinal or behavioral changes are not discernible, though this may be a function of the evaluation methods used rather than an actual measure of such changes. At any rate, no sense of broad societal changes in attitudes or behavior could be detected. Similarly, for the criterion of sustainability, it was difficult to get a sense that these democratic institution building efforts would be continued after the withdrawal of A.I.D. funding.