Office of Democracy & Governance: Strategies and Field Support
 While the four democracy and governance “subsectors” assist the DG Office in organizing the content of its work, the nature of its work is divided into the following types: field support, technical leadership, and direct management of global activities. Using these three functions, the DG Office works to improve the overall effectiveness of USAID programming in democracy and governance.
Strategies and Field Support
Through its field support, the DG Office helps USAID field missions design, implement, and evaluate democracy development strategies. Center staff members often provide on-site assessments of a political transition in order to recommend the best way to help support democratic trends and transitions. The purpose is to help focus democracy dollars on clear, achievable results.
Experienced non-governmental organizations and contractors outside USAID often carry out critical aspects of Agency strategy. The DG Office maintains roughly 25 grants and contracts with these partners in order to access their assistance quickly and efficiently. Non-profit groups such as IFES, The Asia Foundation , Freedom House, and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), and for-profit development consulting firms such as Management Systems International (MSI) and Chemonics International, Inc., have ongoing relationships with the DG Office to implement democracy programming.
Technical Leadership
Through its technical leadership, the DG Office identifies and develops tools that USAID and other development professionals can use to support democratic development. No one thinks this field is an exact science, but there are lessons to learn from current democracy programs. Researching, analyzing, and disseminating information about democracy and governance programming are part of the DG Office’s mission. The DG Office publishes Democracy Dialogue and the Technical Publication Series to circulate growing information about democracy development.
Program Management
The DG Office exercises direct program management of some USAID democracy and governance programs, including support for free trade unions worldwide and the encouragement of women’s participation in politics. For countries with no USAID mission, the DG Office manages democracy programming in close collaboration with the State Department and NGO partners.
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