Damon Wilson, President and CEO of the bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy (NED); Daniel Twining, President of the International Republican Institute; and Derek Mitchell, President of the National Democratic Institute, explore how nations can best make transitions to freedom.
Damon Wilson is President and CEO of the bipartisan National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose mission is to strengthen democracy around the world. Daniel Twining is President of the International Republican Institute, which is one of the NED’s core institutes and works with citizens and governments worldwide to promote freedom. And Derek Mitchell is President of the National Democratic Institute, another NED institution that seeks to bolster democratic institutions globally. From Mitchell’s tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Burma in President Barack Obama’s administration, to Twining’s role as foreign policy advisor to the late Senator John McCain, to Wilson’s service on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush, each has a range of experiences and leadership as advocates for democracy.
The three spoke with David Kramer, the Bradford M. Freeman Managing Director of Global Policy at the George W. Bush Institute, and Christopher Walsh, Deputy Director of Freedom and Democracy at the Bush Institute, about how nations can best make transitions to freedom, the importance of global partners in building up democracies, and how to help democracies regain their strength if liberties begin to erode. They each emphasize democracy-building is not done from the top-down, but rather in solidarity with others. And they make it clear that America’s own experience shows how democracy is not always linear, but it is self-correcting.
