Opportunity to give me a line rehearsed to please u. S. Donors. Its evidence that i collected indirectly and that came up in conversations about central and Eastern European democracy promotion. Again, my conclusions are not to dispute problems with u. S. Democracy promotion or its unintended negative consequences. But just to highlight that it can and has mattered and that its an investment whose payoffs go up and down in the short and long term as we saw in the first panel. But its an important investment. In conclusion, allow me to return to the merits and limitations of the central and Eastern Europeans as democracy promoters. Again, to discover those i talked to their recipients in their neighborhood. Those recipients highlighted three important merits. The first one is the firsthand experience with democratizatio fl that they have. A lot of the individuals were the organizing source of the domestic breakthroughs. They have this unique experience with this as well as moral authority in the eyes of the recipie recipients. They come with what i call recipes or sets of steps that could be taken to implement certain reforms that could be, again, sets of steps to be taken that could be tailored to the needs of recipients given the recipients stage of democratization. The second is the local knowledge and ties to important local people which gives them access to important stakeholders and allow them to brooch sensitive issues as peers rather than from the pulpit of accomplishments and centuries of democratic experience. The last merit that was very important to recipients was the sustainability. As i said, a number of those countries have been active in the same set of recipients for more than two decades. So however small their efforts might have been, their impact has accumulated over time to produce some affects. Very sorry. You are going to have to wrap it up. So the limitations. I think the most important limitation that those democracy promoters have had is their limited capacity. The second most important limitation is that they their democracy promotion efforts have had a certain geopolitical or political component which has sometimes undermined their consistency and impar sealty. With that said, i believe they have made helped made some democratic gains. To me, what they means is that they have helped open windows of democratization opportunity. It had a has not been enough to help countries toward sustainable longterm impact. I will conclude here. In the second round of comments i will return to talk about the opportunities i see for cooperation between the u. S. And some of the new democracies that have developed around the globe in the last two decades. Great. Thanks very much. Michael. Thank you very much. First of all, many thanks to the ambassador for organizing this and for kindly inviting me here. Its a great honor, of course. I was asked to say a few words about Central Europe and the United States when it comes to democracy and perhaps offer a kind of a Central European view on issue. Im afraid i will differ from what tsveta just said. Not in the analysis, with which i fully agree, but my starting point is that Central Europe has been changing lately in a couple of past years. To say maybe the obvious, the United States were the first and most natural point of reference for anyone striving for freedom. Americans were among the first to come to us with a transition after 1989. Each though in terms quantity the u. S. Funding was quickly and by far exceeded by the European Union means for transformation assistance, the u. S. Political leadership and commitment greatly contributed to driving processes. As a result, many felt that special kinship between the two sides over the years. After president obama took office, as we know, certain bitterness appeared. Several prominent political figures from central and Eastern Europe responded in an alarming mode to the changes that the new administration introduced. To calm things down the u. S. Articulated what we call a new approach to Central European democracies. Joe biden turned to us saying, you have delivered on the promise of your revolution. You are in a position to help others to do the same. Exercise your leadership. As we have heard, i think that the Central Europeans mostly accepted the challenge and started working on that. However, what we could see that on the one hand we could see, the European Union struggling with its own pour epower in the few years. We could see that there was despite what we heard, there was a lack of political commitment of the United States towards the region of Eastern Europe since 2009. As a result, the entire region became more susceptible to voices and forces that do not voice democracy well. We have heard about the disturbing Political Development in hungary. The Government Works on changing its support of transformation in a way that might undermine the very concept of helping democracy gain ground. For example, the redrafted concept of the czech transformation policy will likely include a provision that any future assistance will be based on a consent of the official government that is t will seek to support moderate protagonists of the status quo regime and from what i know all references to the term democracy are likely to be removed. There are nationalists in slovakia and advancing into local and Regional Government and poland, systematically has a political opposition which is never good for democracy. I could go on and on with this, but i wont. What i want to say is, were facing a very treacherous mitch. It was confirmed by many speakers here today. The u. S. Has disinvolved democracy in the eyes of the Central Europeans seem unwilling or unable to provide political coleadership. The European Union is fully preoccupied with its own governance problems. Central European Countries grapple with difficulties. Alternative liberal or undemocratic ideologies have been gaining ground around the world. And in europe. At the sale same time, i find this bizarre, we never really left the comforting view that liberal democracy does not have any serious contender at the Global Market of ideologies. As a consequence, democracy promotions became progressively limited to technical and essential and nonsensitive, nonpolitical projects. These projects bolster Civil Society, ngos and institutional capacities and so on. Because they are not political by definition, they cannot advance the crucial issue, that is the lack of democratic mode of thinking. Working democracy requires first of all a democratic mindset. We do not address this issue. Therefore, any solution to the challenges must be a political one. The very First Step Towards democracy revitalization must include thinking hard of why is it losing its attractiveness in the west. By thinking it hard, i do not actually mean the expert thinking. I challenge the politicians to do the thinking. Because we cannot we need to make this issue political. We have to start at home. Even though i agree withat it t u. S. Is a leader in democracy in third countries, i would like to challenge this view that we now have to see more engagement within the family of democratic countries, because thats where i think we are losing confidence. We have to find a joint way to multinational comprehensive and political dialogue and democracy. Im afraid that this cannot take place without a Firm Commitment and coleadership of the United States. Its here where i see that the Central European region can contribute despite the view that i offered moments ago, there are still fascinating elements of idealism in Central Europe. But this idealism which is which has a very realistic and immediate understanding of what is at stake right now. Where is this coming from . Every one of us know. But there were times where the west accepted division of europe for the same of stability. There was times where the Central Europeans had nothing but idealism left. People tirelessly argued that stability based on this principal only aides to the forceful kidnapping of Central Europe. Now europe is undivided and no major war and no chaos, no instability occurred. They were probably right in their assessment. There are still plenty of people who are sensitive to trading democracy for gains. What may be one surprising element of Central European society that might be worth engaging is a dialogue with small and Medium Enterprises owners. These are people whose fate is most linked with a thriving liberal democracy. These are people who are most in dangered by threatening the state and by making open society not so much open anymore. To conclude, we have heard many excellent suggestions regarding new approaches and instruments for democracy this morning. Im happy i was able to be here. My contribution is instruments might work only if we are confident about our principal goals. I do not see this confidence lately. We detend to seat 1e the 1990s illusion. Dreams of free and undivided europe were being labeled illusions and they became reality. My pragmatic therefore, i am more afraid about the lack of believes and confidence. Thank you. Thanks very much. Melinda, over to you. Im also very grateful for the opportunity to be here this morning and delighted that were having a serious conversation about reforming u. S. Democracy assistance in washington. I think its high time. Like many others, my commitment to this field was inspired by the legacy of individuals. When i became a program officer, i desperately tried to understand the logic behind my 3. 5 Million Program. It was a Civil Society program. The program was meant to empower youth and women. These are two powerless constituencies there. The thinking was if we were to empower the youth and women, they might convince their friends to pick up trash and start computer centers. Sounds good, but hardly the stuff of great change. We would have been far better off by putting those funds into investigative journalism, courageous journalists have shown that theres a serious problem with corruption and the president s 12yearold son at the time owns nine waterfront mansions in dubai worth approximately 44 million. These are the kinds of stories that will break the fear factor and inspire people to change their own societies. I am very critical of the democracy bureaucracy, personally u. S. Aid for implementing ineffective programs. Let me be clear. Democracy promotion is too important an instrument of u. S. Foreign policy to do badly. There are many programs we could discontinue today and nothing would change. We can do better. So today i would like to offer three recommendations. Im not claiming that these are perfect solutions. I want to start the conversation about how to reform. Its very crucial. There are two main models for delivering assistance. We have a fieldbased model and a independent grandmaking model. The fieldbased model is primary headquartered it has a headquarters in washington and field offices around the world. The grand making model has Headquarters Office but works through grants and local partners. The u. S. Government overwhelmingly distributes democracy assistance through the fieldbased model. A couple of the names are familiar to everyone here the International Republican institution, counterpart international, dozens of others. They all operate roughly along the same kind of lines. A large office in washington that sets strategy. Field offices are throughout the world in cairo, everywhere else. The programs are executed in the countries. Field offices have two main disadvantages. I would like to think and talk about this today. Number one, fieldbased organizations are vulnerable to strongarm tactics by repress receive regimes. Donor organizations without field offices are less vulnerable to pressure because they dont have local offices to shut down. The second obvious disadvantage i see is that the fieldbased model is really inefficient. Overhead costs, includesing salaries, rent and expatriot perks in an organization with field offices 70 versus 16. When pressed on why they need an incountry presence in not free countries, organizations with field offices will argue that their presence will enable them to seize opportunities. But if political change comes to a place like uzbekistan where the ruler has ruled for over two decades, having a field office will make no difference. If anything, implementing programs with the permission of a clearly lly authoritarian official real reformers may refuse to work with an organization that it cooperated with the old regime. Having had relationships with Civil Society activist not maintaining field offices puts organizations in best position to take advantage of newly opened space. I want to give you some examples. You know that let me point to a couple of examples. We spent 5. 6 million to enhance the overall effectiveness of parliament. Im probably one of two experts here. Im going to cut to the chase and tell you the parliament has never been freely elected and every member of parliament is a member of the ruling party. Yet u. S. Taxpayers paid for an Orientation Program for these new parliament tearians, all of whom won elections that the u. S. Embassy described as not Meeting International standards. It gets worse. The u. S. Government rejected the elections and trained the winners. U. S. Aid paid for a new website to make this illegitimate parliament more efficient. This is all publically available in reports. A final assessment found that this parliamentary program, this 5. 6 Million Program, did not change how the Parliament Functions or how ordinary people relate to and understand the parliament. Since the independence, u. S. Aid has spent 55 million to make the country for democratic. The country remains undemocratic and is in fact becoming more and more authoritarian. In spite of the obvious negative trajectory, the u. S. Government presses on with multidollar programs. In 2012, u. S. Aid issued a 1. 5 million call for listen to this. Its beautiful. That would enable key Civil Society organizations to better respond to the president s vision and calls for more meaningful and state Civil Society partnerships fulfilling the governments commitments to various intergs naal and human rights instruments. The idea of u. S. Taxpayer dollars going to implement the supposed democratic vision of the authoritarian president reinforces nation that foreign aid is a scam. Will give you an example of kazakhstan. My examples are from this region. We worked with a contractor, a 1. 75 Million Program to increase the capacity of kazakhstans leading Civil Society organizations. Theres a problem here. That presumes that kazakhstan we were going to pump up the capacity of Civil Society organizations so they could better represent the interests and reflect those of the government. The problem is that kazakhstan has a parliament that does not derive its legitimacy from constituents. They actively manipulate the elections. The Program Makes absolutely no sense. Why does u. S. Aid continue to fund these misguided perhaps in authoritarithor tauthoritarian . The assumption that more is always better. We can end this west with an emphasis of triage, allocating more money where theres a greater chance of chance. It does things differently. It funds small grants drethly around the world. It selects most promising ideas from indigenous organizations. Russians are trying to fix russian society. Theres a lot of wisdom in this model. It acknowledges that outsiders have a limited role to play in political transitions. In my opinion, its a unique model and should be commended and bolsters. Practically speaking, the rule i have come up with when thinking about a division of labor is that only the ned should offer where freedom is not free. We will have to get to the conclusion. My two other points im going to summarize them are on strategy and on strategy we ought to deploy our shrinking resources in places where a democratic outcome is likely. That means no multi. Marv dollar programs not in transition. He would shouldnt fool ourselves thinking they are. My final point is on competition. Competition needs to be encouraged and transparency is vital. Those need to be eased out. In conclusion, i think the democracy Assistance Community needs to have a tough conversation about the meaningfulness of its programs. I was appalled when i went through old files and saw that we had been implementing the same strategies for more than ten years. This needs to change. Taxpayers deserve better as do aspiring democrats. Thank you. Thanks very much. Lets have a round of applause for our panelists. [ applause ] they did hard work up here. Now, i would like to ask you all to very quickly sum up your conclusions of what we said so far. You each have three minutes. Which is not very much. Lets keep it crisp. Thank you. Okay. Im actually not really sure are to begin. There was a lot of interesting things that were just said. I guess i would just pick up on a few points that the other panelists made that really resonated with me. As i am not a specialist, im learning from i think one point that id like to hit on, i think so