Institutions of Democracy - 2003 - Democracy International

Democracy International (DI) provides technical assistance, analytical services, and project implementation for democracy, human rights, governance, and conflict mitigation programs worldwide. Since its founding in 2003, Democracy International has worked with civil society organizations, political parties, election-management bodies, government agencies, legislatures, justice-sector institutions, and others in more than 80 countries to advance a more peaceful and democratic world.  

In this recording, Democracy International co-founder Eric Bjornlund is interviewed by Democracy International Vice President for Strategy and Technical Leadership Liza Prendergast. They discuss the founding of Democracy International and its early years and the evolution of analytical and implementation programming for democracy and peacebuilding work. They also touch on how their work has been shaped by the needs of the development community and the expertise of their staff as well as how the organization has responded to cuts in foreign assistance programming.

Eric Bjornlund

Eric Bjornlund is a lawyer and is co-founder and President & CEO of Democracy International (DI). Over the past 40 years, he has designed, managed, evaluated, and provided training and technical assistance for international development programs in 80 countries. He has extensive experience across the full range of democracy and governance, human rights, and peace and resilience programs and is a recognized expert on international and domestic election monitoring and on analytical methods for international development assistance.

Mr. Bjornlund also was the founding Board Chair of the Election Reformers Network, a nonprofit organization that draws on the experience of international democracy promotion to advocate for election reform in the U.S., and serves on the Advisory Board of the graduate program in Democracy and Governance at Georgetown University and as Executive Secretary and Board Member of the Advancing Democratic Elections and Political Transitions (ADEPT) consortium of leading democracy promotion organizations. He has served previously, by appointment of the Administrator of USAID, as a member of the U.S. Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid; on the Executive Advisory Board of the Council of International Development Companies; and as Co-Chair of the Democracy, Rights, and Governance Workgroup of the Society for International Development.

Mr. Bjornlund is author of Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy (2004; Arabic edition 2013), a seminal study of the emergence and significance of election monitoring, as well as book chapters, articles, essays, and reports on election reform, election monitoring, democratization, and international democracy assistance. In recent years he has taught at Georgetown University, Williams College, and the American Center in Myanmar. He has testified on a number of occasions before the U.S. Congress and at the United Nations and has appeared often as an expert at international conferences and on media news programs in the U.S. and abroad.

Mr. Bjornlund worked previously in senior positions at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the Carter Center, and he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Earlier in his career, he practiced corporate and international law at Ropes & Gray, one of the largest law firms in the U.S. Mr. Bjornlund holds a Juris Doctor from Columbia University, a Master in Public Administration from John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Williams College.

Liza Prendergast

Liza Prendergast serves as Vice President of Strategy and Technical Leadership at Democracy International (DI). Ms. Prendergast leads the development and deployment of technical solutions to advance democracy, development, and peace. Since 2013, Ms. Prendergast has driven DI’s commitment to evidence-based development and external communication to expand DI’s global presence in Africa, Asia, Europe and Eurasia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean. She leads DI’s high-level technical engagement in the United States, as well as with the governments of Denmark, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, and with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank. Previously, she served as a Technical Specialist in Civil Society and Governance at World Learning, where she worked in Algerial, Burma, Egypt, and Turkey. From 2005 to 2011, she served in increasingly senior positions at the Center for Civic Education, where she advocated in the U.S. Congress for the Education for Democracy Act, managed the U.S. Campaign to Promote Civic Education, and led Civitas International partnership exchange programming. She has delivered remarks at the World Congresses on Civic Education in South Africa and Indonesia and served as a guest lecturer at Georgetown University, James Madison University, the University of Vermont, and elsewhere.

Ms. Prendergast serves on the Board of Directors for the Center for Civic Education, a non-profit organization advancing the principles and practices of representative democracy in the United States. Previously, she served as the first Board Chair of the Georgetown Democracy and Governance program Alumni Association and as Secretary of the Board of Directors for Election Reformers Network. She also co-chaired the Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Work Group for the Society for International Development (SID-US). She speaks and writes regularly on issues of democracy and foreign policy and authored “Confronting a Global Democracy Recession: The Role of the United States International Democracy Support Programs”, which was featured in Democracy’s Discontent and Civic Learning. Ms. Prendergast holds an M.A. in Democracy and Governance from Georgetown University, where she graduated with distinction, and a B.A. in History from George Washington University.