About the Democracy Resource Center

The Democracy Resource Center is an online resource portal to find and hire democracy and governance professionals as individuals, teams, or as an organization.

These professionals come from diverse backgrounds and possess unique skill sets, honed through significant professional and personal experience.

The common denominators linking all of these professionals include the following shared values:

  • Democracy is the best form of governance
  • Every person is created equal: one person, one vote, and all voices are valued
  • Every individual deserves to have equality of opportunity, process, and outcome, regardless of their gender identity, physical characteristics, ethnic or religious background, sexual orientation, political affiliation, age, or if they are a person with a disability
  • Systemic biases are real and ingrained in the fabric of all societies, and it is incumbent upon those who possess the privilege to actively combat biases
  • All politics is local and solutions developed locally are preferable to those imposed
  • Unproven suppositions are considered to be false until they are proven. Quantitative and objective data research must form the basis for all decisions and ultimately, policies

Why is the Democracy Resource Center important?

Democracy is under threat worldwide, and the Democracy Resource Center provides options for a quick reaction force to respond in real-time to those threats through rapidly deployed democracy and governance experts.

Indeed, while the current number of democratic countries is the highest our world has ever seen, recent years have been marked by an incremental erosion of democratic attributes in older and younger democracies.

Democratic regimes

62%

97 countries

Hybrid regimes

18%

28 countries

Non-democratic regimes

20%

32 countries

According to International IDEA, the democratic attributes are:

  • Representative government, including clean elections, inclusive suffrage, free political parties, and elected government
  • Fundamental rights, including access to justice, civil liberties, and social rights.
  • Checks on government, including effective parliament, judicial independence, and media integrity.
  • Impartial administration, including the absence of corruption and predictable enforcement of law and policies.
  • All politics is local and solutions developed locally are preferable to those imposed
  • Participatory engagement, including civil society participation, electoral participation, direct democracy, and local democracy.

To counter this phenomenon, usually referred to as “democratic backsliding”, we require skilled professionals ready to assist law- and policy-makers, as well as civil society representatives. Through the DRC, we facilitate access to a pool of the best-equipped professionals from the Global South and the Global North, ready to address complex situations with pragmatic, innovative, and context-sensitive approaches.