CONTRACTING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE.

The United States contracts foreign democracy assistance work out to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Although this is a long-standing practice, rooted in development assistance norms, the efficacy of such delegation remains to be determined due to inconsistent and methodologically flawed evaluation practices. This paper examines the manner in which nongovernmental organizations - as democracy assistance contractors - seek to deliver on their commitments to donor states and evaluate the effectiveness of their democracy assistance endeavors. The paper finds that NGO democracy assistance practices seek direct impact in terms of capacity building at the individual level, yet report on impact at the state level. NGO evaluations that ignore individual level change undermine the ability of states to hold NGO contractors accountable. A new approach to democracy assistance evaluation is proposed that seeks to increase NGO accountability through a shift in focus to individual level analysis and data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]