For more than 25 years, IRI has promoted democratic development in more than 100 countries on four continents.  The Institute’s programs – which range from coalition-building in Ukraine, to strengthening democratic governance practices in Colombia and civil society strengthening in Iraq – yield important lessons about successful strategies and activities.

The Institute’s experience presents opportunities for learning, and IRI has supplemented its programming with manuals on public opinion research and party development programs, as well as publications like "Why We Lost" (PDF) on the downfall of the center-right in Eastern Europe. 

To institutionalize these efforts, IRI has established an Office of Monitoring and Evaluation, which improves the analysis and evaluation of the Institute’s work to ensure effective, innovative and measureable programs.  In addition to ongoing efforts to monitor and evaluate programs, IRI is currently pursuing two initiatives – an impact evaluation of its governance program in Colombia, and case study research of IRI political party, civil society and governance programs throughout the world.

Impact Evaluation
IRI is committed to exploring new evaluation methods to better demonstrate the impact of its programs.  Impact evaluation is a cutting edge technique, particularly in the field of democracy and governance, which utilizes randomly selected treatment and control groups to determine whether a change can be attributed to a particular activity or intervention.  IRI is testing the applicability of this evaluation model by commissioning a rigorous, independent impact evaluation of elements of its governance program in Colombia.  Through random sampling of public opinion of treatment and control groups, IRI will determine if increasing transparency and improving local governments’ ability to deliver services to constituents lead to an increase in confidence among citizens in the democratic process.  IRI expects that its exploration of this evaluation technique will also inform future efforts to utilize impact evaluation in democracy and governance programs. 
 
IRI is also conducting impact-style evaluations in Cambodia and Ukraine, on the Institute’s youth democracy training program and local elected officials training program, respectively.

Case Studies
To further institutionalize opportunities for program learning, IRI is undertaking a broad-scale research effort to catalogue and analyze what constitutes successful democracy programming, and what lessons can be applied to future work.  This research will focus on three areas of programming (political party work, civil society strengthening and governance) and will determine how IRI’s efforts have contributed to overarching principles under each category. 

For political party work, these principles are related to how parties address 1) political organization 2) party identity 3) message development and delivery 4) competition 5) governance and 6) strengthening of the legal system. 

Civil society principles focus on organizations’ level of 1) internal capacity 2) external capacity 3) popular support 4) ability to act as an agent of democratic change 5) ability to act as a voice for the disenfranchised and 6) coordination with political parties. 

IRI is currently engaged in a historical review of programs as well as consultations to develop principles for governance work.

The purpose of all IRI’s evaluation initiatives – both current and future – is to define and demonstrate the impact of democracy programs, with the end goal of helping ensure more effective, innovative and measureable programs.