Alliance of Democracies Foundation: Bringing together the world’s democratic alliances

Following the 2016 US elections, it was clear how external factors could negatively impact and undermine a country’s political transparency and legitimacy. Former Vice-President Biden affirmed that this represented a global challenge and thus a global approach should be followed.

Alliance of Democracies Foundation made it its mission to bring together the world’s democratic alliances to counter several threats to democracy and good governance such as terrorism but also prevent right-wing extremism from rising. It also addresses the lack of overall coordination between democracies in terms of governance, tech and relations with civil society. Several projects were launched in key countries with emerging democracies like Georgia, Moldova, Armenia and Ukraine to facilitate and strengthen the democratic process. This entailed working with local representatives and political parties and institutions but also with young entrepreneurs to promote good governance, identify policy challenges and find tech solutions. This is linked to their Hackathons through which they engage with young business men and local representatives while holding master classes and mentorship programs to help scale up their project.

As a result, they have established different platforms that enable activists to get in touch, engage and interact with each other thus giving back the tools to the people as means to ensure a transparent and legitimate election process making sure the 2016 US election does not happen again. This created regional cohesion and through the democracy tech program, Alliance of Democracies Foundation was able to scale up its projects while promoting democratic values in the regions that most needed it.