National Endowment for Democracy
Based on Wikipedia: National Endowment for Democracy
In 1991, Allen Weinstein, one of the founders of the National Endowment for Democracy, told the Washington Post something remarkably candid: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
That single sentence captures the peculiar nature of an organization that has operated in plain sight for four decades while remaining genuinely difficult to categorize. Is the National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, a noble champion of freedom around the world? A taxpayer-funded instrument of American foreign policy interference? Or perhaps both at once?
The answer depends almost entirely on whom you ask—and what country they live in.
The Reagan Vision
The story begins in June 1982, when President Ronald Reagan stood before the British Parliament in the Palace of Westminster and laid out an ambitious vision. He proposed building what he called "the infrastructure of democracy"—a system of free press, labor unions, political parties, and universities that would spread across the globe and counter communist influence.
Reagan wasn't speaking in abstractions. Behind the scenes, plans were already taking shape. An organization called the American Political Foundation, supported by members of both the Republican and Democratic parties along with scholars from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, had been developing a concept for a government-funded but privately operated foundation. The goal was elegant in its logic: create something that could support dissident groups behind the Iron Curtain and nurture democratic movements in unstable American-allied dictatorships, all without the diplomatic blowback that came from direct CIA involvement.
The State Department loved the idea. They argued that a non-governmental foundation could do things the U.S. government simply couldn't do openly.
In 1983, Congress approved initial funding of eighteen million dollars, and on November 18th of that year, articles of incorporation were filed in the District of Columbia. The National Endowment for Democracy was born.
What the NED Actually Does
To understand the NED, you need to understand its unusual structure. It functions as a grant-making foundation, meaning it doesn't run democracy programs directly. Instead, it funnels money to other organizations that do the actual work on the ground.
Half of NED's funding goes to four core American organizations, each representing a different sector of civil society. The American Center for International Labor Solidarity works with unions and is connected to the AFL-CIO, America's largest federation of labor unions. The Center for International Private Enterprise focuses on business development and free markets, affiliated with the United States Chamber of Commerce. Then there are two explicitly partisan organizations: the National Democratic Institute, associated with the Democratic Party, and the International Republican Institute, connected to the Republicans.
The other half of NED's funding flows to hundreds of non-governmental organizations based in roughly ninety countries around the world. These groups apply for grants, and if approved, receive money for programs ranging from journalist training to election monitoring to civic education.
The numbers have grown substantially over the decades. In the 1980s, Congress allocated fifteen to eighteen million dollars annually. By 1993, that figure had risen to thirty-five million. By 2009, NED's income had reached $135.5 million, with nearly all of it coming from the U.S. government through USAID and the State Department.
The Shift in Strategy
Political scientist Sarah Bush discovered something interesting when she analyzed decades of NED grants. In the 1980s, the organization focused on directly challenging authoritarian regimes by funding dissidents, opposition parties, and labor unions—the kind of groups that could actively threaten dictators. This was confrontational work.
But the character of NED funding has changed dramatically. By 2009, roughly sixty percent of NED grants went to what Bush calls "relatively tame programs"—technical assistance, training workshops, civic education. These programs are less likely to upset the status quo. In 1986, only about twenty percent of funding went to such activities.
Another political scientist, Lindsey O'Rourke, notes that while NED now operates programs in more than ninety countries, "most of today's programs pursue less aggressive objectives than their Cold War counterparts."
Whether this represents maturation, mission drift, or prudent adaptation depends on your perspective.
The Global Footprint
The NED's activities have touched some of the most consequential political movements of recent decades.
In China, the organization began work in 1984, helping launch a Chinese-language journal called The Chinese Intellectual, initially aimed at students and scholars studying in the West. By 1988, the journal had opened offices in Beijing—a remarkable achievement for an American-funded publication. Then came the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and everything changed. The journal was forced to relocate back to New York.
Since 2004, NED has provided over $8.7 million to Uyghur groups, including the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur Human Rights Project. It has also funded programs related to Tibet and, in 2019, allocated roughly $643,000 to civil society programs in Hong Kong. In response, China imposed sanctions on NED's leadership in 2020.
In the Middle East, NED played a role in the Arab Spring of 2011. The April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt—a key organization in the protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak—received training and financing from the organization. So did the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and various Yemeni activists.
In the former Yugoslavia, NED arranged meetings between dissidents and American members of Congress, government officials, and journalists. It also provided funds to Freedom House, which in turn supported the Yugoslav opposition.
The Controversy
Here is where opinions diverge sharply.
To supporters, the NED represents American soft power at its best—promoting democratic values, supporting civil society, and providing a lifeline to activists struggling against repression. They point to the organization's transparency (its grants are publicly disclosed) and its support for groups that often criticize U.S. policy.
Critics see something more troubling. They argue that the NED functions as an instrument of regime change, dressed up in the language of democracy promotion.
Consider Nicaragua in the 1980s. The NED funded pro-U.S. unions, conservative political parties, student groups, business associations, and women's organizations. Between 1984 and 1988, the organization provided roughly two million dollars to the civic opposition, with about half going to La Prensa, an anti-Sandinista newspaper. To critics, this looked suspiciously like the previous CIA effort to undermine left-wing governments in Latin America—just conducted in the open rather than in secret.
Sociologist William Robinson argued that Reagan-era NED funding supported "pseudo-covert activities": training pro-American elites, promoting American-friendly educational systems and media, strengthening organizations aligned with U.S. interests, and building transnational elite networks. The rhetoric, Robinson contended, emphasized democratic process—free and fair elections—but the actual concern was always outcome.
During the 2020 Thai protests, pro-government groups cited NED support for protester-sympathizing organizations as evidence that Washington was orchestrating the demonstrations. The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok issued a formal denial.
The 2025 Crisis
In February 2025, the NED faced an existential threat from an unexpected direction: Elon Musk.
Musk, through his role with the Department of Government Efficiency—a cost-cutting initiative within the Trump administration—blocked the Treasury Department from disbursing NED's congressionally appropriated funding. He called the organization "rife with corruption," accused it of "crimes," and declared it "an evil organization" that "needs to be dissolved." In one of his characteristically blunt social media posts, he simply wrote: "NED is a SCAM."
The effects were immediate and devastating. On February 12th, NED informed all the organizations it funds that payments would be suspended. Grantees began laying off staff and cutting programs. By March 1st, NED's International Forum for Democratic Studies suspended operations entirely and furloughed most of its employees.
The organization fought back. On March 5th, NED filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government in federal court. On August 12th, a judge granted an injunction allowing the organization to access the remaining ninety-five million dollars of its previously appropriated 2025 funds.
The Free Press, a media outlet, observed that dismantling the NED would represent something larger than budget cuts. It would symbolize the Trump administration's rejection of the idea that promoting democracy serves American interests—a fundamental shift in how the United States sees its role in the world.
The CIA Question
We should return to Allen Weinstein's 1991 statement, because it illuminates the organization's origin and its ongoing identity crisis.
In 1986, NED president Carl Gershman explained why the organization was created: "It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA. We saw that in the 1960s and that's why it has been discontinued."
The logic was straightforward. During the Cold War, the CIA had secretly funded labor unions, publications, student groups, and political parties around the world. When these covert operations were exposed in the 1960s and 1970s, the revelation damaged both the organizations involved and America's reputation. Groups that had accepted CIA money were tainted by association, sometimes fatally so.
The NED was designed to solve this problem. The same activities could continue—supporting foreign civil society, labor unions, opposition groups, media outlets—but everything would be done openly, with public funding and transparent grant-making. No more secrets, no more scandals.
Whether this represents a genuine evolution toward democratic transparency or simply a rebranding of intelligence activities with better public relations is the question that has followed the NED for its entire existence.
The Strange Coalition of Critics
One of the more interesting aspects of NED criticism is that it comes from both the political left and the political right—though for entirely different reasons.
Some conservatives accuse the organization of harboring a social democratic agenda, pointing to its labor affiliate and its support for unions around the world. In their view, NED promotes a soft leftism that undermines free markets and traditional values.
Some progressives see something altogether different: a right-wing organization oriented toward Reagan's Cold War politics, promoting "a very particular form of low-intensity democracy chained to pro-market economics." In this telling, NED helps overthrow governments that might threaten American business interests while installing "handpicked pro-market allies."
In Latin America, critics invoke the language of imperialism and paternalism—the NED as the latest incarnation of Washington's long history of intervention in the region.
The organization's defenders make a different case entirely. They argue NED supports many groups with social democratic and liberal orientations, including organizations that criticize American policy. Michael McFaul, writing in the Washington Post in 2004, recounted his experience representing the National Democratic Institute in Moscow during the final days of the Soviet Union. While U.S. policymakers were supporting Mikhail Gorbachev, McFaul said, the NDI was working with Democratic Russia—Gorbachev's opponents.
This suggests something more nuanced than simple foreign policy instrument.
What Is Democracy Promotion, Really?
The deeper question underlying all debates about the NED is what democracy promotion actually means in practice.
At one extreme, you could imagine a purely neutral effort: training poll workers, teaching citizens about their rights, building the capacity of journalists to investigate corruption. These activities seem uncontroversial, even admirable.
At the other extreme, democracy promotion shades into regime change: funding opposition parties, supporting media outlets hostile to sitting governments, helping organize protests. These activities look rather different depending on whether you approve of the government in question.
The NED has engaged in both kinds of work throughout its history. The shift from more confrontational funding in the 1980s to more technical assistance today might reflect genuine institutional learning, or it might reflect greater caution about getting caught interfering too directly.
NED itself has stated publicly that democracy evolves "according to the needs and traditions of diverse political cultures" and does not require an American-style model. Whether this represents genuine pluralism or diplomatic hedging is, again, a matter of interpretation.
The Fundamental Tension
There is an inherent tension at the heart of the National Endowment for Democracy that can never be fully resolved.
On one hand, it is funded almost entirely by the U.S. government, receives its appropriation through the State Department budget, and is subject to congressional oversight. By any reasonable measure, it is an instrument of American power, however indirectly wielded.
On the other hand, it operates as a private, non-governmental organization, makes grants to foreign groups that sometimes criticize American policy, and maintains a degree of independence from the executive branch. The 2025 funding crisis—in which a sitting administration tried to defund an organization that Congress had already appropriated money for—illustrates just how much distance can exist between the NED and the government that funds it.
This ambiguity is not a bug but a feature. The whole point of creating the NED was to do things that looked governmental but could plausibly be denied as government action. The organization exists in a carefully constructed gray zone.
Whether that gray zone represents clever institutional design or troubling opacity depends entirely on what you think the NED is actually doing—and whether you believe the promotion of democracy, as defined and funded by Washington, is a good thing for the world.
Four decades in, the debate continues.