FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (11/23/04)

Contact Information:
Tony Wagner, ALO
Tel: 202-478-4704
E-mail: wagnera@aascu.org

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY AWARDED ALO PARTNERSHIP
Cross-National Research on USAID’s Democracy and Governance Programs

Washington, DC (November 23, 2004) – The Association Liaison Office for University Cooperation in Development (ALO), in cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has awarded a grant of $296,590 to Vanderbilt University to carry out cross-national research on USAID’s Democracy and Governance Programs.

Vanderbilt University, with the cooperation of the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Virginia, will measure the impact of U.S. foreign assistance on applied democratic development. The research will also develop a data set on democracy and governance activities in more than 100 countries between 1980 and 2002. The results of the project will be made available to other researchers through an on-line database.

“This project makes an important contribution to the analysis of democracy-promotion efforts,” said Dr. Andrew Green, Democracy Fellow in USAID’s Office of Democracy & Governance, “and sets the tone for subsequent qualitative country-level research. The entire research project is a critical step toward firmly establishing the relatively new field of applied democratic development, and there is tremendous interest for such analysis among USAID counterparts in other countries, the U.S. government, multilateral institutions, and policy leaders.”

ALO, established in 1992, assists the nation's six major higher education associations build their partnership with USAID and help their member institutions foster cooperative development partnerships with colleges and universities abroad. Uniquely positioned to promote the involvement of U.S. higher education in global development, ALO seeks to encourage international partnerships to address development goals. For more information about ALO, please visit: http://www.aascu.org/alo.

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