Portland Public Library’s Friday Local Author Series Friday, September 27th at noon in Meeting Room #5Portland, Maine - The years since 9/11 have demonstrated that exporting democracy militarily doesn’t work. Julie Fisher’s new book, Importing Democracy: The Role of NGOs in South Africa, Tajikistan and Argentina focuses on nonprofit organizations, called democratization NGOs, that promote democratic reforms in their own countries, by “importing” democratic ideas and combining them with their own democratic traditions, often most visible at the local level. The book is based on more than 100 interviews with the leaders of these organizations. Democracy, according to Fisher, is linked to improved economic performance, political stability, good governance and the avoidance of war. Although the democratization process is “a long, hard slog” it gives people hope, even in authoritarian countries. Democratization NGOs are “an ignored global trend”, as important as street protests to the future of democracy.
As a Program Officer at the Kettering Foundation Julie Fisher coordinated the international fellows program and began work on her new book. Before joining the Kettering Foundation, Fisher was a Scholar in Residence at the Program on Non-Profit Organizations at Yale University, and a lecturer in the Biology Department for a course on World Population. She previously taught comparative politics and a course called The Politics of Third World Development at Connecticut College. As a specialist on nongovernmental organizations and micro enterprises, she has been a consultant to numerous international agencies and is the author of two previous books about NGOs. She is a graduate of Pomona and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
