t. Sweden emphasizes human rights within its democracy assistance. In contrast, the United States emphasizes civil society. In addition to three direct governmental channels, a host of US NGO’s are involved in distributing government funds, the most important of which is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Although the NED’s budget was only one tenth of USAID’s budget for democracy assistance, the NED is highly significant. “It is a focal point for democracy promotion activities around the world and the catalyst to a worldwide democratic movement activists, intellectuals and NED-type political foundations. In South Africa, the United States has played an important role since the 1980’s in shaping civil society. Between 1985 and 1993 it provided 338$ million in aid, all of it to NGO’s. Like other Western governments, the United States has shifted its distribution of aid more evenly between governments and voluntary sectors since the election of Mandela in 1994. In 1997, 52% of overall US aid was to the government. However, it also has an important program that supports “watchdog” organizations to monitor the government. Since 1996 it has provided 1$ million to each of three of South Africa’s most prominent CSO’s to undertake this monitoring function. The maturing of multi-party democracy is very important for the United Sates policies in Ghana, and it provided the largest donor contribution to the December 1996 presidential and parliamentary elections. Its second aim is to hold workshops in Ghana’s ten regions, which fund predominantly urban professional groups. In Uganda, US civil society assistance is less developed than in Ghana and South Africa. The main reason is because following twenty years of civil war and a million of deaths, when Museveni came to power in 1986, the US priority was to rebuild the economy of the country and the organs of the government, in...
