Since 1995 Sweden has financed collaboration between seven Swedish party affiliated organizations and their partners in developing countries and Central and Eastern Europe in order to promote representative democracy and a well-functioning party system. The allocation for cooperation is in comparison relatively modest, but increased sharply in 2007 to nearly 75 million, nearly a doubling from the year before. The Government letter 2008/09: 11, ‘Freedom from oppression - Government Communication on the Swedish Democracy Support’, highlighted the role of parties in the democratization process as well as the importance of party cooperation as a component of the total support to democracy. The Swedish Government is strongly committed to demonstrating results of the international development cooperation, but information on the results of the PAO cooperation is rather limited however. The purpose of evaluation is to determine what cooperation has resulted in, and any lessons learned that can contribute to the improvement and development of the support. Target groups for the evaluation is UD,Sida, and the party-affiliated organizations.
The evaluation will be conducted in 2009 and expected to be completed before the end of the year 2009.
Participants: Lennart Peck, Eva-Marie Kjellström and Peter Sjöberg