The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) supports citizens’ rights to participate in free and fair elections. Our independent expertise strengthens electoral systems and builds local capacity to deliver sustainable solutions. As the global leader in democracy promotion, we advance good governance and democratic rights by: providing technical assistance to election officials; empowering the underrepresented to participate in the political process; and applying field-based research to improve the electoral cycle. Since 1987, IFES has worked in more than 145 countries, from developing to mature democracies.
Institutional Representative: Chad Vickery, Director, Center for Applied Research and Learning
Chad Vickery, the Director of IFES’ Center for Applied Research and Learning, has extensive legal and international election administration experience with an emphasis on strengthening democracy and governance in transitioning societies. He manages IFES’ global applied research, technical leadership and strategic innovations initiatives. He specializes in designing and managing electoral integrity initiatives; election complaint adjudication programs; providing comparative legal analysis; working on elections; and rule of law programs throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia, Eurasia and the Middle East.
Vickery’s specific programmatic experience includes leading electoral integrity assessments and projects designed to ensure the development of impartial legal frameworks for elections, increasing professionalism of election management bodies, establishing effective election dispute programs, and increasing political participation of historically disenfranchised groups into the electoral process.
Vickery has also spearheaded the development of new methodologies for assessing the integrity of elections in countries around the world, with a focus on electoral fraud and malpractice and the investigation and adjudication of electoral complaints. He is a member of the Advisory Board to the Electoral Integrity Project, based at the University of Sydney and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a member of the Washington State Bar and has been appointed to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Advisory Committee to the Standing Committee on Election Law and is co-Chair of the Task Force on International Election Law within the ABA Section of International Law.
He holds a master’s degree in international relations from Georgetown University; a Juris Doctorate from the Catholic University of America with a concentration in comparative and international law; and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Washington.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) supports citizens’ rights to participate in free and fair elections. Our independent expertise strengthens electoral systems and builds local capacity to deliver sustainable solutions. As the global leader in democracy promotion, we advance good governance and democratic rights by: providing technical assistance to election officials; empowering the underrepresented to participate in the political process; and applying field-based research to improve the electoral cycle. Since 1987, IFES has worked in more than 145 countries, from developing to mature democracies. Institutional Representative: Chad Vickery, Director, Center for Applied Research and Learning Chad Vickery, the Director…