About us | What we do

GPA works in partnership with governments, international institutions, charitable foundations and businesses to provide analysis, innovation and evaluation in democracy, governance and human rights.

GPA's work is concentrated in four main policy areas,

• communications and freedom of expression;
• human rights;
• parliamentary strengthening and public involvement in politics; and
• transparency and good governance.

In each of these areas GPA's Directors provide considerable expertise for clients in analysing current activity, developing new ideas, formulating policy solutions, and evaluating projects and performance.

Our work ranges from short scoping exercises to two-year research projects, and from the development and delivery of training modules to providing benchmarking indicators.

Typically our services might include

• analysing the strength of political institutions, human rights and equality legislation, and freedom of information regimes;
  
  
• identifying and exploring the emerging themes in democratic best practice;
  
  
• strategic advice to institutions and funders on research and programme priorities in the field of democracy promotion;
  
  
• developing programmes for political reform, combined with advice and support to manage the process of change;
  
  
• organising conferences and events, and facilitating high-level discreet seminars or more public events;
  
  
• applying evaluation tools and benchmarking across a range of disciplines; and
  
  
• auditing and strengthening organisational processes to ensure good governance and transparency.

We believe that our work should have an impact beyond the lifetime of any particular project. Embedding cultural change and improving democratic performance is a long-term exercise. In all of our work we look for ways of initiating a process that will continue to evolve after the project has ended by extending the skills, capacity and behaviour of institutions and individuals.

We do this in two main ways. Firstly, we believe that meaningful and enduring change can only be achieved by recognising the importance of culture, politics and political behaviour. We therefore spend time assessing the specific political, social and cultural factors that influence the performance of organisations, institutions and constitutions in any given context.

Secondly, we also know that solutions cannot be imposed from the outside. The long-term success of our work relies on organisations, individuals and institutions developing their own mechanisms for implementing change. We develop solutions with our project partners, providing support and advice to manage this process.

In all of this work GPA's Directors engage directly with clients, stakeholders, institutions and political actors. It is only by providing this high-level support that we can achieve the tangible results that Global Partners and Associates believes should be at the heart of any project to strengthen democracy, governance and human rights.

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