| Summary/Abstract |
On December 5–8, 1988, two former U.S. presidents, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, presided over a gathering of sixty-eight participants from forty-four democracies at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Arranged by a private organization called the Committee for a Community of Democracies (CCD), this All-Democracies Conference was made possible through financial support from the U.S. government and private foundations and backed by a strong endorsement from U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s administration. The culmination of years of work by the CCD, the conference’s stated purpose was to “consider the establishment of institutions to strengthen solidarity and cooperation among democratic governments.”1 As Ford observed in his opening remarks, never before had citizens of so many democratic nations assembled to promote democracy.
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