Washington, D.C. - On Tuesday afternoon, Representative David Price (D-NC) joined former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, Congressman David Dreier (R-CA), and former Congressman Vin Weber to host a reception on Capitol Hill as part of a two-day conference on democracy promotion organized by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). Rep. Price's appearance at the reception on Tuesday followed his participation in a panel discussion on Monday during the plenary session of the conference.

Rep. Price serves as chairman of the House Democracy Partnership, a bipartisan congressional commission that works with partner legislatures in 14 developing democracies around the world to support their institutional development. HDP pairs U.S. legislators and staff with their counterparts in other countries to help them develop the fundamental building blocks of legislative government such as executive oversight, budget development, transparency, accountability, effective legislation and responsiveness to constituents.

On Tuesday, Rep. Price spoke about the often overlooked role of Parliaments in emerging democracies and the role of democracy promotion in advancing core U.S. interests.

"We need to reject the notion that democracy promotion is an idealist goal that should be pursued only after our more 'realist' interests have been met," Rep. Price said during his remarks at the reception on Tuesday. "Strong democratic institutions enhance stability by ensuring popular support for a nation's security policies and providing a venue in which conflicts can be resolved by compromise rather than violence. They also promote economic growth by providing a consistent regulatory framework upon which economic assumptions can be made. In short, strong institutions are much better partners for a country's citizens and for the United States, than strongmen."

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served as a co-chair of the NDI "Transatlantic Dialogue," agreed with Rep. Price that the democracy promotion will continue to play a prominent role in U.S. foreign policy, but that we must refine and recalibrate our approach after the experience of the Bush Administration.

"Our collective efforts to strengthen democracy abroad – both as an expression of our national values and in pursuit of our strategic interests – will only be effective if they are conducted in a spirit of partnership and humility and not as an imposition of our own models of government," Rep. Price said. "If we maintain this spirit of partnership in our efforts, then democracy support can and should remain a core goal of our foreign policy."

HDP partner legislatures include Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga, Haiti's Chamber of Deputies and Senate, Lebanon's National Assembly, Liberia's House of Representatives and Senate, and the parliaments of Georgia, Kenya, Indonesia and Pakistan. A complete list of HDP partner legislatures can be found here.

In closing, Rep. Price acknowledged the work of past democracy promotion efforts in the House of Representatives, in particular the Frost-Solomon Task Force of the early 1990s. The Task Force was a bipartisan congressional commission that helped stand up parliaments in ten Central and Eastern European countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Earlier this month the Polish Parliament convened a twentieth anniversary commemoration of the Task Force's work and invited HDP to organize training sessions for its current partner legislatures in conjunction with the event.

"I think all of us were struck by how vividly Poland's democratic reformers remembered the work we did two decades ago, how much gratitude and goodwill it generated, and how greatly Poland's democratic institutions have flourished in the years since, especially in this time of tragedy," Rep. Price remarked.

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