"Does USAID’s democracy promotion program work? Although some prior studies have examined specific projects in individual countries, no prior effort has studied the question on a world-wide basis, and no prior study has encompassed the entire post Cold-War period. [...] In the first phase of that research, we found that the answer to that question was “yes.” That is, on average, in the period 1990-2003, USAID’s investments in democracy promotion produced significant increases in the national level of democracy as measured by Freedom House and Polity IV indicators. [...] The current report presents the results of the second phase of the project “Cross-National Research on USAID’s Democracy and Governance Programs.” [...] In the current effort, the data set is extended from 14 years to cover 15 years (1990-2004) and 165 countries, yielding 2,416 observations (country-years). [...] USAID civil society and media assistance have a significant positive impact directly on their respective sectors, and USAID human rights assistance has a significant negative impact on the human rights outcome." (Executive summary, page 2, page 5)