USAID's Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG Center) sought to develop a series of DRG primers on key DRG theories, concepts, research findings and definitions that will be used by democracy assistance practitioners as an educational tool and a resource for more accurately and effectively conveying information about DRG that is evidence based or well-grounded in research and scholarly thinking. NORC agreed to produce a coherent, concise, yet informative set of primers that will advise democratization assistance practitioners.

Working with lead academic author Dr. Larry Diamond of Stanford University and a group of advanced graduate students of democratization, NORC produced a set of eight short papers on DRG development issues. The final eight primers identified by the research team are:

1. Democracy and Conflict
2. Democracy and Economic Growth
3. Autocratic Resilience
4. Economic and Social Requisites for Democracy
5. What is Democracy?
6. Why Prefer Democracy?
7. Political Culture and Democracy
8. Democratic Transitions