Gary Bland, PhD, director of the Center for Democratic Governance at RTI, has 15 years of experience examining democracy and governance in the developing world. Dr. Bland also serves as a lead technical advisor, combining extensive academic, policy, and programmatic expertise in democratic institutional development with a focus on decentralization and subnational reform. He has closely examined and written about legislative process, electoral systems, and democratic transitions. Dr. Bland was a private consultant on decentralization and local government in Latin America with the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank. From 1998-2001, he was a Democracy Fellow in the Global Bureau’s Center for Democracy and Governance at USAID, where he served as the lead technical advisor for decentralization and local government programming, worked on legislative strengthening and anti-corruption programming, provided technical assistance, and conducted training courses. A recipient of grants and participant in numerous conferences, Dr. Bland has written extensively on decentralization and local governance. |