about

The Institute for Representative Government (IRG) is a nonprofit, bipartisan, educational organization established by Former Members of Congress in 1988. The organization seeks to promote democracy by facilitating peer-to-peer dialogues between bipartisan groups of Current and Former Members of Congress and their counterparts from developing democracies around the globe. Over the past 35 years, IRG has conducted almost 100 programs for nearly 1,000 foreign legislators and officials from all over the world. Since 2003, IRG has operated in a strategic partnership with the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) to leverage the extensive worldwide presence and expertise of the two political party institutes. This partnership helps to ensure that IRG's study missions are carefully conceptualized, with a nuanced understanding of the political context each group of legislators comes from. IRG is funded through a competitive proposal process at the invitation of the Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.