One of CIPE’s most cherished questions, the question that CIPE encourages its program staff to ask on a daily basis throughout program development, implementation, and evaluation, the question that drives the entire process, is the question of why – why do things work the way they do; why do economies grow; why do democracies flourish; why do entrepreneurs innovate; why do citizens participate; and why will CIPE’s programs help make all of these things happen.
CIPE doesn’t just talk about the “why” question. Since 1991, CIPE has devoted entire projects to fostering that dialogue among its staff and its partners. In that year, CIPE published its first edition of Economic Reform Today, a magazine that began CIPE’s tradition of rigorous and provocative self-reflection. As part of that dialogue, CIPE launched its first programmatic website in 1995, the Forum on Economic Reform, which received the “Business Web Site of 1997” Award from the Financial Times of London. In 2000, the Economic Reform Feature Service replaced the magazine, and since then has become part of the Forum project, which expanded to establish many of CIPE’s key communication tools. Started in December 2005, this blog remains a major Forum component.
Through issue papers, web portals, workshops, brownbag discussions, and other media, the Forum project remains the cornerstone of CIPE’s intellectual capital, explaining the conceptual underpinnings of CIPE’s work and providing a centralized location to exchange ideas among CIPE’s partners and others interested in why resilient democracies need resilient markets, and vice versa.
This post is part of a blog series celebrating 25 of years of CIPE’s work by looking back at important moments in CIPE history, hallmarks of our achievements, and our successes today. Look for blog posts with tagged with “CIPE @ 25” to follow this series throughout our 25th anniversary year.
Published Date: July 30, 2009