The Executive Secretariat was created after the Community of Democracies meeting in Seoul, South Korea, in 2002, by a group of civil society actors that wanted to consolidate the efforts of the non-govermental actors to organize a more formal process of civil society participation in the Community of Democracies.

The last meeting of the Community of Democracies was held in Santiago, Chile on April 28th-30th, 2005, and in an effort to ensure effective civil society participation, the Execuitve Secretariat (hosted by Corporación PARTICIPA, a Chilean NGO) developed a strategy to prepare for the ministerial meeting. This strategy operated at the global, regional, and national level to bring together representatives from non-governmental organizations, political parties, and political foundations to discuss the major democratic deficits in the region and then developed proposals for how governments should address those deficits. These recomendations were presented to the governments at the ministerial meeting.

The Executive Secretariat is a temporary coordinator, working with civil society organizations and non-state actors across the world. Now that the ministerial meeting in May has occurred, the Secretariat is in the process of being passed to an organization in Mali, the next chair country of the Community of Democracies, due to be held in 2007.

This process is supported by:

Government of Chile	Taiwan Foundation for Democracy	Idea International
Open Society Institute	USAID	Organization of American States
Westminster Foundation for Democracy	Government of the Czech Republic	U.S. Department of State
	Council for the Community of Democracies