The Institute, officially launched in June 2006, is a joint undertaking of the European Parliament Former Members Association, the United States Association of Former Members of Congress and the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians.

The aim of the Institute is to train former legislators to serve globally as election monitors, to participate in several election observation missions per year, and to involve former legislators of the three Associations in post-election democracy building endeavours. The Institute works with other monitoring organisations including the OSCE and The Carter Centre.

Each of the Associations has to seek funding separately from government, business and non-governmental sources.