Therefore, ethnic nationalism is a threat, not only to the countries concerned, but also to their neighbors. Where violence prevails, open society perishes. It is in this setting that my network of foundations operates. As the situation varies from country to country, so do the foundations in these countries. Generally speaking, the foundation network not only strives to create open societies, but is itself a prototype of an open society.
Every national foundation has a local board and a local executive.
The scope, direction, and effectiveness of each foundation is largely determined by the character and the abilities of these people. At first, most of our activities were initiated by the national foundations, but, increasingly, programs that work in one country are adopted by other countries while regional programs, introduced from the outside, allow us to focus more effectively on overarching issues of importance in the building of open societies. The Central European University and the Open Society Institute are the two institutions which give coherence and direction to the activities of the foundation network. As an operating foundation, the Open Society Institute in New York is also expanding my concern for developing and nurturing open societies in other countries of the world, including the United States. When I embarked on my foundation activities, I was planning a short-term campaign to seize the revolutionary moment and to provide an example that would be followed by the more slowly moving, more cumbersome institutions of open society.