The Dialogue's research areas focus on the rule of law, education, migration, remittances, energy, climate change and extractive industries.

The Dialogue originated from the efforts of Abraham F. Lowenthal, who in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the secretary of the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

[1] Together with Peter D. Bell, who at that time was engaged in The Latin America program at the Ford Foundation, he approached Sol M. Linowitz, former US Ambassador to the Organization of American States, with an idea to assemble citizens from throughout the hemisphere to set a new regional agenda.

[1] By 1993, the Dialogue expanded and diversified its activities to include conferences, working groups, congressional seminars, forums for visiting Latin Americans, and individually authored articles.

[3] In 1993, the Dialogue conducted a research into the role "external actors could play in consolidating, deepening and defending democracy in Western Hemisphere".

Advocating "market-based solutions to the reduction of poverty" as the force driving the democratic wave, the Dialogue was eager to foster in Latin America "an economic model fueled by the individual desire to consume and employing market-set prices to coordinate with relative efficiency the supply and demand for goods, services, and capital".

The report openly conceded that "popular frustration may lead to diminished support for democracy and markets" throughout both North and Latin America, yet recommended for the United States to quickly "gain congressional ratification of the already negotiated and signed free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama" while preserving "hemisphere-wide free trade" as a "critical long-term goal".

[6] In 2010, Michael Shifter, the former president of the Dialogue, and Jorge Dominguez, Professor and Vice Provost for International Affairs at Harvard University, organized a meeting with the representatives of the Washington political community about democratic institutions and practices in Latin America.

[9] The Inter-American Dialogue has five programs that convene events and host initiatives with policy makers, business leaders, journalists, advocates and analysts.

[18] The program organizes the Venezuela Working Group, that is chaired by former Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla and US Ambassador Donna Hrinak, to promote policy responses with public reports and private diplomacy.

[19] Additionally, it hosts an anti-corruption symposia series with the Inter-American Development Bank and an annual conference with Fundamedios on media and democracy in the Americas.

[24] Analysis and reports on issues like deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, environmental regulation, and liquid natural gas in the Americas are also produced by the program.

Since then, the conference has grown to become the primary forum for policy makers and analysts, journalists, governments and international organizations, entrepreneurs and investors, and civil society representatives to review progress in the Western Hemisphere and address pending challenges.

At the forum, Dialogue members meet in plenary sessions and in smaller workshops, probe their differences, identify cooperative solutions to regional problems, and develop consensus proposals for action.