New Approaches to Defending Global Civil Society

Topic: Civic space, Civil society

Author: EU SEE, European Democracy Hub

April 2026

Global civil society faces increasingly severe and existential threats. The tribulations of civil society organisations (CSOs) have been multiplying over the last decade and are currently intensifying at an alarming speed and scale.

Regimes’ tactics now go well beyond a few ad hoc funding restrictions and, in many cases, menace the whole notion of an independent civic sphere between individual citizens and the state. On top of this, many western governments are cutting funding to civil society actors around the world.

Against this backdrop, new thinking is needed on how to protect global civil society. In an era of major-power rivalry, competitive geopolitics, and security primacy, civil society is in danger of getting squeezed – in some countries, almost entirely out of existence.

A new Deep Dive by the European Democracy Hub, New Approaches to Defending Global Civil Society (Richard Youngs and Elene Panchulidze, eds.), offers original ideas for this emerging phase, in which radically different approaches will be needed to ensure that independent civil society is not hounded off the stage of global politics.

New ideas to safeguard civil society

Civic diplomacy: Protecting global civil society is increasingly an international issue inseparable from the corrosion of rules-based order. Strategies to defend democratic civil society must tackle the international networks of anti-democratic actors and be approached as a core foreign and security policy: a new kind of civic diplomacy. (Javier Sajuria)
New narratives: Illiberal actors have been very effective in developing their regressive narratives. Liberal civil society actors should learn from this and move beyond narrow communication exercises to develop more well-justified strategies of civic power. (Poonam Joshi)
Beyond donor funding: Civil society needs to dramatically upgrade its strategies for crowdfunding, social enterprise, volunteer mobilisation, and local philanthropic funding sources. The sudden withdrawal of donor support is not a new phenomenon. Cases from Africa to Latin America illustrate that civil society is inherently adaptive. (Ann Tsurtsumia-Zurabashvili)
Relocated civic actors: With increasing numbers of activists being forced to relocate outside their countries, support for this kind of de-territorialised activism needs to be expanded and approached as a core aspect of civil society operations. (Nicolas Bouchet)
Independent media support: Traditional democracy assistance models centred on NGOs are no longer sufficient. Independent media must be treated as critical democratic infrastructure, alongside civil society and political opposition. (Rostislav Valvoda)
Pre-emptive transparency: Governments have weaponised transparency requirements for CSOs as a means of complicating their actions. Civic actors could respond in a more proactive way by harnessing transparency as part of their counterattack against regime restrictions. (Wajdi Balloumi)
The Politics of civil society support: Democratic governments must recast the civil society support agenda as an intensely political battle over values. Democracy supporters need to adjust their tendency to depoliticise support for civil society and instead frame their civil society strategies as part of their own interests and battle for influence. (Anna Khakee)