event

Civic Research Network Workshop on Conservative Civil Society

Wed. October 10th, 2018
London, United Kingdom

In October 2018, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted a workshop of the Civic Research Network in London, United Kingdom. The workshop convened network members from Brazil, Egypt, Georgia, India, Poland, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe together with representatives from governments, private foundations, political parties, civil society, and international organizations for a full-day discussion on conservative civil society in developing and transitional countries, based on findings of the Network’s latest report on The Mobilization of Conservative Civil Society.

Workshop participants examined drivers of the apparent rise in conservative civil society around the world today, considering underlying causes and motivations of different forms of actors and movements on the rise. The discussion paid close attention to tactics used and the extremity of those tactics, and sought to distinguish which conservative actors represent a threat to democracy and which can rightly claim to enhance the health of democratic debate. The workshop concluded with a debate about how civil society funders respond to these trends, exploring ways in which donors should be engaging with the conservative civil society.

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event speakers

Thomas Carothers

Harvey V. Fineberg Chair for Democracy Studies; Director, Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program

Thomas Carothers, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, is a leading expert on comparative democratization and international support for democracy.

Richard Youngs

Senior Fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program

Youngs is a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, based at Carnegie Europe. He works on EU foreign policy and on issues of international democracy.