Carnegie’s Civic Research Network is a global group of leading experts and activists dedicated to examining the changing patterns of civic activism around the world and analyzing the implications for future international civil society support.
The Carnegie Endowment gratefully acknowledges support from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
The Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program is a leading source of independent policy research, writing, and outreach on global democracy, conflict, and governance. It analyzes and seeks to improve international efforts to reduce democratic backsliding, mitigate conflict and violence, overcome political polarization, promote gender equality, and advance pro-democratic uses of new technologies.
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.
To address the deepening climate crisis, climate activism is employing a wider variety of tactics and aiming at a broader set of goals. In response, the movement faces stronger repression and civic backlash against climate action.
Women play diverse roles in and exert major influence on popular movements against democratic erosion around the world, from Brazil to Hungary to India.
Civil society actors around the world are grappling with competition between values systems. Rising geopolitical tensions affect international civil society and its role in this shifting global order.
Civil society groups are simultaneously responding to the pandemic’s direct impacts and looking to a post-pandemic future. Many economic, political, and geostrategic challenges are shaping their thinking and their strategies.
The coronavirus has been a wake-up call for global civil society. It will come out of the pandemic looking very different—and this change will be a significant factor in a now highly fluid international politics.
Government responses to the coronavirus are disrupting civil society around the world. But the pandemic is also catalyzing new forms of civic activism. Members of Carnegie’s Civic Research Network share their insights.
The coronavirus is catalyzing new forms of civic activism. International supporters of civil society should step up their efforts to bolster these local responses.
As Brazilian politicians argue over how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, civil society organizations from the country’s slums have come together to educate and advocate for their communities. But they cannot do it alone.
The EU’s assistance for civil society partners in Turkey, the Western Balkans, and Eastern Europe needs to evolve in response to the more challenging environments activists in these countries now face.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace co-hosted a two-day workshop of its Civic Research Network in Taipei.