 for joining us today. My name is Rosie Levine. I'm a Senior Program Analyst for China at USIP. For those of you who are not familiar with the United States Institute of Peace or USIP, we were established by the US Congress in 1984 as a national nonpartisan public institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. Today's virtual panel discussion is jointly hosted by USIP's China and nonviolent action It is titled, Civil Society's Role in Navigating Authoritarianism, Advocating for Peace and Justice Amid Shrinking Civic Spaces. We have a fantastic group of experts joining us to dive into this topic. Across the globe, we have seen a rise in authoritarianism. According to Freedom House's project, Freedom House's project 2021 Freedom in the World Assessment, fewer than a fifth of the world's population, now lives in fully free countries. This is part of a longer trend of democratic decline and rising authoritarianism that has been underway for the last 30 years, which was further exacerbated during the emergency restrictions that characterized the COVID-19 global pandemic. When thinking about this trend, sorry, when thinking about this trend of a, the prevalence of new forms of digital surveillance and censorship, a very simple question one might ask is, what role, if any, can civil society play in non-democracies? Despite such challenges, civil society and citizen activists around the globe have found ways to carve out space and make change within authoritarian systems. Our panelists will draw upon examples from Asia, Europe and Africa to help shed light on how this happens. Close examination of how these actors have found ways to influence policy processes can reveal a lot. We can learn about the adaptive capabilities, strategies and tactics employed by civil society, and taken together, these examples can help us understand how the strategic use of nonviolent action can lead to policy and other positive social changes in contested environments. Beyond this, however, examining the role of civil society in non-democracies can also help us better understand the priorities and governance approaches of authoritarian regimes and offers other critical lessons for supporting civil society in these contexts. I'm pleased to welcome this expert group of panelists who each bring a wealth of knowledge from practitioner and academic perspectives to help us tackle this very rich topic. To moderate today's discussion and introduce the panelists, I'm delighted to introduce Florence Nakazibway, Senior Legal Advisor for Africa at the International Center for Nonprofit Law, ICNL. At ICNL, Florence oversees regional and thematic projects targeted addressing civil society, legal environment issues, and civic space protection, as well as fostering capacity for government actors, civil society organizations, and regional institutions in Africa on civil society law reform and applicable norms. We are delighted to have her today and she will introduce the rest of our panelists. Florence, over to you. Thanks. Thank you, Rosie. It's a pleasure to be here. Greetings to you all and very welcome. The topic of authoritarianism is a topic that cannot be overstressed, given how it is increasingly creating an existential threat to democracies around the world. In the current era, it's estimated that 70% of the global population lives under authoritarian political regimes. And it is also projected that if the decline in democracy continues at the present scale, less than 5% of the world's population will live in a full democracy by 2026. So really, this is issues around threats and how worrying they are when it comes to civil society space and all other actors living in such a political context. The ongoing backlash against democracy as a result of authoritarianism is characterized by a pronounced shift from outright repression of democracy, human rights, and civil society activists and groups to more subtle government efforts to restricting the space for civil society organizations, especially democracy assistance groups to operate. Too many regimes now employing a standard forms of repression coming from including activists' imprisonment and organizational harassment to disappearances and executions. These trends are causing tremendous consequences for different groups, different key groups including civil society organizations, opposition groups and activists who are being targeted as a result of legal repression and threats. Authorities are again using a lot of securitization measures to really silence, to harass and censor civil society groups to crack down on their operations and really undermine civic activism. Authoritarian political contexts are also very prone to weakening democratic oversight by independent institutions including courts, national human rights institutions, and legislative bodies that have a mandate to check the excesses in the use of executive powers and ensuring accountability. Now, while these trends are worrying, it's very important for us to think about the strategic and integral role that civil society and other stakeholders play in pushing back against these trends, encountering the power dynamics and shaping the governance trajectory in this political context. So I'm delighted to facilitate and moderate this conversation with a panel of eminent speakers and experts who will help us dig deeper in the trends that we are seeing across the globe and what strategies these groups are using in sort of pushing back and influencing their space. With us to delve into this topic, we have a panel of three. We have, I'll start off with the first panelist, Ms Jessica Titz, who is a professor at Middlerbury College in Vermont and Tempoton Asia Program Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. She has done research that focuses on governance in authoritarian regime and especially the role of civic participation. Most importantly, today she will be taking us about the book that she has recently authored, themed Lobing the Autocrat, the Dynamics of Policy Advocacy in Non-Democracy. Secondly, we also have a panelist, Sokfia Young, who is an honorary research fellow at the University College London's Anthropology Department, who is also doing research that focuses on social activism and citizenship and the political economy of development. He also has authored a book entitled Strategies of Authoritarian Survival and Desensors in Southeast Asia, which was published in 2021. And then last but not least, we'll also hear from Ivan Marovic, who is an organizer and software developer and social innovator from Belgrade, Serbia. He was previously one of the leaders of the Otpo Youth Movement, which played a critical role in the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. He has spent several years as a leading educator in the field of strategic nonviolent action in developing learning programs on civil resistance and movement building. So with that, I would want to invite Professor Jessica to start us off to share her findings on this topic on her book. Over to you, Jessica. Thank you so much, Florence. Let me go ahead and share screen so that I can show everybody a few images from the book that I think will be helpful. So this is a book that I published with Max Romping. And what we wanted to do was in political science especially, but just in the dialogue about authoritarian regimes, mostly what we see is that people focus on the institutions like the party system or elections, manipulated elections. But mostly this is a story of elites who have power. And citizens or civil society are usually seen as just sort of passive takers of elite repression until there are protests. So there are no citizens that we really talk about in Egypt until there's an Arab spring. And so what Max and I wanted to do is we wanted to correct this because for practitioners and for researchers who study civic mobilization and civil society around the world, we know that in authoritarian regimes, there are everyday cases where citizens are lobbying the government. And in a lot of cases, they're actually winning policy concessions. And so what we wanted to do is bring that everyday advocacy in authoritarian regimes back into our discussion. And so we brought together a large group of other scholars so that we could have a range of other cases. So we have China's the most authoritarian example all the way up to Montenegro as our most democratic example. And then countries like Turkey's moving around a little bit, becoming more autocratic over time. So these are the range of cases then that we use in the book. And what we try to do is we take a well known life cycle approach that's used in democracies. This is basically how civic organizations, lobbying groups form how they compete, how they advocate, and then how they win influence. And so this is commonly used in research and democracies. And what we wanted to do is study the same life cycle inside of authoritarian regimes to see what's different and what's the same. So what's the same just for lobbying across the board versus what might differ because of the regime type. And so what we found in the first stage, this is where we're looking at a group of citizens who want to come together and they want to form some sort of lobbying organization. And so this is where they're mobilizing. So they are registering, they're looking for volunteers, they're looking for staff, they're trying to get initial funding. This is that very first stage. So as these groups are trying to enter into the policy space, what we see inside of authoritarian regimes is that there are fewer groups that are allowed to complete this process, and they're usually smaller. We also see that there are a lot of policy areas that are just no-go issues. These are too sensitive and groups are not allowed to form. So that's what we see inside of authoritarian regimes. But then in both democracies and authoritarian regimes, we see that groups that focus on things like technical information that the regime needs to know, that these groups are welcomed, whether it's a dictator or a Democrat. We also see that there's less mobilization in emergent policy areas. And this is just the same across regime types. Now in the second stage, once these groups have formed, they enter into an ecosystem. This is where other advocacy groups are active. And so what they're trying to do is they're trying to compete based on their ideas for projects, for funding, for policy influence. In this ecosystem, what we see is that in authoritarian regimes, we see that there are fewer groups. We also see that groups are, they tend to be clustered in certain policy areas and not diversified across all policy areas. That's probably expected. What we see that's a really interesting outcome, though, is that in authoritarian regimes, there are essentially two ecosystems where you have regime loyalists, and then you have opposition communities. They're in two different ecosystems, and they're not competing with each other for funding or policy influence. So they're competing inside of their ecosystem, but not across. Now, compared to democracies, we also see a lot of similarities. So we see that groups compete on different ideas. We also see that they have different resources. And so that's similar to democracies. Now, in the third area, this is where groups have already formed. They're already competing in an ecosystem with other lobbying groups. This is where they have to decide what their advocacy strategies are going to be. In authoritarian regimes, what we see are that your political resources really impact your strategic choice. So this is how close are you to policymakers? What sort of access do you have? Do you have any political protection? We also see that in authoritarian regimes, most advocacy groups aim for lower levels of government. So rather than approach the national government, they're usually trying to win influence at local government. It's just easier to access these policymakers. Now, what we see that's the same in democracies and authoritarian regimes is that oftentimes strategic choices are being determined by resources that are inside of the group. So this isn't the external political environment, but this is simply what sort of resources and skills the group has access to. Also interestingly is that we see that outside lobbying tactics, using strategies like media strategies, social media strategies, that these are really prevalent in both democracies and authoritarian regimes. That doesn't differ by regime type. And then in this last stage where we say, are these advocates actually able to influence outcomes? Are they able to win their battle for policy influence? What we see is that in authoritarian regimes that they are restricted to nonsensitive policy areas. Again, there are no go policy areas in which groups simply can't influence the outcome. However, we see that for regimes that are focused on performance legitimacy, this could either be economic performance or democratic procedures like holding elections, even if they're not necessarily all that competitive. In those types of regimes, we see that these advocacy groups can actually have a lot of influence. Now, when we look across authoritarian regimes and compare them with democracies, we also see that whenever there are elite divides, so where the elites disagree about what the policy should be, this gives advocacy groups entry into the policymaking process so that they can supply this expert information that might help one side win over the other side. And we see that regardless of regime type. So when we look at the life cycle then, these are some of the differences and similarities we see between authoritarian regimes and democracies. And so what this seems to boil down to is that in those earlier stages of the life cycle where groups are just trying to form, they're trying to register, they're trying to get volunteers, and when they start to enter into an ecosystem where they have to compete with other organizations for funding and policy influence, this is where authoritarian regimes are the most restrictive. This is where they differ from democracies. So we see that authoritarian regimes really put most of their repression resources on these early stages of group development. In later stages, so once the groups have already formed and they're already competing for funding and policy influence, we see that when it comes to the strategies that they pick and the outcomes that they have, whether they're successful or not, we don't see a lot of differences between authoritarian regimes and democracies. And so this led us then to think about can we build a theory for how groups can lobby autocrats? And the model that we came up with has three different areas. And this is for groups to think about, but also for researchers who study these groups to think about. And one is simply access to policymaking. So in authoritarian regimes, the size of the people who make policy are usually much smaller. And oftentimes, they are not distributed evenly across the political regime, but might be concentrated in one branch or the other. So you might have a really strong executive and a really weak legislature, right? So these are important things to understand. The other is the demand for information. So for policy relevant information, how available is that information to autocrats? Is there anything like a free press or a semi free press that they can get information from? Or do they need this information from advocacy groups? And then the last part is social control. And so this is understanding what the repertoire for repression is across the regimes. As Florence talked about, this is a really wide repertoire all the way from receiving a visit from police services all the way up to being jailed for advocacy work. So knowing what that repertoire is and where those red lines are can lead to an adaptive lobbyist. And these are the lobbyists in our study that we saw were able to work in these really challenging conditions and be successful. And so I'll go ahead and stop here and turn over to Sophia so that we can hear more about these specific cases. But I wanted to point out that University of Michigan Press has made our book open access. And so people can read the different chapters and the theory for free, which is which is great. So I'll go ahead and stop here. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica. Over to you Sophia please. Thank you Jessica and Florence. So yeah, so I'll bring a case study on Cambodia that I have a chapter within a book as well. So these chapters I discussed about the transnational advocacy network that one of the influential concept that many advocate group or civil society organizers have been using and referring to as a strategic point in order to influence policies making and also the outcome of movement in a different developing country and also developed country as well. So a draw on the case Cambodia. So transnational advocacy a clam as in one of influence that can connect between the global north and global south or can be the west and other developing country and that especially in the context of human rights and environmental protections right there. So case of transnational advocacy become privileged because of the recent globalization and also democratization of smartphone as well as social medias that linking to the networking of the information as Jessica mentioned about how it is important in terms of data and information to frame the policies making like that and it has enable group like connection from one group to another to respond to human rights as well as environmental protection issue. So this often called like in the scholarly work that calls boom bearing effects that mean the group that with the weak resource and powers like that can also connect with the international resourceful person that compete each other to provide as well as to level that influence from the outside of the country and to influence policies making in the countries like that. So but many people have been talking a lot not a lot about the contact where the regime has been named as like autocracy as well as the regime has been named some sort of like a hybrid contact as one and not many have been discussing about what we call the nationalism and also sovereignty when we talked about the authoritarianism as well as autocracy and authorization one of the key issue that has been raising for them is that they have to protect their legitimacy as well as their sovereignty. So the influence by the international or foreign agents tend to be considered as the domestic influence intervention that can lead to some sort of like a regime change or demobilization or regime in that context like that. So autocrat always perceive that international and intervention and support from international actors undermine their national sovereignty or when attempt to democratize the regime like that. So local interest with the strong link to international advocacy network may face a lot of challenge in this context especially when they come to whether they can ensure how to navigate this to ensure the effectiveness in terms of policies making and also influence policies like that. So the book the chapters that I draw on the movement of environmental protection again the hydro power development in Cambodia where the den forest will be unleaded and also the biodiversity will be destroyed in that contact. So a group of local initiatives called the modern nature using that kind of approach with a lot of commitment from the international support that come to that kind of contact. So by working together with the local community as well as international actors using different social media is like that to influence that kind of kind of movement. So as you know Cambodia is one of the hybrid regimes where electoral system has been in place and used to make it my ruling system. The election is held regularly and but the regime and the government has not been known or has been known to the scholars and advocacy group as like electoral or sort-trainism are the regime that we call like regime with active we can taste some of my demography, hybrid demography or anything like that electoral or sort-trainism as well or some sort of say autocracy. So recently a lot of scholars as well as practitioners has named it as autocracy because the leader has been there more than several decades regardless of recent traditional powers so the country actually depends on a lot of foreign aid and also trade either to develop the country and as a result of that they use it as in order to electrify how the country have been governed like that but they are very resistant to the contact what they call foreign intervention because even though they depend on foreign support but they resist to the any ideology that can be very contractatory to the regime government something like that. So in this context so how the civil society group or advocacy group that I mentioned about navigate them through to this process so we see at the beginning there's a rise of like repression on the civil society as well as the modern nature group that try to protect the community from being affected by the dam constructions like that so one of the key funders of the leader were actually banned and forced into living in exile so that means it indicates the sign where the international foreign nurse that working in the country become very sensitive to the country like that because of the regime is moving toward some sort of autocracy that can also create any adverse impact to the regime like that. So what happened to those people especially the local activists and also civil society that have been working collaboratively the international actors like that so in that context we found that in terms of like the local activists have transformed themselves like from the structural based organization into individual citizenship who actually claim the right of citizen based on the law prescribed like the Camarine constitution saying that every citizen has a right to protect or to participate in that from the structural organization to the individual base to avoid some sort of repression that can be happened because can be accused as the agent that actually brought ideology from international into the local for the aim of like demobilizing as well as democratizing the societies like them. So through social media these like individual activities plus are the support from the very limited from the international actors so the international actors is now moving themselves away but the local one have played a very important role to mobilize support from the local community as well as through social media their level acts some sort of participation from youth society that they allow interest to the protection measures and also natural over there and it become what they call is the national interest so that's here the key of the national interest and also the sovereignty and then the local community could claim and also local activity would claim that this is not the matter of international agent that actually infiltrate any other foreign intervention in the country but it is initiative that created by the local community plus the national interest to protect so the Austrian government here see is it the case where they can also link to their political legitimacy as well so they take action in that process and also provide very decisive approach to stop building the dam in that case area so in this context so we see that there is a delocalization process from the international to the local process from the structural organization to individual organization like that that keep them some sort of like a level to influence the policy so to conclude I would say that to remain engaged and active advocacy group have to decentralize themselves from organizational base to the unstructured mass participation movement of citizen in groups and they have done so not only to survive and also to avoid the present measure from the ruling regimes and also to reframe the advocacy strategy in line with what we call like sovereignty and also the national interest so when it comes to national interest so that means the regime will pay more concern and the repression will be reduced a little bit but it's still there but at least they can achieve their result by leveraging that kind of plan but to be in mind that social medias has been a playing very important role in country where a lot of people have been using like the media as part like that so social media will provide some sort of leverage to attract more international participation from the mass citizen like that so this can be considered as a homegrown strategy to ensure that all participants are paying attention to the context and reframe the issue to the national interest so in this I would say that there's a form of shifting strategy from one place to another strategy to another strategy to navigate to different kind of mechanism to ensure that the remaining gage and they can also influence the policies thank you thank you very much Sofia for sharing that experience from Cambodia I'll now move on to Ivan to share his reactions to this topic how about you yes thank you Florence I think this is fascinating I actually have to say that like I'm really glad that we are here painting the picture of autocracies that is very different from you know focusing on repression top down firm control which is something that is in the news in the media that is our perception but is also the picture that autocrats themselves would like to paint however you know if we do any kind of analysis of of of any autocracy we can see that there is a elite competition competition within the elite circles and different factions exist there so it's much more dynamic situation than you know it's kind of hidden from the from the public but it's still there and in those competition unlike democracies where elites have to go back to the people every now and then and ask them like who do you like more in autocracies the autocrat himself or you know plays the role of an arbiter between those elites and and as long as they don't question the role of that arbiter you know this competition can take place and I think like you know the idea of lobbying the autocrat at least how I see it uses that feature of autocracy that as long as the power of the autocrat is not threatened some of the how shall I say demand some of the ideas and some of the policy how shall I say can be even adopted and and and and implement however here is where I would put the caveat is that every little victory for civil society is potentially the power in the grassroots because the success breeds more demand for more representation and more and this is where the danger lies I think for this and I think that like every autocrat who feels that their power might be even if it's not intentional might be threatened because of the growing capabilities and growing capacity of the of the civil society will resort to the to the crackdown and we've seen that many times where movements who started the social movements who had to deal with the particular issues bothering communities ended up being politicized because fighting for a particular issue is always at least in potential fighting for political power or at least limiting the existing political power but I think this is actually really great for activists to know that this this is the something that can be done and these are the how shall I say potential risks to advocacy within authoritarianism and I'm really happy that that this is clear in your in your book. Thank you very much Ivan and for all the for all your reflections in sort of looking at the opportunities that you know we can consider in terms of the power of the grassroots movement encountering some of the challenges that we see. I'll go back to Professor Jessica in reaction to sort of the trends that you have seen and the challenges that are being posed to civil society within this political context where do you see is a more constructive and preventive approach that civil society should take in sort of addressing these challenges and to really sustainably influence and shape spaces. Yes I mean what we see in all the different country case studies that we look at is that it's just a challenging environment so there's no one right answer what we tend to see is that the groups who are most successful are the ones that are best able to adapt so rather than sort of picking one strategy that they're able to use different strategies as they can and you know they're always balancing acts so Ivan was talking about some of these you know if you get too close to one particular group of elites and their position that can help you get access but that can also then lead to later repression by the other group of elite and so what we see in a lot of the case studies is just this adaptive lobbyist this sort of balancing act between these different areas we do see that the groups that are most successful tend to try to base themselves somehow on the claims of legitimacy that the regime makes so let's say that it's a regime that you know really talks a lot about performance legitimacy like economic growth the groups that we see that try to link their issues to that particular issue usually have more success and then they just have to be very careful about how they propose that issue but as Sophia was talking about a lot of times using a media approach and you know trying to mobilize people and mobilize public support for the issue that that works really well so I think oftentimes in democracies we think oh you shouldn't draw attention to your cause because you'll be repressed but if you don't draw attention to your cause you won't have any influence and so again there's that balancing act between you want the attention on your particular issue but you want to make sure that you stop when you need to and switch tactics so again it really comes down to adaptation and being able to quickly adapt that's probably not a very satisfying answer in that there's no one right way it's not like a formula exactly but what we see is that groups that are able to adapt and understand the information needs how to access policymakers and then how to navigate that repertoire of repression that those are the most successful groups. Thank you Jessica and I totally agree with you it's really about knowing very clearly what the context demands a lot of these are very dynamic contexts and the players the power dynamics tend to shift a lot so knowing when to you know play the right cards in such context is very critical and also going back to Sophia maybe looking at the strategies that you have shared that civil society are deploying obviously we are seeing some successes in Cambodia with the environmental advocacy groups but where do you see these actions falling short and what more needs to be done to sort of ensure that these interventions are transformative in terms of the policy advocacy outcomes. Thank you Florence so I think there are many things that we can think in terms of how advocacy group and also civil society as well can play the role in this context but one thing that I would see that I mean advocacy when we talk in the developing country especially in Austro-Saharanism something like that it's more on a project of democracy project by the western country would say something explicitly I mean a lot of international donors international advocacy group have paid a lot of money through grant making anything like that through the developing country so when I think the civil society in the local level it has its own challenges as well on one hand on one hand how to ensure that the result being discussed with the international donors are going to be at risk on the one hand they have on the other hand they also need to navigate themselves through repressive mission that they are going to face you may have known a lot of like local social society activists have been suffering a lot because of their challenging their devotion to achieve the outcome what they have been planned so I think this is what we should think about when it comes to the strategy as well as the connection between the international actors and also the local actors to understand what their identity is and to understand what their resource and technique that they couldn't use is also the key thing that the international actors and also the local actors need to work together to make sure that how everyone will play their own role and also play a more safe safe over like that the only thing that we can see here adaptation as Jessica mentioned is the strategy that you can do if you go a lot in terms of confrontation then you face a lot of impressive and then it can be uh uh cost up to life changing for example cost to life that can be a devastation approach that you would see in that context so this is what we think adaptation and navigation through different channels even through different elite in other technicals that process is also the key thing that they should do in terms of innovation I would I would agree with the everyone saying that media has been playing very important role but I mean in theory of like social movements like concession and repression they always come together the government as well as the ruling regime would say that if you concede a lot what's happened if the mass mobilization will take strong action to demand for regime change if you concede a lot people will get demand more if you concede less it's okay like that if your people concede a lot and then there's gonna be a lot of demand then there will be a lot of repression from the government or to curb any kind of accent that can put the regime at risk so this is what the thing so that the player that the play a role between like concession and repression is still there for debate in that context so as I did say in this contact for the case Cambodia's maybe some other country as well when it comes to autism even in China as well we're talking about the nationalism and also sovereignty no one can touch my country unless I have to say so for the rulers or the country like that so thinking about national interest how you build nationalism in the issue that you are talking about and also how to ensure sovereignty as as contact as well so then you can buy it in the opinion as well as influence from the elite as well as the ruling regime so that will consider some sort of innovation of thinking as well that not many alternative national advocacy network and also the international donor has been talking about that. Thank you Sophia and really just echoing the need for diversifying you know the different you know actors that are involved in this process and I think even listening to you all what again that you hear a lot in authoritarian regimes is the notion of political manipulation and this manipulation cuts across not even just with the elitist groups you know the the diversion you know that Jessica talked about where you have the sympathizers and then the opposers within or in the sector and that really then undercuts on the collective voice that you would expect from that but then even with the grassroots as Ivan mentioned there is power there but we also know even during election processes they are all very prone to manipulation and in a way they also undermine the outcomes that you're expecting even though they play a distinct role in responding to these contexts so just moving on to Ivan of course a way of your experience in movement building which is still a very crucial way in pushing back against these authoritarian regimes what do you see as the role and the future of movement building and how can we really construct alliances you know across you know the global south and the north. Yes thank you for that question I think it's how should I say it is already like in our discussion so far you know we kind of tie issues that communities are concerned with and that they are pushing for with the questions of power and how power is distributed in the society and so what we've seen throughout the 20th century and in the early 21st century especially is that social movements are the main vehicle for ordinary people to engage in politics and that is true regardless of the political system so in the more stable democratic systems we do have social movements and we see them changing not just behaviors but also attitudes and policies but we see the same happening in more closed societies in authoritarian and hybrid regimes the reason for that is that people especially as I said in the like 20th and 21st century and the research has shown that are choosing civic mobilization tactics of nonviolent action and movement building as the form of political engagement partly because institutional frameworks don't respond to their needs and be there rigged and partially because and the research has shown nonviolent action proved to be far more successful and far more effective than violent action and I'm currently having an organization international center on nonviolent conflict here in DC and we've supported research that showed that you know nonviolent movements are twice as effective as as violent movements and even in the last 15 years when the effectiveness of nonviolent movements plummeted and you know there is a reason for concern the effectiveness of violent movements plummeted even more so in a sense it's still the game the only game in town so in a sense for conflict transformation when we think about institutions that are not functioning that are not responding to people's demands and on the other hand violent conflict and suffering that it brings when we compare these two nonviolent broad-based movements are still shown as the alternative between these two extremes and people keep choosing this alternative as the probably the most viable one. It did a good point of not to end on that the importance of nonviolent action even as we are fighting a severe repression from autocratic regimes there is a question that I'll just move to the question from the audience there's one question to Jessica could you talk more about the competition you see between civil society groups and what are the causes of this? These civil society groups when they're trying to change policy they're oftentimes competing with each other so for example you know even if you pick a policy as as easy as waste reduction right when we look at groups in China who are working in this space they have different ideas about what the right solution should be so some want to incinerate waste others want to you know deal with waste with more recycling and so the groups are then competing with each other to get access to policy makers to promote their solution their preferred solution so this is the kind of competition that we see and then there's also competition over funding so there are only so many sources of funding and groups need to get funding in order to run their projects so they're trying to secure funding as well as a receptive audience among policy makers and this is where they're usually having sort of a competition of ideas or a marketplace of ideas and they're trying to convince policymakers that their solution is the best. Florence I don't know if it's okay if I if I refer to something that Yvonne was saying a minute ago is that okay okay um he just brings up such a wonderful point about how civil society can work inside of authoritarian regimes to help reduce conflict um and so one one really interesting case that I've seen in the environmental movement is that a lot of these groups have had to move closer to the government they've had to take on a lot of government service contracts and worked directly for the government but what's really interesting is that even though they're working for the government they're still bringing their values into that process and so they're taking regulations that the central government has asked the local governments to implement into their work process but the local government doesn't have the technical capacity to do that they don't know how to do it so they're hiring these environmental groups to do that work for them as consultants and what they're doing is they're writing in processes like public comment periods and town halls and all sorts of access channels for local citizens to bring their complaints to the local government and these channels didn't exist in any formal way before now they're being written into the laws and regulations that each time before you approve a permit you have to hold an open period for citizens to come and so I think that that's a really interesting point which is you know even in authoritarian regimes to survive these groups might have to work for the government participate with the government get close to the government but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're giving up their autonomy and their ideals in some ways they're just showing that adaptive characteristics so that they can promote their their ultimate goals thanks Professor Jessica for that and I I guess really very important technical expertise is very key to sort of support where there are weaknesses in institutions that challenge of course is maintaining the integrity because certain times you know the lines are blurred and you find that you know they are compromises you know to fit within the political system so how do you protect the legitimacy of such you know civil society who are sort of providing that service and support there is another question are there any cases of authoritarian regimes working together with civil society actors I feel like a very detachment is to advance democratic reforms or other positive societal changes and maybe I don't know if Sophia or Yvonne want to add to that any cases where yeah regimes are working with civil society to advance democratic reforms or other positive societal changes where are we seeing this Sophia yeah I would see that there are many cases around Southeast Asia and also particularly in Cambodia as well that they have bought in a number of idea from different other civil society to go together as you can see from I mean from from the perspective of international donors as well as international advocacy group as well they would ask that do you have any channel that we can work with the political elite in order to influence certain policies so uh some of the NGO and also advocacy group when they apply for grant they would say so that because they have been a lot they have been a lot good network with the the government with the ministry of environment with the department of local administration something that they are to ensure that there is a local reform for democratization and also local participation so this is like the co-optive process that we can see and a number of cases has been like that because as I mentioned before the most of developing country rely a lot of aid and trade from other country as well to they cannot just isolate themselves because they are not quite a communist country that need to isolate themselves similar to North Korea for example so there's some sort of overlapping between different aspects so they can work together to a certain degree lobbying within from inside like that and that's why some organizers then would our advocacy group would say that I'll do just outside one without compromising my autonomy as well identity while the others were using different approach they're lobbying lobbying from inside because they can get access to the policy and information and also influence the elite within the inside to get to the point that they want yep if I can add to that I think you know history tells us that like smart authoritarians do engage in negotiations and they actually plan a transition so they can still preserve a little a lot of influence and power so if we compare for instance 1989 two neighboring countries Hungary and Romania in Hungary when they realized that the movement is growing and that the how should I say it's going to be very difficult to preserve power the Hungarian authorities entered very early in negotiations and organize a series of round tables and and actually had a managed transition while in neighboring Romania then President Chauşescu refused to do that and the the the result of those two transitions is very different and I think you know we we can find a lot of examples where elites who used to preside over the authoritarian countries actually traded their political power for economic power and they managed to maintain their how should I say influence in the new democracy just shifting away from a political monopoly towards more economic economic power and so you know there are many cases of that thank you and Professor Jessica do you want to highlight some more examples yes so we have a lot of really great examples in in the book one of the chapters is on Turkey and the author looks at women's assemblies so groups that are trying to have more protection of women's rights and what's really interesting about that chapter is that you know authoritarian regimes are not monolithic so just because you have certain ideas in one part of the government it doesn't mean that that's equally shared and so what this chapter finds is that at the city level there's actually been a lot of responsiveness for forming these local assemblies or women's councils and so in 25 different cities in Turkey they were able to form these organizations to advocate for women's rights and so again when we talk about these adaptive lobbyists sometimes trying to figure out where those cracks are in the regime and where there are differences of opinion actually create openings for advocacy thanks for that and I think at the heart of this of course are the security risks and how to navigate you know what to all do you know do we is therefore engaging with security mechanisms because you mean that those are the sources of the threats that we see there's also a question and feel free to respond also how do civil society groups avoid being influenced by their foreign donors and maintain autonomy over the agenda there is also another question which is to Professor Jessica have you also looked at the case of Saudi Arabia where activists have to be very careful with their advocacy in order not to steal MBS's thunder regarding social innovations and reforms so whoever is ready can tackle those I can answer the Saudi Arabia question very quickly because we didn't look at that case actually so so I can't speak directly to it but we did look at a number of cases where there is severe repression so for example a lot of the people that I've interviewed in my research on studying civil society in China are in jail for life sentences and so in those regimes where we do see active repression what has been interesting for me to study is that it's not that you can't that there's any sort of foolproof way to avoid repression but oftentimes the the repression is the end instance right and so there are there are actually a number of repertoires of repression that happen before that stage and so for a lot of groups normally what happens is there are other interventions first and then the group is sort of making the choice whether to continue with that work in exactly the same way or if this is one of those moments where they adapt and so a lot of the successful cases that I study have managed to avoid repression simply by coming at the issue a different way using a different tactic or stopping for a period of time and then restarting again later when political conditions change so we don't have a case on Saudi Arabia but we do have several cases on fairly authoritarian regimes with with a lot of repression thank you and Ivan or Sofia do you want to address civil society yes let me let me how should I say just go back to you know the the source of power of if we don't look at civil society as a collection of small NGOs that are like each of them dealing with like a particular issue and are highly professionalized but if we look at civil society as a vast array of informal networks and potential for social movement if not an existing social movement we can see that the source of power is in people and their participation rather than financial resources and so smart social movements and civil society organizations that that were part of them were wisely using funds both locally resource locally sourced or those who that were acquired from international donors but they were using them wisely but they were not relying on them they were relying on building that participation of citizens and this is actually what kept them independent and at the same time accountable to the communities that they were representing and that's why it's called people power because the source of that power is people thank you please Sofia take the phone all right yeah i just want to add on iran and that process i mean when it comes to social movement it yeah of course we can claim as independent because social movement can be mass can be a variety of things that come up people can come to the street without identify themselves as part of any organization but when it comes to the advocacy group it is a specific civil society that tend to be feed in by different resource something like that in that context so i think to to avoid to being lab-valued as a foreign agent or foreign intervention in developing country i mean one the key thing that you would say is about identifying yourself identity so identity will play an important role in this context to to to lab value cell as an independent person or something like that that linked to the contact like that and majority of the country that work that social society that work in a country where our certainism are playing role for example in the context of china something like that and also in other south east asian as well so working together to lobby the policy because the agenda setting is not always a very independent very critical of the policy but also working along with the policy that's been being a lot indicted by the government and then the social society using that rhetoric in order to lobbying from inside is also the key thing that to make sure that there is no challenging issue when it comes to foreign intervention and also as lab-valued as like the one who actually is looking for change of the regime feed in the country by the foreign donors and that contact them thank you and i'll take it back to professor jessica i just wanted to pick up on what sofia was saying about um so a lot of these organizations they need to make sure that they're understood as a domestic group right and that they don't have any international ties but i also want to say that you know the work that icnc does icnl and um usip at fort foundation a number of other international organizations the work that that you all do for conflict transformation and talking about the power of civic participation that work is still really important so a lot of those um leaders they have been trained or had capacity development exercises through one of these organizations and even if they haven't had direct training oftentimes they're using models that they've learned about in your research for their work so they oftentimes do have to maintain sort of a division between i'm a domestic group and i don't have international resources but even if they don't have direct funding they're learning from the international and transnational community and it's such an important resource so thank you for all of your work uh thank you all uh really just to help us appreciate the prevailing threats um that authoritarian regimes are posing to civil society and other stakeholders and echoing the need for collective nonviolent actions and solidarity which is not just local but also international um looking at the diverse roles that different stakeholders play including grassroots um and the people power uh movements that we are seeing across the world i also want to highlight that legal restrictions are a significant tool that is really really emboldering emboldering um orthocratic states so efforts for influencing norms and legislations that are protective of human rights and civic space is definitely very critical um and of course highlighting the important role that iCT and uh digital tools and platforms are playing in sort of equipping civil society in responding and pushing back against these these regimes um and so as we sort of come to a close i want to invite each of you to share your wrap up points um i will start off with um ivan and then so here then we'll end it with professor jessica thank you very much i just want to kind of uh uh how should i say uh build on what jessica said earlier that like this uh education and models and and more general like skills are something that is really important and that you know even with or without resources even in adverse conditions where you know not much can be done the closed space you know the appropriate skills can actually get uh people along way and i think this book also shows that like you know uh through lobbying uh autocrats which is kind of also one skill we can achieve a lot even if it doesn't look like that uh judging from the kind of how autocracy looks thank you sofya yeah i think in in contact of lobbying autocracy in that context there is no one side is fit uh one project can fit all all the objective in that context so uh the cycle that jessica mentioned uh do in the presentation so there's a movement around from one cycle to the recall it won't approach it doesn't work then we'll go to the cycle of the project that they are exploring that contact so working together with the not only with the with the contact of like networking internationally but our fellow colleagues also play an important role as well to understand how advocacy and so lobbying approach can be working in a more effective way in that contact thank you thank you and jessica in a few seconds um i just want to say that doing this research has shown me um i guess a ray of hope in that even though we're in this age of authoritarianism there's this powerful promise of civic participation where people are changing policies and advocating for what their community needs and sometimes even pushing back against authoritarian role and so i think we should all study and focus on this particular thing thank you very much thank you all and just to say there is a light at the end of the tunnel so thank you all for sharing your thoughts and to the participants we hope these reflections have been engaging the discussion should continue for sure and we thank you all for taking the time we thank us ip for hosting us today it's been a wonderful opportunity to to really just hear and participate thank you all and wish you all a good day