By Ansgar Gessner, Chris Dayson, Ben Gidron, Mark Sidel, Ingrid Srinath and Rupert Graf Strachwitz
This publication originated from the roundtable “Backsliding Democracy: The Crisis for Civil Society and Philanthropy in Comparative Perspective” that was held In July 2026 as part of the 17th international conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) in Lisbon. It was Mark Sidel’s idea to convene the group of international experts, Chris Dayson (UK), Ben Gidron (Israel), Rupert Strachwitz (Germany), Ingrid Srinath (India) and himself (US), to share their insights into how threats to civil society and philanthropy are emerging and playing out in their respective countries. Ansgar Gessner chaired the roundtable discussion.
What the experts shared and what this paper underlines is that we are witnessing an international phenomenon of democratic backsliding, in addition to and amplifying the national developments — also for the most part backsliding — that can be explained by local social, economic, or political factors. As if drawing from the same playbook, authoritarian and conservative governments around the world are reversing democratic commitments, undermining democratic processes, dismantling social services and international development assistance, politicizing the judiciary and investigative agencies, threatening changes to tax status or funding, and threatening the pillars that have made civil society and philanthropy significant forces for strong resilient democracies in the United States to India to Germany to Israel to the United Kingdom and beyond.
Each author of this edited working paper outlines and analyses how some of these threats have been playing out in their countries and region. While, naturally, more country insights analyses are desirable to paint a truly global picture of the backsliding democracy phenomenon, this working paper sheds some light on the global scale of the issue.
Ansgar Gessner & Mark Sidel
Berlin and New York and in October 2026
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