Beyond the Ballot Box: Democracy Is What Happens Between Elections

Article by Liliana Gutan

July 23, 2026

Beyond the Ballot Box: Democracy Is What Happens Between Elections

Democracy, for me, means accountable institutions anchored in the rule of law. It is not just about elections. Rather, it is everything that happens between elections to ensure people have access to three core values: dignity, safety, and a sense of belonging to a healthy and free society.

Moldova is experiencing the ruptures in the international rules-based order deeply. As Ukraine’s neighbour, we are close to the frontline of its efforts to defend its sovereignty and European security. From the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, we have faced threats to our own security, concerted efforts to undermine our democratic institutions, and a huge influx of refugees.^[1]

Moldova is a small country of 2.6 million people, yet in the first months of the war we hosted nearly one million Ukrainian refugees. Our society has not fractured – and Moldovan civil society has been instrumental in sustaining that cohesion, working alongside government and international partners.

The bravery and resilience shown by both Ukrainians and Moldovans is a source of hope. Ukraine continues to resist Russian aggression. And despite unprecedented Russian misinformation and interference in the 2024 EU referendum and our presidential and parliamentary elections, Moldova remains on the path towards EU integration.^[2]

But we should not take our democracy, or public support for it, for granted.

Leaders say that we are living in a complex and chaotic world. Yet acknowledging this complexity is far from enough. We need our leaders to develop a realistic vision rooted in the value of human life – and to calibrate their promises to people’s basic expectations. This requires the courage to listen to what the electorate tells them, especially when they are saying they need to live safe, dignified, and meaningful lives.

I believe the first expectation is to maintain peace and security. This is the core request any population makes of its leaders. The second is sustainable development, which means development rooted in democratic values. These are the foundations upon which citizens choose to place their trust in elected representatives and institutions.

Accountability when It matters most

At the same time, in any healthy democracy, our leaders need to hold themselves accountable to high ethical standards, transparency, and respect for the rule of law. These principles matter most when they are politically inconvenient, and when applying them carries a cost. There can be no exceptions.

Democratic resilience cannot be measured only by how institutions respond to national crises. It must also be measured by how they respond to individual citizens in moments of vulnerability. An investigation into the death of Ludmila Vartic, in March 2026, is one such test – and it goes to the heart of what democratic accountability means in practice.^[3] Ludmila was a mother of two and kindergarten teacher in Hâncești, who committed suicide after years of domestic abuse. Her husband held public office and carried a party card from the governing party. The criminal investigation was opened only after sustained pressure from her family. Dumitru Vartic was eventually charged with domestic violence resulting in death. The case remains ongoing.

Ludmila’s case highlights the wider societal problem of violence against women and girls in Moldova – a problem not unique to Moldova, but faced by societies around the world. It underscores the need for a more effective and consistent response from the state. A society that tolerates violence against women is not a society that offers freedom, safety, and dignity to all its citizens.

Moldova has the necessary legislation in place. It has ratified international conventions on violence against women. The question raised by the Vartic case is therefore not whether legal protections exist, but whether they are applied equally and consistently, regardless of who is implicated.

Accountability cannot be a selective virtue. Too often, in Moldova as elsewhere, politicians invoke democratic principles loudly from opposition and quietly set them aside once in office. The real measure of democratic maturity is not what leaders promise before they reach power – it is what they do when the inconvenient moment arrives: when the accused is an ally, when the investigation touches their own circle, when acting on principle carries a political cost. That is the moment that defines whether a democracy is real or merely performed.

The strongest argument Moldova can make for its European future is not the declarations its leaders make in Brussels. It is what its institutions do for people like Ludmila Vartic.

Moldova is at the most consequential moment in its post-Soviet history – granted EU candidate status in 2022, with accession negotiations opened in 2024. Some argue this is not the moment to risk destabilisation. I reject that framing: a democracy built on selective accountability is not one that Europe should admit, nor one that will endure.

The Vartic case is a reminder that democracy’s credibility is always being tested – not in grand moments of constitutional design, but in the ordinary and often painful questions of whether institutions show up for people when it matters. Moldova has demonstrated, through its response to the refugee crisis, that a society can hold together under extraordinary pressure when the conditions of dignity, belonging, and security are actively maintained. But these conditions are not self-sustaining. They require leadership that is honest enough to acknowledge when they are being undermined – and institutions willing to take action in response.

What democracy requires

Moldova’s experience is not unique. Across this series, contributors have approached these questions from different angles but arrived at a comparable place: that trust erodes slowly before it breaks visibly; that what autocrats destroy first is not infrastructure but dignity, memory, and the capacity for agency; that disengagement is rarely apathy – it is fear. The formal architecture of democracy rests on foundations that are human before they are political. When people lack security, dignity, and belonging, no institutional design recovers them. When they have them, extraordinary things become possible.

The work ahead is not to restore a model that has run its course. It is to understand, honestly, what people actually need to live free and meaningful lives – and to build the political, cultural, and civic conditions in which that becomes possible.

That requires courage: the courage to listen, as much as the courage to speak. And the courage to collaborate across diversity and divides.

Democracy, in the end, is not defined only by what happens on election day. It is defined by what happens every day.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Liliana Gutan is a 2010 John Smith Fellow from Moldova. In her capacity as a member of the National Secretariat responsible for the successful implementation of these initiatives, the focus of Liliana’s work over the last three years has been on the Moldovan Chairmanships. This includes the organisation of numerous regional high level meetings, summits and conferences.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Benedicta Solf and Casey O’Neill, Moldova Shoulders Disproportionately Large Ukrainian Population, in the Shadow of the European Union and Russia, Migration Policy Institute, December 2025, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/moldova-ukrainian-refugees

^[2] Stephen McGrath, Moldova narrowly votes to secure path toward EU membership after accusing Russie of interference, AP News, October 2024, https://apnews.com/article/moldova-elections-eu-referendum-russia-325cb2c13beb1d76565a6e2aadef971a; Claire Gilbody Dickerson, ‘Massive’ election interference by Russia, Moldovan officials say in decisive presidential vote, Sky News, November 2024, https://news.sky.com/story/massive-election-interference-by-russia-moldovan-officials-say-in-decisive-presidential-vote-13247385; Sarah Rainsford and Paul Kirby, Moldova’s pro-EU party wins vote mired in claims of Russian interference, BBC News, September 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2rdlj8ejgo

^[3] Moldpres, Head of State on domestic violence and Ludmila Vartic case: We need justice, not speculation, May 2026, https://www.moldpres.md/eng/society/head-of-state-on-domestic-violence-and-ludmila-vartic-case-we-need-justice-not-speculation

Topics

Civil Society

Human Rights

Rule of Law

Regions

Moldova

Resistance Is Not Enough: Rethinking the Belarusian Democratic Movement

Article by Palina Brodik

July 22, 2026

Resistance Is Not Enough: Rethinking the Belarusian Democratic Movement

A turning point is approaching for the Belarusian Democratic Forces, which emerged in response to the rigged presidential elections in 2020. They have begun to lose momentum after six years of tireless advocacy for democratic change – and it is time for the movement to have a serious conversation about its current shape and strategic direction.

Negotiations between the US and Belarusian authorities, which resulted in the release of hundreds of political prisoners, have deepened divisions within the movement into two opposing camps: the supporters of the hard-pressure approach that allows no compromise until the regime is defeated, and the proponents of a flexible approach that accepts limited concessions as a means of securing incremental gains. This dilemma revealed much more than differences in tactics. It exposed a rupture around the fundamental question: what kind of political actor must the democratic movement become if it is to reclaim Belarus? Every geopolitical shift — negotiations over prisoners, the end of the war in Ukraine, changing Western priorities — will only deepen the divisions and further delay the prospect of returning home.

The divide therefore runs deeper than tactics. It highlighted the very qualities that have sustained the movement over the past six years. Since 2020, it has drawn strength from shared memory, moral clarity, and organisational durability in the face of repression, exile and war. These qualities were essential for survival, but are insufficient for development.

Resistance preserves identity under pressure. However, it offers little guidance on how to prevail against a regime that has repeatedly proven more violent, adaptable, and strategically agile. Resilience, by contrast, requires the capacity to adapt without losing that identity. The question, then, is whether the movement has mistaken preserving its existing form for the ability to evolve — confusing resilience for resistance, organisational visibility for political viability.

Rebuilding political viability requires restoring three capacities that both repression and geopolitical turbulence have gradually eroded.

1. Continuity of political meaning beyond the life-span of the current movement. Belarus has experienced three major waves of democratic mobilisation in the 21^st century alone: in 2006, 2010, and 2020. Yet the history of the movement for our independence and European orientation goes back centuries. The regime does its best to break the chain of memory by obliterating historical milestones and replacing them with a state-sponsored narrative centred solely on the “Great Patriotic War”. Sometimes we contribute to this ourselves: each new generation believes the predecessors are not worth exploration if they have not succeeded – and they eventually replenish the ranks themselves. Yet democratic movements survive not through uninterrupted victories but through continuity of meaning. Otherwise every new mobilisation begins from zero.

2. The second capacity is autonomous political agency. Operating in exile, the movement naturally relies on international support. However, agency should not be built on external validation alone, such as through meetings with foreign country leaders and participation at global political fora. Legitimacy cannot be outsourced. A political actor that increasingly depends on outside confirmation is vulnerable to changing geopolitical priorities. And vice versa — it stays democratic and durable as long as it embodies the interests of the people it seeks to serve. No amount of international recognition can substitute for a living connection between democratic actors and the people they seek to serve.

3. Third, and perhaps most demanding of all, is the capacity for self-reflection and, consequently, adaptation. It requires honesty about our successes and failures, an awareness about the changing context, and acknowledging our structural limits to prevent us from falling into obsolete ways of thinking. Democratic movements fail not only when they lose their values, but also when they become unable to distinguish those values from the strategies once used to defend them. The former should endure; the latter should evolve. Сonfusing the two turns adaptation into betrayal and criticism into disloyalty. It takes a lot of courage to be intellectually and emotionally honest with oneself and to be able to admit the necessity of revision. But it is an important marker of a movement’s political maturity and a precondition for further growth.

Democratic movements can survive organisationally while collapsing politically. The Belarusian Democratic Forces risk precisely this: preserving their form while losing the capacity to act as a genuine political subject. This also has implications for foreign engagement: support is most effective when it contributes to adaptive political capacity rather than reinforcing institutional visibility.

To prevent the negative scenario, the movement should return to the fundamental question that structures this argument — what kind of political actor must the movement become if it is to shape Belarus’s future rather than be shaped by the country’s decline and shifting geopolitical realities?

Explore the full mini-series here.

Palina Brodik is co-founder and director of the Free Belarus Center, a member of the Coordination Council of Belarus and an official CCB delegate to the Congress of Regional and Local Authorities under the Council of Europe. Palina has over a decade of experience in human rights and election observation. She has collaborated with organisations including UNDP in Ukraine and Belarus, the US-based Advocates for Human Rights, and the Center for Civil Liberties and has taken part in international and domestic election observation missions. She has coordinated the Eastern European edition of the Personal Democracy Forum and the Ostrogski Forum, as well as four seasons of the festival of Belarusian culture and activism “Hučna Fest”.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

Topics

Civil Society

Democracy and Elections

Human Rights

Regions

Belarus

Civil Society Organisations Are Losing the Narrative War – How Can Trust Be Rebuilt?

Article by Joldoshbek Osmonov

July 20, 2026

Civil Society Organisations Are Losing the Narrative War – How Can Trust Be Rebuilt?

Civil society is how citizens can hold power to account. But what happens when organisations that exist to defend democratic life are no longer trusted to do so?

In functioning democracies, the answer barely needs asking. Transparent government, free expression, the right to challenge power and insist on the truth, all depend on a civil society that people believe in. It is through civil society that citizens engage with one another, mobilise in times of need, protect human rights, and advocate for change. When that belief erodes, so does the accountability it sustains.

For authoritarian governments, this erosion is not a problem. It is a strategy.

We are living in a time of profound uncertainty. The international rules-based order is no longer guaranteed. As authoritarianism and populism gain ground and democratic values come under pressure, civil society finds itself on the front line – and the forces working against it are organised and deliberate.

Propaganda, legal threats, and institutional failings are making civil society more vulnerable

Kyrgyzstan is a clear example of how civil society can become vulnerable. In April 2024, the country passed a law on ‘foreign representatives’, requiring NGOs that receive foreign funding to register with the government – echoing Russia’s and Georgia’s foreign agent laws, though without the same criminal liability.^[1] This reflects a broader trend: growing authoritarianism and a shrinking civic space that make it harder for citizens and organisations to speak out.

Kyrgyzstan is not an isolated case. Across countries like Russia, Belarus, Georgia, and other Central Asian countries, the pattern is the same: governments are using legal pressure and narrative control to delegitimise the organisations that hold them accountable. In Russia, organised civil society and NGOs have been systematically portrayed as a threat to traditional values and national identity – and that same propaganda playbook is being exported across the region, eroding credibility of civil society organisations beyond its borders.

The threat is not solely external however. Parts of the NGO sector have been undermining their own credibility by remaining overly donor-centric, lacking transparency and failing to communicate their work and impact effectively to the public.

The effect of this sustained pressure on civil society and internal shortcomings is a loss of trust. People no longer believe that civil society organisations tell the truth, stand for something, or have anything meaningful to offer.

And when the connection between people and civil society breaks down, civil society can no longer fulfil its democratic function. The gap between organisations and the communities they exist to serve becomes a gap that weakens democracy.

So how should civil society respond?

Some of the challenges are practical: funding, legal pressure, hostile information environments. But the deeper challenge is rebuilding trust and relevance. Old approaches and instruments are no longer enough. Civil society organisations need to think critically about how they are reaching people, how they come across, and whether they truly understand the context in which they operate.

Starting internally: transparency, accountability, and effectiveness are vital. Suspicions that NGOs are ineffective or opaque are widespread, and organisations need to take this seriously. Trust is rebuilt through actions, not just communication.

Yet internal renewal is only half the work. The deeper challenge is rebuilding the connection with communities – and that begins with an honest reckoning about how that connection was lost in the first place. It means going to where people already are: the school gate, the local market, the community group, the places where trust is built through presence rather than broadcast. It means speaking in a language that people recognise and not jargon that requires explaining. And it means reducing financial dependence on external donors by developing more diversified, locally rooted funding – through the public sector, social entrepreneurship, and direct community support.

Organisations need to be clear about both the work they do and what they stand for. The issues that civil society organisations address are often the issues that matter to people. When organisations can clearly demonstrate their relevance and impact, trust becomes easier to build and sustain.

Finally, where possible, constructive dialogue with governments should not be abandoned. Civil society organisations should seek to cooperate on practical, less politically contested challenges, building confidence and relationships before attempting to address more difficult issues.

What leaders need in this moment

Civil society may be losing the narrative battle – but that does not mean war is lost. Leaders need a clear-eyed understanding of how we got here and what is at stake.

The forces working against democracy and civil society – authoritarianism, populism, propaganda, misinformation – are organised, deliberate, and adaptive. Responding to these forces requires not just resilience, but the willingness to change: to be honest about failure, to engage with people where they are, and to earn trust rather than assume it.

The goal is not simply to survive. It is to rebuild the kind of civil society that people feel belongs to them, one that reflects their concerns, speaks to their realities, and importantly, one that they would fight to defend.

Ultimately, trust cannot be demanded, it must be earned, sustained, and renewed over time.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Joldoshbek Osmonov is the team leader of the Civic Engagement for Development Project in Kyrgyzstan funded by the Swiss Development Agency. He has extensive work experience in international development organisations, think tanks, and the civil society sector and possesses strong expertise in civil society, governance, public policy, and local politics. Joldoshbek holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Pennsylvania, the United States, and BA in international relations from the American University of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, April 2024, Law Targeting Foreign-Funded NGOs Sends Chill Through Kyrgyz Civil Society, https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan-foreign-agents-chill/32893000.html

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Civil Society

Regions

Kyrgyzstan

No Shortcuts to Trust: Education, Civic Habits, and Social Resilience in Central Asia

Article by Farrukh Irnazarov

In Central Asia, citizens have not simply lost faith in institutions. They have stopped expecting institutions to deserve it.

Citizens are curious about reform, transparency, opportunity, participation, and modernisation. However, their everyday experience may be shaped by uneven services, opaque decision-making, limited civic space, or institutions that respond more readily to status than to need. And yet the instinct is to treat this as something politics alone can fix. It cannot. Trust is not primarily a political product; it is a learned disposition.

In such an environment, ‘leading by example’ is not a soft moral appeal. It is the structural basis of credibility. Where authority is culturally important, public conduct carries unusual weight; people watch whether officials, educators, business leaders, and civic actors behave according to the standards they ask others to accept. Trust is built when words and actions repeatedly meet.

Education as democratic infrastructure

Trust is too often treated as a political problem to be solved only by policy: new laws, new strategies, new platforms, or new communications campaigns. These matter, but they are not enough. People learn, often early, whether cooperation is safe, whether disagreement is dangerous, whether success requires domination, and whether institutions deserve patience when they make mistakes. Education is therefore the overlooked foundation of democratic resilience, not because schools can replace politics, but because they form the habits of mind that make healthy politics possible.

This requires thinking about education more broadly than curriculum reform. It means treating classrooms, youth programmes, universities and informal learning spaces as laboratories of social behaviour. One powerful mechanism is gamification – designing learning environments that teach the logic of mutual gain. This is not about points and prizes. It is about showing young people, through experience, that achievement and contribution are not opposites. Too much public life is organised around zero-sum instincts: if one group advances, another must lose; if one entrepreneur succeeds, society has been exploited; if one community receives attention, another has been forgotten.

A better educational design can show young people that achievement and contribution are not opposites. A student can ‘win’ by building a business model that also solves a local problem. A team can score higher when it helps another team improve. A simulated city, school budget, or environmental challenge can reward cooperation, long-term thinking and shared benefits rather than only individual victory.

This matters in Central Asia because social cohesion cannot be imported through abstract democratic language. The region’s histories, hierarchies, kinship networks, respect for elders, and expectations of authority differ from Western European civic models. A copied template may sound progressive while failing to speak to local trust dynamics. Gamified education can translate democratic habits into lived experience: negotiation, responsibility, reciprocity, compromise, and service. It can show that success does not have to mean someone else’s defeat. That lesson, absorbed early, is a quiet defence against polarisation later.

A second mechanism is debate culture. Debate is not simply public speaking, nor is it the performance of defeating an opponent. At its best, it teaches a harder civic discipline: to hold a position firmly while remaining genuinely open to being changed by another argument. This is one of the deepest foundations of democratic life. A person who has practiced fair debate learns that disagreement is not betrayal, that criticism is not always an attack, and that losing an argument need not mean losing dignity. In societies where authority is often protected from challenge, debate culture can create respectful forms of questioning. It does not require young people to reject elders, institutions or tradition. It teaches them how to examine claims, ask for evidence and recognise complexity without collapsing into cynicism.

The difficulty is that most policy thinking moves in the opposite direction. It is top-down, structural and short-cycle. Governments and donors want measurable outcomes within a funding period. NGOs, especially in Central Asia, often work with precarious financing and constrained civic space, which pushes them toward safe projects, narrow indicators, and cautious language. But trust grows slowly. It needs continuity, repetition, and relationships. A three-month campaign cannot undo years of suspicion. A digital platform cannot substitute for credible behaviour. The most important work may be the least visible: a teacher who models fairness, a youth mentor who allows disagreement, a local project that proves cooperation can produce real results.

Technology, trust and democratic resilience

Technology intensifies both the problem and the possibility. Disinformation widens the gap between rhetoric and reality. It makes it harder for leaders to maintain credibility and harder for citizens to know what deserves belief. In information environments shaped by rumours, propaganda, influencer politics and fragmented media, distrust can become self-protective: people stop believing not only false claims but also true ones. This is especially dangerous in societies where institutional trust is already fragile.

However, technology should not be treated only as a threat. In Central Asia, its effects are already mixed. Kazakhstan’s eGov system, for example, has shown how digital public services can reduce everyday friction between citizens and the state: when people can access documents, payments or applications online without relying on personal connections or opaque bureaucracy, technology can make institutions feel more predictable and less distant. Yet the same region has also shown the limits of digital trust, especially when online spaces are shaped by disinformation, surveillance fears, or sudden restrictions on access. The point is not to promise technological salvation. The point is to try low-risk, low-cost experiments – digital debate clubs, local problem-solving games, transparent community budgeting tools, media-literacy simulations, or platforms that allow citizens to track small public commitments – and to learn honestly from failure. Even attempting imperfect solutions can build trust when the process is transparent. People do not need institutions that never fail. They need institutions that admit limits, correct mistakes, and keep showing up.

In a region with civic actors may face pressure, where respect matters, where authority is personal as well as formal and where young people are navigating both traditional and global digital culture – this is not an abstract principle. Trust between citizens, communities, and institutions must be built from where people actually stand. Education, in this wider sense, is where the bridge can begin.

The African proverb captures the choice: “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”. Trust cannot be rushed into existence by decree, branding, or institutional design alone. It is slow, collective work. It is learned through games that reward mutual success, debates that dignify disagreement, technologies that connect rather than manipulate, and leaders who make credibility visible through example. There are no shortcuts worth taking.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Farrukh Irnazarov is an international development expert with over 15 years of experience in economic policy, investment strategies, labour migration, trade, and agribusiness. He is the Co-Founder and Country Director for Uzbekistan at the Central Asian Development Institute (CADI) and Co-Founder of the RANSIF Group, a policy and research platform promoting responsible and transparent investment in Central Asia. Farrukh’s focus is on fostering constructive capital, designing investment screening mechanisms, and advancing private sector development across the region.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

Topics

Civil Society

Democracy and Elections

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Regions

Central Asia

Gen Z, Agency and Engagement: From Tokenism to Meaningful Collaboration

Article by Aaron Campbell and Gulshat Ayydova

July 16, 2026

Gen Z, Agency and Engagement: From Tokenism to Meaningful Collaboration

Young people are often described as the ‘future’, yet they are already shaping political life in the present. We are two young leaders from very different contexts: the UK and Turkmenistan. Even though our countries are culturally, socially and politically quite different, we found through indepth discussion in both – and we suspect across the globe – Gen Z are navigating complex barriers to formal participation while simultaneously creating new, constructive forms of civic engagement. If our leaders are serious about building resilient and peaceful societies, we have to transform our engagement with young people from tokenistic consultation to meaningful collaboration.

Young people’s agency is expressed not only through formal institutions such as voting or parliamentary participation, but also through civic activism, digital mobilisation, community leadership, and social entrepreneurship. However, our systems frequently fail to recognise this reality. Young people are invited into conversations symbolically rather than substantively, consulted without influence, and expected to participate in systems that were not designed with them in mind.

Through our work we hear from young people that they see themselves mentioned in speeches and strategies, but do not participate in decision-making spaces where power actually sits. Youth councils, consultations, and forums often exist without real influence over policy outcomes, reinforcing frustration and deepening distrust in institutions.

There are both formal and informal barriers for young people to engage with governance structures. These include limited access to policymakers, hierarchical political cultures, and a perception that the youth lack the experience or authority to contribute meaningfully. In formal settings, even practical factors such as language confidence, professional etiquette, and expectations around dress and behaviour can become invisible barriers that exclude young people from participation.

In the UK, organisations like My Life My Say and Flipgenn are actively breaking down these barriers – and it is working. In the lead-up to the most recent local elections, 444,874 young people registered to vote in April 2026 alone, and the Electoral Commission found that 81% of young people see living in a democracy as important.^[1] Yet such organisations remain the exception rather than the rule, and the lack of meaningful institutional pathways for engagement remains one of the greatest barriers young people face.

When those pathways are absent, the consequences are significant. In the UK, polling shows that 63% of 18–24-year-olds doubt any major political party could improve their lives, and 73% feel politicians do not care about people like them.^[2] In Turkmenistan, young people similarly describe a sense of distance from formal decision-making – feeling that their voices sometimes carry weight in community spaces but rarely reach the institutions where policy is shaped. In both contexts, the risk is the same: when young people feel that the system is not working for them, disengagement follows.

One example from Turkmenistan shows what becomes possible when this changes. Through the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) seminars on Climate Negotiations, Model OSCE, and Inclusive Climate Governance, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) supported Youth Climate Summer School, and the annual Local Conference of Youth (LCOY) endorsed by YOUNGO, young people from across Turkmenistan have come together to learn, exchange ideas, and contribute to addressing environmental challenges.^[3] These initiatives have been made possible thanks to the support of national institutions, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education, as well as international partners such as UNICEF, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the OSCE, and diplomatic missions including the UK Embassy. Working together, these partners have created spaces where young people can develop their skills, collaborate with experts, and transform their ideas into practical initiatives that benefit their communities.

What has been most inspiring is seeing how young people respond when they are trusted and encouraged to contribute. Many participants have gone on to organise awareness campaigns, volunteer activities, and peer-learning initiatives, sharing their knowledge with others and inspiring more young people to get involved. They often speak about the pride and satisfaction they feel from being able to contribute to issues that matter to them and to their communities.^[4] These experiences show that when young people are given opportunities to learn, collaborate, and take responsibility, they develop into confident and active citizens. Society, in turn, benefits from their creativity, enthusiasm, and commitment to building a more sustainable future.

Representation matters. When people see someone like themselves making a difference, they feel empowered to believe they can do the same – and their sense of belonging to their country is strengthened when they can see themselves working within its structures and contributing to its future. But representation must not mean simply inviting young people to the table: it must mean giving them the authority, trust, and resources to shape outcomes. Youth engagement should also extend beyond parliaments and ministries. Community centres, universities, coworking spaces, and local initiatives often provide more accessible and psychologically safe environments for young people to engage in public life.

Leaders and policy-makers concerned about social cohesion among the next generation should understand that empowering young people to be active members of their society – in the spaces where they live, study and work – is precisely how trust and social capital are built. If we are serious about building resilient and inclusive societies, youth engagement must move beyond tokenism and toward genuine representation, civic education, and structural support. It requires real investment and commitment, but the evidence from both our countries is clear: when young people are given the opportunity to contribute, they do – and society as a whole is stronger for it.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Aaron Campbell is located at the intersection of Mental Health, EDI & Liberation, Advocacy for Young People, Higher Education and Politics/Policy, with a passion, drive, and focus on making long lasting and meaningful change within society, particularly for those who are marginalised. They graduated from the University of East Anglia with a degree in Computing and Graphic Design and since have worked with many organisations across multiple sectors including government, mental health, legal and grassroots organisations.

Gulshat Ayydova is a climate and youth advocate from Turkmenistan. She founded the Youth Climate Action Network Turkmenistan and leads a range of initiatives to engage young people in climate action. Her work includes organising eco camps, eco festivals, climate hackathons, and national youth conferences on climate change, as well as co-developing policy recommendations for the government. She currently serves as a member of the EU Youth Sounding Board for Central Asia. Gulshat is committed to advancing inclusive and sustainable climate policies in Turkmenistan.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual authors and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] The Electoral Commission, Young people’s views on politics and voting 2026, March 2026, https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/research-reports-and-data/young-peoples-views-politics-and-voting-2026

^[2] From a survey conducted by Opinium, https://www.opinium.com/insight/ and commissioned by My Life My Say, https://www.mylifemysay.org.uk/

^[3] UNICEF, UNICEF Launches Youth Climate Summer School 2025, June 2025, https://www.unicef.org/turkmenistan/press-releases/unicef-launches-youth-climate-summer-school-2025; UN Turkmenistan, Raising a Generation of Climate Leaders: Gulshat and Selbi Empower Youth for Climate Action in Turkmenistan, November 2025, https://turkmenistan.un.org/en/305747-raising-generation-climate-leaders-gulshat-and-selbi-empower-youth-climate-action; OSCE, OSCE promotes youth engagement in climate change issues in Turkmenistan, July 2025, https://ashgabat.osce.org/centre-in-ashgabat/595459; OSCE, Model OSCE promotes youth leadership and climate diplomacy in Turkmenistan, April 2026, https://ashgabat.osce.org/news/centre-ashgabat/663259

^[4] Statement based on participant feedback collected during workshops and informal discussions rather than a formal evaluation.

Topics

Civil Society

Human Rights

Regions

Turkmenistan

United Kingdom

The Psychological Roots of Democratic Disengagement

Article by Botagoz Zhumabekova

July 15, 2026

The Psychological Roots of Democratic Disengagement

When I first became a JST Fellow in 2018 I had a very clear answer to the question: does change come from the topdown or the bottom-up? For years, working at the intersection of government and public life, I assumed the answer was obvious. Systems change systems. Institutions reform institutions. If you want a better democracy, you build better structures.

I no longer think that is quite right.

For the past nine years, I have been working as a psychotherapist specialising in leadership and occupational psychology. I work with individuals and the leaders who shape organisations, workplaces, and communities. And what I keep seeing is something that formal political analysis tends to overlook: the degree to which people’s relationship to civic life is shaped not by policy, but by psychology – and, specifically, by fear.

Particularly the fear of being punished for being different. For speaking when you were not supposed to. For having an opinion that diverges from the group. This is the legacy of authoritarian and post-totalitarian cultures, and it does not disappear when constitutions change. It lives on in families, in workplaces, in the habits people develop around whether it is safe to show up, speak up, or push back.

When people disengage from democratic life, we tend to reach for familiar explanations: apathy, cynicism, misinformation, or low trust in institutions. These are real. Yet I think they often describe symptoms rather than causes. Beneath them, frequently, is a deeply internalised belief that participation carries risk – that visibility invites punishment, that difference is dangerous.

Comparative research across post-Soviet societies has long demonstrated a pattern of strong trust within families and close networks, combined with weak trust in institutions and public life. This suggests that democratic disengagement is not simply a political phenomenon, but a social and psychological inheritance: people learn where it is safe to trust, and where it is not.^[1]

Democracy, on this account, does not only fail because of bad institutions. It fails because those institutions are built on top of societies where the psychological conditions for participation have never been properly established. You cannot ask people to show up as active citizens if they have never been given reason to feel safe enough to do so.

This brings me to what I think is one of the most underrated questions in democratic renewal: what do people actually need before they can engage?

At our recent JST Ideas Exchange Forum – where we were re-thinking democracy for a new era – we kept returning to the values of security, dignity, and belonging. And I think these are right, but I want to be precise about what they mean at the level of individuals and communities. They mean acknowledgement, first. Being seen. Having your history, your pain, and your particular experience of the world recognised before anyone asks anything of you.

The question of technology is inseparable from this. Digital spaces and social media have dramatically amplified the speed at which identity narratives travel – and in fragmented, polarised information environments, those narratives increasingly reward performance over authenticity, outrage over nuance. For people who are already uncertain whether it is safe to hold a distinct view, this only compounds the problem. The algorithmic incentive is to affiliate with a tribe, not to think independently. The psychological toll is a further erosion of the inner conditions that genuine civic participation requires.

And yet I remain genuinely optimistic – not naively, but because of what I see in my work. When people are given the conditions to take authority and responsibility for their own lives – when they feel safe enough to have a view, to act on it, to lead from where they stand – that capacity does not stay contained. It extends outward. It moves into families, workplaces, communities, and eventually into the political sphere. The circle of influence grows.

This is the bottom-up work that I believe is essential – not as a replacement for institutional reform, but as its necessary foundation. Top-down change without this is architecture built on unstable ground.

What would it mean to take this seriously at scale? It would mean that democracy promotion stops leading with structures and starts asking about the human conditions those structures are meant to serve. It means that leaders – of governments, organisations, and communities – learn to acknowledge before they ask. It means that the people who design civic participation processes understand something about the psychology of participation, not just its mechanics.

At the same time, taking the psychology of participation seriously does not mean removing responsibility from citizens themselves. Psychological safety is not the destination – it is the precondition. Democratic cultures cannot be built on safety alone. They require the gradual development of civic maturity: the capacity to tolerate disagreement, to remain engaged despite uncertainty, and to accept that participation inevitably involves risk, accountability and compromise. The task of democratic renewal is not to protect citizens from that burden, but to create the conditions in which they are able – and willing – to take it on.

This may be particularly important in post-authoritarian societies, where generations have learned that safety lies in conformity, silence or deference to authority. Democratic participation, in these contexts, is not only a political act but a psychological transition: from protected subjecthood to active citizenship, from seeking permission and certainty to exercising judgement and responsibility.

Perhaps the question is not whether change comes from the top-down or the bottom-up. Democracies ultimately depend on both: institutions that are trustworthy enough to invite participation, and citizens who have established a sense of political safety that enables them to embrace the psychological challenge of freedom itself.

None of this is quick or linear. However, I think we are, collectively, arriving at a moment that calls for rethinking – and that is, in its own way, a cause for hope.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Botagoz Zhumabekova is a psychotherapist and leadership psychologist, working at the intersection of emotional resilience, trauma-informed practice, and social change. Her professional background spans consulting for major international institutions, including serving as an independent consultant for European Bank (EBRD) projects. Botagoz is the author of a research project on leadership psychology and self-esteem, conducted in collaboration with senior women leaders and partners from major international corporations. In her therapeutic and group work, she specialises in the psychology of leadership, intergenerational trauma, and the emotional patterns that influence civic behaviour and decision-making.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Roger Sapsford and Pamela Abbott, Trust, confidence and social environment in post-communist societies, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Volume 39, Issue 1, March 2006, pp. 59-71, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967067X05000668

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Civil Society

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Human Rights

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Europe

Central Asia

From Silence to Agency: What Post-Totalitarian Societies Must Learn from Their Stories

Article by Olga Reka

July 13, 2026

From Silence to Agency: What Post-Totalitarian Societies Must Learn from Their Stories

There was a time when war took my voice away. When reality becomes unbearable, reflection is reduced into mere observation. Silence ceases to be calm – it turns into the anticipation of terror from the sky. Under conditions of total war, people lose not only their homes, but also the capacity to narrate what is happening to them. Reason narrows to instinct. And everything that requires sensitivity – art, in particular – seems to fall mute. This is how we begin to treat culture as a luxury, as something that can be postponed until more stable times.

Yet the opposite is true: culture is not an adjunct to democracy; it is a precondition for agency.

We live in a time of eroding trust. Governments, media, and institutions are losing credibility. The frameworks that once defined democratic order no longer feel sufficient. Reality itself has fragmented. Policies and protocols may create structure, but they cannot resolve what is, at its core, a crisis of narratives – a rupture between identities, experiences, and meanings. This is not only a Ukrainian question. It is a European one.

Almost five years ago, storytelling and cinema became, for me, a way of resisting this fragmentation. A feature film script about the first months of the Russian full-scale invasion felt not like documentation, but rather reconstruction – an attempt to reclaim authorship over my own experience. In this sense, culture is not representation. It is a safe space where meaning is restored, and with it – the capacity to act.

Since 2022, I have noted a new habit: I catch myself observing people in large European cities as though through an invisible yet dense membrane. This distance is not geographical, but experiential. War creates a rupture that resists translation. And this gives rise to an uneasy question: is agency possible without the experience of existential risk?

Our unprocessed histories – colonial pasts, totalitarian traumas, genocide – return through narratives as recurring threats. This is why the figure of the antagonist is so central to contemporary storytelling. Yet the antagonist is not only what we fight against. It is what we recognise, ‘other’ and refuse to integrate.

Popular culture now offers telling examples. Squid Game does not invent a dystopia – it exposes the future shock of a traditional society. Adolescence does not resolve the problem of contemporary masculine identity – it renders the “accursed questions”^[1] even more complex. These stories resonate because they name what society already senses, but cannot yet articulate.

Post-totalitarian cultures – particularly in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia – face a different problem. They have inherited a cultural hero who is fundamentally passive: the silent dissident, the ironic observer, the one who survives but does not act. In such contexts, silence is mistakenly perceived as strength. In reality, it is often a symptom of learned helplessness. If this narrative remains unchanged, it will continue to reproduce itself – even under democratic conditions. A society that tells itself stories of endurance rather than action will continue to endure, but not to transform.

One of my most sincere sources of inspiration in recent months has been Václav Havel’s essay ‘The Power of the Powerless’, invoked by the Prime Minister of Canada during the 2026 forum in Davos. This text is not merely political commentary in the conventional sense. It is a cultural essay that describes how agency arises not from systems, but from small acts of redefinition – moments when individuals choose to refuse reproducing the scripts imposed upon them.

It seems that our societies today need not simply new content, but a new narrative structure, a different kind of cultural hero – one who acts without guarantees, speaks without certainty, and accepts vulnerability not as weakness, but as a condition of agency.

In Ukraine, the Revolution of Dignity of 2013-14 marked a defining moment when society’s agency not only became unmistakably visible, but also emerged as a force capable of safeguarding democratic values. Since the first months of Russia’s aggression in 2014, volunteer initiatives have quite literally helped keep the Ukrainian state functioning. Their work extends far beyond procuring military equipment and tactical medical supplies. Volunteers have built evacuation networks, supported internally displaced people, and helped devastated communities begin the long process of rebuilding.

The same spirit of initiative has also shaped Ukraine’s soft power abroad. Many of the country’s most effective international cultural and civic initiatives have not been orchestrated by the state but have grown organically through self-organisation and the networks of the Ukrainian diaspora. Ukraine has also demonstrated a remarkable ability to embrace digital innovation, with civil society playing a pivotal role not only in developing and implementing these innovations but also in rigorously testing their effectiveness and holding them to account.

Equally fundamental to Ukraine’s contemporary sense of agency is the ongoing reimagining of local identities across its towns and villages. In recent years, communities have explored their own histories through a wide range of cultural and civic initiatives, rediscovering local heritage, engaging with the complexities of multicultural memory, and dismantling narratives imposed from outside. In doing so, they are reclaiming the right to tell their own stories, and, ultimately, to define themselves on their own terms.

Not all our societies are ready for such a shift. Many are still organised around survival rather than transformation. And this is precisely why the delicate work within the realm of the sensuous – cultural practice – cannot be secondary. Without it, political change lacks psychological grounding.

Our current moment is marked by simultaneities. For some, agency now signifies the basic capacity to act; for others, it denotes a deeply existential experience of subjecthood.

Until quite recently, the ‘Old World’ reliably provided institutional frameworks through which an individual could choose a profession, a way of life, political convictions, partners, or a place to live. Yet reality is unsettlingly clear that no structure can guarantee any longer either meaning or safety.

At such a moment, action becomes inseparable from responsibility: values come at a cost; freedom is not a default condition; neutrality, as an avoidance of choice, no longer functions.

Our identity now is action. It is our daily practice, be it screenwriting, art, human rights advocacy, or a commitment to the rule of law. Alternatively, it can also be the rejection of all the above in surrender to a totalitarian trend.

Democracy today does not begin with institutions. It begins with a shift in how we tell our stories.

Explore the full mini-series here.

Olga Reka is a Ukrainian producer, writer and cultural storyteller whose work explores archetypal and transformational narratives shaped by themes of war, dignity, trauma and cultural memory. With over 150 hours of national television to her credit, she has created award-winning fiction projects and is known for story worlds that reflect the contemporary Ukrainian experience. She currently co-ordinates the publication project “Ukraine and Ukrainians”, a historical ethnographic art album of the NCFC “The Ivan Honchar Museum”, Gunia Project and The Ivan Honchar Charitable Foundation. Her recent films include the features “Nodokasa”, “Zenith” and “Misty in Places”; and the short “In the Shadows” (Grand Prix – Ukraina Festiwal Filmowy 2021; Special Jury Mention – Short of the Year 2021). Olga was also the showrunner and co-writer of “5baksiv.net”, Ukraine’s first web series and winner of the Grand Prix at Bilbao Web Fest 2017.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] “Accursed questions” (often called proklyatye voprosy in Russian) are universal, foundational inquiries about human existence that never have a single, final answer.

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Civil Society

Human Rights

Ukraine Conflict

Regions

Ukraine

How Can We Secure a Healthy Political and Social Order in a Fragmented World?

Article by Lord John Alderdice

This article introduces a new series of short essays by JST Fellows – leaders working across Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia – exploring how societies can build the trust, agency and resilience needed for an era of fracture and flux.

We are living through a period of profound change and uncertainty. The erosion of the rules-based international order is causing instability on a global scale. Familiar frameworks and alliances, such as NATO, are no longer seen as providing security guarantees and a basis for shared understanding between states. The institutions that form the foundations of healthy democracy – the media, government, judiciary, and civil society – are not functioning in the way that they should. Media ecosystems no longer offer a shared factual reference point; governments struggle to deliver on the concerns of those they represent; judiciaries face growing pressure on their independence; and civil society is increasingly recast – through propaganda and hostile narratives – as a threat rather than a mechanism for accountability and civic action. It all adds up to a climate of social and political polarisation, creating distrust: in governments, in one another, and in democracy itself.

Added to this, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) presents both opportunities and threats to how our societies and economies function. The political emergence of Gen Z, with youth-led protests in countries as disparate as Georgia, Nepal, Peru and Madagascar, is seen as evidence of growing frustration of young people with inequality, corruption, and the failure of existing institutions to respond to people’s concerns.^[1]

These forces are not temporary disruptions but structural shifts reshaping political and social life. As such, they demand a new approach. This is not a time for nostalgia but for a collective rethink. Throughout this mini-series, our contributors delve into experiences of culture, trust and agency in their societies to explore a central question: What actions do we need to take and what stories must we ensure are heard, in order to shape and secure a healthy political and social order for the emerging global era?

In the articles that follow, JST Fellows explore this question in depth, offering diverse perspectives on what it means to rethink democracy through the lens of culture, trust, and agency. They look at opportunities and challenges emerging in media, technology, and information systems. They look at the power of identity and narratives, and their effect on social cohesion. And they look at agency and engagement, with a focus on young people.

These are not separate strands but interwoven dynamics that reinforce each other. Technology drives identity narratives. Identity politics shape how young people engage. And youth movements reshape information ecosystems.

Our Fellows, who come from countries across Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, write about how these forces are playing out in the contexts in which they live and work. Questions of identity, culture and memory also run throughout the series. Olga Reka, from Ukraine, writes about the critical role of the arts, culture, and storytelling in creating meaning and agency as a precondition for democracy. Botagoz Zhumabekova examines the psychological foundations of democratic participation, arguing that active citizenship depends not only on political opportunity but also on people feeling safe enough to engage.

Trust – or its absence – is a common theme. Gulshat Ayydova and Aaron Campbell look at what we can learn from the way young people already engage in informal spaces to encourage meaningful participation and build trust in political processes. Joldoshbek Osmonov, from Kyrgyzstan, looks at the legitimacy crisis facing civil society and how organisations can rebuild trust in the face of propaganda that presents them as a threat. Farrukh Irnazarov explores the role of education in building trust in institutions and civic responsibility across Central Asia.

Looking at democratic renewal through a political lens, Palina Brodik reflects on the future of the Belarusian democratic movement, arguing that preserving collective memory while remaining adaptable is essential to sustaining political agency in exile.

The series concludes with Liliana Gutan’s reflection on Moldova, where democracy is measured not only by elections but by what institutions deliver between them. Her article brings together many of the themes explored throughout the series, arguing that democratic resilience ultimately depends on whether people experience dignity, security, and belonging in their everyday lives.

I hope these articles offer both provocation and possibility – showing what it looks like when values-driven leaders think seriously about the challenges of our time. They are part of the generation of diverse leaders needed in this moment, to shape a new order in which people can live in sustainable, peaceful and just societies.

Explore the full mini-series here.

John Alderdice, Professor, the Lord Alderdice. UK Trade Envoy to Azerbaijan & Central Asia and JST Trustee.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Daniel Boffey, ‘We are very strong’: Georgia’s gen Z drives protests against return to past, The Guardian, May 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/16/georgia-gen-z-drives-protests-against-return-to-past-foreign-agents-law; Omkar Khandekar and Yam Kumari Kandel, How Gen Z-led protests put Nepal’s 1st female prime minister in power, NPR, September 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/09/20/nx-s1-5545760/nepal-protests-gen-z; Marco Aquino and Alexander Villegas, Peru’s Gen Z rallies against President Boluarte, protesting over pensions and corruption, Reuters, September 2025, https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/perus-gen-z-rallies-against-president-boluarte-protesting-over-pensions-2025-09-27/; AP News, How Gen Z protesters brought down Madagascar’s government and now want the president out, October 2025, https://apnews.com/article/madagascar-protests-gen-z-rajoelina-e39ef11bd1f4a92f1f4b353900348219

Topics

Civil Society

Democracy and Elections

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Human Rights

Regions

Europe

Central Asia

Expert Briefing | ‘Rhetoric, Disorder, and the Crisis of Democracy’

Article by Foreign Policy Centre

July 7, 2026

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Expert Briefing | ‘Rhetoric, Disorder, and the Crisis of Democracy’

On 15th June 2026, the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), the Global Disorder Group at City St. George’s, University of London (City), Shout Out UK (SOUK), and the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Political and Media Literacy co-hosted a discussion examining the relationship between political rhetoric, information disorder, and democratic resilience.

The event was chaired by Susan Coughtrie, FPC’s Executive Director, and brought together an expert panel including: Dr Sasikumar Sundaram, Senior Lecturer at the Department of International Politics at City; Professor Inderjeet Parmar, Professor of International Politics at City; Effie Webb, reporter on The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s (TBIJ) Big Tech team; Amelia Fairney, SOUK’s Head of Strategy and Communications; and closing reflections from Matt Bishop MP, Chair of the APPG on Political and Media Literacy.

The discussion explored how increasingly polarised political rhetoric, widening inequality, AI-driven misinformation, and fragmented media ecosystems are reshaping democratic discourse. Speakers examined the structural drivers of democratic strain, the role of technology in amplifying division, and practical approaches to strengthening political and media literacy.

This briefing outlines key themes and insights from the parliamentary panel discussion:

Political rhetoric is a symptom of deeper structural transformations.
The concentration of economic and technological power is reshaping democratic discourse.
AI is accelerating existing vulnerabilities in the information ecosystem.
Political and media literacy must be treated as democratic infrastructure.
Strengthening democratic resilience requires systemic responses.

To explore the key thematic takeaways from this expert discussion, you can download the full briefing here.

“Democracy depends on freedom of speech, just as a democratic international order depends on the free flow of ideas and dialogue. Yet rhetoric has become a mainstay of power politics, displacing democratic dialogue. The rhetoric of civilizational glory, decline of the West, technological inevitability, and ideological discontentments among others reflect deeper inequalities between states, societies, actors, and institutions. Specifically, rising wealth inequalities and oligarchies have displaced state entrepreneurism aimed at public well being, which is driving rhetoric, disorder, and the crisis of democracy. Political and media literacy should therefore cultivate social purpose and critical judgment, asking not only how we communicate, but what kind of good life and accountabilities democratic societies ought to pursue.”

Dr Sasikumar Sundaram

“The challenges posed by misinformation, AI, and polarised rhetoric cannot be separated from the wider political economy of contemporary democracy. Extreme concentrations of economic and technological power have contributed to growing public distrust and of political exclusion and alienation. There is a widespread legitimacy crisis which fosters dangerous political movements. Political and media literacy are therefore not optional additions to democracy; they are vital democratic infrastructure. However, lasting democratic resilience will depend not only on helping citizens navigate information environments, but also on addressing the inequalities and imbalances of power that erode trust in the first place.”

Professor Inderjeet Parmar

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Freedom of Expression

Good Governance and Institutional Reform

Media and Online Freedom

Regions

United Kingdom

Op-ed | International Aid as a Line of Defence: What Happens to Human Security Without Soft Power?

Article by Anna Chernova

April 24, 2026

Op-ed | International Aid as a Line of Defence: What Happens to Human Security Without Soft Power?

Securitisation of foreign (and domestic) policy is leading to a prioritisation of hard power approaches over civilian-led, soft power approaches, leaving many wondering about the future. As Europe rearms in response to the Russian threat to its collective security, and as the US proves itself an unreliable security partner, the UK finds itself repositioning within a fractured Euro-Atlantic alliance. This raises a broader question: how to de-securitise and return to “normal” politics?^[1]

If militarism shapes the next generation’s approach to public policy, what are the prospects for addressing the root causes of violence that are driving the skyrocketing humanitarian needs and record levels of forced displacement? The impact of armed conflict is increasingly more severe and violence is becoming the new normal, while political solutions are de-funded and militarised approaches take precedence.^[2]

As the UK and many other democratic states reduce investment into peacebuilding and other soft power efforts, resource constraints are affecting the very institutions that help prevent and mitigate conflict, support collective security, and promote diplomatic solutions.

Today, the international community marks the importance of multilateralism and diplomacy for peace.

This takes place in a context of increasing global arms transfers, the proliferation of non-state armed groups, a resurgence of international armed conflicts, and systematic violations of the UN Charter across continents.^[3] The low cost of entry into conflict for both state and non-state actors (in part enabled by globalisation, including access to technology, finance, and information), combined with social, economic and environmental factors, is undermining peace and other development goals. In a globalised order, military escalations in one region risk pushing millions into poverty, including in already conflict-affected contexts.^[4]

This dynamic is also unfolding alongside increasing inequalities and restrictions on civic space. Democratic backsliding has reduced agency for civil society, including humanitarian actors, women’s rights groups, LGBTQI+ movements and many others relying on a rights-based, rules-based international world order – particularly in contexts where the states are unwilling or unable to adhere to a viable social contract. Without multilateral spaces, civil society voices risk further marginalisation and isolation in the face of expanding authoritarianism.^[5] Without civic space, the positive peace agenda is undermined.

At the same time, significant reductions in aid are reshaping the UN and the multilateral architecture underpinning diplomacy for peace. Regional and global multilateral institutions and their civil society partners are grappling with a steadily increasing wave of violence and militarism with dwindling resources. The private sector, philanthropy, and new donors (e.g. in the Gulf) seem willing to meaningfully engage in ways that come close to replacing USAID’s contribution to pathways for peace, and the wider Nexus approach that brings together Humanitarian Development and Peace.^[6]

Human Development progress, particularly around Women, Peace and Security and gender justice, are stalling and regressing. These trends point to the continued importance of investment in soft power, including support for democracy, human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, and security sector reform. While the UK has historically positioned itself as a leader in this area and continues to recognise its importance, current policy choices suggest a growing gap between this recognition and the protection of funding for peacebuilding, development and humanitarian relief.^[7]

Where does this leave the UK role in the wider European neighbourhood and globally?

A renewed focus on human security is needed. A purely state-centric approach, driven by self-interest among a growing number of undemocratic and unequal states is likely to lead to a more violent world order that will not yield the desired collective human development dividends. The UK’s historic role in championing human security approaches in institutions like NATO, and reflected in its approaches at the UN Security Council is more needed than ever. In a shifting global order, where collaboration among middle powers around shared geographic or sectoral interests and values is becoming critical, the UK’s track record on human security lends value regionally and globally.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence review of strategic trends flagged important human security dimensions, outlining risks around inequalities and other socio-economic factors that are likely to drive instability and diminish UK’s global role and its national security.^[8] Yet despite the availability of such detailed and well-considered analysis, foreign policy and national security decision-makers continue to defund the human security agenda, and inadvertently make the world (and the country) less safe.

With civic space narrowing, citizens and states must be represented in regional and global dialogues, as well as in the institutions that underpin them. While the UK prides itself on a long historic track record of soft power, particularly through its academic institutions, think tanks, vibrant media, and civil society – these all require public investment. Without a well-resourced and stable civil service to help deliver on these objectives, this historic soft power asset risks weakening, with implications for peacebuilding outcomes.

Holding the pen, and running out of paper: what happens to penholding at the UN Security Council?

A major factor in the UK’s global security positioning is in the power of its permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The UK holds the pen on some key thematic and geographic files, convening peace and security conversations across a wide range of diverse states.

For a post-Brexit middle-power, the UK retains an impressive amount of influence in these soft power spaces. However, much of the political credit goes to historic investments by DFID and the Foreign Office in regional institutions such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the UN aid systems, and the Human Security agenda within NATO. Without sustained investment in these spaces, including in the civil service staff and structures, the UK’s soft power positioning will not be sustainable and it will not be able to build on its impressive historic track record of conflict resolution and peacebuilding through collective security and human security approaches.

Without diplomacy and resources to civilian-led processes, military solutions will be increasingly seen as “normal” and viable. A growing share of the population, particularly younger generations coming of age in a renewed period of geopolitical competition, may come to view conflict as an inevitable feature of international relations. Without diplomacy, there will be more bullets.^[9]

Anna Chernova has a background in foreign policy and international development, with a focus on human rights, conflict resolution and humanitarian action. She has worked in diplomatic and non-governmental sectors in Eurasia and West Asia. At the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, she led work on human rights and democracy, including parliamentary diplomacy efforts in conflict resolution, election observation and inquiries. Prior to joining the OSCE, Anna managed large-scale humanitarian operations in Russia’s North Caucasus at the close of the second Chechen war, and had worked on refugee issues with the UN in Bulgaria. Since 2014, she has been advising humanitarian organisations on foreign policy analysis, political risk and transnational threats. Her research and policy work focuses on gender and conflict, human security, counter-terrorism and human rights. She is particularly interested in conflict prevention and addressing root causes of violence driving humanitarian crises, such as extreme inequalities and authoritarianism. Anna’s academic background is in International Studies, Russia/Eastern Europe and Global Security. She is a US Fulbright Research and IREX Public Service Fellow, and is based in the UK.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.

^[1] Jonathan Luke Austin, Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard, “(De)securitisation dilemmas: Theorising the simultaneous enaction of securitisation and descuritisation,” Review of International Studies (2017) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-international-studies/article/desecuritisation-dilemmas-theorising-the-simultaneous-enaction-of-securitisation-and-desecuritisation/FE45D2C1D20870EC0E74DF54FA487C06

^[2] ACLED Conflict Watchlist 2026, “What is driving conflict today? A review of global trends,” (2025) https://acleddata.com/report/whats-driving-conflict-today-review-global-trends

^[3] ICRC https://www.icrc.org/sites/default/files/document/file_list/challenges-report_ihl-and-non-state-armed-groups.pdf; SIPRI, Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2025 https://www.sipri.org/publications/2026/sipri-fact-sheets/trends-international-arms-transfers-2025

^[4] UNDP, “Military escalation in the Middle East could push more than 30 million people into poverty worldwide,” (2026) https://www.undp.org/press-releases/military-escalation-middle-east-could-push-more-30-million-people-poverty-worldwide-un-development-programme-warns

^[5] Freedom House – Freedom in the World 2026, “The Growing Shadow of Autocracy,” https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2026/growing-shadow-autocracy

^[6] World Bank Group, “Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict,” (2018) https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/publication/pathways-for-peace-inclusive-approaches-to-preventing-violent-conflict

^[7] International Development Committee, “Future of UK aid and development assistance: interim report, Government Response,” https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/52758/documents/293937/default/

^[8] Ministry of Defence, “Global Strategic Trends out to 2055,” 7^th edition (2024) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68dba439dadf7616351e4bf8/GST_7_Final_post_pic_change_WEB.pdf

^[9] Forbes, “Heed General Mattis’ Warning, D.C.: Less Diplomacy Means ‘More Ammunition’”, June 2025https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewtisch/2025/06/18/heed-general-mattis-warning-dc-less-diplomacy-means-more-ammunition/

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International Relations and Geopolitics

Soft Power

Regions

United Kingdom

Beyond the Ballot Box: Democracy Is What Happens Between Elections

Accountability when It matters most

What democracy requires

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Resistance Is Not Enough: Rethinking the Belarusian Democratic Movement

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Civil Society Organisations Are Losing the Narrative War – How Can Trust Be Rebuilt?

Propaganda, legal threats, and institutional failings are making civil society more vulnerable

So how should civil society respond?

What leaders need in this moment

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No Shortcuts to Trust: Education, Civic Habits, and Social Resilience in Central Asia

Education as democratic infrastructure

Technology, trust and democratic resilience

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Gen Z, Agency and Engagement: From Tokenism to Meaningful Collaboration

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The Psychological Roots of Democratic Disengagement

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From Silence to Agency: What Post-Totalitarian Societies Must Learn from Their Stories

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How Can We Secure a Healthy Political and Social Order in a Fragmented World?

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Expert Briefing | ‘Rhetoric, Disorder, and the Crisis of Democracy’

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Op-ed | International Aid as a Line of Defence: What Happens to Human Security Without Soft Power?

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