In this episode Shalini and her guest discuss the changing valances of civil society over the last few decades. How can we assess today the geographically and historically specific understanding of civil society as a sphere outside of, and opposed to the realm of politics and state institutions and the market? Was this kind of view informed by a very specific political experience in Eastern and Central Europe, and could this limited understanding of civil society have unwittingly paved the way for some of the populist revolts that we have seen in recent years? Is it a mistake to equate civil society with emancipatory progressive ideas that disregard its potential for supporting regressive political agendas? What are the fundamental dilemmas about both the inherent plurality, and thus, the contradictory nature of civil society? Can we overcome some of these dilemmas by focusing on issues of systemic inequality and acknowledging the inextricable connection between the political economy of our globalized world and the fate of civic culture, both national, local, and transnational?
Guests featured in this episode:
Lenny Benardo, Executive Vice President of the Open Society Foundations, and the founding director of the Open Society Fellowship Program. Lenny also sits on the boards of Bard College, the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, the European Humanities University in Lithuania, and my very own institution, CEU. He has published numerous articles in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, the International Herald Tribune, Bookforum, American Prospect, and Prospect magazines. Having worked in Russia, the Baltics, Poland, and Hungary earlier in his career with the Open Society Foundations, he has witnessed first hand the exhilarating atmosphere of the democratic transition in eastern Europe.
GLOSSARY
What are the Open Society Foundations?
(00:35 or p.1 in the transcript)
The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve this mission, the Foundations seek to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. On a local level, the Open Society Foundations implement a range of initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. The Foundations place a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities.
Investor and philanthropist George Soros established the Open Society Foundations, starting in 1984, to help countries make the transition from communism. Their activities have grown to encompass the United States and more than 70 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Each foundation relies on the expertise of boards composed of eminent citizens who determine individual agendas based on local priorities: source
What are the Revolutions of 1989?
(04:48 or p.2 in the transcript)
Revolutions of 1989: collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the end of the period of the Cold War and the removal of the Iron Curtain between Eastern and Western Europe. Primarily, it was the disavowal of Communism by all of the Eastern European states that were in the Soviet sphere of influence after World War II.
The seeds of the revolution were present from the very beginning, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia were pre-cursors to the Revolutions of 1989, which were the final cataclysm that ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union itself just two years later.
The revolution began in Poland with the creation of Solidarity, the worker's movement that challenged the Communist government (the supposed representatives of the "workers' paradise) for authority. This was the first movement in the Eastern bloc that had not been brutally suppressed. This de-legitimized the Communist claim as representatives of the people's will. It continued when the Hungarian authorities decided to no longer interdict those seeking to leave the state by crossing the boundary between Hungary and Austria. This led to a flood of refugees from Eastern Europe streaming into Hungary to escape to the West. The defining event was then the collapse of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. With the exception of Romania, the revolutions were largely peaceful as the governments put up only token resistant to the clear will of the people for the end of Communist rule and democratic reform: source
What is the Black Lives Matter?
(16:28 or p.4 in the transcript)
Black Lives Matter (BLM): international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013, dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Black violence, especially in the form of police brutality. The name Black Lives Matter signals condemnation of the unjust killings of Black people by police (Black people are far more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people) and the demand that society value the lives and humanity of Black people as much as it values the lives and humanity of white people.
BLM activists have held large and influential protests in cities across the United States as well as internationally. A decentralized grassroots movement, Black Lives Matter is led by activists in local chapters who organize their own campaigns and programs. The chapters are affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, a nonprofit civil rights organization that is active in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom: source
What is the Occupy movement?
(16:32 or p.4 in the transcript)
TheOccupy protests: a series of international demonstrations primarily directed against capitalism and economic inequality, sparked in particular by what are now referred to as austerity measures, official action taken by governments in order to reduce spending in the face of economic problems. Kicking off in Wall Street in New York, the Occupy protests had then spread right across the world, including such prominent locations as Frankfurt, Rome, Sydney, Hong Kong, London and various cities in the United Kingdom. As well as marches involving as many as 10,000 protesters, the demonstrations involved large numbers of people 'camping out', or occupying, key venues in cities across the world. One notable example was around the entrances to St Paul's Cathedral in central London, where over 200 tents formed a ramshackle campsite. This subsequently caused officials to close the cathedral due to health and safety concerns, the first time its doors have been closed to the public since the Second World War Blitz: source
What is the Arab Spring?
(16:34 or p.4 in the transcript)
Arab Spring, wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes. The wave began when protests in Tunisia and Egypt toppled their regimes in quick succession, inspiring similar attempts in other Arab countries. Not every country saw success in the protest movement, however, and demonstrators expressing their political and economic grievances were often met with violent crackdowns by their countries’ security forces: source
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SR: Welcome to "Democracy in Question," the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world today. I'm Shalini Randeria, the Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. This is the sixth episode of season five, and it's my great pleasure to welcome Leonard Benardo, who is Executive Vice President of the Open Society Foundations. He served previously as Regional Director for Eurasia and the founding director of Open Society Fellowship Program.
Lenny is also a board member of the American University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan, the European Humanities University in Lithuania, and of my own institution, the Central European University. Having worked in Russia, the Baltics, Poland, and Hungary earlier in his career with the Open Society Foundations, Lenny has witnessed, firsthand, the exhilarating atmosphere of the democratic transition in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, in which, of course, the Open Society Foundations was a central actor. But he has also been a thoughtful observer of all the countertrends against democracy, civil society, and rule of law in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the world.
So, I look forward to discussing with him about the current tension-laden trajectory of these processes in the last three decades. If the world-historical moment of 1989 seemed to usher in the definitive triumph of liberal democracy across the globe, in retrospect, this optimism may have a hollow ring. With the rise of new populisms and autocracies, the anxieties generated by the war in Ukraine, for example, the survival, let alone the future of democracy, liberalism, and open society are at stake and the utopian promises of civil society that all of us were celebrating in the '80s and '90s seem to have been eclipsed by a range of threats and uncertainties.
So, what I would like to discuss with Lenny are the changing valances of civil society over the last few decades. How can we assess today the geographically and historically specific understanding of civil society as a sphere outside of, and opposed to the realm of politics and state institutions and the market? Was this kind of view informed by a very specific political experience in Eastern and Central Europe, and could this limited understanding of civil society have unwittingly paved the way for some of the populist revolts that we have seen in recent years?
Is it a mistake then to equate civil society with emancipatory progressive ideas that disregard its potential for supporting regressive political agendas? And I'd like to address with him a few fundamental dilemmas about both the inherent plurality, and thus, the contradictory nature of civil society. Can we overcome some of these dilemmas by focusing on issues of systemic inequality and acknowledging the inextricable connection between the political economy of our globalized world and the fate of civic culture, both national, local, and transnational? So, Lenny, welcome to the podcast and thanks for joining me. It's a great pleasure to have you on the podcast, to which I believe you've been listening now and then.
LB: Yes, a faithful listener, Shalini. And it's a great honor and pleasure to be with you here today.
SR: So, let me start with the concept of civil society itself. The historical project of rejuvenating the idea of open society was tied to the quasi-utopian potential that many located in the discourses and practices of civil society amidst the crumbling edifice of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe, a region, Lenny, that you know so well. How do you remember the euphoria surrounding the role of civil society in the period preceding and following 1989, and what were the expectations about the role of civil society then?
LB: It was very much anticipated, Shalini, in the wake of the revolutions in 1989, that, indeed, civil society would be the social formation and the engine by which change, democratic change, would eventually transpire. And part of the reason for that is a kind of question of default, the state was no longer seen in any way as having, at that time, a progressive and productive role to play in broader social change. The state, in many ways, had been aligned with, and was seen as a central partner to the party.
And with the collapse of state socialism or communism, the state was seen to become something of a historical vestige, and it was going to be society, in the eyes of many, that would lead the change. I will say, looking back at 1989, or 1991, when the Soviet Union imploded that December, that, in some ways, there was a kind of transformative understanding of the role of civil society that took us past elections, being the kind of hallmark institution that allowed for democratic change, whether you are able to predict an election ex ante or change it ex post, having the authority for free and fair elections was seen as the kind of primus inter pares feature of a democratic state.
But I think there were lessons learned from the late '80s and early '90s, that what happened in the earlier part of that decade, when it came to Spain, or Portugal, or Brazil, that elections were not sufficient. They were a necessary condition for democratic change, but they were not a sufficient condition. And the role of social organizations was going to be a far more necessary part of the democratic firmament that would allow for social change. So what we saw in the late '80s and early '90s, of course, was an explosion of what became known as, in the vernacular, non-governmental organizations, this constellation of different non-governmental groups, whether in human rights, whether in public health, whether in economic development, whether in independent and free media, they were seen by many, either explicitly or implicitly, as those ingredients that would be the determining features in how change occurred in these respective countries.
SR: Could you share something about your own experience of working with the OSF, setting up some of these NGOs in Russia, given the problems faced by civil society in Russia today, looking back at the '90s, what are the kinds of mistakes, do you think, that were made?
LB: I think mistake number one, in hindsight, Shalini, is really, I would say the question of hubris. I think the expectations of being able to build fully anew that culture and society was one of the cardinal mistakes that so many individuals made when looking at the possibility for change. That is to say, how culture thought of as an institution, as a set of social practices can't just be reborn, de novo, with a sleight of hand, abracadabra, but it's something that has many, many features of and elements from what preceded it.
Many of us had aspirations to do, well-intentioned aspirations, I should say, but hubristic aspirations, nonetheless. I can say that I was part of an effort in the mid-90s, called the Transformation of the Humanities. Just listen to those words that somehow, we were going to transform Russian humanities. Again, the best of intentions, but the idea that external institutions were going to be able to come in and completely uproot and transform the humanities in Russia. Looking back at it, I frankly shudder a bit. It's not to say that nothing good came of this. Many, many fantastic titles were translated and published throughout the Russian Federation, many so-called classics and social science and humanities began to fill the shelves of local libraries and university libraries.
And to that, I am thrilled that those opportunities were taken advantage of, but I think it was the larger sense that, indeed, there was this possibility to take Russia on a radically different and divergent path that it had been on by concerted programmatic investments, that I think was a major, major mistake that we only look back on now, as I say, with some trepidation.
SR: I mean, the translation project was certainly a great success. Could you share something about the successes of organizations like the OSF in bringing about a change?
LB: Those successes, Shalini, were myriad and manifold, there's no question at all. In Russia, just an example of rule of law, helping establish a cohort of practicing lawyers who would be trained in basic standards around criminal justice reform, and administrative reform, other kinds of legal reform, this was a huge advance for people who were fundamentally untrained or trained only in Soviet models of legal governance that were frankly ill-equipped to help in thinking about the kind of legal elements of a democratic state.
And just on the human rights side, you know, we helped fund a long roster of very, very important human rights practitioners who were able to guide and counsel so many institutions on the necessary human rights protection. We worked on all sorts of public health investments when it came to TB, and malaria, and HIV. And then broadly in education, the support that we gave to new private institutions such as the European University in St. Petersburg, or the School of Social Economic Sciences that was founded by Theodore Shonin, or The New Economic school. I think that was a colossal achievement in terms of bringing together new human and intellectual resources in the country.
And then the same in the sphere of general education, in the area of mass media. Tragically, a few months ago, one of the great partners of ours, Manana Aslamazyan, died when she was hit by a car in Yerevan. But Manana was the Head of Internews, which was an organization that we supported greatly for many years, that helped strengthen and advance local television programming and radio programming, especially in the far-flung regions of Russia. And then just the internet. It’s unimaginable today to have a partnership with the Russian government as we once did. We set up internet centers in over 30 public universities, the first internet centers of their kind in the Russian Federation. So, there were a slew of very profound programmatic engagements and interventions over, frankly, a few decades.
SR: So, Lenny, I'm wondering, do you think a second mistake was to somehow see civil society as anti-politics, civil society as opposed to the realm of politics? So, to use Konrad's phrase, politics of anti-politics are counter-power that cannot take power and does not wish to do so. Do you think it was counterproductive to think of civil society in this way because, in a sense, it was like a retreat from the institutional realm of politics, and that somehow left political organization to parties, which were untouched by rule of law, human rights, humanistic ideals, and new intellectual trajectories, which the new educational institutions, then established, helped to build.
LB: No question at all. First, though, you have to recognize the fact that it would have been a leap of faith at that point in the late '80s and the '90s when politics was seen as something that the state controlled and that was tied to what had been the Communist Party. The idea that civil society actors, civil society institutions, were going to embrace the notion of the political in the wake of the collapse of state socialism, it's illusory, that would never have taken place, and it would be ahistorical to think otherwise. However, I think the fact that it didn't take place laid the seeds for so many of the problems that came later, when instead of embracing the political and embracing the fact that politics is about power, it's about resource distribution, it's about inequality, and it's about things that are natural components of everyday life, by not embracing that, it gave cannon fodder to those willing to impugn these groups for allegedly kind of standing above society, being political without saying that they're political.
So, I do think the György Konrad's notion of the anti-political was a failure in many ways. I should say one last thing, and that is the notion that the non-governmental sector, the so-called third sector, was somehow a public good in and of itself, that everything that went on in the third sector was representative of something positive, progressive, forward-thinking, and democratic, that civil society is representative of a very broad cast of institutional characters, some of which we would prefer to close our eyes to, some of which we're happy to sign checks for, but the idea that NGO is synonymous with progressive or democratic is, of course, a terrible error.
SR: So, Lenny, let me ask you to develop this argument further, maybe in two different directions, if you'd like. One would be to say, how should we then understand civil society movements? And there is a whole gamut of them, right, in the U.S. from QAnon, to various alt-right organizations, to anti-vaxxers, to anti-abortion activists. Do you see that somehow as a reaction to the progressive politics of civil society, the third sector? So that's one train of thought that we could develop together.
The other is to say, although we saw some of these developments of retrogressive right-wing movements, we also saw some very positive developments recently. We did see the Black Lives Matter movement. Just before that, we had seen the Occupy, Arab Spring. So, it seems that we have sort of two strands in totally different directions with very little connection to one another, the right-wing ones being funded transnationally in many ways, whereas Occupy or Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, springing up quite spontaneously in many places simultaneously. Would that be a reading which you would subscribe to?
LB: Well, let's unpack it a little bit, Shalini. In terms of the first part of your question, the degree to which kind of reactionary retrogressive groups were responding, in some ways, to the more as it were forward democratic segments of the non-governmental community, I don't see it as a reaction necessarily, I see it as exploiting and taking advantage of the broader civil society space that allows for, and should allow for a broad diversity of organizations and institutions to fill that vacuum. I see it as less of a reaction and more as opportunistic.
In most ways, especially in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, questions around inequality were, for better or for worse, and I think, frankly, the latter, considered to be very much in line with state socialism and that, somehow, liberalism, and capitalism, and all of its manifestations would allow the transcendence of a focus on equality where liberty and democracy would be the kind of standard-bearer subjects. I think that was a huge mistake. And, of course, what we experienced in a number of environments with rapid privatization where people were essentially selling, or exchanging, or substituting power for property that led to deep and enduring forms of stratification in society that made the question of inequality paramount, but the attention to it, alas, quite insignificant.
And in some ways, some of those conservative responses, I think, we're able to, again, in an opportunistic way, feed off of that inattention. But at the end of the day, I see it less as a response to so-called progressive NGOs. In terms of what you're describing now with social movements, you mentioned the movement for black lives, you mentioned Occupy, what's interesting here is the way in which NGOs themselves were no longer seen by many as the kind of necessary intermediating organs or institutions with the state and social movements, as we've seen throughout history and forms of collective action, were seen by many in the social realm as a much more powerful lever to acquire those kinds of particular demands.
When I think of the movement for black lives or I think about Occupy, I might offer a slight corrective to your suggestion of their spontaneity. Certainly, they are not centuries-old social formations, but at the same time, I think that they were much more complicated and evolving to the point in which they emerged maybe more full-fledged on the national, and indeed, global scene. I should say that for a foundation, social movements can be a bit of a conundrum. Funding an NGO is more or less unproblematic, right? You have a director of an NGO, you got a bank account, the legal entity. With a social movement, there isn't often, especially with leaderless movements, a person to whom you can, as it were, be in contact with about a grant proposal. There isn't necessarily a bank account, you know, per se. You're dealing, especially with a lot of these leaderless movements with something that is quite hard for a traditional foundation.
But on the positive side of the ledger, and why I think, at the end of the day, social movements will have more efficacy and power, than, perhaps, standard NGOs, is because of the question of legitimacy. And NGOs have often been lacking, for different reasons, some because they've been impugned, and maligned, and castigated so terribly by their opponents, both in society and by the state, sometimes they don't have member basis. And so their legitimacy comes from, where, exactly? That's a tough question. Social movements don't have that kind of legitimacy problem. They're seen as much more legitimate actors, in many ways, when it comes to pressing forward on the issues that are of greatest concern to them.
SR: Absolutely right. I agree with you entirely. And in many countries of the global South, there's been this huge tension between NGOs and social movements, because it becomes also then a question of representation. Whom do you represent, and in whose name are you speaking when you make demands.
LB: Exactly.
SR: So I think you really put your finger to something which is really crucial about the way that the question of legitimacy has really dogged NGOs. There's another question that I wanted to ask you. Listening to you, I was thinking: We are faced with identity politics of a kind that we have not seen in a long time. And the question here would be, how would one foster a strong sense of solidarity in societies, which are so politically and ideologically polarized as ours are today so that even social movements often are single-issue movements rather than broad movements? I'm thinking of reproductive rights movements, which were very strong in the '90s around the Cairo Conference. And I was asking myself of late, although there's so much of a backlash against abortion rights in so many countries, we haven't seen a resurgence of the transnational movement to protect women's reproductive rights. So something seems to have changed, and what exactly could it be?
LB: Yes, although I will say when it comes to reproductive rights, there have been, as well, some extraordinary achievements, whether we look at Ireland, or Argentina, or Mexico, even the Indian Supreme Court this last week. So it's certainly not all gloom and doom in that respect. But I think at the end of the day, we have to be honest with ourselves. And movements around single issues are going to be more successful because it is easier to corral people around a necessary advocacy line on one issue than many issues. That's just standard social movement theory. But the question, though, remains: how do you achieve broader senses of solidarity, especially in an identitarian age, when we seem to be cleaving off solidarities and substituting them for very narrow and singular ones? The only way to my mind to really rebuild, rejuvenate, and reimagine forms of global solidarity is to be as pluralistic as possible. I do fear that the kind of salad days of identitarianism that I guess we're in right now put limits on or throw out challenges to those forms of broad-based solidarity despite the kind of promiscuous usage of intersectionality.
So it's complicated. And I don't diminish at all massive work that has to be done. And when we talk about leaderless movements, things like Occupy, I do think it makes it, in fact, that much harder. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a Leninist, but I do think that organizations, if they're going to be strong, and certainly social movements, if they're going to be powerful, the leaderlessness aspect of them is a massive challenge to ensuring their endurance and viability.
SR: I think you're absolutely right because leaderlessness may, in the beginning, not be such a problem. But if movements are not going to dissipate, if they're really going to become serious contenders for power, and with that, I return to my initial question to you on this understanding of civil society as the utopian realm of non-hierarchical, powerless relationships, if we are to depart from that and ask ourselves, "Can social movements transform themselves into actors, which are strongly political actors," I think then it really becomes an obstacle. Just as you very rightly pointed out, the delegitimization of NGOs as serving foreign interests or illegitimately representing liberal cosmopolitan elites or international finance. What we have seen then, and Hungary is a good example, are pro-government NGOs, so-called GONGOs, who are, in a sense, mimicking a civil society. And that, of course, in a context where there is not only disinformation but also where there is a lot of apathy, and the question then would be, what kinds of strategies do we need under those conditions?
LB: You’ve drawn an excellent example, in Hungary, something very similar, of course, has unfolded over the years in Russia, and, in some ways, civil society, has been hit by two very powerful attacks. On the one hand is, there has been a very intense campaign now for many years that has a number of different actors participating in it to really malign civil society as being a kind of Western-funded and part of a cabal of financial elites, it's often code for forms of antisemitism, and the like. So, on the one hand, civil society groups have been on the receiving end of this kind of attack. And, on the other hand, there's been the imitation politics that our very close mutual comrade, Ivan Krastev, has written about so eloquently in which the state is trying to do what was done much more authentically, if you will, on the side of civil society. And they're doing it, of course, with service provision because those are the kinds of groups that they can tolerate.
So there are a lot of tailwinds that civil society groups face today, and the question is how to rejuvenate this movement. Getting back to a previous point we made, I think civil society groups, ones that we believe, and I say we here as a Democrat, as progressive, that have a democratic and progressive cast to them, I think we need to admit and concede that these are political institutions. These are political organizations. Not politics in terms of vying for electoral power, but politics as in other forms of power, and especially questions of equality and inequality. I don't think we could hide behind any kind of illusory veil of the apolitical.
I also think that it's important for groups, whether NGOs, or whether social movements themselves, to actually not also have to hide under the pillow about the sources of their revenue. I think we can all recognize that NGOs and social movements are not money-makers. This is not part of the corporate sector. They're not working along the lines of a bottom line, and that they're going to have to be funded in different ways by philanthropy the same way that the BBC and National Public Radio and, you know, lots of other public interest institutions understand that their future is not going to be one in which they're able to absolve themselves of philanthropic and charitable support.
And I think that we need to recognize that, and indeed embrace it. With social movements, I think the opportunities are really very great as long as there's a recognition that inequality cannot be divorced from questions of, say, civil and political liberties. Recognizing that the economic and the political are already intertwined is something that will also be of benefit to the credibility, and legitimacy, and viability of both social movements and NGOs.
SR: Thank you so much, Lenny, for these insights into both the politics and the practices of civil society organizations, both non-governmental organizations, professional ones, but also social movements of various kinds, national, local, also transnational ones, based on decades of your experience of working with these organizations and movements. So, thank you so much for being with me today.
LB: Thank you so much, Shalini. And I look forward to continuing the conversation.
SR: So let me wrap up with some of the main points of the conversation. Civil society was seen as an engine of democratic change as against the state which was seen as not only being a historical vestige in Central and Eastern Europe, but there was always also recognition that elections, although necessary, are not sufficient to bring about social and democratic change. There was a huge euphoria about the transformative potential of the role that civil society actors, non-governmental organizations could play. The hubris, however, was the expectation that one could build a new society and culture, especially political culture in this particular region. There are, however, very successful examples of civil society organizations, and activities, practices, both funded by philanthropy from abroad and those which arose spontaneously, and there are also examples of mistakes made.
If you look at some of the successes of those years of trying to establish open democratic liberal civil society in Russia, for example, one could point to rule of law initiatives which helped establish a cohort of practicing lawyers who brought about legal reform, administrative reform, human rights practitioners who could guide and counsel institutions, public health initiatives for investment in reducing tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, educational initiatives in setting up universities like the European University of St. Petersburg, for example, strengthening mass media, especially local radio and television, which were then independent of the government. In many of these areas, we have, however, seen very strong backlashes against NGOs, NGOs which are now being, not only seen as enemies of the state, disloyal to the government, but also as the foreign hand vilified as part of international conspiracies to undermine the state.
Over the last years, we have seen, not only the rise of many right-wing regressive NGOs, furthering political agendas, which are anything but progressive, but simultaneously, we've also seen the emergence of many a social movement, often leaderless, but spreading very quickly from the national stage to the transnational one. Think of, for example, in the last few years, the Occupy movement, the Black Lives movement. Two questions are interesting in this connection, one, the legitimacy deficit that NGOs suffer from is something that social movements don't. And yet, there's always the open question of how both NGOs and social movements are being funded. They need not be defensive about their funding because philanthropy could help with supporting public interest.
On the other hand, the one question that many of these movements and NGOs working in the field of human rights of political rights and civil liberties have neglected is the question of inequality. And they've done so at their own peril because of deep and enduring stratification that has taken place in many societies around the world. And that is one of the reasons why we are seeing a rise of populist, soft authoritarian regimes, and of civil society organizations that are tied into and supported by these autocratic rulers.
This was the sixth episode of season five. Thank you very much for listening to us. Join us again for the next episode in two weeks' time. Please be back and listen to any episode you might have missed. And, of course, let your friends know about the podcast if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the work of the CEU at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch\democracy.