TAI Weekly

TAI Weekly | Democracy and the Economic Systems That Sustain It

By TAI (Role at TAI)
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TAI Weekly

May 04, 2026

Dear readers,

For those who care about independent civil society and rights defenders, the Zambian government’s decision to block RightsCon just days before the conference was due to take place is the latest warning sign. Mouna Ben garga sees a pattern in escalating transnational repression, moving from “restricting organizations, to restricting networks, to now targeting the spaces where civil society comes together.” Want to share your take? If you are working for civil society in an EU member state you can complete the Agency for Fundamental Rights survey assessing civic space operating conditions - deadline May 10.

Meanwhile, this Weekly offers much more to catch up on from dirty gold to a progressive tech playbook to a call on wealth holders not to take the democratic dividend for granted. Plus, the usual jobs and events.

And, finally, we were glad to celebrate World Press Freedom Day this past Sunday. Thanks to all the brave independent media outlets and journalists for doing what you do.

Happy reading!

TAI team

What's New

Almost ten years after China’s Overseas NGO Law took effect, Mark Sidel examines its enduring impact. Foreign foundations and nonprofits remain active in the country, but tightening restrictions have sharply limited their ability to engage in advocacy and have constrained broader civil society space.

D-Hub has launched its Anti-Authoritarian Toolkit, a practical resource for those on the frontlines of democratic defense. Spanning playbooks, podcasts, and videos, it offers concrete ways to understand how modern authoritarian power operates and what can be done about it.

A New York Times investigation by Justin ScheckSimón Posada, and Federico Ríos exposes how the United States Mint has become the final link in a chain that launders foreign gold, much of it illegally mined. The guardrails meant to prevent human rights abuses in global gold mining have collapsed, and rising prices are drawing wealthy buyers into a cycle that fuels the very instability they seek to hedge against.

Accountability Lab and the Digital Democracy Initiative have developed a practical field toolkit for grassroots civil society in South Asia. “Advocacy Under Constraint” is designed to support more deliberate, risk-aware, and strategically grounded advocacy in contexts where civic engagement is growing more complex.

Sabine Saad explores how grassroots actors, including youth-led movements, local NGOs, and community-based initiatives, are opening alternative pathways for environmental engagement and climate action in Lebanon. She shows that decentralized actors can help fill critical governance gaps and advance climate justice, even within fragile political contexts.

In this Accountability Keywords blog, Tiago C. Peixoto speaks on openwashing in the age of AI and the potential of generative AI to help citizens use open budget data for government accountability. An experiment with budget data from a Latin American oversight institution revealed a concerning failure mode, prompting three key implications for AI and accountability work.

A new paper by Wei Shen looks at Chinese investment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's critical mineral sector and shows how investors have adjusted their approaches in response to evolving neoextractivist dynamics. It also draws out wider implications for Chinese involvement in Africa’s critical mineral industries.

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has published a guide on gender mainstreaming in implementing the Escazú Agreement. Commissioned by the Conference of the Parties, it outlines measures to support women’s full exercise of rights to information, participation, and justice in environmental matters. Available in Spanish and English.

The Pattiro team examines shortcomings in Indonesia's official grievance channel in the delivery of flagship national programs, including the free school meals program. Despite its limitations, the channel remains an important accountability mechanism worth strengthening.

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative's 2025 Progress Report describes how EITI has been helping countries tackle corruption risks, strengthen revenue management, and inform energy-related decisions.

Gastón Wright, Co-Director at Civic House, reports in Alliance Magazine on the shift of civic space repression into online environments, and on a nonprofit tracking digital restrictions on civil society. While physical crackdowns and restrictive laws persist, limitations on civic freedoms are increasingly unfolding in digital spaces as well.

At the Global Progressive Mobilization in Barcelona, a panel called for a progressive tech playbook. Spain’s creation of Europe’s first AI supervisory agency and laws against AI-generated intimate images of minors were cited as examples showing that regulation and innovation can coexist. Speakers argued that human-centered AI and social media systems are a core part of innovation.

ESCR-Net members and partners have submitted a vision for what a truly just transition mechanism must deliver to the United Arab Emirates's Just Transition Work Programme: transformative, grounded in human rights, and led by the communities most affected by climate injustice.

Two new Global Narrative Hive blogs show how feminist activists, digital researchers, and communications practitioners in Kenya used Velma, an open-source tool adapted for social movements, to track “family values” narratives shaping online discourse on LGBTQ+ lives, gender roles, and reproductive health. 

An op-ed in Spanish by Kevin Koenig and Vladimir Pinto of Amazon Watch argues that Amazonian Indigenous Peoples are not waiting for governments to define the path toward a just transition; they are already building it. Recognizing that leadership, they write, is the minimum condition for Santa Marta to mark a turning point rather than repeat the region's oil-driven history. 

From Our Members

OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS: In Benue State, Nigeria, communities are advancing a people-centered model of public safety to break cycles of violence. Supported by Lawyers Alert, an OSF grantee, the approach puts communities at the center of shaping safety policies in partnership with the government, redefining safety through everyday realities like moving and working without fear.

MACARTHUR FOUNDATION: Points to impact investing as a way for foundations to expand their reach. This week, its grantee Mission Investors Exchange convened more than 750 participants at its national conference, bringing together leaders focused on investments that strengthen communities, including a plenary moderated by President John Palfrey.

TAI SECRETARIAT: Michael Jarvis argues that democratic decline is no longer a distant political concern but a material risk for markets and private wealth. As institutions that underpin economic stability—rule of law, accountability, and transparency—erode, so does the predictability that capital depends on. Jarvis makes the case that civil society is a critical, yet underfunded, pillar of this system, acting as a safeguard against corruption, opacity, and institutional breakdown. 

ESSENTIAL LISTENING:

The Feminist Economics Podcast is now streaming on major podcast platforms and brings together scholars, activists, and practitioners to connect ideas to action and research to real-world change.

TOOLS AND TRENDS FOR FUNDERS

One important question before philanthropy right now is not whether rapid response funding is vital, but whether philanthropic efforts to resource ecosystems can rise to meet the needs of organizers. In a piece in Nonprofit Quarterly,  Santana Moreno makes the case for coordinating investments with shared organizing strategies for long-term democratic transformation.

A new AI-enabled analysis from Kindora maps the gap between what nonprofits search for and what grant supply actually offers, surfacing a structural mismatch with implications for how funders think about their portfolios.

The Joffe Trust shares six lessons learned about achieving national impact as a funder in the United Kingdom, drawing on its own experience to offer practical guidance for others working at that scale.

Through desk research and in-depth conversations with funders, Peace Direct and partners have identified four flexible funding models currently in use: Direct Champions, Connectors, Experimenters, and Convener-Advocates. Their research also references TAI's own study on Global South intermediaries.

ESSENTIAL LISTENING:

The Kickback podcast’s new episode maps the global research agenda for beneficial ownership transparency, featuring Open Ownership’s Thom Townsend and Alanna Markle with host Tom Shipley. The podcast explores applications across sectors, key methodological challenges, and calls for academic research to demonstrate the economic value of transparency.

Focused Topic of the Week

Democracy Cannot Be Separated from the Economy That Shapes It

New Foreign Affairs analysis of wealthy elites and their bargains with authoritarian leaders reveals the risks of relying on authoritarinism. Oligarchs who back strongmen in search of stability or protection for their assets tend eventually to discover that concentrated power is not reliably loyal to anyone. But the more important question may not be what happens to elites once they have made that bargain, it is why the conditions for such bargains keep forming in the first place. Pedro Rossi's argument cuts to that deeper level: inequality is not just a social problem but a democratic one, because extreme concentrations of wealth translate directly into concentrations of political influence that hollow out the institutions meant to represent everyone. On the flip side, Daniela Blei contends that Brazil’s focus on social inclusion and equity has been a key factor in advancing democratic consolidation, standing in contrast to more troubling regional dynamics.

The just transition debate brings this tension into especially sharp relief. As governments negotiate pathways away from fossil fuels, there is intense pressure (from communities, workers, and human rights advocates gathered at forums like last week’s Santa Marta Conference) to ensure that the transition does not simply reproduce old patterns of dispossession under a green banner. A transition that is designed around capital flows and investment incentives, without centering the workers and communities most affected, risks generating the same political backlash and legitimacy deficits that have fueled authoritarian populism elsewhere. 

What this suggests for philanthropy working at the intersection of transparency, accountability, and governance is that macro-economic structures can no longer be treated as background conditions. Effective and fair tax policy, public investment in essential services, and the gendered distribution of economic gains are not peripheral to democratic consolidation, they are among its most important preconditions. Funding ideas that challenge unfair economic systems, as TAI's work with the Collaborative for a Gender Just Economy seeks to do, is not a detour from governance work. It may be some of its most consequential terrain.

ESSENTIAL LISTENING:

Kellea Miller of the Human Rights Funders Network leads a powerful episode of the Global Citizen Voices of Change podcast on fearless feminist activism, bringing forward voices and stories from the frontlines.

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