TAI Weekly

TAI Weekly | Market Integrity vs Self-Dealing

By TAI (Role at TAI)
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TAI Weekly

August 25, 2026

Dear readers,

Even for August there is a lot to cover this week from prediction market threats to electoral integrity to debt reform prospects to whether the next United Nations Secretary General will be a champion for civil society. 

But we start this week with a series of commentaries on oligarchy published by Project Syndicate, including two contrasting views on the merits of wealth taxes, and concerns on the overthrow of shareholder democracy. While U.S. centric the series has resonance for people worldwide.

Happy reading!

TAI team

What's New

“Even a technically credible policy cannot survive a process that brings people in only after the decisions have been made.” This is one of the lessons from Benjamin Hornsby-Odoi’s review of Ghana’s mineral royalties and a national plan that ultimately never came to fruition. He examines what the experience reveals about participation and natural resource governance.

Brazil’s next election carries consequences well beyond its borders, according to this piece from CONNECTAS. The outcome could reshape the political right’s position across Latin America, as well as the future of Mercosur, Amazon climate policy, and Brazil’s relationships with the United States, China, and the BRICS. Pair with their podcast, examining troubling signs of democratic backsliding across the Americas, including Daniel Ortega’s announcement that there will be no more elections in Nicaragua and Nayib Bukele’s efforts to become president for life in violation of El Salvador’s Constitution.

Amélie Baudot has been appointed as the new chief of the International Fund for Public Interest Media (IFPIM) as Nishant Lalwani steps down after four years at the helm. Lalwani co-founded IFPIM with James Deane in 2022, and the organization has since funded more than 140 media organizations across 35 countries. 

Repression of online and offline freedoms is increasingly coordinated. In, “Changing Tides: Adapting to the Digi-Verse” in Alliance magazine,  Bridget Andere and Nikki Gladsstone considers the implications for civic space and digital rights.

If the United Kingdom wants to rebuild credibility with Commonwealth countries, debt reform may be one of its most powerful tools. A new Devex opinion piece makes the case for action on debt. 

In Ghana, the foreign minister is calling for a system of reparatory justice that would support education grants, venture capital for entrepreneurs, health research, debt relief, and debt cancellation. Aleem Maqbool explores the country’s position in this BBC article. 

Roy Virah-Sawmy sees a moment of opportunity for civil society as new philanthropic capital accumulates alongside a period of democratic decline. His new essay argues that the challenge is not only how philanthropic money moves, but who owns and builds the infrastructure that civil society depends on.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to shape public financial management, raising new questions about how governments use the technology and how its use should be governed. The International Budget Partnership examines where AI is being used in public financial management across 82 countries, from systems already performing fiscal tasks to early strategies and pilot programs.

Zambia’s election saw a win for incumbent Hakainde Hichilema, although the opposition leader has gone into hiding and promised to contest the result. Read competing views on whether the outcomes signal democratic progress or decline.

The race to be the next UN Secretary General is heating up and CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation is wondering how candidates would engage with civil society and help protect civic space. During UN General Assembly hearings, CIVICUS put the question to candidate Olara Otunnu, whose response focused on bridging the gap between global institutions and local realities. 

Ecuador’s security crackdown has produced some tentative gains, but concerns over human rights abuses and democratic erosion are growing. Americas Quarterly considers the tensions surrounding Daniel Noboa’s approach and what comes next for the country. 

From Our Members

HEWLETT FOUNDATION: Announced at the Aspen Security Forum a new five-year grantmaking effort that aims to provide $100 million through 2031 to help ensure that emerging technologies develop in ways that keep people safe while fostering innovation. The “Emerging Technology and Security Initiative” will focus on artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing in the United States and around the world.

MACARTHUR FOUNDATION: President John Palfrey joins McKnight Foundation President Tonya Allen and California Community Foundation President and CEO Miguel A. Santana in reflecting on what philanthropy can do to protect communities, defend democracy, and prepare for future disruption. Drawing on experiences from Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles, their Stanford Social Innovation Review article, “Philanthropy: No City Stands Alone”, offers five lessons for an era of disruption.

ESSENTIAL LISTENING:

Take or Give, a new podcast co-hosted by Alex Martins and Lorriann Robinson, covers the aid and international development sector.

TOOLS AND TRENDS FOR FUNDERS

Philanthropy is increasingly being challenged to rethink its relationship with the natural world. Maria Amalia Souza, Founder of Casa Socio-Environmental Fund, argues that funders should move beyond a primarily human-centered approach and recognize the interdependence between people and nature. Her reflections make the case for a broader understanding of what philanthropy can protect.

The fortunes generated by the AI boom could trigger a major new wave of philanthropic giving. The Economist considers how this new wealth could support underfunded social issues, strengthen nonprofit talent, and address some of the risks created by AI. 

The nonprofit sector is facing a talent crisis as senior fundraisers retire and fewer young professionals enter the field. In Stanford Social Innovation Review, Mark Dobosz argues that a transactional, metrics-driven culture is contributing to the exodus. The piece makes the case for treating fundraising as a long-term vocation built on relationships and transformational giving.

Growing interest in civic life is prompting more funders to reconsider their role beyond traditional grantmaking. PACE CEO Shannon Green argues that every funder has an opportunity to support civic life, particularly at a time when democratic participation faces growing pressure. 

ESSENTIAL WATCHING:

Transparency International UK has launched a three-part documentary miniseries produced in partnership with Democracy for Sale, examining how the UK’s political system has become increasingly dependent on the super-rich and what this means for democracy.

Focused Topic of the Week

"Market Integrity vs Self-Dealing"

Corruption rarely holds still long enough to be regulated; it migrates toward whichever terrain remains under-scrutinized, as these three stories illustrate.

The Anti-Corruption Data Collective's inquiry into prediction markets ahead of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections captures one such frontier: a financial instrument that monetizes political forecasting is now positioned to interact with the very elections it prices, raising the uncomfortable possibility that markets designed to aggregate information could instead become vectors for manipulating it. Because this will be the first electoral cycle since such markets went mainstream, the risk is less a known failure mode than an open question. This is precisely the condition corruption exploits best, operating fastest where oversight frameworks have not yet caught up with the object they are meant to govern.

Kazakhstan's Kashagan dispute shows what happens once that lag matures into settled practice. The government's allegation that $10.7 billion in contracts were compromised by self-dealing, inflated costs, and bribery. Detailed by Thomas Rowley, and building on ICIJ's 2024 Caspian Cabals investigation, allegations are being addressed not through a public trial but through confidential arbitration, a venue that by design limits what citizens, journalists, or even other branches of government can verify. The scale of the sum matters less than the procedural fact that its adjudication is happening behind closed doors: extraction-sector corruption of this magnitude survives not because it is undetectable but because the mechanisms built to resolve it are themselves opaque, converting a public accountability question into a private commercial one.

An Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative study of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia asks, in effect, whether transparency initiatives can close that gap, and its answer is qualified: publishing extractive-sector data improves investment climates and anti-corruption outcomes only under certain conditions, not as an automatic function of disclosure itself. Read against the prediction-market and Kashagan cases, the throughline remains that transparency is a precondition for accountability, not a substitute for it. 

JOBS

CALLS

  • Grants for Building Narrative Power in Europe - European AI & Society Fund. Grants of up to €150,000 are available through its €2 million program for organizations working on public interest narratives around AI and data centers, AI and jobs, or AI and young people. Deadline: August 31, 2026.

  • Resilient Futures Call 2026 - Grants of up to $50,000 USD for organizations and individuals working on nonpartisan initiatives connecting climate resilience with political leadership. Deadline: September 4, 2026.

  • People Powered is accepting applications for two global programmes offering funding and mentorship to democracy changemakers working to strengthen participation and civic engagement worldwide.

  • Democracy Stories Lab, an open call by People Powered, invites creators worldwide to submit short videos, illustrations, or graphics imagining a more democratic future. Selected submissions will receive cash prizes and amplification through People Powered and the Democracy Narratives Alliance networks. Applications open until September 14, 2026.

  • Call for Papers: Fiscal Policy and Sustainable Development in the Global South - LSE International Inequalities Institute and UNU-WIDER. The academic workshop will take place November 6 in London and will explore fiscal policy design, informal employment, ecological and energy transitions, and fiscal digitalization and governance. Deadline: September 20, 2026.

  • NED Grants 2026 - National Endowment for Democracy. Funding is available for NGOs, civil society organizations, independent media, and other nongovernmental organizations working on human rights, democratic institutions, independent media, transparency, civic participation, and related priorities worldwide. Deadline: September 21, 2026.

  •  The European Endowment for Democracy provides rolling funding for local democracy organizations in the Eastern Partnership, Middle East and North Africa, and Western Balkans & Turkey.

  • The Fifth Element invites blog contributions on systems transformation from practitioners and researchers, drawing on both lived experience and analysis across diverse perspectives.

  • School for Thinktankers, On Think Tanks. February 1-5, 2027.

 CALENDAR

We’d love to hear from you on how we can further improve TAI Weekly to better serve your needs in program management on the transparency, accountability, improved grantmaking and civic space. Please direct your feedback to [email protected] or

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