Global development cooperation is undergoing profound transformation. Long-standing assumptions about aid, power, and partnership are being unsettled by aid withdrawal, geopolitical realignments, the climate crisis, rising inequality, and technological disruption. Within this shifting terrain, global civil society—often critiqued for the “NGO-isation” of collective action—faces renewed scrutiny. High-profile efforts to “localise” development, celebrated as steps toward locally led agendas, have instead revealed how such reforms can reproduce and deepen existing hierarchies of power rather than dismantle them. Against this backdrop, the role of citizenship and civil society in shaping development is both more contested and more essential than ever.

This panel provides an opportunity for our Working Group to take stock of where we are and to consider what is required to move toward reimagined futures that place citizenship and civil society at their centre. We invite contributions that examine how these spheres are changing across scales and contexts; that analyse how new or dominant actors are “stepping up” with practices that expand civic space and strengthen citizen action; and that investigate how communities and movements are asserting agency in the face of structural constraints.

We particularly encourage submissions that interrogate the roles of diverse actors—governments, multilateral institutions, NGOs, philanthropy, and grassroots initiatives—in a system in flux. Of special interest are bottom-up perspectives that highlight cases where citizens, communities, or movements have successfully driven agendas from the ground up, shifting narratives away from top-down aid toward solidarity, mutuality, and locally rooted change. By drawing these insights together, the panel seeks to illuminate both the challenges and the transformative possibilities for citizenship and civil society in contemporary development.

This panel is organised by the EADI Working Group on "Citizenship and Civil Society in Development"