What’s Next for the Global Gen Z Uprisings?

Panelists will discuss how youth-driven protest movements are shaping global political change and examine how these movements work to sustain momentum after major political transitions.

WALDMAN: All right. Well, thank you, Talia. And thank you, everyone, for joining this virtual term member meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, “What’s Next for the Global Gen Z Uprising?” I’m Elliot Waldman, editor-in-chief at World Politics Review, and I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion.

I’m really excited to have a really stellar panel joining me today. And I want to take a few minutes to just briefly introduce them. You all have their bios so I won’t, you know, hit everything, but just the quick highlights.

First, Steve Feldstein is a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where his research focuses on technology, national security, the global context for democracy, and U.S. foreign policy. His upcoming book is Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Private Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare, which will be out next year. And he has also served in several foreign policy positions in the U.S. government in the executive and legislative branches.

We’ve also have—we also have Lesley Anne Warner, who’s currently the founder and principal consultant at Phase Zero Solutions, advising private sector clients on geopolitical and macroeconomic risks across Sub-Saharan Africa. She has decades of experience working in foreign policy issues related to armed conflict, human security, political transitions, and security cooperation, and has also held several government jobs, most recently as deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance at USAID.

Lastly, but not least, Maureen Ahmed is a senior policy practitioner and former U.S. diplomat with two decades of experience advancing human rights, global health, and accountability initiatives across South and Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and in multilateral settings. She served at the State Department for eight years, most recently as unit chief in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and previously in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, where she oversaw democracy and governance programs across Asia. All very relevant experience to today’s discussion.

So I want to start just maybe by setting the stage for us because I think we’ve all been, you know, looking—seeing the headlines, keeping track of a lot of these protests that have swept the world. They’ve been, for the most part, massive youth-led demonstrations, primarily members of Gen Z that have taken place over the past couple of years in more than ten countries across five continents. And, you know, it’s important to note that each one has its own context and characteristics, but there’s definitely been this sort of throughline of disconnect—of discontent with poor governance, corruption, and inequality animating the protests. And we’ve seen, in terms of outcomes, right, a very wide mix of scenarios.

In places like Nepal and Bangladesh we’ve seen unpopular, authoritarian in some cases, leaders overthrown. In Madagascar we saw the protests devolve into a coup. And in places like Kenya and Indonesia, we’ve seen sort—a sort of effort to placate the protesters through some concessions on the part of the government, but no major shifts in the political landscape. And then, Steve, I want to start with you, because another of the big things about these protests that’s been picked up in headlines is the use of social media platforms as tools for organization and mobilization. And not just traditional ones like Facebook, but also Discord and TikTok, which are some newer players, right?

And it’s interesting to look back on how these protests compare with the Arab Spring uprisings, which was another case when social media was seen as an enabling force for pro-democracy uprisings in the region. As someone who studies the role of technology in shaping political movements, what jumps out at you about these protests? And do you see any notable parallels or contrasts with the Arab Spring?

FELDSTEIN: Yeah, no. Thanks for the question. You know, I’ve been thinking a little bit about this. And, you know, I actually logged on this morning right before this session because there’s been so many new developments happening when it comes to Gen Z protests, and so forth. And I just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t anything that I had missed overnight or in the last day that had occurred. And as it turned out, the first European government has just fallen now in Bulgaria, as of yesterday. So protesters, you know, thronged the streets, as we’ve seen in other places, largely organized, as I understand, by TikTok. They were motivated by corruption concerns and tax hikes that were presented in the most recent budget. And now the government in place has fallen and, you know, there’s a bit of a vacuum in terms of what happens next.

And so this, to me, points out a couple particular aspects that I think are unique to the moment that we’re in and these protests. I think, first and foremost, there’s a rapidity, there’s a swiftness to what’s taking place that I think supersedes what we’ve seen before. Whether it’s Arab Spring or 2017 to 2019 protests in places like Hong Kong, there are things that are happening at scale on a timeline that I think sort of defies what we’ve seen in the past. And so I think that aspect is really important. I think a second aspect is that we’re seeing this copycat effect take place driven by common motivations and common frustrations across multiple different regions. And so what, you know, maybe before would have been confined to a single region, at least for the first few months before maybe making its way over into adjoining regions and so forth—and I think of the Arab Spring protests to some degree like that—I think now we’re seeing a real crisscrossing and a hopping over from continent to continent.

And it’s really hard to kind of keep track of that. But, you know, whether it’s, as you mentioned, Madagascar, or Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Mexico, Bulgaria right now, it’s truly kind of a worldwide phenomenon. And I think it’s really fascinating to me as well the fact that, despite very unique contextual situations, very specific ways in which motivations that people have when it comes to rising up against the status quo incumbent governments, there are kind of common symbols, common ideas, and common frustrations, I think are resonating with youthful populations around the world.

One last thing I’d also mentioned is that I do think that there has been a greater level of organization linked to platforms in ways that we haven’t seen in the past. And, you know, I’ve been particularly taken by what’s transpired in Nepal when it came to the use of Discord platforms, and the fact that very—you know, multiple different channels have been established for very specific aims. And so I think rather than being something that was maybe, you know, let’s say in Egypt during the Arab Spring, where you were able to use social media to galvanize populations, then the internet was shut down and it became a matter of people thronging and getting together on the streets, I see in the Gen Z protests a much more particular way that these platforms are being used to continue to organize people even after—in the aftermath after governments have fallen, in terms of providing assistance, providing information, or voting on who will potentially run things next.

WALDMAN: Lesley, you’ve been keeping an eye on some of the protests in Africa as they’ve been going on, and sort of thinking about how those, you know, fit into the global context that Steve just outlined. What are some notable trends that you’ve been picking up on in that regard?

WARNER: Thanks, Elliot. And thanks for arranging this session.

So just to tackle this first question broadly, the continent has been experiencing—the most recent wave of Gen Z protests started in the middle of last year. And it’s spread across several countries with remarkable speed and intensity, largely because of some of the factors that that Steve mentioned just now. And this most recent wave represents the most significant continent-wide mobilization since the post-Arab Spring period, between 2011 and 2014.

Some of the key differences with historical precedence, so there have been multiple waves of protest movements across the continent starting from the 1960s movements mobilizing for independence, 1990s movements mobilizing around the third wave of democratization. And in those historical precedents, protesters were usually organized through formal—like, they had formal organizational infrastructure through trade unions, political parties, and student associations. And they were largely fighting for democratic systems. So they were fighting for democracy.

Today’s youth operate within—largely within multiparty democracies. And I’ll disaggregate some of that later on. But they are largely organized outside formal political structures. And they’re largely leaderless, digitally organized, which makes them more likely to be able to mobilize people rapidly in very—mobilize people in a very organized fashion in a very quick way. But at the same time, the fact that they’re leaderless also creates challenges for sustainability and for actually extracting concrete concessions from the government.

If you look at the protests that have happened over the past eighteen months, starting last—in the middle of last year, we had Kenya, Nigeria, Mozambique, Togo, Angola, Madagascar, Morocco, Cameroon, and Tanzania. If you look at the freedom in the world scores for these countries, you’ll see that most of the—all of these countries, all nine of them, were rated as either partly free or not free according to Freedom House. And while the intensity has varied, these movements have shared common characteristics, such as being predominantly youth organized, organized through social media platforms, and explicitly rejecting traditional political leadership.

And the last thing I’ll say on this point is one of the important things to understand about this particular moment is that a lot of the populations on the continent are dealing—are still dealing with the economic impact of the COVID-19 shocks and the impact on supply chains. They’re dealing with the impact of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the impact on food and fuel prices. They’re dealing with the debt crisis. So in Sub-Saharan Africa the debt-to-GDP ratios rose from 35 percent in 2013 to nearly 60 percent in 2022. And on top of all of this, you have a decline in overseas development assistance, led by the U.S. but also complemented by the Europeans. And it’s the first time in a generation that this has happened on such a large scale. The last time this happened was right after the Cold War ended.

And then finally, these countries are dealing with the impact of the U.S. trade—U.S.-China trade war, and the tariffs, the expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. And what governments have done is that instead of absorbing these costs, they’ve passed them on to their populations. So at the same time that populations are less satisfied with the way that democracies are performing, and we can get into that more later, they’re also seeing their cost of living rising. And they’re not seeing a complementary accountability and transparency on the part of the governments. So that is what is fueling a lot of these protests.

And, sorry, I lied. The last thing I’ll say is three of the nine countries some, of the protests—so Tanzania, Mozambique, and Cameroon—those had economic grievances, but they were directly tied to post-election issues. So dissatisfaction with the way that recent elections had been executed.

WALDMAN: A lot of threads there to pull on that I definitely want to come back to later in the conversation. But, first, Maureen, I wanted to go to you. How does, you know, what you’re seeing in some of these protests in South Asia, Southeast Asia, that have been unfolding, sort of maybe compare or contrast with what Lesley just laid out in terms of the structure of the movements, them being leaderless versus organized, things like that?

AHMED: Yeah, no, thank you. I’m glad in this order because all the things that have been mentioned have happened in this region as well. And it’s interesting, right, because it’s happened at such a scale. I’ll start first with South Asia, because I remember I was actually in Sri Lanka in 2021—late 2021, working with the State Department. And you could viscerally feel some of these trends that Lesley and Steven are talking about, which is, you know, there was a fuel shortage, food prices, unemployment rates were going up. You know, the macroeconomic conditions of Sri Lanka were being felt just by everyone, amidst, you know, consecutive COVID lockdowns. And so while I did depart before the May 2022 protests in Sri Lanka, everything that was laying out on the grounds you could understand what was going to be happening, and those predictions were there.

One of the fascinating things, I think, maybe to talk about Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal, which some people call it the South Asia spring, is similar trends, but I think a larger trend of discontent over elite capture and nepotism. So there were a lot of different trends happening here. Of course, a lot of these were fueled by anticorruption calls and economic reasons, but a lot of this was seeing, you know, family dynasties that have been in power for a very long time, and coming back in different iterations, and not being able to provide really the things that the youth really needed. I mean, you’re talking in a region where a large, large percentage of the countries are folks under twenty-five years old.

So when you look at Sri Lanka, while there was an economic crisis happening, you’re also talking about, you know, the Rajapaksas, who were coming in and out, the different brothers, in different iterations. And not being able to provide a different model, which is how these movements went from, you know, starting off really cross-sectional, intersectional, talking about a lot of issues, all the way to going to calling for the resignation of their leaders. And in all three countries we saw the prime ministers, you know, resigning and leaving the countries. And so I think it’s quite fascinating that copy/paste model that we’re talking about also talks to this idea that Gen Z really don’t like this—you know, the older generations or familiar faces that their parents had seen in this region.

And I think what’s been different is that they’re ready to go all the way on this. I think, you know, my family’s originally from Bangladesh. And I was asking my dad, like, hey, like, what’s happening here? How is it that you go one week to calling for protests, to the next—you know, next week the prime minister going? And he said something to me, which is, you know, interesting. He’s saying, Maureen, when you protest here in the United States, you know, you’ll go to a protest, you have these street protests, but then you’re going to Whole Foods, picking up your cherry tomatoes, and going to CorePower Yoga. Maybe that’s a reflection on what I’m doing—but not to take away grievances that we have in the U.S.—but he said, in Bangladesh this is life or death, right?

And so for a lot of these youth, what they’re seeing is that they don’t see a future in terms of economic, you know, options for themselves. But they’re also so connected online that they’re seeing others living a better life than themselves. And I think one of the things that is coming through is that, well, what does that mean when you’ve got a cellphone that’s showing you what it’s like to live, you know, in another country? Or what are these movements in neighboring countries? And I think, you know, what we saw in Southeast Asia this last couple months, a lot of different movements here in September and October and August, they’ve been borrowing these models from the region, right? I don’t know if they’re all talking to each other or if they’re utilizing their diaspora networks to figure this out, but you certainly see similar tactics being used across the region. And I think, you know, governments are scared. I think, you know, when the Indonesia protest happened, the Philippines government was like, hey, we don’t want this here. And, you know, a couple of weeks later they had to go through their own movement.

I’ll end with one other thing about the digital connection part. One thing I was fascinated by was that a lot of these countries, at least when I was looking at South Asia, was that they had really repressive digital laws on place. You know, Bangladesh had the Digital Security Act. The protests in Nepal started because twenty social media accounts were, you know, taken down by the government. And yet, everyone found other alternative models, right, to be able to connect with each other. So when in Nepal, Facebook, X, you know, Instagram were down, they went to Discord, they went to TikTok, they went to the other social media platforms. So I think, you know, we talk about it later, one of the things I think is interesting is that what are the tech companies going to do when these are being utilized by governments either to crack down on dissent or to be utilized for dissent? How do you respond? And I think, you know, the youth of this region showed us that they found creative ways to utilize it.

And one last thing is just considering, you know, where is this going to go now? I’m sure you’ll capture it, but one thing—you know, a lot of these countries may now have a new leader, but it’s quite tenuous because in some of these places they’re waiting for elections. So they have caretaker governments in place. Or they have a leader in place, but no operational changes have happened. And so I think it’s quite, I think, unpredictable nature in this place, because we don’t know what’s going to happen, if these trends are going to continue. But I also think it is hopeful because a lot of people did find that accountability for change, at least in terms of, you know, changing leadership.

WALDMAN: Hmm. Steve, Maureen just raised a really interesting point, which is that the technology kind of cuts both ways. It can be used by the protesters to organize and to mobilize, but it’s also a tool of repression. And I know that this is something you’ve done a lot of work on as well, in terms of how governments are using these tools to suppress and try to surveil, you know, opposition, or pro-democracy movements, right? Where do you—where do you see that trend going, in terms of how governments are responding to these protests?

FELDSTEIN: Yeah. No, it’s a huge challenge. And, you know, it’s interesting. I mean, part of—so, you know, I wrote a book, The Rise of Digital Repression. It came out in 2021. Part of the impetus was a reflection of how ten years prior, in the wake of Arab Spring and the color revolutions, we were really at a moment where people were looking at technology as—they were calling it “liberation technology.” That it was viewed as a means to mobilize populations, to give voice to those who were marginalized or outside the political system, and to be able to bring about change in places that had been static and led by incumbents for decades, right? And so there was a real, I think, moment of hope in terms of how these technologies, similar to what we’re seeing right now, could really mobilize at scale a huge swath of youthful populations, and bring about reform that was sorely needed.

And we saw how that story went there. And not that, you know, history is going to repeat itself again at this stage, but I think we have to sort of think and take those lessons seriously. So what happened? I mean, we saw governments, especially those that sort of weren’t wracked by protests but potentially would be wracked by protests. And I look at even very large countries, like, Russia as part of that, learned a lot of lessons. They said, we have to get ahead of this. We have to use the tools and turn them on the protesters. China certainly has been instrumental in both providing a model, but also the technology in which to track, and identify and then incarcerate individuals who posed a threat to the state. Many other countries as well have followed those same—that same playbook.

And so I think, you know, at this moment we have to sort of take the good with the bad. We have to sort of think—be very kind of cognizant and realistic that even though there seems to be, generally speaking, like, a real wave of change that’s sweeping through multiple different regions, there’s also the ever-present possibility of retrenchment. You look at places like Kenya, where there was recently an Amnesty International report. And perhaps Lesley can speak a little more to this, where, you know, they have looked at tech companies in particular. And they said, you know, you have different police and security forces that are now weaponizing protesters who had been on the streets, who were organizing online. And it is harassing them. It is also identifying them. It is picking them up, and so forth.

So it is not a safe environment, per se. And that we can’t assume that. And we also can’t assume that governments won’t find ways to fight back with the very same technological tools that protesters right now are wielding so adeptly.

WALDMAN: Hmm. And on the—from the perspective of the tech companies, right, it kind of seems like the trajectory has been, since the Arab Spring at least, steadily in the direction of more deference to governments, sort of more, you know, acquiescence to these requests that they take down certain opposition accounts, things like that. What kind of lessons do you think they should be drawing from these latest protests that we’ve been seeing?

FELDSTEIN: Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, I think it hasn’t been linear, in that, you know, I think there’s been ups and downs. And there, I think, really was a moment five, six, seven years ago where there was a greater amount of friction when it came to companies pushing back. And, you know, part of what I was able to document in my research, in places like Thailand and others—and other contexts, was that tech companies, including companies like Facebook and Twitter, at the time, now X, and so forth, you know, were trying to find creative ways to either remove operations to regional hubs, like Singapore, so that they wouldn’t be directly under the control of national governments, and to try to create space.

Unfortunately, a couple things have happened in the interim. And I think we’re in a pretty difficult arena right now, at least when it comes to the big tech social media companies. I think, one, governments became more coercive in terms of forcing companies to have representatives based in their countries, whether it’s a Turkey, or India, or so forth. Governments also became more willing to use their leverage to force companies to accede to their demands, handing over personal data, other sorts of things like that. And then simultaneously with that, companies themselves became much more willing to accede to these requests. You know, a lot of the—you know, and this is a whole other conversation—but a lot of trust and safety teams have been dismantled. There’s been sort of a sea change when it comes to the willingness of tech companies to confront and push back against governments.

And so, as a result of that, I think a certain number of platforms, X is pretty prominent in my mind, have really kind of gone a long way in terms of sort of giving in to these demands. So it’s difficult. But I will say that there are other alternatives that have risen, Signal in particular, you know, encrypted communications and so forth. And so even if the traditional social media companies are not necessarily safe bets, and allow a lot of harassment and so forth, there are other alternatives out there that people are finding and people are using. And so I do think it’s a fluid environment on that front.

WALDMAN: Yeah. And notably, you know, the reason that Nepal—that Nepal—the protesters in Nepal started using Discord and other alternatives, was because the government decided to ban more traditional social media platforms. And that was, you know, sort of a form of necessity that they—that they took, to use those other platforms.

Lesley, I want to give you a chance to jump in on what Steve was just talking about. But also curious for your view on what this all means for democratic governance, right? You wrote a really great piece for World Politics Review that went into detail on some survey data from African countries about different perceptions of democracy, and how that might be playing into these protests.

WARNER: Sure. So the one thing I’ll say about digital repression in Kenya, specifically, that the Amnesty report raised, is that the government used the posts that activists made during the protests in order to track them and then abduct them. I think a key issue to look at for future protests on the part of the protesters would be, are there ways that they can learn from other countries where digital repression has taken place to defend themselves against these sort of—these sort of attacks? And how do they evolve, knowing that this is how the government is going to react?

And then in terms of the broader piece on how Africans feel about democracy, and the fact that some of these protests are happening in countries that are either partially free or aspirationally free, I just want to reference the data from Afrobarometer, which is a continent-wide, highly reputable polling organization. And according to Afrobarometer, nearly two-thirds of African youth prefer democracy over any other type of government. However what’s notable about this statistic is that about 60 percent are dissatisfied with how democracy is actually implemented in their countries. So this is why they see—which is why—this is why you see the phenomenon of these Gen Z protests happening in countries with relative freedoms and multiparty democracies.

Another notable element of Afrobarometer’s data is that youth tend to trail older generations in their conventional engagement with politics. So in terms of contacting local leaders, affiliations with formal political parties, et cetera. So about—and, in addition, only about 64 percent of African youth regularly participate in elections, compared with about 78 percent of participation from older cohorts. On the flip side, what’s interesting about the data is that youth participation in elections exceeds older generations. If you actually look at the numbers, it’s very small. So 11 percent of youth participate in protests. Only 8 percent of older generations participate.

But what this difference in numbers means is that African youth view popular mobilization as delivering a better return on investment than electoral participation, which also indicates that they may have lost faith in institutional democracy, while they also maintain commitment to democratic ideals. I think if you zoom out, and this is—I think it was the last sentence of my World Politics Review piece—I think what we’re seeing across Africa, and probably across many regions, is a reflection of just global dissatisfaction with the way that democracy is implemented. And so a lot of these populations are dealing with the same sort of issues that we’re dealing with here at home, which I think is an interesting phenomenon to look at over the long term.

And then the last point on Afrobarometer data is that there’s a concerning openness to authoritarianism among African youth. So approximately 56 percent would accept military takeovers when elected leaders abuse power, compared to just 47 percent of older citizens. And what this means is that if protest movements fail to achieve institutional outcomes, Gen Z’s demonstrated openness to military intervention creates a vulnerability to authoritarian alternatives. And so what this means is there are some populations that see military takeovers as a bit of a reset. And they think that perhaps they can control the outcome because they were once able to mobilize people on the street to put—to put pressure on the government. And so they assume that if the military hijacks popular protests—which in academic literature is called an end game coup—that they will then be able to continue to hold the military accountable.

And we haven’t really seen that pan out. So what we’ve seen is once the initial mobilization happens, it’s much more difficult to get people back out on the streets. And on top of that, what we’ve seen is—in previous rounds of protests, so specifically looking at Sudan’s revolution between 2019 and 2021, you see the security and intelligence forces strategically using violence, and specifically choosing low-level violence as a means by which to, on one hand, maintain control over the protesters and disincentivize them from continuing their momentum, but on the other hand stay below the radar of international criticism. And so if you’re able to say, OK, only, you know, ten people got killed this week—which is obviously very, very terrible—it’s not, you know, 1,000 people, or, you know, 3,000 people. And so the international community tends not to come down as heavily on these countries.

WALDMAN: Hmm. Maureen, the points that that Lesley raised, of sort of protesters choosing whether or not to engage with formal democratic processes, there’s some interesting stories happening in South Asia around this, right? Like Nepal, where protesters specifically chose the foreign—the interim prime minister—or, their preferred candidate for interim prime minister, as was, you know, widely reported in headlines, in part through a Discord vote, right? And they’ve been pretty—they’ve continued to be mobilized and putting pressure on the government to implement these anticorruption measures that they’re—that they’re gunning for. And we’ve also seen in Bangladesh as well continued political engagement from youth protesters there. What do you see—how do you see that sort of playing out in the future as we look ahead to, you know, what’s next? Both of these countries have elections coming up.

AHMED: Yeah. It’s a really good question. Just briefly, I think in that moment where we saw these changes happen, it was a moment of, you know, true reflection of, hey, you know, a democratic process, at least in terms of democratic protests and participation, can lead to an inclusive, participatory process of figuring out what an interim government can look like. So, for example, in Bangladesh, as we know, Dr. Muhammad Yunus is serving as the interim, you know, government leader. This is someone that the international community knows. And, you know, the way that they put together the administration of the interim government caretaker administration, you’ve had a very inclusive process, at least in the inception of leaders from the student movement from Dhaka University, who had leaders from, you know, leading civic organizations that unfortunately were undermined by, you know, previous governments.

You had leaders represented of women, and indigenous populations, religious minority groups. So you had this moment where, at least on—you know, on an operational level, it looked like there’s an opportunity here to figure out what that’s going to look like. Similar in Nepal, you’ve got this voting and participatory process that also looks hopeful. And it looks like, you know, hey, we’ve got some new people here that can provide us with a different model. The key question here is that, while you can have this new type of change happen, we’re going to go back to this model of how elections work—

WALDMAN: Uh-oh. I think we may have lost Maureen there.

Well, Lesley, maybe I could jump back to you while we wait for Maureen to come back online. There was—I think one of the things that was interesting when we were sort of prepping for this call that we discussed was, you know, how do we—how do we try to look around the corner to see, like, what are some indicators that could be—that we could use to see if protests like this or uprisings like this are coming, right? And this is—I know you said you’ve done some work on this in the U.S. government. It’s something that the U.S. government does not have a great track record of. You know, so maybe you could talk a little bit about that, and then perhaps we can jump to the audience for Q&A.

WARNER: So I think it’s very challenging to figure out exactly when and where these sorts of protests are going to spring up, which makes them very difficult to respond to. And I think—sorry, there are many thoughts going through my mind right now. So one of the programs that I had established when I was in the Biden-Harris administration, which was the result of a blue sky memo that my boss had asked me to write as a result of just the proliferation of coups on the continent. And it was a—it was a memo on upstream measures to address the crisis of legitimacy in African democracies. And at the end of it there were nine blue sky policy ideas. One of them was something that the NSC really liked, and they picked it up and fast-tracked it, and it became a deliverable for the Africa Leaders Summit in 2022.

It was called the African Democratic and Political Transitions Initiative, or ADAPT. And it was basically designed so that the—well, let me backtrack. The U.S. has a very bad track record of dealing with—at managing political transitions. Usually these are windows of opportunity that come up—in previous cases—that come up basically generationally. And so they come up very infrequently. And then when they do come up and they’re unexpected, we have a very hard time mobilizing the requisite diplomatic, financial, and technical support to actually make sure that the transition—that there is a transition to democracy, and that the people power that’s been mobilized actually gets—you know, that their grievances are addressed through the—through regular governance channels.

And so I proposed a State Department-led interagency task force to basically marshal those diplomatic, financial, and technical resources, but also to monitor indicators and warnings that would indicate that transitions are going off the rails. And this was inspired by my time on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, during which we saw transitions in—the most notable ones were Ethiopia in 2018, when Abiy Ahmed came in, and then during the Sudan revolution, between late 2018 and early 2019. And I just saw how the executive branch really struggled to figure out how to engage, and then subsequently lost the window of opportunity. And we see what’s happened in both of those countries.

The last thing I’ll mention is that I think this particular moment that we’re in right now is interesting to see how these movements are going to play out. So historically the United States—and, Steve, I’m sure you’ve seen this. Maureen, when she comes back on, I’m sure she would have seen this as well. When you travel abroad to a lot of these countries, the United States is the leader of the diplomatic community in terms of holding governments to account, making sure that people have the right to protest peacefully. We used to have a lot of rapid response funding for human rights defenders. We have a lot of support for civil society mobilization. And so historically, like, other countries have hid behind us in terms of making sure that people have the right to protest peacefully.

Now that we have decided that, A, we’re not going to comment on the conduct of elections in other countries, and also we’ve eliminated a lot of this assistance, the type of support that these protesters have historically had with the U.S.—from the U.S., does not currently exist. This does not mean that they are not going to be able to do their mobilization, it just means that this kind of chapeau of support and protection that, you know, sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t work, is completely eliminated. And so I think that—one of the things that, I guess, U.S. civil society is thinking through, or, like, the U.S. democracy and governance space is thinking through, is how do you recreate that network of support for people, given that the U.S. government and U.S. government programs are no longer providing that?

WALDMAN: Hmm. Small qualification to what you said. The U.S. is very much commenting on elections in Europe, but seemingly not anywhere else in the world, according to the recently released National Security Strategy.

Maureen, do you want to—I see you back on. And I should have mentioned that you’re joining us from a hotel in Thailand where you’re on vacation. And you’re very graciously taking time from your vacation to do this. So before we go to questions, do you want to just take two minutes to wrap up the thought you had before you dropped off?

AHMED: Sure. Maybe this topic’s too spicy for my wi-fi. Just quickly, I was just going to say, about the elections coming up in South Asia, I think the main key thing is that, while there’s so much momentum and hope and changes that are happening that have energized the youth, what’s going to happen is that these elections in this region follow a pattern where, unfortunately, with the options of a multiparty system, as the trends that Lesley and Steven talked about, operationally, you know, governance in this region has a lot of obstacles and a lot of administrative, you know, issues where I think it’s going to be unpredictable, and quite tenuous, and potentially violent, especially in Bangladesh, with elections coming up. That that is, unfortunately, something that can’t be, you know, avoided. And while there might be hope—you know, the parties that exist in Bangladesh will have to find a way to mobilize what the youth are asking for in a way that translates into governance.

One of the things that we’ve often heard in, you know, both in South Asia and Southeast Asia, is that some of the things that make people’s lives better are just operational changes—like, for example, I’m going to the magistrate court and I just need, you know, X, Y, Z court to provide me with a ticket and to give me a date for me to return, and stick to that deadline. Something that tangible can change someone’s life. And yet, even those operational things sometimes don’t work. And so whether or not the elections provide that, you know, operational change for those folks, I think you’re going to still have a governance issue. I think you’re still going to have an administration issue. And that may lead to consistent, you know, unrest, you know, further protest, or potential crackdowns on these youth, right, as we’ve seen in Africa, depending on who takes over the—you know, the governments here. You know, are these—are these movements going to face any backlash for what happened?

And so we really don’t know what’s going to happen. But we could see these trends happening. And I think all that’s left to say is that we—you know, we’re going to have to see what happens, and hopefully things translate into actual, you know, administrative change.

WALDMAN: All right. Well, on that note, I want to invite everyone who’s listening to join our conversation with their questions. And before I do that, a quick reminder that this meeting is on the record.

Talia, over to you.

OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.)

We’ll take the first question from Niki Masghati.

Q: Hi, everybody. Can you hear me?

WALDMAN: We can

Q: Well, first of all, I just want to say it’s so nice to see friends, colleagues, mentors, all on one call. So lovely. I was really kind of nerding out while I was listening to all of you speak.

So just wanted to say, first of all, thank you guys so much. What an interesting conversation. I have, kind of, like, a maybe difficult-to-answer questions, so I understand—I understand, if, you know, it’s hard to kind of provide one conclusion. But there was so much conversation about how governments are becoming more and more coercive as time goes on. There’s so many reasons for governments becoming more coercive that I won’t necessarily get into in my question. But there was a good bit of discussion on how some governments will ban what, you know, what we would consider to be traditional platforms, and then use those who are, you know, trying to gather will go to a different platform or a different space.

But, you know, and is something that Steven, Maureen, and I have spent a lot of time working on, governments will then turn to shutting down the internet entirely. They will block off all access to all different kinds of technology communications. You know, considering that Gen Z is very much—more so than Millennials—a generation that has grown up relying on using digital platforms and are more agile, I would say, than the Millennial generation, of course, any that come before, and the fact that governments are sort of swinging back and forth on the pendulum of either complete shutdowns, which now some are doing a little less of because they’re really seeing the impact on their economy and targeting platforms, or actually going more towards that, or using those coercive measures, like going after, you know, the local reps that Steve was talking about.

You know, so how do you feel like this kind of, you know, what is it, cat and mouse chase is going to unfold as we sort of look into the next maybe even just two years? Is it that—do you see governments actually now putting more pressure on Signal and on Discord? Is it—again, is it going to be this sort of Whack-a-Mole approach? Are we going to see, in fact, full-scale shutdowns coming back? You know, moving away from this sort of partial—anyway, I won’t blabber on, but I’m just really curious about your thoughts on where you see this going. Thank you.

WALDMAN: Thanks, Niki. Who wants to take that one? Steve, do you want to start?

FELDSTEIN: Sure. No, great question. Thanks, Niki.

You know, it’s hard to predict exactly where things will go. I mean, I think the best thing that I would sort of say, that I think it’s a contested terrain. And what that means—and there’s a few different ways in which that’ll play out. So on the one hand, I think you will see amongst a cohort of high-capacity countries—you know, China and Russia certainly at the forefront, but also places like Iran, where they will—it’s not that they’ll just sort of resort to internet shutdowns, per se. It’s about, kind of, full control of the digital ecosystem. It’s about banning certain apps, having an ability to kind of watch and surveil what people use, and then providing state alternatives—whether it’s VK or something similar, or now they have a new Super Max app in Russia. Obviously we saw in China a long time ago this sort of substitution effect with WeChat becoming the primary platform. And for a lot of citizens, they’ll just sort of go with that.

And so finding ways to convince people at scale to use alternatives is something that becomes pretty important. I think for many other countries that sit a little bit more in a kind of middle arena, where there’s more of a contested terrain, where at times you’ll see governments, like Turkey’s or India’s, you know, push back and try to use coercive measures against platforms, but where there’s still a lot of space in which activists can organize digitally, I think there is where you have a lot more of an ability to do interesting things, to find different platforms, mobilize people on them. Whether it’s Discord today or something else tomorrow. There’s a whole freedom tech ecosystem that I think it really has a lot of promise when it comes to getting out of kind of your traditional, big tech social media platforms and doing things—interesting things with that. So I think there’s a lot of promise. But, you know, it’s not easy. I mean, the biggest challenge—the hardest thing is getting lots of people to follow lead and to go on a platform, not just the kind of leading-edge activists.

WALDMAN: Lesley or Maureen, do you want to add to that? Anything you want to say to chime in?

AHMED: Yeah. I’ll just add something quickly. One thing we saw happen, at least in South Asia and I’m sure in Southeast Asia, is the use of diaspora networks, and mobilizing with folks in communities globally. And so, of course, as we know, when there’s quite a repressive tech shutdowns and governance in the region, you saw folks stepping up—blogging, you know, utilizing their networks across the globe. I saw that in Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, Nepal, and other parts of the region. So I think what we got to see in this movement is that no matter what the stakes are—and they were quite high, when you’ve got all these, you know, social media accounts being taken down—they found the most creative ways to get their messages out.

You know, I had family in Bangladesh who I couldn’t reach. And yet, you know, they found ways to get that information out to different people, to different, you know, communities. And so we’ve all seen this before, but I think with this generation, if we were to say what’s different about these protests, right? Because we’ve seen student protests or youth protests before. They are so mobile-y active and mobile-y knowledgeable to figure out how to use those connections. And one of the strongest things that I don’t think we have that qualitative, or, you know, assessment yet, is that diaspora networks were truly used in the 2025 protests, and some of these other protests. And I think we’ll find other ways of connecting, if these, you know, shutdowns or other ways to disconnect folks continue to happen.

WALDMAN: OK. Talia, let’s take our next question.

OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Evan Patterson.

Q: Hey, everyone. This is Evan Patterson from Congressman Frank Lucas’ office. Thank you guys so much for putting this together.

Lesley, a couple quick questions for you. You had mentioned something at the start of your conversation that I hadn’t thought of before. You had mentioned that the Ukraine invasion had been causing some impacts in Africa. Could you expand a little bit on what that looks like for younger generations? And then a second question, really quick, is, in the specific instance of Kenya, do you think the recent U.S. deals and agreements that we’ve done with Kenya—for example, the military police force in Haiti and then also the healthcare cooperation framework that we put together just a couple days ago—do you think that that’s viewed positively or negatively with the younger generations in Kenya? Thanks so much.

WARNER: Thanks for that question, or those questions, Evan. So, first, on the Ukraine piece. So when I was working for Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield at U.S. mission to the U.N., this was back in 2022, she specifically took a trip to Ghana and Uganda which highlighted the impact of both food and fuel prices on African populations. And the reason why she did that was she wanted to highlight the fact that a lot of African countries were dependent on wheat exports from both Russia and Ukraine. And farmers, in addition, were suffering the impact of increased fertilizer prices as well, which was then creating other economic tensions. In terms of the way that it affects youth, I think youth tend to have less of an economic safety net than their older counterparts. And so I think that they—you know, everyone was affected, but they were affected more. And that may influence why they’ve been more likely to have economic grievances that drive them out to the street.

On Kenya—(laughs)—that is an interesting question. Kenya, in general, is just really interesting right now. So I’m not a macro person, but I’ve started kind of tracking macro issues there because Kenya is—I don’t know if they’re exactly qualified as in debt distress, but they’re definitely having some debt issues. I am very curious how they are going to manage avoiding defaulting on their debt before their elections, which are in a little under two years. And one of the—you know, the impetus for protests, both last year and this year, was reduction of subsidies, increased taxes. So essentially, as I mentioned before, the increased costs that the government is incurring are passed on to the population.

In terms of recent deals, I think that the litmus test will be whether people see the impact of the deals as trickling down to the everyday Kenyan citizen. I just saw—so the minute that Steve mentioned the—I think you mentioned the Bulgarian government falling, and you checked the internet. I quickly looked on BBC Africa, and I was, like, oh my god, did anything happen? And it turns out that the Kenyan parliament is holding up the Kenya—the health deal that was just negotiated last week between the U.S. and Kenya, over data privacy issues. And so I think that is also tied to the bigger question of how—that we’ve been discussing—about how governments use data to surveil people. And so I assume that that is why there is—there’s pushback to this sort of deal.

WALDMAN: Hmm. Talia, let’s take our next question, please.

OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from James Clinton Francis.

Q: Hi, everyone. Thanks for this timely discussion.

A lot of you have mentioned the amorphous, leaderless structure of these movements, but also question their long-term political stability and sustainability. So I guess my question is, for really any of you, how might a leader emerge from these movements? What new ways might this leader, or leaders, negotiate with incumbent governments? And what specific economic concessions may be extended in the short term to assuage any of these grievances? Thank you so much.

WALDMAN: Hmm. Thanks, James. So a bit of a free for all. Who wants to jump in? Maureen, I know that, you know, there’s been some interesting sort of engagements with some of the governments in some of the countries that you cover. I wonder if you have any thoughts on James’ question.

AHMED: Yeah. That’s a fascinating question. And it’s almost 12:30 my—12:30 a.m. my time, so I’m going to need more time to think about that. But I think there is things that are happening, right? I think what’s happening is that, depending on the country, whether you have a caretaker government or elected leader, et cetera, until elections happen, or if elections are already happened, there are—there are some participatory processes that are happening behind the scenes, where they’re trying to figure out what these—what these concessions are, what—how to bring up these grievances. I, myself, am not privy to that, at least not at the moment.

So I think what might be happening is figuring out how do you materialize some of these concerns, whether it’s, you know, more youth participation, more—you know, in Bangladesh there’s a civil service quota that was the cause of concern. So decreasing that quota means that’s a more tangible thing that you can do, right? And you can say, I’m going to give you this legislative change, which I think we saw in Indonesia. And so I think what needs to happen is to figure out what is the request, what is the ask? If it’s a process change, I think, depending on the law that is in question, if that is going to change then that could be one type of change that we see.

I think a lot of the requests are all around the board, right? You know, you’re asking for we don’t want nepotism. We don’t want this—you know, we don’t want this family to take over. You’ve got such a broad range of concerns here. I think we’ve seen this in the past here in the United States as well, right? When a movement takes hold, you’ve got all of these concerns. So I think it’s going to require organization from both sides, right? The new leadership or the new incumbents coming in, and then also for these movements to figure out, OK, we had all these concerns, and now where are we going to go?

We’re still in a waiting period in some of these places. And so I think the next couple of months are going to be key. But I think it’s all going to depend on how do you operationalize what some of these concerns are. Some things are going to be able to be done. Other things are not. And that’s just because of how, you know, these parties are going to, you know, negotiate some of this.

WALDMAN: Hmm. It is an interesting sort of trade off, right, with the amorphous, leaderless protests. It makes it easier to organize, but then also makes it harder to sort of interface with the government when they come to you and say, what are your demands? It also raises an interesting question to me of how do these movements even define success. How do they—how do they say, OK, we’ve seen enough, that we’re happy. We’re satisfied. We’ll, you know, this is—we’ll stop protesting now. I don’t know if, Steve or Lesley, you want to comment briefly on that before we take our next question.

FELDSTEIN: You know, I just—really quickly—two things come to my mind when it comes to kind of this question of leadership transition, who takes over. One of which is that you’re not necessarily entering a vacuum. You’re entering a temporary vacuum where those who had occupied power are out of office. But there are others at different levels, whether it’s mayors, whether it’s other popular opposition politicians, or so forth, who are—who have followings, who are popular, and who are potentially willing to step in. And part of the question is, what are their motives? Are they there because they are aligned with the goals of the protests? Or do they have another agenda at hand, and this is a convenient way to exploit that?

And so I think that’s one thing that, you know, we have to kind of guard against, especially when you have a leaderless protest that kind of emerges very quickly. Who comes in after that? And to what extent—and what—and are their motives pure? The other thing to also watch out for is that just because you sideline a military or the political establishment doesn’t mean they’re actually gone. They still have resources. They still have guns. They still have an ability to recapture power. And if there’s nothing else, I think we’ve learned from, you know, situations, whether it’s post-Arab Spring, Sudan, Myanmar, or so forth, is that you cannot count them out. They may be gone, but they have a lot of accrued power, established networks, and ability to come back into it.

WALDMAN: All right, let’s take the—

WARNER: Just to—

WALDMAN: Oh, go ahead.

WARNER: Oh, just to add really quickly. First of all, excellent question, James.

I think it’s important to focus, though, on the fact that these protests have gotten—like, their ability to mobilize with the speed that they have and with the relative success that they have, at least in very short timeframes, is tied to the fact that they’re leaderless. If they—if leaders were to emerge, it would make it easier for the government to target them, which then gets us into the same conundrum that previous protest movements have had. So it’s a bit of a Catch-22. I think that one of the things that—you know, the leadership question aside—I think if protest movements are able to have an affirmative agenda, as opposed to we are opposed to X, Y, Z. But, we want, you know, very concrete demands as to what they want, which is very difficult because getting to the point that Elliot raised about what—how do you define success. If you have 1,000 protesters on the street, you probably have 1,000 different definitions of success. However, to the extent that they can actually come together and figure out, OK, what is it that we’re actually trying to get.

And then to answer the question of what would reasonable things be for these protesters to demand, for one, anticorruption is huge. So I think everyone understands that these countries are dealing with a lot of different economic factors, geopolitical factors that I mentioned earlier. But if costs are passed on to the populations, and they see rampant corruption and nepotism, then they tend not to like that. And so if you’re able to address corruption, I think that that helps take the air out of things. And then specifically rolling back taxes, reinstituting subsidies, which, of course, creates economic tensions within the government itself, but, again, Catch-22. And then specifically, they can—governments can institute programs that would specifically address youth unemployment. In some of these countries it’s as high as 50 percent, which makes the youth more likely to go out and protest.

WALDMAN: Hmm. Well, I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave it there. We are just about at our time. But I want to thank the panelists for joining so much. This was a really great conversation. And thank you to all of the members and young professionals who joined as well, for listening and for bringing your questions. And hopefully this is a conversation that, you know, we can all keep going—keep having, into the future, in whatever contexts we decide so. Thank you, again.

WARNER: Thank you.

FELDSTEIN: Thank you.

AHMED: Thank you.

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.