"Democracy campaigner: governments are scared of the participation revolution", 25 Apr 2017

...Governments and sometimes non-state actors are going out of their way to shut down the ability of citizens to collectively organise and mobilise, [...] imposing rigid restrictions on NGOs to weaken human rights and pro-democracy groups that seek to challenge authoritarian regimes... [While] we should be very careful bracketing the UK with such places, [...] for most it is clear that this problem is coming west... So why is this happening? ... [One] important theme [is] the internet: ... [civil society organisations] are organising in very different ways with the digital tools at their disposal. That poses a fundamental threat the world over to established power... It may well be that [because] we are at the beginning of a kind of participation revolution... that what we’re seeing is the pushback on the ability of citizens to mobilise.