international and national levels(cf. EPD, 9 Gowan and Batmanglich 2009, 10 Hossain et al. 11 ). Unfortunately, fewer and fewer actors are willing or able to push back. While the existing spaces must be kept open, other solutions should also be considered: democracy supporters could also start looking for alternative, non-traditional spaces while defending the existing ones. Moving beyond the sphere of theory and drawing on the practical experience of a political foundation, this paper attempts to identify such spaces, however small, particularly in constrained contexts through a proposed approach based on the metaphor of‘pockets of democracy’. Back to the roots: Building democracy from below! Although narratives of closing spaces are a useful analytical tool, they fail to motivate action and are not useful for supporting democracy. The term‘closing spaces’ highlights the significance of autocrats and their various methods of limiting civic participation. However, such narratives fail to place activists and democracy supporters at the centre of the debate. The term limits creativity and increases desperation, and at best it leads us to defend those spaces that are now closing. While democracy supporters should continue to defend the remaining spaces, they must stop lamenting the end of the last wave of democracy. A new wave could begin. Today, 70 per cent of the population of the African continent is under the age of 35, and this figure is projected to rise to 75 per cent by 2030 12 . Depending on how they are engaged, the youth can represent both an opportunity and a challenge. Urbanisation is also a factor here, since it will arguably change social, cultural and political behaviour patterns. Informal traders, gender activists and environmental groups are growing in importance everywhere. While recognising the significant challenges posed by rising poverty rates, increasing crime, high levels of sexual violence against women, growing violent extremism, an escalating number of coups d’état, and the devastating impact of climate change on African economies and environments, evolving grassroots communities demonstrate effective strategies for advancing in the face of shrinking spaces. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that, in the current context of increasing repression, funding cutbacks and staff shortages – not to mention the very personal impacts on democracy defenders and their families, ranging from the reduction of financial livelihoods to threats against personal safety – activists have significantly less energy and capacity to defend existing spaces and open new ones. This dual burden can lead to a downward spiral, so the emergence of grassroots initiatives and alternative democratic practices is vital for countering despair and sustaining hope for renewal. Remain hopeful, change spaces, and start widening them again: Pockets of Democracy As democracy supporters around the globe have come to the realisation that they cannot always effect democratic change by turning‘the big wheel’ in a country, they must look towards innovative concepts that restore the essence of democracy to its core: building dialogue and participation in societal processes from below. This approach is slow and small-scale, but has the potential to widen spaces and increase participation, thus fostering democratic development. Moreover, this must happen in the open; democracy support cannot be hidden. It must be transparent. Of course, the Pockets of Democracy concept does not purport to be a universal blueprint for supporting democracy. It is not a magic wand that can reignite democracy at a time when it is waning. Rather than replacing them, the PoD approach complements other approaches to supporting democracy, including dialogue formats, alliance-building and transformative change­making, to name a few. It offers an additional perspective on the wider debate about renewing and sustaining democracy. Although it is particularly relevant in contested, shrinking or closed civic spaces where conventional strategies often encounter significant obstacles, it can also be applied to different political contexts. This is precisely because, as will become clear later in the paper, the spaces defined as PoDs actually exist in a variety of contexts and can serve as effective anchors for democratic resilience. Recent developments and the erosion of democratic standards in established democracies in the Global North(so-called mature democracies) have demonstrated the fragility of democracy. Hence, this approach is useful for cultivating spaces that serve as anchor points for sustaining and potentially expanding democracy. There are three ways to support‘pockets of democracy’: 1. It’s not only a matter of‘doing no harm’ but of‘doing good’: The diagonal dimension for development partners: Even national and international development actors that do not explicitly work on supporting democracy have a high level of responsibility for the 9 European Partnership for Democracy(2020) Thinking democratically: recommendations for responding to the phenomenon of‘shrinking spaces’, https://nimd.org/wp-con ­tent/uploads/2020/02/Closing-democratic-space-exec-summary.pdf 10 Richard Gowan and Sara Batmanglich(2009) Democracy Support: A fresh start, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York, https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/global/06537.pdf 11 Hossain, Naomi et al.(2018) What Does Closing Civic Space Mean for Development? A Literature Review and Proposed Conceptual Framework, IDS Working Papers 12 African Union.(2019). Africa’s Future: Youth and the Data Defining their Lives. The African Union Commission(AUC), Department of Human Resources, Science and Tech ­nology and the Population Reference Bureau(PRB). https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/37828-doc-soayr_policy_brief_ok.pdf Pockets of Democracy: ideas for democracy support in constrained contexts 3