Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CIVILSPACE (The Shrinking Space for Civil Society in Europe)
Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-02-28
Confronted with fundamental crises such as domestic terrorism and the COVID-19 pandemic, democracies in Europe have increasingly adopted policies that negatively affect the ability of civil society organizations (CSOs) to function and engage politically. Meanwhile, parties with illiberal agendas have entered government in a growing number of countries. Consequently, as highlighted by academics and practitioners alike, the ‘shrinking of civil society space’ has by now become a central concern within the EU itself. Since CSOs—i.e. membership-based voluntary organizations pursuing collective goals—constitute the organizational fabric of democratic societies, restrictive legal reforms are likely to have lasting negative repercussions for the quality of EU democracies and raise concerns about democratic regression in the region. Despite this topic’s salience, academic research and evidence on the evolution of ‘legally defined’ civil society space in Europe remain fragmented. As a result, there is limited understanding of how and why EU member states have altered the legal environments of CSOs over the last two decades, as well as how these distinct legal environments shape CSOs’ activities. The CIVILSPACE project addresses these gaps investigating the drivers and consequences of the ‘shrinking of civil society space’ for CSOs in the EU. It studies the impact on CSO law of fundamental crises faced by member states (domestic terrorism, the sovereign debt crisis, migration crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic) in conjunction with the take-over of governments by illiberal parties which might be inclined to exploit such crises as a ‘window of opportunity’ to push through restrictive policies. Moreover, the project will assess how CSOs respond to different legal environments, including potential ‘chilling effects’ of legal environments on CSOs’ political engagement. The evidence and insights generated by the CIVILSPACE project will be relevant not only for academic research seeking to measure and analyze trends in CSO regulation and their repercussions for CSOs, but also for broader social and policy-oriented discussions on how to foster - through devising more effective and balanced regulation - a vibrant and independent civil society.
The work carried out so far focused on the creation of a comprehensive and cross-national dataset on civil society regulation. Simultaneously, the theoretical framework was finalized theorizing central drivers of especially restrictive changes in CSO law. The ‘Legal Change Dataset’, now completed, covers data on the sector-wide legislation (broadly affecting CSOs) in 12 EU Member States over 23 years in 13 legal domains—affecting organizations’ ability to exist, perform political activities, raise resources and exercise rights. This is complemented by a dataset on four organization-specific legal regimes capturing provisions designed to specifically regulate unions, pro-migrant and welfare CSOs as well as regulation dedicated to financial monitoring (especially foreign funding). They were developed as each of these domains is likely to be particularly affected by exposure to one of the four crises of interest (the sovereign debt crisis, migration crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and domestic terrorism). Analyzing the data collected, the CIVILSPACE team engaged in quantitative and qualitative analyses. The results of these parallel phases of theorizing, data collection, and initial empirical assessments have been published or presented as papers in conferences and workshops. To give but four examples, one paper written by the team, conceptualizes and analyzes the restrictiveness and permissiveness of CSO legal environments as separate concepts, defined respectively by CSOs’ obligations and privileges embedded in legislation. Initial findings show an upward trend in legal restrictiveness in all 12 countries examined, e.g. enhancing governments’ ability to interfere with fundamental rights (e.g. freedom of association). However, also permissiveness undergoes increase, providing CSOs more means to challenge government (e.g. through National Human Rights Infrastructures). A monograph on Civil Society's Democratic Potential (Oxford University Press, https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780198884392.pdf(opens in new window)) published open access by the PI develops the organization-centred perspective on CSOs underpinning the second project part. Another paper focuses on the role of crisis exposure and right-wing populist parties in government, with initial statistical findings showing that both are conducive to the growth of CSO restrictions. Finally, the team started to explore qualitatively the evolving nature of legal environments for pro-migrant CSOs.
While practitioners and academics have highlighted that over the past decade democracies have been increasingly regulating CSOs, there is still a lack of comprehensive, cross-national analyses of which EU member states have made CSO regulation more restrictive in response to different crises, and how and why. Most studies focus narrowly on legislation tied to particular crises (e.g. terrorism), types of organizations (e.g. human rights) or regions (e.g. Central Eastern Europe). The CIVILSPACE project measures the evolution of legally defined space for CSOs broadly. It takes into account the multidimensional nature of regulation —encompassing legal domains that directly or indirectly influence CSO survival, resource access and (especially political) activities. It analyzes not only sector-wide regulation but also regulation tailored to specific CSO types (e.g. pro-migrant CSOs) whose growth by definition enhances the unequal treatment of CSOs within the sector. Importantly, it also recognizes that legal reforms can bring about not just restrictive but also enabling changes, arguing that legal restrictiveness and permissiveness need joint consideration. In the second main project phase, the project team will theorize and explore CSOs responses to different legal environments, distinguishing behavior conforming with legal requirements from so-called “chilling effects”, whereby CSOs self-censor, i.e. might be dissuaded from engaging in legal political activities essential for democracy. Large scale CSO survey experiments will help to disentangle implications of distinct reform elements as well as the responses of different CSO types. Bringing this second project phase on behavioural consequences of the law together with the project results to date, CIVILSPACE will advance the theoretical and empirical literature on civil society regulation and their consequences for democratic civil society. It thereby speaks to broader debates in politics, sociology and law concerned with the growth of restrictiveness in democracies’ legal architectures, including debates on democratic recession, militant democracy, and counterterrorism legislation. Further, it can inform discussions on democratic resilience and policy development in the field, as its insights provide a foundation to evaluate which EU members are prone to be vulnerable in times of crisis and which measures might be suitable responses to address those vulnerabilities.