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The Regulation of Civil Society in Advanced Democracies: Organisation-specific or Systemic?

Civil Society
Comparative Politics
Democracy
Regulation
Nicole Bolleyer
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München – LMU
Nicole Bolleyer
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München – LMU

Abstract

Which regulatory frameworks are in place in long-lived democracies to steer the behaviour of membership-based, voluntary organisations (VOs)? More importantly, do these frameworks differ with organizational type (e.g. parties, interest groups, public benefit organisations) or do they broadly resemble each other, thereby reflecting a democracy’s general approach towards regulating, shaping and possibly interfering into civil society? This paper stresses the need to systematically compare organisational regulation beyond the boundaries of subfields that specialize on one single organisational type such as parties or interest groups and to explore parallels and differences in regulation. Legal norms display the extent to which state regulation of societal actors is perceived as normatively acceptable and thus reflects how controversial a state’s attempts to actively steer organisational life are. Their comparative study can give us insights into normative conceptions of state-voluntary relations underpinning democratic states. To examine this claim, this paper compares the regulation of parties, interest groups, public benefit organisations across advanced democracies marked by either democratic continuity or breakdown and by distinct welfare-state traditions, two dimensions expected to shape traditions of organisational regulation in a democracy.