Southern European Civil Societies during the Crisis: Dense and Weak?

The economic crisis that erupted in 2008 had profound effects on civil society’s organizations. The crisis has affected: 1) the funding of civil society’ organizations, 2) their opportunity to engage in policy making, 3) organizations accountability standards, 4) citizens’ needs and finally 5) citizens’ engagement. The negative impact of the economic crisis on civil society organizations has not been spread evenly across regions or clusters of organizations. The economic crisis has deepened the existing divide between large and small/locally-based organizations and has also reinforced the north/south divide in the non-profit sector. For instance, civil society organizations in Southern Europe have been hit harder by the crisis than those in Western Europe. In Southern Europe, the cuts in public funding of civil society organizations has taken place in a context of rapid increase of social needs. Accordingly, during the crisis co-operation among civil society organizations has been strengthened in order to deal more effectively with revenue constraints and the rising social needs. At the same time numerous new informal social networks have surfaced. These networks have set up solidarity institutions (e.g. collective kitchens, solidarity pharmacies, clinics, groceries) or experimented with solidarity economy schemes (e.g. new co-operatives in agriculture, media and consumption, exchange networks, parallel currencies, alternative food networks, etc.). The proliferation of informal networks is not merely an outcome of the economic crisis. Together with citizens’ collective mobilizations they are clear signs of public dissatisfaction with representative democracy as a practical political project. In this respect, the proliferation of such networks reflects both the choice to experiment with new forms of radical activism and the need to provide social support in the context of the crisis. The multiple shifts in Southern European civil societies that have been recorded during the crisis are bound by existing socioeconomic conditions. Thus the organizational forms and repertoires of collective action that have resurfaced during the crisis correspond to ones that usually emerge in periods of severe economic crises (e.g. the shift from formal to informal associational repertoires). Moreover, the increased density of Southern European civil societies does not signal their growing strength. During the economic crisis, the reduced capacity of the state to safeguard the basic rights of citizens has led to a rapid deterioration in the quality of citizenship. Thus, resurgent associational life has been coupled with a significant rise in the levels of poverty and social marginalization. In turn, social inequality and exclusion have undermined the strength of civil society. As the case of Southern Europe illustrates, the density of civil society may be a misleading indicator of its strength if abstracted from the broader political and economic context.