Persistent Citizen Engagement in Repressive Contexts: The Cases of Russia and Hungary

The alarming trend of constraint and repression in particular areas of citizen engagement has captured the attention of scholars from many fields. The study of civil society is no exception. Research within this field has tracked the rise of new barriers, both formal and informal, to citizen engagement, particularly in highly politicised sectors. Not only have repressive contexts, such as several states of the former Soviet Union, failed to liberalise as hoped, but also restrictive measures have diffused to previously secure (albeit young) liberal democracies. Some literature on civil society has interpreted such restrictive measures as a means or at least a cause of depressing citizen engagement in the public sphere. Viewed through the lens of civil society as an arena of associational activity, this claim is rather simply substantiated: laws that repress certain sections of civil society diminish the space of that arena. However, viewed through the lens of civil society as a level of citizen engagement, the claim that restrictive measures depress engagement is puzzling: in some cases, citizen engagement has remained steady, or even increased slightly. Steady levels of engagement might suggest that social capital and civil society are not significantly affected by restrictive measures, that limits in one sector shifts citizen engagement to other sectors. The cases of Russia and Hungary typify several trends in civil society: repressive measures first implemented by the Putin regime are mirrored by policies enacted by the Orbán regime. Thus, it is commonly asserted, there is a marked and disquieting convergence of these two cases. From dissimilar starting points—Russia, a consolidated autocratic system; Hungary, formerly a liberal democracy, now marred by avowedly illiberal policies—both cases epitomise concerns about the repression of civil society and resultant effects on citizen engagement. Though not denying that laws in Russia and Hungary target and restrict politically-charged sectors of civil society, this paper contends that repressive measures have not depressed citizen engagement, merely prompted transferences of engagement to other sectors. The paper proceeds as follows: first, we introduce two conceptualisations of civil society—as ‘arena’ of activity or as ‘level’ of engagement—and justify our selection of Russia and Hungary for a comparative case study. Next, we review recent literature that deals with (a) public sphere activity in repressive contexts, (b) the effect of new or intensified repression on civil society, and (c) specific analyses of civil society in Russia and in Hungary. Following our conceptual focus, we operationalise the level of citizen engagement through survey data from CIVICUS and the Levada Center. We then trace this indicator over time, noting its variation in the aftermath of measures that repress or restrict the arena of civil society activity. Finally, we discuss our findings and their wider relevance, both to other geographical areas of civil society studies and to other research fields that address citizen engagement.