When Mainstream Parties Push for Civil Society Restrictions: Towards Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies?

A growing number of studies indicate that established liberal democracies increasingly restrict civil society actors, a trend closely linked to the growing impact of populism on European democracies. Especially governments including right-wing populist parties have been shown to resort to legal measures that target government-critical groups as well as organizations working on issues that are ideologically contentious. But how pervasive is this trend beyond countries governed by parties with an illiberal ideology? Do ideologically mainstream parties in government also use their prominent position to restrict groups fighting the government’s agenda or engaged in activities rejected for ideological reasons through legal means? If so, is the intensity and nature of restrictions adopted predominantly shaped by the government parties’ ideology or by state traditions making state actors more or less inclined to constrain civil society actors? Linking the literatures on party ideology and defensive democracy we theorize the drivers of contentious civil society restrictions, encompassing restrictions that directly curtail CSOs’ freedom of speech, right to assembly and association essential for CSOs to play a meaningful role in liberal democracy. To test the hypotheses, we select UK and France, two liberal democracies which have been governed by ideologically mainstream parties and experienced a shift from center left to center right, while representing contrasting cases in terms of their propensity to intervene in protecting constitutional values. Our findings show that the intensity and type of restrictions are predominantly shaped by state traditions. However, in the UK the change towards right leaning governments led to sharp increase in voice restrictions, meaning that in states with low propensity for the state to intervene, ideology may drive restrictiveness.