The ‘Shrinking of Civil Society Space’ in Europe: Assessing Early Symptoms of Democratic Decline

Considered a problem of ‘third countries’ (e.g. EP 2017), the ‘shrinking of civil society space’ within EU member states has been high on the agenda of practitioners (e.g. EESC 2017; EC 2018; EP 2018; FRA 2018). Several studies indeed indicate that European democracies increasingly restrict civil society organizations (CSOs)—democratic regimes` organizational fabric—through legal means (e.g. Buyse 2018; Swiney 2019; Bolleyer 2021). Still, academic research remains fragmented. Studies focus on legal regulation related to one particular crisis (e.g. terrorism, financial crisis), specific CSOs types (e.g. human rights organizations) or on developments in specific regions (e.g. CEE). This paper presents the first encompassing assessment of this phenomenon based on the ‘Legal Change Dataset’ compiled by the ERC-funded CIVILSPACE project. We coded changes in legal privileges/obligations applicable to CSOs from 2000-2022 covering 12 EU countries across 13 legal domains. The 12 countries represent different regions, legal traditions, old/new democracies, and governmental ideologies. The 13 domains include the regulation of CSO basic rights (e.g. freedom of association, assembly), access to state resources (e.g. tax benefits), core activities (e.g. lobbying) and infrastructures available to CSOs to challenge authorities (e.g. judicial protections). Conceptualizing legal restrictiveness as a multidimensional concept constituted by legal privileges/obligations, we apply IRT models to assess the restrictiveness of CSO’s legal environments. The inclusion of privileges in our data is critical, as most of the debate has addressed CSOs obligations only, ignoring that legal domains may move in a permissive direction. Our analysis shows that several domains have become more permissive across countries. Further, we assess whether CSOs` obligations criticized in countries perceived to be in democratic decline are actually part of the legal repertoire of resilient EU democracies. Meanwhile, we can identify obligations that might indeed constitute government attempts to curtail CSOs’ ability to play a role in democratic processes.