Closing Spaces for Civil Society – A Multidimensional Game

In the trap of illiberal autocratisation, all walls are closing simultaneously around the independent civil society.

The issue of closing spaces for civil society – government policies that have cracked down hard on civil society organisations which are either critical toward the illiberal power holders in Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe or used as scapegoats by them – has become an inseparable part of the region’s autocratisation process from Hungary and Poland to Romania and Serbia.

The legislative and administrative measures in these and other countries that intimidate representatives of civil society, defining them as foreign agents and security threats while placing them under legal or even illegal intelligence surveillance and hindering their day-to-day work show remarkable similarities. A hardly surprising fact if one considers that the above anti-CSO policies follow the same – mostly Russian – blueprint.

Illiberal Social Engineering

The above prevalent practices have often been commented on. However, it is rare to consider that these targeted authoritarian measures probably do not pose the biggest threat to an independent and critical civil society (at least not directly) but buttress the illiberal social engineering in a broader sense.