Source: Politologický časopis - Czech Journal of Political Science
Czech Journal of Political Science
Location: Czech Republic
Author(s): Alena Kluknavská, Jiří Navrátil
Title: Civil Society Trajectories in CEE: Post-Communist ‘Weakness’ or Differences in Difficult
Times?
Civil Society Trajectories in CEE: Post-Communist ‘Weakness’ or Differences in Difficult
Times?
Issue: 2/2020
Citation
style:
Alena Kluknavská, Jiří Navrátil. "Civil Society Trajectories in CEE: Post-Communist
‘Weakness’ or Differences in Difficult Times?". Politologický časopis - Czech Journal of
Political Science 2:101-118.
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Civil Society Trajectories in CEE:
Post-Communist ‘Weakness’
or Differences in Difficult Times?*
Jiří Navrátil, Alena Kluknavská**
Abstract
The article links previous debates on the qualities of civil society in CEE countries and its contemporary
challenges with the aim to demonstrate the debate’s inner differentiation but also its persevering
incapacity to identify and articulate current political risks. The article critically reflects on discussions
over the presumed weakness of civil society and connects them to the major contemporary
challenges for post-socialist civil society in the last decade – profound political transformations driven
by authoritarian elites, the 2015 European refugee crisis, and the current coronavirus pandemic.
Examining the trajectories and characteristics of CEE civil societies in relation to these developments,
we claim that instead of a single, homogenous CEE civil society shaped by a shared communist past,
civil societies in the region are largely determined by different national political contexts. One of the
few common characteristics which makes them different from their old democratic counterparts is
their depoliticization, mostly in terms of their selective approach to political issues and risks.
Key words: civil society; Central and Eastern Europe; post-communism; anti-establishment; refugee crisis;
pandemic
DOI: 10.5817/PC2020­‑2­‑101
1. Introduction
Are civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) weak or are they just different
from their Western counterparts? What kind of difference do they have in common with
each other, and how does it affect their capacity to face contemporary challenges? Al-
*	 The work on this article by Jiří Navrátil was financially supported by a Specific research project from
Masaryk University (MUNI/A/1359/2019). The work by Alena Kluknavská was supported by the grant
project ‘Contestation of Truth: Public Discourses on Migration in Central Europe in the Post-truth Era’
(registration no. 19-14575Y) sponsored by the Czech Science Foundation.
**	 Jiří Navrátil, Assistant professor, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Joštova 10, 602 00 Brno,
Czech Republic, e-mail: jiri.navratil@fss.muni.cz, ORCID: 0000-0001-5333-044X. Alena Kluknavská,
Researcher, Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University, Lipová 507/41a, 602 00
Brno, Czech Republic, e-mail: alena.kluknavska@econ.muni.cz, ORCID: 0000-0002-3679-3335.
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though civil societies in CEE countries are often portrayed as weak and similar, shaped by
a shared communist past, they have often developed with dynamism along divergent trajectories
affected by different challenges (Meyer, Moder, Neumayr, & Vandor, 2019). This
article focuses on critical reflection of the key debates over the conditions and trajectories
of civil societies in CEE, connecting these debates to recent developments and contemporary
challenges of post-socialist civil society in the last decade. Examining their main
trajectories and characteristics in the context of recent developments, the article brings
into question the thesis of post-communist weakness and homogeneity of civil society
in CEE. Instead, it claims that civil societies in the CEE countries are largely determined
by different national political contexts, and that it is not the heritage of the past but its
distorted reflection which makes them selectively depoliticized – and thus different from
their Western counterparts. In this regard, our article contributes to this Special Issue
with a focus on Hungarian and Polish cases – it illustrates both academic reflections and
recent developments in the region while contributing with the description of the Czech
and Slovak cases.
Key debates on civil societies in CEE after 1989 may, with some distortion, be divided
into three stages. In the first decade after the regime changes, the concept of civil societies
entered the debate over the speed and qualities of the democratization processes. Later, after
the turn of millennium, the question of the role of civil societies provoked a debate over
the adequacy of a ‘Westernized’ perspective and never-ending quest for the ghosts from
the Communist past (cf. Gagyi et al. in this Special Issue). Recently, and three decades after
the fall of state socialism, the focus on civil societies in post-socialist countries have been
influenced by three main challenges. First, the claimed divergence of CEE countries from
the ‘standard liberal’ trajectories has been associated especially with political developments
in Poland and Hungary (and to a very limited extent also in Slovakia and the Czech Republic),
with varying consequences for each nations’ civil societies. Second, the 2015–2016
refugee crisis provided an unexpected impetus which revealed some of the characteristics
of the CEE civil spheres. Finally, the current COVID-19 crisis provides us with a continuous
demonstration of how civil societies work and adapt under extreme pressure.
Inquiries into the development of civil society remain important as these analyses
open broader issues and help us to assess the development of our societies from a different
perspective than party politics, theories of democracy or transitology. More specifically,
studying civil societies – especially in difficult times – provides us with insight into the
very core of our societies and helps us to assess their resilience, stability or embedded
problems which politics simply do not touch (Melucci, 2001).
In what follows, we first review the major scholarly discussions over the presumed
weakness of civil societies in CEE. Then, we provide an overview of recent major challenges
to these societies, focusing on the authoritarian and anti-establishment tendencies in
political systems, the refugee crisis of 2015–2016, and the current coronavirus pandemic
situation. Lastly, we attempt to connect these challenges to the previous debates and show
whether weakness can be attributed to our civil societies, and if so, what kind. Here, we
also present the contributions of this Special Issue of the Czech Journal of Political Science,
which address the complexity and overlapping nature of the developments in civil
societies in CEE outlined above.
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2. The Weakness of Post-socialist Civil Societies
and its Causes
The concept of civil societies was not always ‘there’ – and Eastern European experience
with political dissidence contributed to the return of the notion back into the social
sciences. As Cohen and Arato (1992) pointed out, the rediscovery of civil society in Eastern
Europe was related to the failure of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the Czechoslovak
reforms of 1968 and the rise of Solidarity in Poland. In other words, two failures paved
the way for a story of successful mobilization and mass political engagement.
From the moment of transition from state socialism towards democratic capitalism,
the concept of civil society became a buzzword connected to the successful and complete
transition from the authoritarian state towards democratic settings. Many saw a civil society
(and its freedom) as a litmus test of democratic transition (Linz & Stepan, 1996).
Shortly after the revolutions of 1989, a number of studies started to empirically assess the
structure and vitality of civil societies in CEE. Most of them were driven by the more or
less implicit expectation of a link between the fall of state socialist regimes and the renaissance
of politically engaged citizens defending their rights and freedoms, participating in
groups and movements, and seeking to manifest their preferences and ideas in a public
space (Dahrendorf, 1990; Arato, 1991; Ekiert, 1991; Gellner, 1991; Bernhard, 1996; Rose
et al., 1996; Ekiert & Kubik, 1998; Rose, 1999).
One of the major concerns of these studies was the exploration of the specific strengths
and weaknesses of these civil societies. The thesis of ‘weakness’ of civil societies in CEE
became common sense among the researchers of civil participation and most often denoted
the overall low level of formal individual civic engagement, and the small number of
formal civil society organizations and their weaker position vis-à-vis the state. Thus, civil
societies in CEE countries were implicitly or explicitly considered as doing much worse
than their Western counterparts (Bernhard & Kaya, 2012; Ekiert & Foa, 2012; Howard,
2003, 2011; Kaldor, 2003; Newton & Monterro, 2007).
Two broad groups of factors were used to explain the structure and the quality of
post-communist civil societies – external and internal. External factors were largely discussed
in the studies of the organizational and resource mobilization aspects of civic activities.
Here, mostly the effects of foreign resources and the US and EU development
programmes were explored and evaluated. The results of these studies conformed to the
‘weakness thesis’ of the previous wave of research: foreign aid was identified as having
a destabilizing and politically suppressive effect on local civil societies, as the interests
of donors prevented civil actors from becoming more politically autonomous (or even
radical) and emancipated from political elites and at the same time from becoming embedded
in local communities and grass-root initiatives (cf. Aksartova, 2006; Baker & Jehlička,
1998; Carothers, 1999; Fagan, 2004; Flam, 2001; Jacobsson, 2012; McMahon, 2001;
­Mendelson & Glenn, 2002; Narozhna, 2004).
Discussions about internal factors affecting civil societies build on three main arguments.
The first and the most general approach might be characterized as claiming that it
is the experience of Communism and structural effects of authoritarian rule that prevents
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civil societies from flourishing and becoming strong in advocating the interests of citizens.
This was most typically illustrated by Howard (2003, 2011) who pointed out that the
comparatively low levels of individual engagement in post-communist civil society organizations
(CSOs) might be explained as the outcome of the legacy of mistrust of communist
organizations and the persistence of informal social networks – both being the heritage of
the former regime (Howard, 2011, p. 139).
The second argument points at the cultural patterns in post-socialist societies that
have their origins historically much earlier than state socialism. Thus, types of political
activity in CEE that are different from the West are not a result of communism but rather
result from different traditions, symbols and ideas about society and politics. These
pre-socialist patterns were further strengthened with the rise of socialist states and then
triumphed when their representatives – the pre-1989 dissident elite – became part of the
new political class. Sometimes a label of ‘non-political politics’ or ‘anti-politics’ is used to
describe the general ethos of normality of distance from institutionalized politics, political
parties and policy-making in general. The conception of civil society and politics of
CEE dissidents, most notably Václav Havel and Gyorgy Konrad, was based on principles
of non-politics, ethics and anti-authoritarianism (Rupnik, 2010; Smolar 1996). The mainstreaming
of their discourses (together with anti-communist resentment) has constituted
an obstacle for politicization of various issues and social problems in CEE societies and
represented a pathology for democratic politics (Linz & Stepan, 1996; Renwick, 2006;
Tucker et al., 2000). According to Ost:
The opposition rejected the state not just because it could not win there, but also because it
did not want to win there. It was inspired by the same radical views of politics that inspired
the new left in the West. This opposition did not want to possess power so much as to abolish
it. It was, before all else, anti-authoritarian (Ost, 1990, p. 2).
Other authors pointed to the impact of the so-called ‘discourse of anti-politics’ on the
democratic politics of post-communist countries. This concept was put forward by dissidents
and privileged parallel ways of doing politics – apart from political parties and institutions.
According to Linz and Stepan (1996): ‘In fact, most of the values and language
of ethical civil society that were so functional to the tasks of opposition are dysfunctional
for a political society in a consolidated democracy’ (p. 272).
The same issue was highlighted by Tucker et al. (2000) in their account of the utopian
features of Czech post-1989 politics:
Non-political politics is impossible in a modern representative democracy. In the absence
of political parties, a government would have to negotiate individually with each member
of parliament who may at any moment secede from a governing coalition. Such a situation
would lead to political instability, difficulties in changing a status quo, and lack of predictability
in political decisions (pp. 445–446).
The third argument leaves aside the nature of state socialist societies and looks at the
processes of transition and democratization after 1989. Bernhard (1996) identified four
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key factors that are responsible for the weakness of new civil societies in CEE countries.
While two of them (post-totalitarian reality and social transformation) seem to belong
specifically to the process of transition from communism, the other two (demobilization
of civil society after the regime change and transfer of leading civil society figures into
state administration) are related to the democratization process in general (Bernhard,
1996, pp. 311–321). Similarly, Howard also highlights the disappointment of citizens with
the evolution of post-communist societies (Howard, 2011, p. 139). It has been suggested
that although there was an initial wave of civic engagement through collective action aiming
at regime change in 1989, the people, who won their freedom on their own, have been
treated like children and as though they must be taught how to use it correctly (Buden,
2013, p. 37). This applies not only to transitologists and other political scientists who created
the phenomenon of ‘post-communism as a transition to full-scale democracy’, but
also to the early elites and politicians of the newly democratic states who actively tamed
the initial wave of engagement. The processes of demobilizing the CEE societies started
soon after 1989 and were meant to restore the ‘standard’ functioning of political and economic
institutions. The aim was to prevent potential radicalization of citizens and movements
in the streets after the fall of the socialist regimes, which could threaten political
institutions from working in a rational and standardized way (Krapfl, 2009). Thus, the
initial engagement of citizens in public affairs was stifled, which discouraged them from
further participation. These practices of prevention of participation through non-institutional
channels also continued after the initial phase of political transition: policymakers
succeeded in dealing with the situation of the most ‘dangerous’ and potentially mobilizing
social groups (such as unemployed miners or steelworkers) by providing them with selective
incentives through social policies in order not to protest (e.g. early retirement for
miners, pro-employment policies for youth etc.) (Vanhuysse, 2006).
3. Weakness or Difference?
Assessments of CEE civil societies simply as ‘weak’ did not go unnoticed by academics,
both from the West and within the region. Generally, the concept of civil society and its application
in CEE were critically assessed. It has become increasingly ‘self-evident’ that civil
society research should focus mostly on the analysis of the organizational activities and
collective processes outside the areas of the state and the market, while studying activities
on the individual level mostly through the lens of political collective action (membership,
recruitment, mobilization). This epistemological approach has implied normative positions
regarding the assessment of non-organized elements in the sphere of civil society.
When applied to the analysis of CEE societies, it has been argued that CEE civil societies
are weak (or, at least, weaker than those in the West), as there is a lower level of organized
participation followed by civil privatism of the citizens (Howard, 2003; ­McMahon,
2001). However, applying the concepts of ‘social movement societies’ (Meyer & Tarrow,
1998; Rucht & Neidhardt, 2002), which assumes frequent mass engagement and frequent
mobilization, the activities of social movements and other collective actors have been
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challenged by at least three streams in social research: by anthropologists re-conceptualizing
the civil society, by students of social movements applying the concept of transactional
activism, and by political scientists inspecting new forms of individual political
participation.
The first, and probably the earliest, is represented by social anthropologists who pointed
at various meanings and realities of the concept of civil society and promoted ‘elusive
usage of civil society, in which it is not defined negatively, in opposition to the state, but
positively in the context of the ideas and practices through which cooperation and trust
are established in social life’ (Hann, 1996). In doing so, assessment of the vitality and
strength of civil society by means of studying only NGOs means studying representations
of ‘an impoverished view of social life’ (Hann, 1996, p. 20). In his case study of a Hungarian
border village, Hann goes one step further claiming that not only did a civil society
exist here during socialism, but it was the material prosperity resulting from reformist
socialist policies which enabled its existence (Hann, 1992, p. 163). Furthermore, some researchers
pointed out that some aspects of organizing in socialist societies outperformed
the civil activities after 1989, even according to ‘Western standards’. The case study of
a Czech environmental organization founded in 1979 illustrated that its original emphasis
on volunteerism and participant interaction vanished during the transition, which forced
its adjustment into a professionalized, grant-seeking model of environmental NGOs (Carmin
& Jehlička, 2005).
The second critique of the weakness thesis focused on the assumption of the primacy
of mass collective action as a constitutive feature of the civil sphere. It suggests that there
has been an increase in collective civil actors in CEE societies that are less socially embedded
but more focused on cooperation (or conflict) with other CSOs or with political elites
and institutions, and more powerful in promoting public interest agendas and bringing
broader social change than the community and grass-root organizations. Consequently,
the concept of transactional activism (Petrova & Tarrow, 2007; Císař, 2010, 2013) has
been developed in the post-communist context, where the apparent lack of mass social
movements and popular mobilizations has been overshadowed by the plurality of CSOs
that focus not on mobilizing citizens but rather on promoting their own interests, while
working with professional staff and being economically dependent on external and mostly
institutional resources (e.g. EU grants, foundations, public funding etc.).
It is precisely because of their economic independence in politically and culturally restrictive
national contexts that transaction activists succeed in pursuing different political
goals and advocating various interests that were neglected in existing socio-political settings
(e.g. the environment, minority rights etc.). In other words, the prior research emphasis
on building social bonds among citizens via organizations is being replaced with
a focus on developing and maintaining an organizational infrastructure of civil societies
(through transactions and relations among collective civil actors etc.) (Diani, 2003; Baldassarri
& Diani, 2007). Several studies (Císař & Vráblíková, 2010; Císař & Navrátil, 2015;
Mazák & Diviák, 2018) empirically identified and illustrated key aspects of this ‘new’ form
of political activism in the CEE societies: these were, most importantly, advocacy activities,
transnational cooperation, building closer relations with other CSOs in the field, and
strong dependence on public funding.
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The third line of argument focuses on the engagement of individual citizens. The traditional
account of civic engagement puts an emphasis on active citizen involvement in
extra-institutional activities through collective action, and focused on individuals’ contribution
to civil society events, structures and processes (Barnes & Kaase, 1979; Brady,
Verba, & Schlozman, 1995; Norris, 2002), often privileging membership in formal advocacy-oriented
organizations and policy-related initiatives. However, while for example
Latin American countries after the late 1970s experienced large-scale mobilizations and
protests, in CEE the lack of extreme inequality, lower level of urbanization, absence of
a tradition of violent struggles, and existing social protection created a context in which
citizens were not pushed into collective protests (Greskovits, 1998, p. 85). It has also been
suggested that the absence or unavailability of vehicles for collective action (organizations,
movements, networks) may push citizens to avoid ‘voice’ and choose ‘individual
exit’ – absenteeism, abstention or negative voting may constitute important forms of social
and political participation in post-socialist countries (Greskovits, 1998, p. 74).
Furthermore, it was not necessarily an unavailability of collective actors but their forms
and actions which contributed to the parallelism of individual and collective engagement.
On the one hand, fragmentation and political framing of trade unions as a heritage of
the Communist past – even if the trade unions were one of the most important actors
for regime change in 1989 – led to the pacification of large conflicts in the sphere of the
economy (Ekiert & Kubik, 1998). On the other hand, the gap between the elite transaction
networks of the NGOs, which privileged certain parts of the political agenda, and citizens,
led to their mutual distancing, withdrawal from certain thematic fields of civic activity
and preference for individualized participation (Navrátil, 2018).
This is further supported by the evidence of relatively high participation of citizens in
non-advocacy CSOs (Navrátil & Pospíšil, 2014). Consequently, we may observe individual
advocacy engagement in the form of financial support for groups, campaigns, or projects
and active individual citizenship (ethical consumerism, charity giving, writing letters to
public officials etc.) (Navrátil, 2018). In fact, this is not so different from the developments
in the older Western democracies, where the arrival of new means of communication, the
widening repertoire of political participation, and the coming of the digital age changed
the tools of citizen coordination profoundly and offered new opportunities for individual
political engagement (Internet activism, political consumerism, e-donations etc.) (Norris,
2001; Micheletti, 2003; Zukin et al., 2006; Shirky, 2008; van Deth, 2012).
4. Contemporary Situation and Challenges
Two decades after the fall of state socialism, the process of building stable democracies
and ‘hypercapitalist’ or ‘privatized’ societies (Jacobsson, 2015) was accomplished. The
next wave of empirical research into civil societies in CEE has, in the last ten years, indicated
that there are still differences between post-socialist countries and older democracies,
but these are often smaller than the differences between the post-socialist countries
themselves (Jacobsson & Saxonberg, 2013, p. 3). One of the main arguments of the earlier
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wave of research – the thesis of NGO-ization and co-optation of activism through external
funding – has been replaced by efforts to assess all varieties of social and political
activism and their varying trajectories. The research has demonstrated how different
repertoires are rooted in CEE, how civil society actors adjust their framing according to
varying political and cultural contexts and deal with funding opportunities (Jacobsson,
2013; Hryciuk & Korolczuk, 2013; Zakharov, 2013). In other words, after two decades of
development, the picture of civil society seems to have grown fuzzier with large regional
differences, and less focus on a few theoretical concepts.
Furthermore, another series of case studies of post-socialist civil societies painted an
even more counter-intuitive picture of what has been going on recently: many CEE cities
and urban areas became laboratories of the conflict between advanced processes of
neoliberal transformation and its consequences (including commercialization of public
spaces, gentrification, fragmentation and privatization of the public sphere, cronyism and
oligarchic behaviour). It is in the urban spaces where the growing discontent of younger
generations with the neoliberal revolution has spilled into more or less formal networks,
initiatives and groups (Jacobsson, 2015; Polanska, 2015; Bituštíková, 2015). These recent
grassroots activities seem to cast doubt on the previous sceptical voices on the passivity
and withdrawal of post-socialist citizens from public affairs. However, how have our civil
societies dealt with recent major challenges?
4.1. Shifting Political Grounds in CEE
Recent political developments in CEE countries suggest that both political conflicts and
actors are going through significant transformations. Anti-establishment and authoritarian
political shifts in the region in recent years have caused distinct reactions from governments
to autonomous civil society (and have transformed its political opportunities),
and at the same time produced different responses from civil societies to these changes
and reactions.
In Poland and Hungary, the rise of nationalism, social conservatism, anti-communism
and authoritarianism led to profound changes in the structure of the political competition
and even in the polity. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party won the majority of seats
in the 2010 parliamentary elections, which was followed by his second and third electoral
victories in 2014 and 2018. Raising issues of national sovereignty, using strong anti-EU
rhetoric, making constitutional changes, concentrating executive power, and attacking
liberal civil society by the Orbán government have ultimately resulted in what researchers
describe as an illiberal turn away from liberalism and pluralism towards authoritarian
rule (Bustikova & Guasti, 2017; Buzogány, 2017). At the same time, the country saw the
rise of the extreme-right party Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), one of the most
successful extreme-right parties, which combines electoral representation with extra-institutional
mobilization and which has been contesting elections in Hungary over the
last decade (Pirro, 2019). In Poland, the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) won the
majority of seats in the 2015 parliamentary elections, after which it began consolidating
power by attacking key institutions (Stanley & Cześnik, 2019).
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The Czech and Slovak republics, however, have witnessed somewhat different processes
– here, entrepreneurial and social populist political movements have not aimed at such
deep political transformations. In the Czech Republic, the ANO 2011 (Action of Dissatisfied
Citizens) movement, led by the owner of the biggest agrochemical company in the
country, Andrej Babiš, entered government in 2013 and subsequently won the parliamentary
elections in 2017. The party, using an anti-political technocratic discourse, has become
the most successful new Czech political party since the fall of communism (Havlík,
2019). In Slovakia, the extreme-right party Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) –
managed to attract enough votes to enter parliament in the 2016 and 2020 elections, becoming
a  strong oppositional party building on anti-minority and anti-establishment
sentiments (Kluknavská & Smolík, 2016). In 2020, the populist party Ordinary People
and Independent Personalities Party (OĽaNO) won the parliamentary elections in Slovakia,
capitalizing on the widespread discontent with the governance of the country with
a promise to clean up politics (Deegan-Krause, Haugton, & Rybář, 2020). Investigation of
the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée in 2018 revealed close links between
business, judges and politicians, which made anti-corruption one of the most important
issues for voters (Deegan-Krause, Haugton, & Rybář, 2020).
These changes have produced different responses from the side of civil societies in
each of these countries. In the Czech Republic, the responses were driven partly by the
opposition parties but mostly by the new non-partisan civic initiative ‘A Million Moments
for Democracy’. This initiative organized mass public demonstrations against Prime Minister
Babiš and his government, combining existing anti-communist sentiment (Babiš was
accused of cooperation with the secret police during the Communist era) and a critique of
his political, economic and media power and resulting conflicts of interest (BBC, 2019).
In Slovakia, the aftermath of the contract murder of a journalist who investigated cases
of high-level corruption, associated influence peddling and organized crime led to creation
of a social movement called ‘For Decent Slovakia’, which organized the largest public
demonstrations since 1989 (Láštic, 2019). A string of protests in several cities across
the country turned into mass anti-government demonstrations in March 2018. Because
Prime Minister Robert Fico did not explain the ties of some of his close advisors to Italian
organized crime, the protests led to Fico’s resignation as well as the resignation of the Interior
Minister and Police President (Láštic, 2019).
Civil society responses to the rising authoritarianism in Poland and Hungary are explored
in the articles in this Special Issue. Looking at Hungary, Márton Gerő, Pál Susánszky,
Ákos Kopper and Gergely Tóth examine how civil society organizations react to the
closing opportunity structures, in particular to the closing space as the government tightens
the legal and funding opportunities for CSOs. Many organizations have made strategic
decisions depending on their perception of the situation. Perceiving the environment
at the national level of governance as increasingly hostile, CSOs often withdrew
from their cooperative ties with political authorities and from doing research and oriented
themselves more towards raising awareness, taking a watchdog role, and engaging
in publicity on issues with the aim of changing public opinion. Maintaining the focus on
Hungary, Ágnes Gagyi, Márton Szarvas and András Vígvári examine three case studies
aiming to expand and complement the picture of Hungarian civil society, going beyond
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the ­government’s attacks on major CSOs and showing segments of local societies actively
organizing to negotiate the process of post-socialist development.
Moving the focus to Poland, Grzegorz Piotrowski examines present-day discussions
on the topic of Polish civil society in the light of recent political changes revolving around
the concepts of illiberal democracy, populism and (neo)conservative backlash. He claims
that recent developments in the civil society, namely a shift towards more confrontational
campaigns and changes in the structure of the sector and its financing, have resulted in
a new landscape of civil activities in Poland.
Furthermore, while there are some recent studies of the situation of conventional
CSOs, much less is known about the development of trade unions in the changing
CEE political landscape. In the next article, which takes a comparative approach, Maciej
Olejnik fills this gap and argues that the first formations of the populist governments in
Hungary (2010–2014) and Poland (2015–2019) led to the emergence of a new version
of corporatism, which he denotes as a patronage corporatism in both of these countries.
His study illustrates empirically how providing selective incentives and support to some
actors on the part of the government may effectively co-opt one part of civil society (trade
unions) and split, intimidate and weaken the other – the ‘troublesome’ ones.
4.2. Refugee Crisis
The number of refugees arriving in Europe increased significantly during the year of 2015
as a result of the violent conflicts in Syria, Libya and some other countries in parts of Africa
and the Middle East (UNHCR, 2015). This quickly turned into a critical policy issue
and a highly polarized public debate in most European countries (Bansak, Hainmueller, &
Hangart, 2016; Chouliaraki & Zaborowski, 2017; Crawley & Skleparis, 2017; Horsti, 2016;
Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, & Wodak, 2018). This new conflict divided both political
elites and civil society and produced an environment where new coalitions coalesced and
where new mobilizations and counter-mobilizations occurred. The arrivals sparked a wave
of anti-immigrant mobilization by radical and anti-Islam groups, but at the same time also
led to demonstrations both supporting refugees and opposing xenophobia and intolerance.
Interestingly, the initiative, timing, and polarity of mobilizations related to refugees differed
across European countries. While in old democracies such as Italy, Greece and Spain
the major initiative was taken by the advocates of solidarity (Andretta & Pavan, 2018),
the CEE countries witnessed dominant mobilization by those espousing refusal to accept
immigrants. This situation produced different logics concerning mobilization and counter-mobilization
over the refugee question. In some countries, the solidarity mobilization
reacted first and spoke for a humanitarian approach, while the counter-mobilization built
on ethno-nationalist and exclusionary ideas. In other countries, including CEE, the dominant
mobilization came from the anti-immigrant movement backed by the government,
while the solidarity mobilization only reacted to these anti-refugee initiatives. However,
the extent of these types of mobilizations differed considerably between countries. Differences
in the levels of counter-mobilization were observed in countries where the anti-refugee
camp dominated organized protest, including the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
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In Slovakia, the number of refugee-related public events was much lower than in the
Czech Republic. In both countries, about two-thirds of the events were against migrants
and migration in general, while about one-third voiced support for the refugees (Navrátil
& Kluknavská, 2019). While anti-refugee mobilizations were distributed rather evenly
across the country, pro-refugee mobilizations dominated in the capital cities. It was the
pro-refugee side which organized as a countermovement, as typically their events were
organized as counter-events which attempted to confront rallies organized by the anti-refugee
groups. Also, the repertoire was the same – demonstrations dominated. Most of the
events in both countries were organized by formal groups and organizations, and only
a minority of them were run by informal networks or individuals. It was quite typical that
in both countries the anti-refugee camp was dominated by political parties and movements,
while pro-refugee events in both countries were dominated by civil society actors.
Still, most of the civil society activities concerning the refugee crisis consisted of field
work and assistance, and service provision for refugees (often in Hungary and Serbia).
In Poland, the situation was quite similar: both the Catholic Church and nationalist and
extreme right movement organizations, backed by the government, mobilized against refugees;
however, their efforts provoked a strong reaction from some civil society organizations
(Narkowicz, 2018). In fact, the crisis revealed a significant tension within a civil society
field created (again) by the conservative government strategy. By various means, the
government suppressed CSOs helping refugees in Poland while supporting those CSOs
which aimed at ‘helping at the source’ – abroad (Follis, 2019).
While in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland the refugee crisis was, in terms of
numbers of incoming refugees, not really a crisis, Hungary experienced a massive influx
of asylum seekers in 2015. It seems that, again, most of the civil society initiatives in Hungary
consisted of helping refugees directly on site and providing various types of assistance
(coordination of volunteers, provision of food, legal advice, medical assistance etc.).
As Dániel Mikecz suggests in his work in this Special Issue, some of the aid organizations
also focused on training and education, and informed the public about issues related to
migration, while others campaigned and lobbied in efforts to promote advocacy activities,
stressing the importance of their role and responsibility. Mikecz in his article investigates
the role of the morality of solidarity movements with a special focus on how refugee aid
organizations articulated their claims in terms of issues, forms and frames of solidarity
during the migration crisis in 2015. He finds that the goal of refugee aid groups was in
particular mitigating anti-refugee sentiments among the public, which were multiplying
in a hostile environment reinforced by the government’s anti-migrant campaigns.
4.3. Coronavirus Pandemic
The global COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as an unprecedented international public
health crisis. It started in China in late 2019 and has since rapidly spread worldwide,
with the first cases in Europe reported between January and February 2020. The governments
in Central and Eastern Europe reacted quickly by adopting various measures including
declaring a state of emergency, imposing lockdowns, requiring physical and social
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­distancing and even closing their borders, to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus
in their countries.
In the Czech Republic, schools and universities had to close (but continued teaching
online), public events and gatherings were cancelled, shops were closed (with exceptions
such as grocery stores and pharmacies), and free movement was limited with exceptions
for travel to/from work and trips ensuring basic human needs such as shopping for food.
The Czech government also made it compulsory to wear a face mask in public spaces
(Tait, 2020). It also temporarily re-introduced internal borders, barred access to the country
to foreign nationals (with some exceptions) and forbade Czech citizens from leaving
the country (with the exception of cross-border workers). Additionally, anyone returning
to the country had to observe a mandatory two-week quarantine at home. At the same
time, debates and policy initiatives were launched to help the citizens and firms economically
hurt by the quarantine.
In Slovakia, the government adopted similar measures, including requiring a face mask
in public, to tackle the crisis. One notable exception in Slovakia, however, was mandatory
state quarantine for all people coming back to the country, i.e. the obligation to be isolated
in one of the state quarantine facilities for the time necessary to carry out a laboratory test
for coronavirus. Authorities also closed off several Roma settlements in eastern Slovakia
and deployed soldiers to take samples for testing after reports of multiple coronavirus
cases. Such actions increased worry among some civil society organizations about further
exclusion, stigmatization and discrimination of these marginalized groups (Romea, 2020).
Though both Poland and Hungary also rapidly responded to the spread of coronavirus
with similar measures, the governments at the same time tried to politicize and take
advantage of the pandemic to secure more political power. In Poland, despite restrictions
undertaken as a result of the coronavirus, the government, led by the Law and Justice Party,
pushed for presidential elections to take place in May, dismissing concerns about free
and fair elections, health risks, the quality of voting or the constitutionality of such a vote
(Klajn, 2020). In Hungary, concerns were raised at the end of March 2020 when the Hungarian
parliament voted to accept the government’s request for the power to rule by decree
without a set time limit. Under the new legislation, the government was able to suspend
the enforcement of certain laws and people who publish what was deemed as untrue or
misrepresented facts could face prison (Bayer, 2020).
Civil societies in these countries have reacted to the coronavirus crisis and measures
undertaken by the governments in different ways and have even found new forms of mobilization
and civic involvement. In both the Czech Republic and Slovakia, civil society has
mostly focused on service provision in areas that needed to fill the gaps left by the state.
Besides non-profit organizations, informal grassroots networks and communities have
often started initiatives and coordinated via online platforms and social media. There have
been neighbourhood initiatives helping the elderly or disabled people with aid and shopping,
universities sending their medical and pedagogy students to volunteer in hospitals,
groups of psychologists offering free therapy, and organizations helping homeless people
or teaching children in socially excluded communities. One of the core issues was sewing
face masks at home. Since both governments made coronavirus mask-wearing compulsory
but did not provide them to citizens, people mobilized to sew and distribute homemade
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masks to comply with this rule and to help those who could not get the masks themselves
(Tait, 2020). Numerous initiatives and online groups, for instance ‘Whole Czechia Sews’
or ‘We Sew Masks in Brno’, were established, with thousands of members, including individuals,
small firms, cafeterias and theatres sewing and distributing masks to health
professionals and social provision facilities which were in short supply of protective gear.
As a result, civil society and non-profit organizations, particularly in the social service
and healthcare provision sectors, gained more public and media attention, which in the
future may lead to a better evaluation of their activities and may highlight their importance.
Also, a new wave of volunteering may strengthen participation in the civil sectors
in years to come. However, as the governments mostly focused on providing financial
assistance to commercial subjects and no such initiatives for non-profits emerged during
the crisis, some non-profit organizations who are heavily dependent on either donors or
public subsidies may face economic obstacles in the future. Also, some advocacy groups,
such as the organizers of mobilizations against the prime minister in the Czech Republic,
may be losing momentum, as the state of emergency interrupted a series of protests for an
indefinite amount of time.
In Poland and Hungary, the consequences of laws passed with the pretence of mitigating
the coronavirus might be rather harmful to civil society. For instance, Law and Justice
tried to use the coronavirus pandemic to put forward its political agenda in Poland, particularly
laws criminalizing sexual education and restricting access to abortion. While in
the past such attempts were met with large protests (marches with black umbrellas), as Piotrowski
in his article in this Special Issue points out, currently the demonstrations would
be in violation of social distancing measures, with possible penalization (Klajn, 2020). The
new legislation in Hungary has also caused deep concerns among many CSOs as it gives
Viktor Orbán new power to silence or intimidate his opponents, including journalists
and human rights activists. Such measures further close the space for CSOs struggling for
survival, adding to the processes that may eventually lead to de-democratization of the
political system, as Gerő et al. in their article in this Special Issue argue. Moreover, as disinformation
and misinformation about the coronavirus spread rapidly, in some instances
amplified by political actors, such trends may have profound consequences for those civil
society organizations which inform the public about the situation and help to fight the
spread of false narratives.
5. Conclusion
This article looked at key debates over the role and developments of civil societies in Central
and Eastern Europe and connected them to recent challenges. Which connections
have we identified and explored? From today’s point of view, it seems that the initial focus
on the historical weakness of post-socialist civil societies in terms of numbers of participants
and organizations missed the point of the subsequent risks and potential of CEE
civil society in two major regards. First, it took all post-socialist civil societies as a single
case of the post-communist condition. Second, it failed to capture the real challenge of
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our civil societies – not the passivity of citizens but their mobilization by authoritarian
politicians and nationalist-conservative movements.
As our article and the other contributions to this Special Issue reveal, there is no
homogenous civil society condition in CEE. On the contrary, the civil societies in each
country deal with significantly different political landscapes, utilizing opportunities to
restrain and control the political elite on the one hand, or choosing between co-optation
and abeyance on the other. One of the current challenges for civil societies in CEE that
we identified as particularly important is associated with anti-establishment and authoritarian
political shifts and hostile reactions of governments to autonomous civil society.
Happening particularly in Hungary and Poland, we have witnessed these trends emerging
and deepening in challenging times during both the refugee and coronavirus crises. This
suggests the immense importance of political context for civil society and its condition.
Moreover, both the Polish and Hungarian cases seem to contradict the traditional connection
between civil society mobilization and democracy vitality. It has been illustrated
not only how authoritarian regimes in Poland and Hungary gained their momentum in
the streets and squares, relying on civic networks and extra-party structures (e.g. Greskovits
& Wittenberg, 2016; Minkenberg, 2017), but also how they mobilize support even
when in office. It was precisely this capacity which enabled the conservative regimes to
pressure the oppositional part of civil society to adapt or vanish.
At the same time, there are some common underlying trends in all CEE countries.
After several decades of capitalist transformation, a significant part of civil society conformed
to neoliberal model – it became NGO-ized while substituting many functions
performed by the state to soften the ‘path of economic globalization’ (Kaldor, 2003, p. 9)
or the ‘post-socialist integration of Eastern-Europe to global capitalism’ (Gagyi et al. in
this Special Issue). This meant especially working in the shadow of the state in the sphere
of service provision, and selectivity of agenda in advocacy activities which has limited
civil society actors’ social embeddedness. The former denotes dealing with problems on
the ground without asking political questions. The latter relates to the pre-occupation
with political rights and freedoms, financial transparency and watch-dogging against the
ghosts of the totalitarian past. This left the civil society in CEE quite an easy prey for
both technocratic political managers and for anti-communist conservatives when they
seized political power. Despite the numerous (and often somewhat hidden) struggles of
the past, present and future, depoliticization of civil society in CEE, in the sense of its
selectivity of political issues, may be in its most fragile – and defining, at the same time –
moment.
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