The Selective Closure of Civic Space

Conny Roggeband and Andrea Krizsán

Global Policy, 2021, vol. 12, issue S5, 23-33

Abstract: Scholars and NGOs have been raising alarms about the increasing political restraints that civil society organizations face globally. In this paper, we argue that closure is in fact a selective mechanism: governments attempt to reorganize civic space through a dual process of selective in‐ and exclusion of civil society organizations. Civil society organizations identified as critical of or even anti‐government face obstruction and restraints, whereas simultaneously the space and state support for organizations identified as pro‐government is expanded. Governments instrumentalize certain civil society organizations to their own benefit: they are sponsored and used to influence the realm of civil society in ways that directly legitimize state power and maintain an appearance of democracy. We illustrate our claims by discussing the reorganization of civic space in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe through the case of women’s rights activism.

Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12973

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:glopol:v:12:y:2021:i:s5:p:23-33

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1758-5880

Access Statistics for this article

Global Policy is currently edited by David Held, Patrick Dunleavy and Eva-Maria Nag

More articles in Global Policy from London School of Economics and Political Science Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().