Three Waves of Authoritarianism Impacting Civil Society

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Discussion

Abstract

About twenty years ago, Samuel Huntington published this famous volume “The Third Wave”. In about a decade, countries around the world had managed to free themselves from autocratic rulers and started a transformative journey towards democratic governance and liberal societies. Civil society organizations significantly contributed to this development serving as “drivers of change”. However, the overly positive forecasts of a world without authoritarian regimes, and populist autocrats did not come true. Instead, democracy is on the retreat worldwide. What this means for civil society is addressed by a growing literature that points out the “shrinking and changing spaces” for civil society and its actors world-wide.
The retreat of liberal-democratic governance combined with an anti-civil society attitude of public and societal actors constitutes by no means a new phenomenon. Looking back into history, each wave of liberalization and democratization was followed by a wave of autocratization in the form of the emergence of societal anti-liberalism combined with authoritarian governance that put in place instruments and strategies that at least hindered of fully oppressed CSOs.
This was the case in the second half of the 19th century, when racism defined as the supremacy of the white man developed into the prime point of reference and legitimization for oppressive policies in the global south and in North America. In many European countries, civil society was heavily controlled since governments were afraid of the growing power of the proletariat with its numerous CSOs. Manifold were the instruments and strategies of governments to control, oppress and even eradicate civil society during the area of fascism in Central Europe. In each case, the process of getting civil society under control started smoothly with somehow limited legislative procedures. However, these first steps developed in a short time into a tightly woven network of regulations, and mechanism of rigid control.
The Round Table draws the attention to those strategies that are put in place by governments, increasingly infected by authoritarianism and anti-liberal tendencies, with the aim of hindering the work of CSOs and moreover delegitimizing the concept of civil society. As a point of departure for our discussion serves the methodological approach of “policy learning”.
The Round Table encompasses an introductory to the concept of policy learning which is followed by case studies highlighting the smooth transition from a liberal towards a restrictive and controlling governance regime vis a vis civil society. How authoritarianism impacts civil society will be exemplified by referring to Germany and Central Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, to Russia after the breakdown of the Soviet-Union until today, and to China from the beginning of the period of liberalization until the emergence of today´s new Maoism. It will be depicted how policy instruments are exported and taken-up by like-minded governments, and how these policies are embedded in a mind-set of ideas and concepts that combines nationalism with anti-feminism and anti-pluralism.

References

Carothers, T. and Brechenmacher, S. (2014) Closing Space: Democracy and Human Rights Support under Fire. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Glasius, M., Schalk, J. and De Lange, M. (2020). Illiberal Norm Diffusion: How Do Governments Learn to Restrict Nongovernmental Organizations? International Studies Quarterly, 64 (2), 453–46.
Knill, Ch. (2006): Cross-national Policy Convergence, Routledge.
Nolte, E. (2008): Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche, Piper.
Roggeband, C., & Krizsán, A. (2021). The selective closure of civic space. Global Policy, 12, 23-33.

Sub Unit

• Third Sector organizations and civil society under different political regimes and contexts: role and regulations

Discussants

• Elie Abouaoun, St Joseph University

• Annette Zimmer, Münster University

• Ulla Pape, University of Greifswald

• Katja Levy, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Moderator

• Elizabeth Bloodgood, Concordia University