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OrgIntCEE - The Missing Link: Examining organized interests in post-communist policy-making

Subject Area Political Science
Term from 2017 to 2022
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 378988505
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

While great scholarly effort has been dedicated to understanding how Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries transformed from one-party monopolies to democracy and from communism to capitalism, post-communist organized interests as key voices of civil society have received comparably little attention. This is surprising due to the unique trajectory of civil society in CEE. Communist regimes regulated all civic participation, while marginalizing or outlawing dissident movements. However, the collapse of communism is generally considered an enormous triumph of civil societies, as civic movements (e.g. Solidarność) ultimately brought communism to its knees. In the 1990s though, these fragile new democracies were ultimately navigated through the challenges of post-communist by technocratically operating executives. Low associational membership, low trust and weak consultative procedures were defining features of postcommunism, leading to a perception of CEE interest organizations as weak and ineffective. Yet reform-oriented governments soon aimed to appear more responsive to citizens and created new platforms for civic engagement, a trend reinforced by the spread of Western European norms. European integration brought about opportunities for transnational learning. Thus, the strength of post-communist organized interests was perhaps underestimated. Based on qualitative and quantitative methods, the project systematically explored organized interests in four CEE countries – Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovenia – in three policy areas key to their long-term viability – energy, healthcare and higher education. The OrgIntCEE project revolved around five analytical and empirical building blocks. First, we were interested in population ecologies, i.e., how the breakdown of communism, Europeanization and recent trends towards illiberalism in CEE affected organizational birth and death rates. Secondly, we explored interest intermediation structures, i.e. how interest organizations are incorporated into the political process, interact with other stakeholders and where they lobby. Third, we systematically analyzed the determinants of organizations’ political access and influence (e.g. resources, expertise, professionalization, inter-organizational cooperation, etc.). A fourth building block focused on how European/international ties affect CEE organizations, their internal development and lobbying strength. Closely linked to this is our “coming-of-age” dimension focusing on organizational professionalization, multi-level lobbying and expertisesharing with policy-makers. Recently, we increasingly explored how organized interests are coping with “democratic backsliding” and closing political opportunity structures in the region.

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