Southern Europe is known as a region in which democracies are still characterised by weak interest groups and civil society.
The paper will deal with the difficult establishment of an autonomous civil society with strong interest groups in new democracies and how the relationship between state-civil society evolved over time. Forty years of democracy in Portugal, Spain and Greece and almost seventy Italy allow for an exciting comparison about the southern European cases. Afterwards, the sthe social and financial strength of southern European interest groups will be discussed, before the nature of civil society is analysed.
Southern Europe is still characterised by low levels of participation and social engagement. The last part of the paper discusses the role of European integration, and how interaction with other interest groups and the Eurogroups have contributed to a stronger position of interest groups in state-civil society relations.
