Democratic theory suggests civil society promotes democracy through instilling cooperation among citizens and generating a critical public sphere. For civil society organizations, cooperation with state authorities is integral to represent their constituency’s interest. However, particularly NGOs as civil society’s political voice, face a difficult choice if states turn against them or the values they represent: They can speak up and risk exclusion or remain silent and risk cooptation.
To investigate how NGOs react to this dilemma, I rely on the case of Hungary where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has identified NGOs as "major obstacle to the construction of an illiberal democracy". At the center of my study is a set of liberal NGOs, the so-called ‘Norwegian NGOS’, who came under investigation by the government in 2014. Accusations shifted from ‘foreign paid political activists’ to financial irregularities. As there has been no verdict until today, the damage is reputational, depending on organizations’ exposuree: Some were singled out by the government, some decided to speak up themselves and others remain unknown to the public.
To address how states attempt to coopt or silence civil society, I first show how the political, legal and financial environment in Hungary effectively discourages public sphere activities. This leads to a differential treatment of NGOs according to suspected political alignment.
The second part of the Paper examines NGOs’ reactions through a thematic analysis of expert-interviews with NGO leaders. I expose four strategies with different confrontation potential that organizations pursued and show how these strategies shape organizations’ conceptions of civil society’s function for the future.
The analysis of the Hungarian case is a stand-alone research project. However, my current goal (beyond the date of the workshop) is to conduct more fieldwork and broaden the paper to NGO-state relations in Poland under the PiS government.