Professionalization and movementization - Civil society organization’s internal coping mechanism with de-democratization

In the last decade, one of the main questions in the research on civil society was how civil society organizations respond to de-democratization. The question arises especially in Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans, although, the shrinking space tendencies were also discovered in old democracies of Western Europe and North America. Most of this research focused on the changing strategies of independent and critical civil society organisations (CSOs). Besides de-scaling their activities, one important response is "movementization", i.e. CSOs applying a more participatory repertoire. Another response to de-democratization is professionalization, i.e. the increasing differentiation of the organizational structure and specialized distribution of work. While movementization mainly refers to the changes of repertoire, professionalization is an internal change of the organization. How do these two tendencies relate to each other? How does movementization of CSOs affect the internal structure of the organization? What is the impact of professionalization on other activities? We posit backsliding as a central environmental factor affecting all four fundamental resource arrays: membership, financial resources, access to decision-makers and issues (Lowery 2007). We expect the choice between professionalization and movementization to vary along group type (business associations, professional associations, trade unions, and citizens’ cause groups), the represented issue and constituency (i.e., how salient it is on the illiberal government’s agenda), the relative weight of membership, staff, and donors in decision making, financial resources and their sources, and the level of access to policymakers. Our paper addresses these questions by examining Hungarian civil society organizations through a new online survey. Hungary is a critical case in de-democratization: the Orbán-regime is arguably the most resilient electoral autocracy within the European Union. According to the Varieties of Democracy Indices (Coppedge et al. 2022) Hungary experienced the steepest decline in its deliberative democratic quality during the last 15 years in the EU and currently ranked last in its openness towards societal interests in policymaking (with a mere 0.253 points on a scale of 0 to 1). Furthermore, the Hungarian government just adopted a new law purportedly defending the sovereignty of the country from foreign interference. The newly established Office for the Defense of Sovereignty in Hungary will be empowered to investigate financial records and demand documents and data from any organization or body operating in Hungary, including civil society groups, media organizations, and political parties. The survey is conducted among 2000 Hungarian CSOs, in the field of human rights, environmental protection, welfare-oriented organizations, healthcare, higher education, and energy policy groups examining professionalization, organizational activities with a special focus on lobbying and interest-representation, as well as basic patterns of funding and fundraising activities, and the mobilization of volunteers and members.