The Effect of EU Civil Society Support on Access to National Policymakers in EU Neighbourhood Policy Countries in the Context of Shrinking Civic Space

The European Union (EU) employs two encompassing frameworks that aim at the strengthening of civil societies in its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) partner countries: the Med Dialogue for Rights and Equality II in the Southern Mediterranean region and the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (EaP CSF) in Eastern Europe. Both frameworks have among its stated goals the strengthening of the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) in influencing policy-making at the national level. In general, both initiatives aim at providing EU support for a deeper engagement with CSOs at the EU, the regional, and national levels alike. The 1st EAP CSF Civil Society Summit held in November 2024 issued a resolution urging among others for greater participation for CSOs in EaP policy. It also called on the international community to combat authoritarian tendencies and democratic backsliding and an increasingly shrinking civic space. We know, however, surprisingly little how and to what extent these broad EU frameworks affect CSO involvement in policy-making processes at the national level. There is scholarship of course on civil society beyond the EU (e.g., Buzogány 2018), and also on various EU civil society engagement programs in general (see e.g., Colombo and Sharapova 2020 for a recent overview) or with a regional focus (e.g., Bürkner 2019, Dandashly and Kourtelis 2019). Much has also been written on these frameworks and targeted EU civil society support in the respective countries and specific policy areas (e.g., Weilandt 2021 on Tunesia, Rommens 2014 on Georgia, Baltag 2022 on Moldova, etc.). Yet there is no large N comparative scholarship on CSO access to policymakers or the effectiveness of these programs in the ENP countries. Moreover, despite an increasing scholarly attention on interest groups and lobbying in democratically backsliding (e.g., see the 2023 special issue of Politics and Governance edited by Dobbins and Labanino) or outright authoritarian contexts (Grömping and Teets 2023), the region – rife with both semi-consolidated democracies, hybrid regimes and autocracies – remains underexplored in lobbying and interest groups research. With the help of our large-scale comparative CSO survey fielded in 12 ENP countries both in Eastern Europe and the Southern Mediterranean – a first of its kind – we explore how EU civil society support frameworks affect CSO access to national policy-makers in these countries in the context of shrinking civic space. We control for organisational characteristics and strategies both at the organisational (mobilisiation and maintanance) and the inter-group (population and community) levels. We thereby base our inquiry on two theories, the political opportunity structure and the influence production frameworks. Our study fills an important research gap both in the interest groups and civil society and the Europeanisation literatures.