Patterns of Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe: from historical trajectories to recent challenges

In this paper, we elaborate on a map of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We summarize 16 country reports collected from scholar and experts from 16 CEE countries in the course of a comparative project. We complement them with analyses from other datasets, e.g. the European Values Study (EVS) and an expert survey that was conducted for the purpose of this study. We apply these sources to cluster the 16 CEE countries under investigation into four distinct country groups: a) the Visegrad group, which consists of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary, b) Slovenia and Croatia, c) Bulgaria and Romania, and finally d) the non-EU-countries Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, and Moldova. Austria serves as a reference country for comparing CEE civil society with a traditional Western European civil society. Historical trajectories, economic data and an institutional analysis all confirm this clustering, and we describe and analyze the country groups using these categories. Even though the groups are diverse, some similarities become obvious, such as the important role of the European Union and the accession process in shaping the institutional framework. Analyses also reveal distinct features of civil society within the four country groups, such as a particularly high level of donor dependency in the non-EU country group and a low level of institutional trust in Bulgaria and Romania. Finally, we discuss trends and future developments. Despite recent challenges, including the withdrawal of foreign donors and political tensions in some countries, the outlook we provide for this dynamic region remains largely optimistic. This paper was originally published in: Vandor, Peter Traxler, Nicole Millner Reinhald Meyer Michael (eds.) (2017): Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe: Challenges and Opportunities. Vienna:ERSTE Foundation. This research was supported by ERSTE Foundation and Vienna University of Economics and Business. We thank the 27 authors and over 400 local experts for their contribution to the results of the study. The edition and translation of the Hungarian version were made by Eva Kuti.