Europeanization of civil society in Poland

The paper presents a preliminary diagnosis of the changes that have affected Polish civil society along the trajectory of Europeanization over the 1990s and early 2000s. First, the continuing structural transformation of the civil society organizations is described and analysed. The phenomena of uneven growth and multifaceted differentiation of the sector are emphasized. Legal and institutional arrangements aimed at the levelling of the formal position which civil society actors occupy in the public sphere of the country vis-a-vis the state and market actors are then discussed. Using the case of the involvement of Polish civil society actors in new institutionalized partnership settings related to the implementation of EU structural funds, the levelling arrangements, introduced under the banner of Europeanized modes of governance, are finally put to an empirical test to probe their effectiveness and adequacy in the post-Communist country.