Abstract
This chapter presents the conceptual framework of resourcefulness that brings together the contributions to this volume; it also establishes Poland, Russia, and Sweden as particularly relevant cases for understanding transformation in the relationships between civil society, the state, and the market. Here, we explore the organizational realities of civil societies in the three countries and their shared history of a strong state. We posit resources as a contrast medium, allowing us to distinguish between different types of resourcefulness in civil society organizations’ responses to various pressures. Finally, the overall thematic structure of this book and each of its contributions are highlighted.
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This volume explores the relationships between civil society, state, and market in Poland, Russia, and Sweden. In these countries and around the world, these relationships have undergone significant transformation in recent decades, with managerialism and government bureaucracy permeating civil society (Bode & Brandsen, 2014; Maier et al., 2016). Civil society organizations’ engagement in state procurement programs and embrace of new public management technologies and rationalities as well as profit-oriented project-based approaches (Benevolenski & Toepler, 2017; Eikenberry & Drapal Kluver, 2004; Hedling & Meeuwisse, 2015) suggesta merging of the institutional logics of the three societal spheres. Most often, the process of blurring boundaries between the civil society, the state, and the market forges “soft” forms of pressure that nevertheless effectively diminish civil society’s ability to provide critical perspectives on social, economic, and political developments (Salamon & Sokolowski, 2018). They halt reproduction of the internal logic of membership and the values of participation, challenging the potential democratic impact of civil society as awhole (Eikenberry, 2009; Henderson, 2002; Salamon & Toepler, 2015).
Additionally, stricter state regulations for accountability and political engagement as well as direct repression of forms of collective actions with the potential to confront political and economic elites erode fundamental democratic rights. Regardless of the particularities of individual political and ideological regimes, both democratic and non-democratic governments exert significant pressures on civil society, sometimes under the banner of the fight against international terrorism (Buyse, 2018) and sometimes in the name of “sovereignty” from liberal democratic values (Casula, 2013). Albeit more violent and therefore more visible, repression leads to outcomes similar to those taking place under “soft” governance: The features of collective organizing usually attributed to civil society—autonomous engagement, voluntary and nonprofit activities, plural and particularistic identities (Rosenblum & Post, 2002)—are being challenged.
With this book, we aim to demonstrate how civil society organizations navigate the dynamic and complicated terrain of expanding opportunities for market- and government-oriented forms of engagement as well as the “shrinking” spaces for advocacy and contentious civic mobilization (Carothers & Brechenmacher, 2014). The chaptersgathered here theoretically interrogate, and provide empirical evidence of, the accommodation, negotiation, and contestation of an extensive scope of external pressures by civil society organizations in three countries. We highlight that state and market pressures on civil society are exerted first and foremost by means of (re)arranging and controlling resource accumulation, use, and transformation. The influence of market institutional logic is facilitated by civil society organizations’ engagement in profit-generating activities (e.g., selling merchandise) and the need to adapt market rationalities in order to achieve a sustainable inflow of revenue, often in the context of professionalized rather than associational organizational forms (Maier et al., 2016). When states regulate or manipulate the sphere of collective action, they often do so by directly funding the types of action and organizations that align with state policies (Turunen & Weinryb, 2020) and by conditioning, limiting, or completely cutting off access to independent funding sources as well as by severely curtailing access to the political sphere, for instance, by means of restricting some organizations from partaking in consultation processes (Daucé, 2015).
While financial resources are provided or withdrawn to put pressure on civil society, they are also used by civil society organizations to adapt to and counter these pressures and manifest their durable nature (Sampson et al., 2005). Organizations develop strategies to counter this method of interference and find new, innovative ways of organizing collective life. Our approach recognizes organizational agency in the primary processes that change the civil society landscape. We explore the repertoire of actions that constitute resourcefulness on the part of organizations weighing the benefits and costs associated with various kinds of resources, access opportunities and restrictions, and the dynamic nature of resources.
Before introducing this volume’s contributions, this chapter presents our conceptual framework of resourcefulness and establishes Poland, Russia, and Sweden as particularly relevant cases for understanding the shifting landscapes of civil society. By way of illustration, we offer three examples of external pressures and organizational resourcefulness employed in three organizations, one from each of our selected countries.Footnote 1
The Organizational Reality of a Reconfigured Civil Society
It is a challenge to translate the encompassing transformative processes often termed “professionalization,” “NGO-ization,” “marketization,” “hybridization”, etc. into the realities of organizational identity and day-to-day operation. In much of the literature, each of these processes is treated separately (Maier et al., 2016). Rather than the processes themselves, our main focus of exploration is the effects of those processes on the ability of civil society organizations to carry out their missions. The first of our three examples is the European Solidarity Center in Gdańsk, Poland, a foundation behind a museum and a library created to preserve the memory of the trade unions’ contribution to the fall of the communist regime in Poland and beyond. The Polish movementSolidarność (Solidarity) is often seen as the historical foundation of contemporary Polish civil society (Grabowska & Szawiel, 2003; Załęski, 2012). Our Russian organizational example is the NGO Development Center in St. Petersburg, one of the many capacity-building professional organizations that contributed to the development of civil society all over the country through the distribution of information and resources (cf. Jakobson & Sanovich, 2010). In 2015, like many other prominent organizations, the NGO Development Center was forced to register with the Ministry of Justice as a “foreign agent.”Footnote 2 Our third example is equmenia, a local branch of a national umbrella organization for religious youth associations in Gothenburg, Sweden. Equmenia has been an important part of Swedish civil society since the faith-driven revivalist movement, temperance, and the workers’ movements contributed to the democratization of Sweden in the early twentieth century (Micheletti, 1995).Footnote 3
Chronologically, the first exertion of pressure relevant to our discussion challenged equmenia in late 2018, when the organization was denied state fundingfor its youth scout activities on the basis that its work in propagating the evangel of Jesus could be exclusionary. A few months later, in Poland, the Ministry of Culture threatened that the European Solidarity Center would suffer substantial financial cuts unless the organization accepted state control. At about the same time, the NGO Development Center was awarded a grant from one of Russia’s most prestigiousstate funding programs despite its status as a “foreign agent” and attendant precarity. On the surface, these three organizations and the challenges they experienced are very different, shaped by their own characteristics as well as the sociopolitical contexts they inhabit. We discuss their idiosyncratic institutional contexts in more detail in the following section, but it is important to note here that, contextual specifics notwithstanding, the common underlying concern is a narrowing of interpretations of which ideas qualify as democratic and liberal, resulting in limitations on the potential of civil society as a relatively autonomous sphere that manifests the interests and will of citizens. Here, we bring the reader’s attention to the fact that the vignettes presented exemplify state pressure on civil society organizations: the state negotiating its own governing mandate (equmenia), mixing oppressive and soft powers by assigning some organizations punitive labels and simultaneously endowing them with resources (NGO Development Center), and attempting co-optation (European Solidarity Center). When forced to negotiate the extent of its autonomy, each organization utilized various types of resources and found resourceful ways of navigating the changing demands of the state.
In the case of the Swedish equmenia, an outcry of solidarity on the part of a large umbrella organization for socially-oriented civil society organizations resulted in a reversal of the state’s decision to withdraw funding. Subsequently, a discussion about the need to renew interpretations of what constitutes a democratic organization eligible for funding was initiated by the national government’s launching of an inquiry into what value system an organization must espouse in order to qualify for public funding (SOU, 2019). Thus, this paradigmatic case resulted in explicit debates about the autonomy of civil society and the limits of state interference. In Poland, with the help of various individuals, civil society organizations, and the local government, the European Solidarity Center managed to crowdfund the amount of its Ministry of Culture funding in a remarkably short time, thus refusing cooptation (Katka, 2019). This became a powerful message to the government that its attempts at control would spur action. It also provoked popular debates about the legacy ofSolidarność in times of de-democratization. The Russian NGO Development Center found itself in the paradoxical position of simultaneously being the subject of punitive measures (being listed as a “foreign agent”) and accepting financial support from the state. This contradiction, while securing the immediate economic survival of the organization, put at risk its symbolic resources in the form of legitimacy among partners and beneficiaries. Together, these three cases provide an empirical basis for our challenging of the understanding of the state as a monolithic entity and for our unpacking of the complex relationship between a particular state and civil society. Distinguishing different levels, forms, and instruments of state operation generates an analytical perspective that captures the specific institutional context of the strong state.
Obviously, the relative autonomy of civil society refers to the market as well as to the state. Independence from profit-driven interests as civil society’s core characteristic is often emphasized in the nomenclature “nonprofit” or “voluntary” sector, terms which are often used as synonyms for civil society. In recent years, studies have brought attention to the fact that “business-like” rationales and practices are increasingly permeating civil society (Maier et al., 2016). Organizations commodify their work by offering services in exchange for direct monetary compensation from beneficiaries or third parties, for example, public authorities (Eikenberry & Drapal Kluver, 2004). This commodification of civic engagement often takes the form of project-based contracts (Hedling & Meeuwisse, 2015). Both equmenia and the NGO Development Center competed for project funding despite the bureaucratic, symbolic, and financial costs accompanying the application process. While equmenia was deemed “undemocratic” as a Christian organization in a secular state, the Development Center was treated as an unpatriotic “foreign agent” capable of influencing public opinion and authorities while receiving foreign funding. Nevertheless, both organizations were granted state support.
A more business-like approach also bases recruitment criteria on formal training and professional experience rather than commitment to the issues and the organization (Salamon, 1999). Those who are not employed are usually engaged sporadically and around specific issues, often as potential donors or service consumers rather than as members. Working with such categories of supporters represents a departure from traditional concepts of membership (Papakostas, 2011), but when mobilized efficiently, these supporters can constitute a powerful resource for the organization, as exemplified by the European Solidarity Center’s monumental crowdfunding campaign.
Despite the profound effects on organizational stability, functioning, and identity exerted by the pressures of political, economic, and cultural shifts, civil society organizations exhibit an adaptability that cannot be reduced to conformity. Existing organizations find ways to preserve their missions and resist co-optation (Kravchenko & Moskvina, 2018), while new organizations emerge with the aim of counteracting the processes that are undermining the autonomy of civil society (Kings et al., 2016). A variety of resources and instruments may be at their disposal. Direct mobilization and building solidarity against state co-optation attempts has already been described in the case of the European Solidarity Center in Gdańsk. The NGO Development Center in St. Petersburg also drew on its contacts with other civil society organizations and launched the projectChuvstvo Loktia (which loosely translates as “Shoulder to Shoulder”) in 2019, which aimed to create spaces for the accumulation and sharing of material and immaterialresources between local and regional partners. Similarly, in a context in which civil society and the state have historically engaged in far-reaching cooperations, it was the solidary support of other civil society organizations that prompted the reversal of local authorities’ decision to deny funding to equmenia in Gothenburg.
Demonstrating skill in navigating institutional landscapes, negotiating boundaries, and managing external and internal limitations and opportunities, the three organizations discussed above exemplify remarkable resourcefulness. Compelled to acquire external funding—in all three cases, public funding—they each experienced pressure to comply with conditions stipulated by their sources: accepting ideas of democracy, governance, civic rights, and legitimacy. Each organization then attempted to negotiate and subvert those ideas in order to continue its work. We argue that a similar process of accommodation, negotiation, and contestation emerges when other types of resources are accumulated and transformed into activities, identities, and networks. It is this capacity for adaptability and resilience on the part of civil society organizations, their ability to engage with and stand against external attempts at control and enforced dependence, that this volume explores. The comprehensive empirical and innovative theoretical approaches of the individual studies investigate a variety of organizational forms, resource types, and methods of accommodation and contestation while tracing local expressions of global trends.
Case Selection: A Shared History of a Strong State
There are some apparent dissimilarities between the three countries considered in this book. The most striking of these pertain to their disparate histories of state socialism (Poland and Russia) and state corporatism (Sweden); their distinct relations to international organizations such as the EU and NATO; and their differing paths and intensities of engagement in current processes of transformation toward globalization, (neo)liberalism, and marketization (Miller & Taylor, 2009). The even more deeply engrained categorizations of capitalism versus communism or democratic versus authoritarian regimes (Brown, 2001) figure as well. A conventional comparison of such contexts would lean on the cross-regime approach, highlighting varying clusters of historical relations among state, market, and civil society (Salamon & Anheier, 1998). The cross-regime perspective, however, is limiting, especially as such comparisons tend to present static organizational landscapes without illuminating dynamic developments in multiple contexts (e.g., Archambault et al., 2014; Henriksen et al., 2012).
Another consequence of the regime approach is that it often draws scholars into debates about whether civil society even exists in Eastern Europe and whether it can carry out the functions assigned to it by the Western intellectual tradition. Since this tradition is rooted in a specific practice and institutional framework, it treats the Eastern European experience of the last thirty years as “a linear temporality of catching up” (Kulawik, 2020, p. 3). In addition, this experience is so different from the Western experience that it is easier to overlook or erase than it is to understand and conceptualize (cf. Kravchenko, 2017). The catching-up view collides with the perceptions of those who are actively involved in Eastern European civil society and creates spatial and epistemic boundaries within academic knowledge production (Kulawik, 2020). Making the case for a vibrant civil society and its significance for society at large in former socialist, Soviet countries opens room for a discussion that overcomes the limitations of the regime approach.
In the interest of capturing the dynamic changes within and between our selected countries and foregoing regime discussions in general, we recognize the abovementioned disparities between them but focus on their similarities. Our point of departure is the recognition of a common experience of a strong and large state, a characteristic that impacts not only how state bureaucracy interacts with nongovernmental organizations, but also how market rationality penetrates nonprofit initiatives. The history of state socialism in Poland and Russia, on one hand, and of the neocorporativist state in Sweden, on the other, has left a legacy despite substantial rollbacks in more recent years. State socialism as a scientific concept is used principally to designate an institutional setting characterized by single-party polity and planned economy (e.g., Sokol, 2001), an arrangement that consolidates legislative, executive, and judicial powers into the state apparatus and subjugates society and economy to the state (Kamiński, 1991). State corporatism is a system of political representation in which the state incorporates various powerful interest organizations into the decision-making process outside the parliamentary process (Lewin, 1994). At the same time, the relative decentralization of governance through a system of semi-independent directorates has increased the political role of the bureaucratic administration through which state and corporate interests intertwine (Rothstein, 1988).
Nongovernmental nonprofits existed throughout the time of state socialism in Poland and Russia and were an essential part of Swedish state corporatism. Earlier research has discussed whether the expansive (welfare) state “crowds out” private voluntary, familial, and communal forms of self-organization and social provision; scholars have generally concluded that the opposite is usually the case (Salamon & Sokolowski, 2003; Skocpol, 1996; van Oorschot & Arts, 2005). However, the role that civil society organizations are relegated in the context of a strong state differs from that of other institutional settings. Although vital for sustaining state legitimacy in all three countries, civil society organizations did not engage in independent welfare provision under the Communist Party’s monopoly on power (Salamon & Anheier, 1998). In the communist period, the state welfare model purported to guarantee universal social and economic rights for citizens, whereas nongovernmental actors, with their services integrated into the system of welfare provision, were meeting more specific needs such as redistributing public resources (Brenk, 2017; Wengle & Rassel, 2008). The Swedish institutional setting, although similarly reducing the role of civil society organizations in service provision to a minimum, differed significantly in that it provided opportunities for advocacy and opinion-building around social andother issues (Lundström & Wijkström, 1995).
For our discussion, the most illustrative example of the embeddedness of civil society organizations in state resources, structures, and processes is that of trade unions. As workers’ movements played a central role in the establishment of socialist regimes around Eastern Europe and of social democracy in Northern Europe, they became important agents alleviating social, economic, and political tensions. In Poland and Russia, such movements were integrated into the system of workplace management, enforcing regulations and plans but also giving voice to workers’ interests and channeling state resources into services—mostly as a complement to state-provided services, but also parallel to them (Il’in, 1995). While social services are not part of the trade union mandate, Swedish trade unions were (and remain) represented in bodies of public administration and private corporations; they provide expertise on legislative measures proposed by other political actors and propose political initiatives of their own (Allvin & Sverke, 2000). Although systems of integrating nongovernmental organizations into governmental procedures and co-opting potentially oppositional forces to align with state interests have their national specificities, the mechanism of integration and co-optation via the (re)distribution of financial and power resources seems to be a common one. Moreover, it has persisted through political and/or socioeconomic paradigm shifts in Poland, Russia, and Sweden.
With the fall of socialism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a wave of unprecedented social mobilization rippled across the globe, signaling a rejection of state interference in economics and society. For our discussion, the most important outcomes of this transformation were, on one hand, a proliferation of various forms of for-profit and not-for-profit economic and social activities and, on the other hand, a substantial scaling down of publicly funded welfare programs in all three countries (Cook, 2013; Hort, 2014). Entangled in the narrative of the transition to capitalism and the supposed need to catch up with the West, the professionalized organization as a blueprint for civil society organizations emerged. After the initial wave of mass mobilization subsided, those civil society organizations that remained either lost their progressive role (e.g., trade unions; see, for instance, Heyns & Bialecki, 1991; Shubin, 2008) or assumed the function of public service providers (Alekseeva, 2010; Henderson, 2002; Jezierska, 2015). The need to fill the void left by state rollbacks was reinforced by EU pre-accession grants (for Poland) as well as American funding (for Poland and Russia) (Crotty, 2009; Leś et al., 2000). Foreign funding often sponsored concrete projects involving collaborations between emerging organizations and (local) state and self-governing authorities.
Although it is not a social service provider, the NGO Development Center has become a poster organization for the outcomes of this process. More importantly, its fate as a “foreign agent” is illustrative of how vulnerable such civil society organizations can become when the state reasserts it power and reintroduces the principles of state domination over society. In Russia, stricter regulations for the registration and accountability of foreign-funded organizations were first introduced in 2005. Independent funding to civil society organizations dwindled following the introduction of the “foreign agents” law (2012) and the Ministry of Justice’s lists of “undesirable organizations” (2015) (Moser & Skripchenko, 2018; Tysiachniouk et al., 2018). It became costly for civil society organizations to receive foreign funding and engage in advocacy (Semenov & Bederson, 2017), thus making state fundingone of the most significant sources for civil society as a whole (Jakobson & Sanovich, 2010; Salamon et al., 2015).
Similarly, in Poland, the period of initial liberalization was followed by a (forceful) reinstatement of central government as “the center of gravity” for civil society across several Eastern European countries (Meyer et al., 2020). When the radical right-wing party Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) won a parliamentary majority and the presidency, attacks on civil society organizations, especially those with clear liberal or leftist orientations, ensued. Harassment, in the forms of excessive auditing, public smearing, and cuts in funding (all evident in the above-described case of the European Solidarity Center), is directed only at certain organizations, while others (often right-wing organizations) enjoy generous governmental support in terms of symbolic and economic resources (Szuleka, 2018).
Although less dramatic, the rollback of the Swedish welfare state took place during approximately the same period. It led to the establishment of a mixed welfare model, while a still (comparatively) strong public sector has opened for private and civil society welfare providers supervised and financed by the state (Hartman, 2011; Hort et al., 2019). As a result, a shift emerged in what issues stimulate civil society activity. Already in the 1990s, Lundström and Wijkström highlighted that organizations aiming at societal change were gradually losing members—and resources generated from membership—to service-oriented organizations (Lundström & Wijkström, 1995, 1997). At the same time, the privatization of social service provision failed to allow nonprofit organizations to successfully compete with public and profit-oriented providers, especially in education, healthcare, and the labor market (Trägårdh, 2012). With diminishing opportunities to generate resources from members, and public procurements less broadly available than envisioned at the time of initial policy design, civil society organizations find themselves relying on direct state support (e.g., Regeringskansliet, 2015). Like their Polish and Russian counterparts, they often work on a project basis, receiving grants rather than making profits.
Breaking with liberal political principles by means of the overt financial and symbolic undermining of civil society and the targeting of visible, high-status organizations is symptomatic of a larger process: that of the state takeover of independent social institutions, which is typical of increasingly illiberal regimes like Poland’s and Russia’s (Christensen & Weinstein, 2013; Zakaria, 1997). However, as mentioned above, tendencies toward limiting and restricting the operation of civil society organizations are also evident in established democracies like Sweden, although in different forms. While the process of governance still relies on the participation of civil society in key aspects of public decision-making, access to power resources is unequally distributed among civil society organizations (Trägårdh, 2007).
Moreover, the principle of autonomy of civil society can be undermined in the name of other societal concerns, for instance, national security. In 2014, an illustrative debate related to the fight against terror raised controversy in Sweden. The state-initiated investigation of violent radicalism (SOU, 2013) and the government’s policy recommendations were heavily criticized as threatening the very foundation of democracy. Leading scholars of social movements and civil society have asserted that the methods suggested by the government to restrain extremism would force public employees, for example teachers, to police public opinions and attitudes (Wennerhag & Wahlström, 2014). Moreover, as our vignette of equmenia demonstrates, the application of scrutiny and censure can be quite arbitrary. The rejection of public funding to equmenia was predicated on a local regulation that the activities of civil society organizations may not discriminate on the basis of religion. It was the prerogative of the funder to determine that participation in the organization’s activities required identification with the Christian faith, although such a claim had never been made.
To conclude, a civil society emerging and operating vis-à-vis a strong state pressures organizations to become executors in the service of the state apparatus, blunting the ideal of the critical potential of civil society as a space of alternative visions and challenges to the socioeconomic status quo. To understand the institutional context in which civil society organizations interact with the state and the market, it is necessary to acknowledge the importance of historical legacies as well as that of contemporary developments. We therefore strive to move away from the still prevalent East/West divide in the contemporary civil society literature; we dismiss as unproductive and misleading the customary view that Eastern European civil society is weak, or even nonexistent, in comparison to that of Western democracies (Howard, 2002; Salamon et al., 2015). For decades, such an approach implied that the East as a geographical entity was at an earlier stage of development and should, with time, follow the lead of the West.
Inspired by recent, albeit still limited, critical attempts to contribute to another, more complex and locally sensitive approach (Ekiert & Kubik, 2017; Jacobsson & Korolczuk, 2017), webelieve that the selection of Poland, Russia, and Sweden as cases for this volume holds the potential for new insights into unexpected similarities and differences among them. In the following section, we propose that such a synthesizing approach is made possible by examining how resources are (re)produced, accumulated/acquired, employed, shared, and (re)distributed in often creative and unique ways to allow organizations to negotiate, contest, and adapt to their institutional conditions while continuing to pursue their missions.
Resources as a Contrast Medium
This book’s distinctive analytical perspective treats resource flows as a contrast medium, allowing us to study processes of transformation in civil society. Resources refer generally to the material and immaterial inputs necessary for organizational operations. Organizational theory recognizes a wide spectrum of resources, including finances (Binder, 2007); organizational structure; the capacity, knowledge, and ability to legitimately exert power (Greenwood & Suddaby, 2006); ideas, narrations, and myths (Creed et al., 2002; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006); and symbolic and discursive means of expression (Hardy & Phillips, 1999). As nomenclature differs depending on academic tradition and the specificity of the research questions, we endeavor to aggregate and categorize this variety by distinguishing between material and immaterial resources (cf. Hardy & Maguire, 2017). Material resources consist of the finances, technologies, raw materials, and physical spaces on which civil society organizations rely to varying degrees. Immaterial resources can be grouped into two subcategories: symbolic resources, such as discourses, myths, identities, and knowledge; and relational resources, such as humanresources, interorganizational networks, and intraorganizational structures and hierarchies. Immaterial resources highlight the interconnectedness of civil society organizations but also their ability to carve spaces in the heterogeneous expanse of civil society, thereby positioning themselves (often hierarchically) vis-à-vis other organizations.
While such analytical aggregations are useful, it is necessary to remain aware of the diverse nature of resources as well as the ways in which disparate resources are interconnected and interdependent (e.g., Dodworth, 2014). Throughout this volume, we examine various aspects of the abovementioned categories as well as combinations that allow for the dynamic operationalization of resources. As an overarching conceptual approach that unites all contributions to this book, we assert that resources enter organizations from different sources in different forms and are attributed different meanings. Organizations accommodate resources and establish relationships with the sources of resources. This is a process that intertwines accumulation, accommodation, operation of resources, and dependence on and communication about them. The use of resources in, for example, delivering services and advocating, and the results of such activities, affect organizational target groups, members, and the broader society through material transformations and sent-out/received communications. The results also affect future opportunities for resourcemobilization and accumulation.
An organization’s form, for example, membership-based association, NGO, think tank, charity foundation, etc., determines what resources are available; organizational form itself may also be the subject of transformation. Because of specific relationships with the sources of resources, an association may gradually transform into a more professionalized nonprofit with paid personnel, whereas a charity foundation may need to establish a subsidiary for-profit organization in order to accommodate commercial activities as a source of revenue. For instance, the NGO Development Center, which began as a nonprofit more than 20 years ago, gradually acquired a for-profit subsidiary and a charity foundation. This arrangement makes it possible to separate at least one part of the holding—the charity foundation registered under a completely different name—from the “foreign agent” label as well as to simplify accounting for nonprofit and for-profit finances. In the case of the European Solidarity Center, funding was being used to initiate a (partial) takeover by means of the establishment of a staff position for a representative of the Ministry of Culture. Allowing this would have affected the position of the Center relative to other civil society organizations and influenced their activities.
Clearly, separating different kinds of resources is difficult; indeed, in some cases, it is unnecessary.Footnote 4 In order to capture resourcefulness, forms of financial resources (state fundingprograms, voluntary work, private donations, or revenues from for-profit activities) are examined in this book with reference to how those resources intertwine with the organizations’ ability to establish and utilize internal human resources, unique organizational identities, or connections to other organizations. The three cases in the vignettes offered in this introductory chapter all provide examples of such intertwining. The NGO Development Center received statefunding to create an arrangement for sharing other material resources, drawing legitimacy from its reputation as a reliable partner to other civil society organizations through a long history of capacity-building activities. Similarly, the European Solidarity Center and equmenia draw on their networks of partner organizations and supporters to counteract or reverse pressure from state authorities.
In organizing this volume, we strove to reveal both social mechanisms that transform similar/different conditions and patterns of navigating resources into similar/different outcomes for civil society organizations (Hedström & Swedberg, 1998; Stinchcombe, 2005). We thus divide the contributions into three parts according to the singularities they explore: the organizational processes, structures, and identities embedded in the resources that the civil society organizations need in order to operate; the strategies used to navigate the institutional conditions that determine their access to resources; and, finally, the resources’ own spatial and temporal dynamics and transformative disposition.
Introducing the Volume
The framework of resources as a contrast medium against which organizational and institutional structures and dynamic processes manifest themselves brings together various approaches that discern the transformation of civil society in relation to the state and the market. Part I of this volume provides an understanding of the potential of financial resources to impact the ways in which organizations, social movements, and civil societies as a whole become inserted into political discursive frameworks and adjust to the benefits and costs associated with those resources. The chapters included in Part II continue the discussion by exploring various aspects of organizational agency in relation to the institutional and organizational contexts that condition access to resources. Part III is a multilayered undertaking that investigates the complex and dynamic character of resources and their interactions with organizations. With intersections in the theoretical and empirical treatments of their research questions, the authors aim to transcend the boundaries imposed by disciplinary orientations, socioeconomic and political settings, and geographical borders. Together, the chapters of this book demonstrate the value of understanding transformations in civil society through the accommodation, negotiation, and contestation of various resources.
Part I: Resources as Constraints
We begin with Katarzyna Jezierska’s “Pecunia olet: The funding dilemma for think tanks in Poland,” directing attention to an often overlooked part of civil society, a type of research and advocacyorganization that projects an image of autonomy from any specific group interests: think tanks. These organizations played a key role in the post-socialist transformation in Poland, including the introduction of liberal reforms in politics and economy as well as the very emergence of a support infrastructure for the country’s civil society. The author reasserts earlier research that suggested that external financial resources may create dependency on the sources of funding but may also increase organizations’ visibility as well as their engagement with and influence over various stakeholders. Striving to preserve their image of autonomy, think tanks develop diverse, selective strategies for soliciting and accepting funds. The chapter’s original contribution to this research field is in demonstrating that resources are at the center of some of the crucial aspects of organizing, connecting an organization’s identity with its external influence and impact. Jezierska also recasts some of the tenets of resource dependency theory by revealing that, while selectivity and diversification are instrumental for the appearance of independence, they only diminish the scope of funding and intensify the “pathological projectification” of an organization’s work.
Shifting the focus to Russia, Yulia Skokova and Christian Fröhlich explore how the allocation of statefunding serves to incorporate civil society organizations into the process of welfare provision while at the same time insidiously subjugating them to the traditionalist–conservative political discourse. “Domestic funding for civil society in a non-democratic context: The example of the Presidential Grants in Russia” reveals the authoritarian character of the illiberal political regime that, in the absence of a totalitarian ideology, builds its legitimacy on a selective approach to cooptation, preferential treatment, and sanctioning of civil society. The Presidential Grants aim to direct civic engagement toward the delivery of educational, recreational, and social services, an arena considered removed from contentious politics. This is not a uniquely Russian phenomenon; civil society organizations around the world are included in the provision of welfare services. Here, however, grant applicants are forced to frame their activities as carriers of the values of traditionalism, nationalism,militarism, patriotism, and orthodoxy. The data indicate that a significant proportion of organizations accept the terms of engagement with the state in pursuit of regular funding and organizational stability.
The chapter “Polish human rights organizations: Resisting institutional pressures,” by Zhanna Kravchenko, Katarzyna Jezierska, Marta Gumkowska, Beata Charycka, and Magdalena Szafranek, explores what happens to civil society organizations as they work to ensure organizational survival without jeopardizing their mission and legitimacy among stakeholders by acquiescing to the demands of the state. Using survey data gathered by an independent think tank, the Klon/Jawor Association, the authors focus on organizations that work with various issues related to social justice and anti-discrimination. The study presents those organizations’ navigation of an environment that suppresses civic mobilization and democratic participation, employing a variety of financial, human, and symbolic resources as well as a comprehensive network of cooperation with other organizations. The results suggest that in illiberal regimes, contentious action can be generated by professionalized civil society organizations that withstand cooptation by utilizing polarization around liberal democratic values.
In “Rural community development in Sweden: From challenging to mainstream?”, Anette Forsberg expands the historical perspective on the role of financial resources in the transformation of the Swedish rural movement since the 1970s. Rural mobilizations emerged as a countermovement to the politics of economic growth and urban development, which not only neglected rural communities but systematically deprived them of economic opportunities, social infrastructure, and population. Following the tradition of the Swedish people’s movement (folkrörelse), voluntary associations, cooperatives, and networks set out to reestablish and support local communities organizing educational and recreational events, organizing information campaigns, creating job opportunities, and providing much-needed welfare services. In accordance with the folkrörelse tradition, the rural movement envisioned common political goals of local participation and influence, consequently becoming an important and contentious factor in regional politics. Forsberg demonstrates the occurrence of a turn away from political engagement after the introduction of generous European structural funds upon Sweden’s joining of the European Union. These resources were accompanied by rhetoric focused on consensus-making, entrepreneurship, and economic growth, in contrast to the original impetus for the movement. Pursuing such financing, the rural movement internalized not only the imposed foreign terminology but also a view of its own activities as economic rather than political; it was thus unable to maintain political claims that challenge urbanization as the norm and bring attention to specifically rural issues.
The chapters in this first part demonstrate that, regardless of their origins—state grants and subventions, philanthropic donations, or market-driven entrepreneurialism—external resources arrive with a set of constraints that may go to the core of organizational identity, mission, and working methods. They necessitate adherence to explicitly or implicitly stated conditions for applications, project management logic, or marketing instruments, thus also blurring the lines between civil society, state, and market. Whether these processes take place in an authoritarian context in which the state remains the main source of legitimate financing or in a democratic setting with a plurality of domestic and international stakeholders, civil society organizations in all three countries must either accommodate pressures or resist them by rejecting certain types of funding. Both reactions come with costs to organizations’ autonomy or stability, their potential for political contentiousness, or their potential to establish long-term goals.
Part II: External Constraints and Facilitators of Resources
Picking up the topic of mobilization around the consequences of urbanization in her chapter “From local to digital and back: E-resourcefulness among urban movements in Poland,” Anna Domaradzka reviews the emergence and development of Polish urban activism. The author probes the movements’ resourcefulness in drawing upon the global social justice movement, using opportunities, and overcoming barriers as they engage in a broad range of activities varying from local community organizing to mass protest events. The movements’ access to resources is conditioned by the bottom-up and contentious nature of their mobilizing. They not only recognize and speak for the specificities of urban residents’ interests, but also distance themselves from professionalized civil society organizations, NGO “zombies.” Domaradzka uses the case of the Urban Movements Congress to demonstrate how online resources in this context, including websites, blogs, and socialmedia profiles, have become an important source of building identity, maintaining relations, generating funding, and even coordinating nationwide political and lobbying efforts.
The differentiation among civil society actors that Domaradzka notes in Poland—those representing (often informal) grassroots urban initiatives and those from “establishment” organizations—can likewise be observed in other national contexts. In “Between autonomy and compliance: The organizational development of Russian civil society,” Vsevolod Bederson and Andrei Semenov draw a fragmented landscape resulting from the selective application of preferences and restrictions to civil society organizations. The authors expand on Skokova and Fröhlich’s observation of a state’s seeking legitimacy by offering access to funding while at the same time dictating organizational conduct with regard to representation, activities, and accountability. As the tradeoff between loyalty and autonomy has become the fundamental prerequisite for engaging in civil society in Russia today, organizations navigate the costs of operating in such a context in different ways. In its response to the government’s crackdown on autonomous sources of funding, including foreign, corporate, and individual donations, civil society has fallen into disparate organizational niches according to scope of, and overall access to, resources.
As the landscape of civil society is gradually reshaped, new cracks and voids appear, opening space for the emergence of new organizations. Meanwhile, old organizations attempt to reconquer their lost domains, appeal to new audiences, address new issues, and invent new instruments of outreach and influence. Lisa Kings, in her chapter “Navigating contemporary developments in Swedish civil society: The case of Save the Children Sweden,” focuses on strategic approaches developed by one of Sweden’s most prominent civil society organizations in response to pressures originating from collaborations with the private and public sectors. Exploring two specific projects carried out by Save the Children Sweden in marginalized urban areas, the study utilizes the concept of avant-garde professionalism to capture organizations’ efforts to develop new forms of community work and to pressure national, regional, and local authorities and other organizations to acknowledge their responsibility for social welfare.
In the subsequent chapter, “Humane resources? The people behind Polish civil society organizations,” Galia Chimiak recasts the topic of the influence of organizational environment with a unique perspective on human resources. The chapter rejects mainstream academic emphases on civic mobilization and organization as responses to a collective need or as manifestations of group interests left unsatisfied by public or market actors. Chimiak’s original contribution lies in her assertion that individuals’ personal norms, motivations, and engagement preferences constitute a complex and dynamic resource for civil society organizations. This, in turn, is shaped by broader societal norms for civic participation and overall working conditions, but also by the norms associated with other resources. Chimiak supports her argument by positing that project-based funding processes not only hinder strategic planning (including for funding), as other authors in this volume have indicated, but create a specific type of work ethos conducive to personal maturation and professionalization rather than the communitarianism and solidarity that drove the Polish Velvet Revolution. Bureaucratic hierarchization, exploitation, and harassment practices add further inequalities within as well as among civil society organizations.
While the first part of this book demonstrates that the mechanisms of dependence and autonomy are embedded in the nature of resources, the chapters gathered in the second part expand on this position by revealing that, when institutional frameworks limit the scope of or access to resources, civil society organizations find the capacity not only to absorb the costs associated with those resources, but to negotiate and contest barriers and generate opportunities to access resources or compensate for their lack. Thus, organizational resourcefulness emerges as a manifestation of agency in interaction with institutional norms regarding access to resources. This resourcefulness is achieved in a variety of ways, resulting in fragmentation between and among organizations but also stimulating organizational innovation, growth, and expansion. Even in the most restrictive, shrinking spaces for civil society, organizations find ways to emerge, survive, and respond to society’s need for democratic participation and social welfare.
Part III: Organizations and Resources: Intertwined Transformations
In their chapter, “Doing the right things or doing things right? Exploring the relationship between professional autonomy and resources in volunteering,” Cecilia Gullberg and Noomi Weinryb focus on volunteering efforts by health care professionals during the influx of refugees from the Middle East into Sweden in the autumn of 2015. The authors frame professional knowledge and practice standards as an organizational resource. The volunteers included in the study provided medical assistance to refugees, at first as an informal network that autonomously generated a common mode of conduct and pooled its own financial contributions to fund medical supplies and equipment. Subsequently, they moved under the aegis of two formal civil society organizations, receiving a more stable provision of material resources while becoming subject to organizational guidelines and norms in the form of control and regulation of identity, licensing, privacy, and scheduling. Gullberg and Weinryb conclude that professional expertise and discretion, as well as the costs and benefits they generate for the purpose of organizing, are applied differently in the contexts of profession-based autonomy and bureaucracy-rooted legitimacy, rendering them contingent on organizational setting.
Further linking resources and organizational dynamics, Zhanna Kravchenko’s chapter, “Liberty, loyalty, and solidarity: The role of transnational, national, and local resources in voluntary organizations in Russia,” traces the transformation of volunteer work as organizational resource in the context of the transformation of Russian civil society over the past 25 years. By examining a community-based association and a charity organization established in St. Petersburg in the late 1980s and early 1990s, respectively, this study links the structures and processes that integrate volunteering into the organizational fabric with an overall structure of resource mobilization patterns and opportunity structures. The study demonstrates how, throughout their history, the two organizations have accumulated resources from sources at the local, national, and transnational levels, converting them into charitable activities for socially vulnerable population groups and into capacity-building activities for other organizations engaged with volunteering, thus embedding them in complex organizational networks. The author argues that when intertwining takes place in an organization, resources related to different levels of spatiality generate distinct patterns of norms, structures, and activities that do not necessarily align with each other and that have the potential to transform the organization’s mission.
At the center of the subsequent chapter, titled “Resources shifting values: Online and offline resources in Swedish civil society,” is the distinction between online and offline resources. Although this distinction is often invoked in contemporary studies of social mobilization, authors Håkan Johansson and Gabriella Scaramuzzino posit that it requires both clearer conceptualization and sharper contrast. It connotes different modes of individual stakeholders’ engagement with an organization: members, employees, and volunteers contributing to everyday operations offline and sympathizers, followers, and members of digital communities expressing their commitment through likes, post shares, and petitionsonline. This distinction also points to varying spatial and temporal thresholds for engagement: the requirement of proximity and synchronicity for in-person meetings offline and the lack thereof online. The study demonstrates the instability of online “clicktivism” relative to offline participation as well as the greater difficulty of online operating with economic resources. Onlineactivism yields lower costs, but it also has fewer instruments for accountability and transparency at its disposal. More importantly, digitally mobilized civic initiatives entail imitating or even establishing offline organizations in order to convert online support into political influence and achieve greater organizational stability.
Part III concludes with the chapter “St. Petersburg LGBTQI+ activists negotiating financial and symbolic resources,” in which Pauliina Lukinmaa examines how civic activism by and on behalf of one of the most marginalized groups in the Russian population is both possible and sustained, even when legitimate resources are scarce and the institutional context is hostile. The author brings an invaluable anthropological perspective to the evolution of symbolic resources such as shared identities, forms of expression, and participation outside of formal organizational boundaries by examining their roles in the discourse of culture and belonging. The study identifies the importance of safety and sensitivity to personal space for practices of artistic expression and recognizes context-specific expertise as central to the survival of LGBTQI+ activism in Russia. Moreover, this expertise empowers local activists vis-à-vis the global/transnational symbols and practices that accompany financial resources. The resourcefulness that the study explores is regarded as a potential asset for global LGBTQI+ organizing and as an echo (if not a direct continuation) of long-established traditions of Soviet underground culture.
The final part of this volume presents the multifaceted nature of resources—their material and immaterial dimensions, their ability to be converted, and their potential not only to elicit organizational change, as argued in the early part of the book, but also to metamorphose as a result of organizational development. This collection expands our understanding of organizations’ resourcefulness as an outcome of their capacity to balance the costs and benefits of accepting and rejecting specific types of resources, to navigate the opportunities in and barriers to accessing those resources, to generate them, and to imbue them with meaning. Studying civil society’s response to external pressures to conform to state and market rationales through the lens of resources sheds new light on its resilience and organizational innovation. Apostolis Papakostas’ epilogue highlights the volume’s contribution to established theoretical paradigms and develops the author’s own analytical framework for the analysis of the polymorphous role resources play for civil society organizations.
Notes
- 1.
It goes without saying that the civil societies of the three studied countries encompass organizations of various values, orientations, purposes, and identities beyond those of the three examples given in this chapter. Finding and exploring comparative data on the cross-national organizational composition of civil society is a significant challenge. Our own efforts have revealed that one of the major reasons for this is that different countries use different criteria to distinguish between types of organizations. First, it is important to note that Russian and Polish legislation does not use the term “civil society organizations.” Rather, it differentiates between nongovernmental and not-for-profit organizations. These overlap partially, thus sometimes equating nongovernmental nonprofits with state-run or corporation-based nonprofits. This is important in terms of both cross-national comparisons and the gathering of statistical information. Here, we compare the legal categorizations in our selected countries before introducing the methodological approach to the classification of civil society organizations applied in this book.
In Poland, two broad categories of not-for-profit nongovernmental organizations are recognized: associations (stowarzyszenia) and foundations (fundacje). These are governed by specific normative acts, and those that carry out various types of social and charity work (Council on Foundations, 2016) are also eligible for Public Benefit Organization (organizacja pożytku publicznego, OPP) status. We find the same categories, as well as religious communions and charities, in Russia and Sweden. Moreover, the status of Socially Oriented NGO that Russian organizations can achieve is similar to that of the Polish OPP, although it is not legally formalized and exists only as a part of discursive practice in policy documents. In Russia, civil society organizations can also be registered as communities of minor indigenous peoples (obshchiny korennykh malochislennykh narodov) and Cossack communities (kazach’i obshchestva) (Federal Law No. 7-FZ “On nonprofit organizations”). In Sweden, there are also public corporations (offentliga korporationer och anstalter), community associations (samfälligheter), and organizations with the purpose of providing economic assistance (ekonomiska föreningar, bostadsrättsföreningar, kooperativa hyresgästföreningar, understödsföreningar, försäkrningsföreningar, arbetslöshetskassor) (Statistics Sweden, 2018).
Countries recognize that non-profit activities are not necessarily carried out by nongovernmental organizations and that nongovernmental organizations are not necessarily not-for-profit. They may therefore be equated in status to nongovernmental nonprofits. For instance, in Russia, NGO status can be conferred on state corporations (gosudarstvennaia korporatsiia), state companies (gosudarstvennaia kompaniia), nonprofit partnerships (nekommercheskie partnerstva), and even private, state, municipal, and budget institutions (chastnye, gosudarstvennye, munitsipal’nye i biudzhetnye uchrezhdeniia). In Sweden, a civil society organization may be legally registered as a stock company (aktiebolag). Trade unions, however, are generally legally excluded from the category of not-for-profit/nongovernmental organizations, although they are recognized as part of civil society by international nomenclature (e.g., UNDP, 2013).
While some similarities between legal categorizations can be observed, the differences exist not only in the national specificity of some legal categories but, more importantly, in the divergences and inconsistencies in statistical record systems. These make comparisons based on official data virtually impossible. For instance, the category of professional NGOs exists only in Russian records, while it disappears behind the term “associations” in Swedish and Polish statistical reviews. In contrast, the foundation, a fundamentally important organizational type that is clearly distinguished in Polish and Swedish records, is equated with “autonomous nonprofits” in Russian official statistics. Business and professional associations accounted for in Polish statistics are likely to be absorbed by “autonomous nonprofits” in Russia and considered trade unions in Sweden. Even the nomenclature for religious organizations varies enough to suggest that differences in semantics may lead to differences in statistics: faith-based charities in Poland, religious organizations in Russia, and faith-based communions in Sweden. Moreover, it has become common knowledge, often repeated in the literature on Russian civil society, that the number of officially registered organizations is usually greater than the number that are actually active (e.g., Salamon et al., 2015, p. 2185).
Without reliable comparative aggregated data, it is impracticable to describe the variation of organizational types in Russia, Poland, and Sweden in any meaningful terms. We therefore refrain from endeavoring to do so and from attempting to impose any strict definition or categorization of civil society organizations to be systematically used across all chapters.
- 2.
Federal Law No. 121-FZ “On amendments to specific legal acts of the Russian Federation with regard to regulation of activities of nonprofit organizations performing functions of ‘foreign agents,’” 20 June 2012. According to the law, NPOs that receive resources (including but not limited to monetary assets) from international sources must register as “foreign agents” if they also engage in political activities.
- 3.
In addition to the heritage of people’s movements (folkrörelse), philanthropic and aid organizations as well as leisure and cultural associations have been an important part of the civic landscape shaping the strong secular character of Swedish society as a whole (Svedberg, 2005).
- 4.
When approaching the similarities and differences in institutional access to different types of resources for civil society organizations in Russia, Poland, and Sweden, we face a significant challenge not unlike that inherent in examining the distribution of different types of organizations. Firstly, not all resources can be expressed in quantifiable terms. Secondly, even for those resources that can be quantified, there are no systematic estimations on an aggregated level. For instance, we can establish that the scope of statefunding of civil society organizations is similar in all three countries, totaling about 1% of GDP (authors’ calculations based on data from Departament Ekonomii Społecznej i Solidarnej, 2012, p. 32; Konkurrensverket, 2017, p. 124; Ministry of Economic Development, 2017; OECD, 2017; Regeringen, 2019, pp. 230, 243; World Bank, 2017). Thisincludes project-based grants, subsidies, and procurements. In Sweden, the share of project-based funding is approximately equal to that of the share of public procurements, while in Russia, the scope of procurements is somewhat smaller and amounts to about 35%. As regards human resources, earlier studies have demonstrated that nonprofits in Russia usually employ personnel on a paid basis (ca. 75% of NGO personnel are paid) and comprise about 0.87% of the economically active population (Jakobson et al., 2011, pp. 25–26). Nonprofit personnel in Poland comprise 11.1% and in Sweden 16.7% of the economically active population (Salamon & Sokolowski, 2018, pp. 76–77); a mere 19.5% and 35% of these, respectively, are paid (authors’ calculations based on Salamon & Sokolowski, 2018, pp. 76–77).
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Kravchenko, Z., Kings, L., Jezierska, K. (2022). Introduction. In: Kravchenko, Z., Kings, L., Jezierska, K. (eds) Resourceful Civil Society. Palgrave Studies in Third Sector Research. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99007-7_1
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