Conclusion

Abstract

Over the past decade, international human rights organizations and think tanks have expressed a growing concern that the space of civil society organizations around the world is under pressure. In order to support the affected groups, who claim the rights to inform, organize, lobby or protest, a new terminology about human rights defense has emerged, as have international efforts to support and “defend defenders.” The literature discussing pressures on civil society organizations is diverse. There has been ample discussion in the literature about national and international policies that are held responsible for the pressures, including the consequences of the War on Terror and the new restrictive NGO legislation. Others have pointed at the backlash on civil society and “criminalization of social protest” resulting from authoritarian tendencies or neoliberal restructuring. Most of those studies acknowledge that pressures on civil society do take place not only in authoritarian regimes but also in long-standing or young democracies. Yet, most reports on the political space of civil society don’t differentiate with a view to the type of regime in which these take place. There is, however, reason to believe that pressures on civil society play out differently in contexts of more open political systems. After all, in such regimes the civil liberties and political rights are often acknowledged in constitutions and national laws and pressures on civil society imply violations of this legislation.KeywordsCivil SocietyCivil Society OrganizationAuthoritarian RegimeAgrarian ReformPolitical SpaceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.