Civil society and populism: How the rise to power of populist parties affects State-civil society relations

With the wave of right-wing populist parties coming to power and gaining influence in recent years, civil society has been hit by increased ideological resistance from outside.

The aim of the project is to understand whether and to what extent these political changes affect the relations between the State and civil society and redraws power relations in the civil society field.

It will develop an analysis of changing state-civil society relations in two EU-countries in Western Europe: Italy and Sweden.

Both countries are since the fall of 2022 experiencing new government coalitions that include right-wing populist parties.

The project will focus on main civil society actors active in two different policy areas: migration and poverty, both on the national and on the local level.This research project aims at contributing to two strands of research: research on civil society and research on populism.

While these two fields of research are well established, both civil society scholars and scholars on populism have largely neglected the issue of the impact that populist governments might have on civil society in Western liberal democracies.Methodologically the project will explore 1) changing political opportunity structures in terms of funding and arenas for influence for civil society, 2) interaction between civil society actors and populist parties in the public debate through claims-making analysis, 3) civil society actors’ positioning and strategies towards the government.