Germany’s Contested Civil Society in a Time of Politization

Growing efforts to shrink civil societies’ scope of action are evident around the globe. Germany’s civil society has not been fully immune from this, but analysing whether there is a shrinking civic space requires a twofold perspective. While having a high democratic state standard and a rather supportive environment, there is also a discourse of whether it is legitimate for civil society organisations (CSO) to be politically active, following controversial recent lawsuits against CSOs on that ground. Additionally, there is an increasing atmosphere of hate and demonization from some social groups against civil society activists that impede their work and scope of action. Accordingly, there is an ongoing discussion whether Germany’s civil society is affected by the shrinking space phenomenon or not. To capture and theoretically comprehend these processes in Germany, I argue that these signs of “shrinking spaces” should rather be understood as a contestation that is the outcome of a growing re-politicization of civil society in the last 15 years. It is rooted in a new wave of politicization in which democracy is no longer an undisputed paradigm. Against this background, over the last decade, civil society has become again a terrain of contestation where different views and options are expressed and collide, but that is also attacked from the outside. Two main changes, I argue, have driven forward the politicization of civil society: first, a new social cleavage that is exploited by (right-wing) populism and, second, the claim for more direct participation in the democratic systems by the citizens which produced new political opportunity structures of good governance that allow more CSOs to advocate. While this process emancipated many CSOs, it also brought forth different contestations about legitimate participation. In this way, one can simultaneously observe a shrinking and a growing space for civil society in Germany.