Legal measures restricting the foreign funding of civil society organisations are seen as a central component of shrinking civic spaces. However, there is no consensus in the literature on what constitutes appropriate state intervention in this area. The article therefore develops a conceptual framework to empirically determine the restrictive character of state intervention more precisely. We make plausible our conceptual argument based on six short case studies on Germany, Austria, Turkey, Hungary, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In doing so, we contribute to the debate on shrinking civic spaces in three ways. First, we show that legal measures regarding foreign funding of civil society should not always be seen as part of a global repressive trend. Second, we propose a new classification of legal measures that goes beyond the hitherto dominant binary understanding that, especially regarding the Global South, assumes repressive tendencies to any adaptation of legal measures. Thirdly, we attempt to link a view of international human rights on the freedom of association with a perspective focused on national constitutional norms, to draw attention to the existing legal normative differences between these two levels in many countries around the world.
Zwischen Regulierung und Repression: Ein Beitrag zur Einordnung gesetzlicher Maßnahmen in Bezug auf die Auslandsfinanzierung von zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen