Anna Meeuwisse - Europeanization in Sweden: Opportunities and Challenges for Civil Society Organizations

Editors: Dieter Gosewinkel and Holger Nehring

Civil Society stands for one of the most ambitious projects and influential concepts relating to the study of modern societies. Scholars working in this field aim to secure greater equality of opportunity, democratic participation, individual freedom, and societal self-organization in the face of social deficits caused by globalizing neo-liberalism. This series deals with the multiple languages, different layers, and diverse practices of existing and emerging civil societies in Europe and elsewhere and asks how far the renewed interest in the concept can contribute to the gradual evolution of civil society in the wider world.

Volume 1
Languages of Civil Society
Edited by Peter Wagner

Volume 2
Civil Society: Berlin Perspectives
Edited by John Keane

Volume 3
State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered
Edited by Lars Trgrdh

Volume 4
Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives
Edited by Karen Hagemann, Sonya Michel, and Gunilla Budde

Volume 5
Markets and Civil Society: The European Experience in Comparative Perspective
Edited by Victor Prez-Daz

Volume 6
The Golden Chain: Family, Civil Society and the State
Edited by Jrgen Nautz, Paul Ginsborg, and Ton Nijhuis

Volume 7
Civil Society in the Age of Monitory Democracy
Edited by Lars Trgrdh, Nina Witoszek, and Bron Taylor

Volume 8
Transnational Struggles for Recognition: New Perspectives on Civil Society since the 20th Century
Edited by Dieter Gosewinkel and Dieter Rucht

Volume 9
Civil Society Revisited: Lessons from Poland
Edited by Kerstin Jacobsson and Elbieta Korolczuk

Volume 10
Europeanization in Sweden: Opportunities and Challenges for Civil Society Organizations
Edited by Anna Meeuwisse and Roberto Scaramuzzino

OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS

Edited by
Anna Meeuwisse and Roberto Scaramuzzino

First published in 2019 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com

2019 Anna Meeuwisse and Roberto Scaramuzzino

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Names: Meeuwisse, Anna, 1958- editor. | Scaramuzzino, Roberto, editor.

Title: Europeanization in Sweden: Opportunities and Challenges for Civil Society Organizations / edited by Anna Meeuwisse and Roberto Scaramuzzino.

Description: New York: Berghahn Books, 2019. | Series: Studies on Civil Society; volume 10 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018040253 (print) | LCCN 2018048814 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789200355 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789200348 (hardback: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: European Union--Sweden. | Civil society--European Union countries.

Classification: LCC HC241.25.S8 (ebook) | LCC HC241.25.S8 E874 2019 (print) | DDC 320.609485-dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040253

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78920-034-8 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-035-5 ebook

Carlo Ruzza

Carlo Ruzza

The field of civil society, and particularly civil society in the context of international governance, has attracted significant attention in recent years and has produced a host of studies on the structure, strategies, and network connections of civil society organizations (CSOs). These studies have generated a body of literature that has acted as a catalyst for more general reflections on a range of related issues such as issues of political legitimacy, the normative role of associational representation, and the linkage between the state and society in different contexts. This book provides an updated reflection on several key issues initially tackled by this literature, but which are in need of a substantial update in view of the broader research agenda and the theoretical changes that have occurred in recent years. This book thus provides a novel look at processes such as the Europeanization of civil society in terms of its normative, financial, organizational, and political aspects.

Civil society-related themes have acquired a different character in the years since their prominent appearance in the literature more than two decades ago. For example, issues such as distrust of supranational bodies have become more salient, welfare states have shrunk, New Public Management approaches have expanded and changed, modifying the way CSOs are framed and funded, and the project of European integration has been undermined by a long financial and social crisis, which has questioned the legitimacy of EU-level funding. This book tackles these and several connected issues in the context of processes of Europeanization of civil society in Sweden.

The book takes its point of departure in the original literature on democracy and associational representation, and it integrates these early insights with the necessary awareness of recent changes in the socio-political situation in several EU countries and Sweden in particular. The books specific emphasis is on the multifarious dimensions of Europeanization, which guides the study of the relations between civil society associations and governance bodies at different levels of government. This is particularly relevant given the historical reliance of Nordic countries on civil society associations and their inclusion in several functions of the state, such as the states implementative, service provision, monitoring, agenda setting, and policy evaluation roles. The volume presents a set of interlinked chapters that all together provide a broad study of organized civil society conceptualized in an encompassing way and document the various ways in which Swedish civil society becomes Europeanized or fails to do so. Europeanization is understood not as an inescapable and benevolent process, as was sometimes the case in the early literature on multilevel governance, but as a complex actor-driven set of social dynamics in which a key role is played by the agency of private and collective actors, by sometimes fragmented and competing elites, and by their interactions in complex social fields. This is an important and distinctive contribution of this volume and approaching the field from this perspective allows the contributors to identify complex configurations of conflict and cooperation among different types of actors within and outside civil society. They are able to disentangle various dimensions of Europeanization and to document the different mixes of actors and issues that characterize each sector.