Politicians are finding in the budgetary crisis they themselves created an ideal excuse to shift up a gear in dismantling civil society. After earlier harsh rounds of cuts, another five million euros is being taken away from sociocultural work. Supra-local cultural work has also been hit hard with 4 million euros in cuts and the support centres in the overarching structure are not being spared either. How much extra the NGO sector will have to save remains unclear.
The environmental and nature organisations, for their part, should already have received clarity in July about their subsidy envelope, but that decision was pushed beyond the budget exercise. With total cuts to subsidies amounting to no less than 500 million euros across all policy areas, they undoubtedly see the storm clouds gathering there as well.
It is clear that the consequences of all the cuts will be felt very hard and for a long time. The only hopeful response left to civil society is its own strategy aimed at sustainable power-building.
The good news is that civil society still does have that choice in its own hands. The coming months will show which organisations can muster the necessary courage, resilience and agility to truly commit to this.
A frontal, ideological attack with cuts as an excuse
In bygone times, when policy reached out to actors in civil society, the illusion arose that good relations with policymakers would suffice. Dialogue was no longer a tactic to achieve your goal, but almost the entire strategy. Now and then supplemented by a mostly symbolic petition or a single protest action. A focus on power no longer seemed necessary. Today, that illusion lies in tatters. https://www.defederatie.org/nieuws/persbericht-sociaal-culturele-organisaties-onthutst-over-zoveelste-besparing-op-een-rij
The broader cost-cutting exercise in drawing up the budget was a convenient excuse to open a new phase of the attack on civil society. That attack is essentially structural and ideological, but is now being legitimized as a financial necessity. However, the attack is part of a deliberate strategy by mainly right-wing authoritarian politicians in N-VA and their allies in other parties to gain a monopoly on the power to shape the society of tomorrow.
The Flemish government, with N-VA leading the way, makes no secret of its belief in the primacy of politics, an idea that in itself is already difficult to reconcile with a mature democracy. One of the basic principles of a democracy is that of the separation of powers. It must prevent a small group of actors from being able to draw all power to themselves and act purely in their own interests.
Traditionally, there are three powers: the first is the legislative (the parliaments), the second is the executive (the government), and the third is the judiciary. The first has already been hollowed out to a significant extent here, given the grip of parties and their chairs on “people’s representatives”. The prevailing norm of party discipline gives governments free rein. And the judiciary? It is also being taken less and less seriously by politicians, or even outright undermined, as evidenced by the attack on “activist” judges and the refusal by ministers to pay judicial penalty payments.
The classic three powers therefore cannot, on their own, guarantee a resilient democracy. This is also evident in the US, where Trump shows how vulnerable a “stable” democracy actually is. He does what politicians here still just about do not dare to do. But we are taking more and more steps in that direction.
The attack on civil society is an attack on democracy and on your rights
Fortunately, a democracy has more institutions than those in the classic three branches of power: there is also a fourth power (the media), a fifth power (the civil service) and a sixth power consisting of actors who organize themselves as advocates in order to place certain interests and voices on the policy agenda.
In the literature, very different actors are often lumped together here. Actors who sometimes defend opposing interests. Employers’ organizations and lobbyists for multinationals, as well as trade unions, environmental organizations or NGOs, all belong to this cluster. The first group, which primarily defends economic interests and is less dependent on subsidies, will survive the round of cuts. Many organizations that stand up for employees, tenants, people who are ill or who lose their jobs, minorities, human rights, nature – exactly, for almost everyone, in other words – risk losing so much clout that irrelevance is just around the corner.
That fits perfectly into the picture of the politicians who want the primacy of politics: citizens may vote every few years and then choose very broad outlines from among the limited options that the party-political landscape serves up to them. After that, they should mainly keep their mouths shut. Even when politicians agree on measures that were never on the menu offered to voters. Powerful interest groups from the business world can continue to exert influence to their heart’s content throughout a policy term, but with a weakened civil society you and I are increasingly excluded from that option. In that sense, the attack on civil society is a direct attack on democracy.
Even those who do not belong to the loyal support base of organizations in that civil society will feel the consequences. Many of the social gains that were won after years of struggle by organizations in civil society are being dismantled bit by bit. If civil society continues to lose ground, the pace of that social dismantling will increase further. When it is no longer there, civil society will also be missed by those who never attached importance to it. You may have little sense of the relationship between established social rights and the historical struggle for them, but soon you will still pay in cash for every antisocial measure.
The coming years will be hard in any case. After the budget is approved, can we do nothing more to defend ourselves against this and future rounds of social dismantling? Yes, we can. Our best and perhaps only option is to convince civil society organizations to choose today to invest more in sustainable countervailing power. Yes, even now that they are going to have fewer resources.
Three indispensable levers with which civil society rebuilds power
You cannot claim to be a strong player within the sixth power without effectively strengthening your own power position. There are various sources of power that organizations can draw on, and therefore also various ways to invest in countervailing power. Three of the most important are: a stronger, organized support base, effective coalitions, and a larger share of own financial resources. In addition, organizations must fully engage in a battle over the narrative.
“The only powerful response is not to mourn, but to organize.”
1. Start at the source: organize and strengthen your support base
For whom do you do what you do? In what way do you involve them today? How can you make them co-owners again tomorrow of the struggle you are waging?
Asking these questions takes you a big step in the right direction. What’s more, not asking these questions enough is one of the root causes of the situation we have ended up in today. Civil society has enjoyed the comfort of more or less reliable partners in politics for too long. They admittedly did not always give you what you wanted, but they did enable you to fulfill your role independently.
Organizations were, as it were, given positional power. Because of that position – sometimes through formal representative bodies, sometimes on the basis of a frequently offered listening ear – it was less important to systematically put pressure on policy. There seemed to be “shortcuts” to realizing part of your agenda, without having to build additional power to enforce your demands. Advocacy became more and more a specialty of policy officers and less and less a matter of collective action.
At times, civil society can still mobilize in spectacular fashion, but today it does not sufficiently succeed in supplementing the soft power of influence with the hard power of more sustainable collective action, which can also be disruptive if necessary. Just think of the impressive mobilizations in solidarity with Gaza: the people were there, the political response failed to materialize. Now that the influence of citizens and civil society is no longer wanted and hard power is lacking, civil society is bleeding and organizations are licking their wounds.
That is painful for the hundreds of thousands of people who have been working professionally or voluntarily for these organizations for years and, above all, for the people for whom the organizations do it.
Now you are certainly allowed to be angry about that, but as the union activist Joe Hill once put it: the only powerful answer is not to mourn, but to organize. Today, it is pointless for an organization to invest even more in relationships with policymakers if you do not first strengthen your position by investing in relationships with your current support base. What’s more: by focusing on relationships with new people whom you can win over because they themselves have something to gain by joining you.
Talk with them (not about them). Talk with them again. Even more importantly: listen to them. Listen deeply. Bring them together and connect where it hurts. Offer them more and meaningful ways to engage (sustainably) and support them in taking on a meaningful role. In countries such as Hungary and the United States, organizations have discovered how organizing people on a large scale not only strengthens their own organization but is also an ultimate weapon for protecting democracy against those politicians who are tearing it down. The recipes are there; all that remains is the courage to fully choose this path.
2. Draw more power from collaboration: coalition and alliance building
Major social changes are never the result of the efforts of a single actor. You therefore need collaborative partnerships that allow you to build power together with other organizations. Two of the strongest ways to do that are through coalitions and alliances.
A (campaign) coalition works best when there is a clear and shared “winning goal.” A concrete demand or material change that you want to force through together. Coalitions are often relatively broad and bring together a range of actors who have conflicting opinions and whose interests do not align exactly. You therefore need a sharp, shared goal. This creates a win-win situation for all participating organizations. In that sense, coalitions are pragmatic: you work together because you all have something to gain from it. Coalitions without such a goal often fairly quickly become a well-intentioned talking shop that takes a lot of time and yields little power. A rule of thumb: anyone who has nothing to gain from a coalition will leave. Anyone who has nothing to contribute has no place there.
An alternative form of collaboration takes the shape of an alliance. Alliances bring organizations together for a more intense, sustainable collaboration around a shared vision and shared values. Within an alliance, the priority is not a pragmatic victory, but rather sustainable counter-power and a shared narrative. The composition is more focused and less broad, with some reach being sacrificed for depth.
An important principle when choosing the right partnership is to be clear about what it is meant to serve. Otherwise you quickly end up on a dead-end track.
3. Diversifying resources with a view to shared power
As a colleague who specializes in fundraising often says: private fundraising is a profession in its own right. The same applies to other forms of fundraising outside of subsidies. It takes time and will not replace lost subsidies in the short term. Still, diversifying income streams is a primary responsibility of every organization that highly values its independence (and the power that follows from it).
You may (rightly) believe in the need for governments to invest sustainably in a critical, independent civil society. But ultimately, sooner or later, as is the case now, you will come up against actors who think differently and have the power to act accordingly. Power is also the difference between being right and being proven right.
Ultimately, building power also rests on the right strategic choices that allow you to make progress on various fronts, never quickly, but sustainably. A stronger, organized support base, for example, will be an important tool for acquiring additional own resources (and vice versa).
Winning the clash between two worldviews starts with a strong story
The current attack on civil society and its role in democracy does not stand alone. There were the attacks on organizations that represented and empowered minorities and that were called segregationist. Ironic, given that these organizations often connected people in the fight against segregation. There was the attack on socio-cultural organizations that, according to the government, took the critical role set out in the decree just a little too seriously. Ironic, because two of the historic peace movements were attacked by policymakers because they supposedly supported violent groups. That same policy unabashedly cuts spending on human rights, while investing more and more in deadly weaponry that is useless for defensive purposes.
The picture that quickly emerges is that of a narrative war of positions. N-VA and its allies have long since dug in for a years-long war in which the terrain on which civil society operates becomes increasingly hostile. That civil society tried to respond with the tactics of a war of movement, which are completely ineffective when your opponent is dug in. Organizations have to engage in that battle of the story on equal terms.
Anyone who sees a subtle reference to the Italian thinker Gramsci in the previous paragraph is absolutely right. Antonio Gramsci analyzed how right-wing, authoritarian politicians built power not only by relying on brute force, but also by acquiring hegemony. That hegemonic position is the result of a propaganda and culture war conducted through numerous social institutions, through which the ideas of an elite in power become “common sense” and large groups begin to support them, even when that runs counter to their own interests.
The narrative war is one that the (far) right has played much more cleverly than the left in recent years. The success of that war helps explain the defensive terrain on which progressive organizations now find themselves stuck. The answer is not to drift along toward an ever more right-wing center, but rather to develop an authentic narrative of our own. You build that narrative through numerous stories, strong frames of your own, and a narrative infrastructure that you develop together with other organizations. This is work that takes years. The right spent years preparing the current attacks and is now reaping the rewards. We can do the same, but it requires both strategic discipline and time to fundamentally redraw the terrain.
All roads (that matter) lead to building power
The one thing you should not doubt today as an organization is the need to invest much more strategically in building power. For some organizations, the focus will be on narrative power; others will try to strengthen their position with their own base and other organizations. But building power is something you cannot avoid if you do not want to become irrelevant. If enough organizations dare to choose power-building together, then they have the best chance not only of regaining the offensive around their own issues of struggle, but also of contributing to a fully fledged, balanced “sixth power”. That strengthened sixth power can call the other powers to order when they would rather not hear certain voices or even deliberately silence them.
The situation is serious enough for us to look one another deeply in the eye. Civil society organizations have built their existing power over many generations of hard work. Those who are at the helm today therefore have the responsibility to handle that legacy with care and to make the important but difficult choices needed to put these organizations and their agenda sustainably back in a position to act.
To put it in a motto from the world of organizing: “get in the game or get out of the way”!
Everyone knows that changing tack takes time. Time to build, time to learn, time also to fail now and then. But we no longer have years. Organizations that still want to have an impact on the world of tomorrow must stop longing today for the lost influence they once had and work hard to create the conditions for the power they can have tomorrow.
