Editors’ Note: Merrill Sovner adapts a 2019 report she co-wrote to address a particular timely question: how informal rules can be used to constrict civil society, focused on the examples of Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic.

In the current political moment in the United States, comparisons have been made to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, both by conservatives holding it up as a model as well as liberals citing it as a warning sign. Each believes that Hungary and neighboring countries in Central Europe provide important lessons about how civil society organizations can be restricted within democratic institutional guardrails. Based on interviews collected for the 2019 report, “Sustaining Civil Society: Lessons from Five Pooled Funds in Eastern Europe,” published by the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at the CUNY Graduate Center, in this post I outline five ways populist and nationalist political leaders sought to restrict CSOs in Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic.

Nonprofit organizations, or more broadly speaking, civil society organizations (CSOs, including trade unions, professional associations, and informal civic initiatives) bring people together to aggregate and articulate their interests, develop volunteerism and leadership, and monitor government activities and advocate for reforms. For these reasons, CSOs serve as an additional check on democratic governments after legislatures and judiciaries. Scholars have studied how political leaders seek to control civil societies through laws and regulations that restrict CSO registration, activities, and incomes.

Beyond formal laws and regulations, informal rules – created through norms, expectations, and practices – are less documented yet also important ways political leaders seek to control civil society. Informal methods can do the heavy lifting of instilling fear and self-censorship in civil society when formal laws and regulations would be contested and overturned. As European Union member states must maintain formal democratic institutions and are subject to Europe-wide courts and human rights conventions, the experiences of CSOs in EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe provide important lessons for established democracies everywhere.

Informal rules work through two main levers: resources and legitimacy. To receive resources, a civil society organization must convince a possible donor that its charitable mission is worthy of support and that the organization is competent to carry out that mission. Because a CSO must demonstrate legitimacy to receive resources, the two are closely intertwined in practice. The state legitimizes civil society organizations in recognizing them as public charities, a shorthand for the public to know it has a worthy mission and competence to carry out activities. The state awards CSOs with resources through tax exemptions, subsidies, and grants. The public at large also awards resources and legitimacy; CSOs with missions that many citizens support are more likely to attract donations. CSOs seek media coverage of their activities to convince more of the public of their legitimacy.

Nationalist and populist political actors sought to undermine CSOs’ access to resources and legitimacy in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria in five ways. First, extremist parties attacked both the missions and the competency of CSOs, especially those working on human rights, anti-corruption, gender rights, and the environment. As nationalist political parties were elected to supermajorities in Hungary, joined government coalitions in Bulgaria, and supported populist governments in the Czech Republic, their rhetoric became mainstream. Their statements sought to divide these CSOs from the rest of the civil society sector.

For example, in July 2014, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán accused civil society figures of being “paid political activists” supported by “specific foreign interest groups” in a major annual speech, language his government continued to use throughout the decade. In 2019, the Czech prime minister distinguished between good CSOs and corrupt or “political nonprofits” and the president declared himself “the enemy of some nonprofits.”  Both characterized CSOs as “parasites” of government funding. In Bulgaria, CSOs promoting gender equality or LGBTQ rights were characterized as spreading a nefarious ideology and the word “gender” essentially became an insult. The negative rhetoric reached a fever pitch in 2019 as Bulgarian government politicians and the Orthodox Church publicly questioned CSO motives and activities. Bulgarian government institutions declined public association with CSOs, and legislation developed with CSO input were tabled.

Second, negative political rhetoric against CSOs was disseminated in mainstream media outlets. In all three countries, ownership of major media outlets was either consolidated into a government-controlled foundation (in Hungary) or dominated by oligarchs close to or in government themselves. In Bulgaria, a media campaign after the 2013 anti-government protests painted CSOs as “foreign agents” and “Sorosoids” paid by Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros. In 2016, Bulgarian private media outlets identified environmental organizations as “the green octopus” after groups protested the expansion of a ski resort in Pirin National Park, a UNESCO heritage site. Open criticism of CSOs began to appear in Czech commercial media around 2018, as disinformation in conservative outlets later appeared in the mainstream press.

Press articles included smears against individual organizations and their staff, frightening people not used to the spotlight. In 2018, a Hungarian weekly magazine printed a list of around 200 individuals it claimed to be “Soros mercenaries,” including CSO staff. Bulgarian civil society leaders were exposed in false scandals in news articles, and CSO  staff were monitored and filmed outside their offices. Hungarian human rights CSOs responded to libelous claims with lawsuits, winning at least two cases in Hungarian courts.

Third, political leaders questioned the origins and motives of CSOs’ main international funders. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations remained one of the largest donors to human rights, gender rights, and anti-corruption CSOs in all three countries between 2010 and 2019. Despite decades of philanthropy in Hungary, Soros was depicted by the Fidesz government as the instigator of the 2015 migration wave; a widespread campaign against him employed anti-Semitic tropes across government statements, media articles, and on billboards. The 2017 “Lex CEU” created new regulations for international universities that were clearly directed at Central European University (CEU), which Soros had founded and endowed. The 2018 “Stop Soros” Law criminalized CSOs’ activities assisting migrants and, separately, taxed their income at 25 percent. These laws were later overturned by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The European Economic Area (EEA)/Norway Grants Programme and the Swiss Contribution NGO Programme were other important funders. In Bulgaria, environmental CSOs were accused of stopping the expansion of Bulgaria’s ski industry at the behest of Swiss and Austrian interests. In Hungary, the Government Control Office conducted audits and investigations of the local foundation operators and grantee organizations of the EEA/Norway Grants Programme in 2014, accusing them of mismanagement, illegal financial activity, and politically biased grantee selection. The operating foundations’ offices were searched, grantees’ tax registration numbers were suspended (nominally for not cooperating with the Government Control Office), and documents and laptops were confiscated. In 2015, a Hungarian court ruled that the police raids were illegal. All investigations ended with no findings, leading civil society leaders to believe the aim was delegitimization rather than exposing fraud.

The audits point to a fourth tactic: changing state practices to withdraw resources and legitimacy from CSOs that criticized the government. In 2010, the newly elected Fidesz government suspended the National Civil Fund, established in 2004 to support Hungarian CSOs, and which was overseen by a board of civil society representatives. In 2011, it was replaced by the National Cooperation Fund, with a government-appointed board. In 2012, the new Fund distributed half the previous budget to many grantees seemingly selected out of political loyalty rather than for the beneficiary organization’s work. Other Hungarian funding mechanisms to CSOs, such as contracts for social services, practically disappeared except to pro-government organizations and churches.

Civil society organizations in the Czech Republic were submitted to increased administrative burdens and financial inspections after the populist ANO (“YES”) party joined the government in 2017. The party threated to cut the substantial Czech state support for CSOs over the objections of its government coalition partner. The Ministry of Interior reduced funding for anti-corruption CSOs and diverted the funds to an anti-drunk driving campaign. The Minister of Finance announced plans to eliminate roughly US$130 million in funding earmarked for civil society and to disburse EU funding for social projects through reimbursements at projects’ end. It was not implemented, but it sent a warning message that state funding could be cut at any time, incentivizing CSOs to self-censor contentious language or criticism of the government.

The state also legitimizes CSOs by recognizing their expert advice in policymaking. In all three countries, critical CSOs were denied access, avoided, or, at best, consulted inconsistently by the state. Hungarian CSO experts that were previously apolitical, such as researchers on the environment, were left out of expert councils and blacklisted from commenting in the media. In Bulgaria, parliamentarians avoided public councils where CSOs provided advice, or they ignored CSO input in later versions of laws. The Bulgarian prime minister claimed sidelining critical voices was part of normal politics, as every government favors policy expertise from some organizations over others. In Hungary, the Fidesz government created new organizations to receive favorable access, such as the Center for Fundamental Rights, which refuted critiques by human rights CSOs.

There were also incidents of state surveillance in Hungary. Agents from an Israeli private intelligence firm met with Hungarian CSO leaders, posing as donors and offering funding to engage in possibly illegal activities. The CSOs refused, yet recordings of these meetings were published in the Jerusalem Post and a Hungarian pro-government daily just before the 2018 elections. Shocked CSO leaders became much more cautious in taking meetings.

Finally, laws and regulations to restrict CSO activities were proposed—yet rarely fully implemented. Nationalist parties proposed laws to identify CSOs with international funding as foreign agents and to monitor their income flows in Hungary in 2013 and in the Czech Republic in 2019 with little traction. The nationalist United Patriots party in Bulgaria proposed dissolving a prominent human rights organization in 2019, prompting national and international outcry. The prosecutor general refused to act on the proposal, and the prime minister announced he had worked well with the CSO and voiced support for the civil society sector.

Fidesz passed laws restricting CSO activities with its supermajorities in the Hungarian parliament, but many of these were contested and later overturned in European courts. In addition to the laws mentioned above, a 2017 “Lex NGO” law required that CSOs receiving over €24,000 in international funding register and self-identify as foreign-funded; noncompliant organizations could be fined and dissolved. Since all organizations were already required to publish a financial report listing their donors, this legislation added the stigmatizing label. A coalition of CSOs and the European Commission sued the Hungarian government over this law, and in 2020 the Court of Justice of the European Union obligated its repeal. In 2021, it was replaced with a new law that allowed the State Audit Office, which generally audits only public finances, to audit CSOs with budgets over €54,000. This pattern repeated in 2024 with the “Sovereignty Protection Act”, which created an office to investigate CSOs and criminalized the use of funding from abroad for political campaigns. The first two investigated organizations, very prominent in exposing Fidesz government corruption, filed a constitutional complaint and the EU launched infringement proceedings. While these cases are still pending, the intent to delegitimize CSOs that criticize the government and to restrict resources from abroad is clear.

In all three countries, CSOs were delegitimized and defunded through negative rhetoric, targeted press coverage, demonization of funding sources, and changing state practices. Proposed laws and regulations were frequently withdrawn or voted down; laws passed (in Hungary) were contested and often overturned. Yet these tactics created significant psychological pressure on CSOs, distracting them from their work supporting civic participation and serving as a check on democratic governments. Many CSO leaders, especially those in human rights and anti-corruption organizations, recognized these informal methods as scare tactics rather than as real threats. These CSOs opted to continue working as before, while many apolitical CSOs without access to lawyers or dependent on good relations with government officials took these warnings to heart, changing their activities and communications about their work.

These tactics are available to politicians in established democracies around the world. There are fewer sanctions against using informal rules than against formal laws and regulations. Holding political leaders accountable requires well-resourced lawyers to file legal cases or prevailing upon the norms and taboos of other politicians and the public at large. It remains to be seen how well these accountability mechanisms will work over time.

-Merrill Sovner

Merrill Sovner is an Affiliated Scholar with the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Merrill previously worked in international philanthropy, including for the Open Society Foundations.