Joanna Kopacka is a Program Coordinator in Engaging Central Europe (ECE), an initiative of the German Marshall Fund that combines civil society support with analytical and research work on political developments in Central Eastern Europe. She focuses on democratic backsliding in Poland, tactics of authoritarian repression, and new ways of mobilization and civic response to populism across the region.
Prior to joining GMF, she worked at the intersection of civic engagement, human rights, and democratic accountability in a number of non-profit organizations; most recently Investigate Europe, an international cooperative of investigative journalists, and WeMove Europe – an organization fostering citizen-driven politics and community organizing across the continent. She has also worked with Polish grassroots initiatives aimed at advancing intercultural and interfaith dialogue, women’s rights, and civic education.
Policy Project: Flipping the script on illiberal transformation: How local action and governance can work to defy anti-democratic measures of the state leadership.
In the process of illiberal transformation, populist governments across the world target independent civil society as a vector of policies they oppose and restrictions to their power. By cutting off the funding streams and carrying out smear campaigns against civic actors, autocrats aim to diminish both their economic standing and legitimacy. In response to the hostile environment created by the central administration, some open society, and human rights actors, however, began to recalibrate their activities and focus on the subnational levels of governance and impact.
In Poland, this process has become especially relevant in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and forced displacement of its citizens. Within days, the need for cooperative efforts between municipalities and civil society organizations (CSOs) to address humanitarian aid, refugee reception and integration shifted from being a topic of discussion to being a matter of necessity. The more avenues the local administration had for cooperation with local CSOs, the more effective all actors turned out to be.
For the first time, Polish municipalities got that actively involved welcoming refugees; a practice that many, mostly Western, European cities had spearheaded in the absence of comprehensive policies at the national and EU levels. Yet, while the latter largely combine local initiatives with long-term measures, Polish cities still lack systemic approach to the welcome and inclusion. Despite the promise of collaboration between local administration and civil society, and notwithstanding the positive effects of new, crisis-induced practices of trust-building and responsibility distribution, months after the initial crisis responses, Polish organizations report the municipalities already regressing to the business as usual.
In the light of the above, this project attempts to combine a theoretical reflection on the cross-sectoral collaboration in the shrinking space of a backsliding democracy with the case for sustaining such partnership with respect to migration and forced displacement. Building on the various stakeholders’ lessons learned, it takes a step further in imagining what a new model of decentralized organizing could look like and how it could be best supported by international actors. It takes advantage of the unique momentum for change, while exploring the potential of local actors and administrative units, new ways of community building and support through democracy aid.
