At the same time, the Romani movement has been influenced by the neoliberal project (see also below, where I discuss the governmentalization of civil society more explicitly). Postsocialist state and civil society building and the transition from plan to market economies in Eastern and Central Europe have coincided with sweeping and intense processes of neoliberalization (van Baar 2011a). The participatory democratic and the neoliberal projects have ambiguously flown together:
The perversity lies in the fact that, even if these projects point in opposite and even antagonistic directions, each of them not only requires an active and proactive civil society, but also uses a number of common concepts and points of reference. In particular, notions such as citizenship, participation and civil society are central elements in both projects, even if they are being used with very different meanings. (Dagnino 2008: 55)
The uncomfortable merging of these two political projects complicates a reading of the Romani movement along straightforward lines of empowerment, emancipation, and human and minority rights articulation. The participatory project and its focus on collective responsibilities, disputing exclusionary mechanisms, and rendering delicate societal problems public tend to be displaced. Indeed, the neoliberal project limits societal participation to individualistic market inclusion—for instance, through activation policies (van Baar 2012a). Accordingly, a democratic agenda tends to be translated into a technocratic, social inclusion one, in which minorities such as the Roma are naturalized as “problem groups” that are individually, or at the community level, held responsible for solving the problems they face. The socioeconomic, political, and historical trajectories that have contributed to the marginalization of many Roma tend to be depoliticized through privatizing, territorializing, and culturalizing these problems. Due to the narrow focus on the ethnicized individual or community, on particular (usually segregated) localities, and on cultural and behavioral patterns of work, consumption, or mobility, complex contexts of marginalization have often been overlooked and depoliticized. As a consequence of these neglects and reductions, it has often been suggested that it is a “Roma (inclusion) problem” that needs to be solved (van Baar 2011a: 243–44).
Accordingly, there is an important difference between, on the one hand, the Romani movement and other social movements in Central and Eastern Europe and, on the other hand, social movements in parts of the world where participatory democracy had been established longer ago. The way in which civil societies have been revived and woven in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe has roughly taken place at the same time of the global “NGO boom” and the changing of roles that CSOs were going to play in policy-making. These changes took place in the context of influential transformations of the structures of capitalism, including new approaches to poverty, security, and development (van Baar 2011a; 2018). Moreover, neoliberal concepts and practices have transnational “roots,” including some in pre-1989 Central and Eastern Europe (Bockman 2011). In some countries, most notably in Hungary, the impact of neoliberalization has already become tangible since the 1970s (Haney 2002). For these reasons, the simultaneity of the post-1989 rise of nongovernmentalism with the neoliberalization of states, markets, and societies in Central and Eastern Europe makes it more difficult to distinguish or phase the participatory democratic and neoliberal projects, particularly regarding the Roma’s situation.
Until late into the 1990s, and partly as a consequence of Cold War East-West relations and the related Western distrust of state authorities in Central and Eastern Europe, the direct Western support for Romani minorities in Central and Eastern Europe mainly consisted of establishing and supporting small-scale CSOs. The steadily growing number of Roma-related CSOs, mainly funded by Western donors, became a major channel for the initial development of, and support for, the (more formal) Romani movement. At the same time, the restructuring of Central and Eastern European states and their institutional infrastructures led to a major change of state–civil society relations. The “strengthening of civil society” and the post-1989 restructuring of the state were parallel, largely interconnected processes, if not, to a large extent, leading political projects. Partially and incoherently, these processes contributed to the decentralization of formerly authoritarian socialist state structures, to the privatization of formerly state-owned sectors, to the reform of welfare regimes, and to the development of various kinds of private-public partnerships. Thus, the support for Romani and pro-Roma CSOs on the one hand, and for democratic state and market reform on the other, coincided with an unprecedented transformation of state–civil society relationships and with a partial transfer of state responsibilities to existing, but most of all newly developed, civil society actors (for an extensive discussion of these transformations, see van Baar 2011a).
These complex changes in the structures, patterns, tools, and forms of governance did not involve a deregulation, but, rather, a re-regulation of government that has been accompanied by a blurring of the boundaries between state, market, and civil society (van Baar 2011a: 163–74). This has certainly been not only an outwardly driven process governed by Western actors or IGOs, but a complex process supported by various kinds of governmental actors, including local and national ones in the region. As part of these processes of state–civil society transformations, IGOs, foreign donors, and state authorities in Central and Eastern Europe have been looking for reliable Romani civil society partners with whom they could build up formal and informal partnerships.
In some cases, these emerging dialogues between state and pro-Roma or Romani civil society actors have had their roots in late socialist economic crises and the need for restructuring the socialist plan economy and reducing the costs of the then existing Roma assimilation programs. In 1984, for instance, the Hungarian authorities argued that “the integration [of the ‘Gypsies’] is restricted by our difficult economic situation . . . a consequence of which is that we must now consider the Gypsy population as playing an important role in the construction of a new consensus” (quoted in Kovats 1997: 57). Martin Kovats (1997) clarifies that allowing the Roma to play a role in socialist Roma policies was largely motivated by socioeconomic difficulties, rather than by a desire to establish Romani minority self-governance and to allow the Roma to impact political and policy developments. He also puts forward that this ambiguity has not disappeared with the fall of socialism and with the post-1989 development of important new representational structures, such as, for instance, the minority self-government system in Hungary. He states that the introduction and building of policy dialogues with tactically chosen members of the Romani minority represent state strategies to postpone the development and implementation of the socioeconomic policies that were and are still needed to improve the situation of the Roma.
Kovats’s observations on the ambivalent effects of these policy dialogues can be put into the perspective of the perverse confluence of the two political projects. State actors that have been involved in the (partial) transfer of their responsibilities to civil society actors potentially consider Romani or Roma advocacy CSOs as the relatively ideal and trustworthy partners for (assisting with) the implementation of policies. These CSOs are seen as agents who are operating in the proximity of Romani communities and who have developed knowledge and expertise about the local situation. From the viewpoint of national or international governing organizations, these features make such CSOs relatively ideal intermediaries between governments and state or suprastate institutions on the one hand, and Romani minorities and “grassroots” communities on the other. Since the 1990s, much has been expected of the “strengthening of civil society” through supporting and establishing CSOs and mobilizing or improving their “local” connections and forms of expertise. For those Romani or pro-Roma CSOs that have been approached by—or have approached—governmental offices, foreign donors, or IGOs, taking up such roles in policy delivery is most often not a question of choice and, more often than not, represents a challenge. Yet, these involvements have also had more ambivalent effects.
The governmentalization of civil society by state and international governmental actors embodies a complex attempt to loosely but effectively attach CSOs to the state and suprastate institutional frameworks of governance. These processes of governmentalization have also led to the development of so-called “quasi-autonomous NGOs” or QUANGOs. Indeed, a substantial number of new civil societal structures, and private-public partnerships in particular, are the result