ABSTRACT
Over the past decade popular uprisings have led to the ousting of authoritarian regimes in post-communist Eurasia and more recently in North Africa and the Middle East. Democratic breakthroughs in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and Kyrgyzstan (2005) were accompanied by an authoritarian backlash in countries such as Russia, Belarus, and Uzbekistan. Kyrgyzstan itself soon turned into a brutal authoritarian regime under Kurmanbek Bakiev, until that regime crumbled in April 2010. The real or exaggerated role played by both domestic and international NGOs in this process has made the study of civil society and its assumed relationship with democratisation timely once again. Authoritarian regimes across the post-Soviet space have responded to the ‘revolutions’ by cracking down on civil society organisations, leaving an increasingly narrow space for autonomous political action. As a result of these crackdowns, civil society organisations have increasingly turned to less politically sensitive issues, such as health, migration, and poverty reduction. Democracy and overt democracy promotion now appear to be off the agenda for civil society groups in the region.
