1 The Problem

It is time to question the ability of the liberal-democratic political system in contemporary societies to both handle urgent crises and represent the political will of citizens. Obviously, every era has its anxieties, and the prospects for democracy have been discussed before. However, the current erosion of intermediate capabilities and procedures in society is of urgent importance as it affects the interplay of civic engagement and institutionalised politics, undermining the vitality of the political system and the legitimacy of democracy. The aim of this volume is to contribute to the discussion of the state of intermediation in contemporary societies by studying the interplay of civic engagement and institutionalised politics in European countries.

Usually, scholars draw attention to the discontent and loss of trust among citizens as voters and its effect on how they relate to and interact with political parties and politicians in the government. There is also a vital discussion about the profound changes in the public sphere caused by the increasing impact of the new social media and how they fracture and globalise spheres of opinion-building. The focus of the present volume will however primarily be on a third factor: the significance of civic engagement for democracy.

Conflictual topics such as climate change, sociopolitical and cultural conflicts about identity, race and gender, and the increasing impact of populism make it urgent to explore the relationship between demands articulated by engaged citizens and the practical realities of institutionalised politics, a relationship that inevitably creates tensions that have the potential to undermine democracy. The impact of both populist and environmentalist movements shows that various forms of civic engagement crucially affect democracy and the political system since they not only are preoccupied with specific problems and policy fields but also influence voting behaviour and public opinion in general (cf. Lafont, 2020, p. 27).

The problem is that in contemporary societies, democracy runs the risk of being undermined by a ‘bipolar’ antagonism between civic engagement and institutionalised politics. If intermediating arenas and practices that allow for a dynamic relation between civic engagement and institutionalised politics are lacking, there is no path towards cooperation or productive tensions, but instead towards increasing alienation or even antagonism. This is the political situation in practice; therefore it should draw more attention in theory and scholarly research.

1.1 Civic Engagement: Friend or Foe?

By default, civic engagement is considered crucial for democracy and a hallmark of a vital society. Thus, the academic debate on civic engagement and democracy is extensive (Putnam et al., 1992; Schudson, 2006; Skocpol & Fiorina, 1999; Verba et al., 1995, to mention a few). According to citizenship theory and similar traditions in normative political thought, civic engagement is expected to deepen democracy as it offers citizens opportunities to participate in political processes beyond general elections, formal rules and political institutions (e.g. Galston, 1991; Habermas, 1992). Furthermore, engaged citizens are expected to intermediate between state and society by bringing forth citizens’ political demands and legitimising political decisions.

However, recurrent alarming reports in media and academia arguing that public institutions, the political order and even democracy are challenged by populist movements demonstrate that civic engagement can just as well be problematic (Greven, 2016; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). Dramatic political events like the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election in 2016 were orchestrated and legitimised as a conflict between ‘the people’ and the political establishment. The conflict between ‘ordinary people’ and the elite has also been used in other countries, as, for example, the rise of the Orbán regime in Hungary and the emergence of illiberal politics in Poland. Also, popular movements such as Les Gilets Jeune in France and the Tea Party movement in the United States express populistic antagonism towards the establishment, provoking social unrest and political turmoil (Cramer, 2016; Skocpol, 2020). Thus, civic engagement is Janus-faced as it has the capacity to both improve and threaten democracy.

In line with this duality, civic engagement is here defined as individuals’ coordinated action to improve some aspect of common life in society, in accordance with how participants imagine society (Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014). As the ‘good society’ is shaped according to the perspective of the engaged citizen, civil society is not monolithic, exclusively consisting of democratic organisations and opinions; it is rather an arena of conflict encompassing a normative pluralism where citizens organise to argue and struggle for their particular beliefs (see Domaradzka’s chapter).

Some scholars have suggested criteria to distinguish between civic engagement as a resource for democracy that makes the political system accessible and as a risk insofar as it challenges democracy (Mouffe, 2018; Müller, 2016). This is a crucial distinction, but, in the end, whether civic engagement is perceived as a resource or a risk may depend on the normative political perspective of the engaged citizen. Nevertheless, by doing no more than labelling civic engagement either as a sign of a vital democracy or as populism undermining democracy, we cannot unfold and comprehend the dynamic shaping the interplay between administrative and political power—or ‘institutionalised politics’ as we call it—and civic engagement. Therefore, the chapters in the present volume explore and discuss the interplay of institutionalised politics and civic engagement in order to identify the mechanisms that shape the roles of civic engagement, producing a societal dynamic that either deepens or challenges democracy.

Depending on the political situation, civic engagement can be a resource for democracy in two ways: defence or improvement. When democracy is threatened, civic engagement may take the form of popular protests and civil disobedience to defend constitutional basics, the ‘skeleton of democracy’, institutions and processes necessary for democracy to function (see Domaradzka’s and Hien & Szabó’s chapters). When democracy is functioning reasonably, civic engagement may improve democracy by intermediating between the political system and citizens, for example, using citizen councils or cross-sector collaboration to give citizens access to political decisions and policy-making (see Grubb’s and Kirby & Leggewie’s chapters). Thus, in the present volume some chapters discuss the role of civic engagement when defending democracy; others discuss how civic engagement may improve democracy. However, there are also chapters examining civic engagement performed by civil society elites running the risk of undermining the legitimacy of democracy (see Ewert’s and Johansson’s chapters).

The interplay between state power and citizens serves to legitimise the asymmetric power relations between citizens and political institutions. At the heart of this capacity is the potential for civic engagement not only to articulate political demands but also to intermediate between state power and society. We use the term ‘interplay’ as a generic term not to obscure any of the many forms of interrelationship between civic engagement and institutionalised politics. However, we are particularly interested in the intermediary capacity of various forms of interplay of political power and citizens. The meaning of intermediation seems to be overlooked—perhaps it is taken for granted—but this concept is much more complex and ambiguous than just reconciling and balancing state power and the will of the citizens. Therefore, we will visit the territory of intermediation and discuss its various meanings and functions for society.

1.2 Visiting the Territory of Intermediation

Intermediation occurs in many different contexts. Here we are interested in intermediation between citizens and institutionalised politics. All forms of interaction between civic engagement and institutionalised politics have an intermediating potential, but all forms of interplay are not always intermediating. Hence, to discern intermediation among the various forms of interplay in society, we must discuss and specify what we mean by ‘intermediation’.

A capacious understanding of the notion ‘intermediation’ may refer to practices aiming to connect institutionalised politics and citizens in order to resolve political matters. That would include, for example, when representatives for organisations in civil society present citizens’ opinions and demands to influence policy decisions or when they seek to legitimise political decisions among citizens. However, since it does not presuppose interaction with a mutual impact on the actors involved, such a capacious understanding also includes static relations, for instance, when governments ignore or oppress civic demands (see Hien & Szabó’s and Tudzarovska’s chapters) or when civic engagement dismisses or overthrows a government. As we seek democratic repair that takes us beyond a ‘bipolar’ antagonism between civic engagement and institutionalised politics, we are interested in the dynamic character of intermediation, practices allowing for mutual influence between political power and citizens.

There are various forms of such intermediary practices. Some interactions are institutionalised and regulated, as in the corporatist model (see Ewert’s and Johansson’s chapters), while others may be spontaneous and improvised, as when authorities and civic organisations interact to deal with unexpected and urgent problems. Furthermore, intermediation may be peaceful and orderly as in organised deliberation (see Ewert’s and Kirby & Leggewie’s chapters), but it may also be an agonistic alternative to political unrest (see Domaradzka’s chapter).

Contextual factors determine how intermediation is framed and enacted. History matters (see Enjolras’ and Tudzarovska’s chapters), as do the constitution and the legal system (see Hien & Szabó’s chapter). Furthermore, by using the civic action framework (Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014) in their chapter in this volume, Waerniers and Hustinx demonstrate that the immediate social context frames how non-citizens enact their political voice in ‘scene styles’. Also, organisational factors may limit the civic space where citizens interact with public authorities (see Grubb’s chapter). Finally, technical solutions such as public opinion polls and professionalisation of civic organisations have the potential to both limit and extend the interplay between citizens and institutionalised politics (see Dekker’s, Meyer et al.’s and Johansson’s chapters).

Depending on contextual factors intermediation may imply interaction between civic engagement and institutionalised politics which affects both. Obviously, policies and political decisions may be influenced or even changed through bargaining and compromise, but civic organisations may also be co-opted and become more loyal to political power than to the citizens and members they represent. However, how we assess the roles, limits and significance of intermediation is not only context dependent; it also reflects theoretical standpoints and normative ideals. For this reason, in the second part of this introductory chapter, we relate the discussion on intermediation to three strands of theorising regarding the interplay of civic engagement and institutionalised politics.

‘Intermediation’, as the term is used in the present volume, is something other than the binary relation between institutionalised politics and individual voters reflected in general elections where individual citizens can vote for a political party or a candidate. Instead, intermediation presupposes collective action as civic engagement, regardless of whether it appears in civil society organisations, political parties or within public authorities (cf. Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014).

General elections ensure political equality, as all citizens are entitled to suffrage, but they cannot respond to political alienation and the voices of non-citizens (see Waerniers & Hustinx’s chapter). To counteract political alienation and make political decisions legitimate, an ongoing alignment is necessary between the policies to which citizens are subjects and the processes of political opinion-formation in which they can participate (Lafont, 2020, p. 23). As intermediation is a dynamic relation, it offers venues and practices to keep the possibility open for citizens and non-citizens to influence the substance of politics and political processes in between general elections.

The need for intermediation is a consequence of political inequality that results from the asymmetrical interaction between politicians in power and citizens subjected to political power. Intermediation then may involve an ongoing interpretation and implementation of laws and policies but also the process of giving them legitimacy and avoiding political apathy and social unrest (Kirby & Leggewie’s chapter). Thus, intermediation can give citizens a voice so that not only they may influence political decisions but also they can contribute to policy processes with knowledge and sensitivity about local opinions and to the production of welfare in cross-sector co-production (see Grubb’s chapter).

When organisations in civil society intermediate between institutionalised politics and citizens, they act as bridges. To fulfil this function, they must be capable of acting effectively towards institutionalised politics, which demands professionalisation. At the same time, they must represent citizens’ opinions, which demands loyalty to members’ involvement and opinions. These dual roles demand that organisations manage the balance between representation and efficiency (Albareda, 2018). To increase efficiency members of civic organisations often are represented by elected or professional elites (see Johansson’s and Meyer et al.’s chapters). As long as members or the population accept and trust elites representing them, they are legitimate, but if the trust is undermined by elites being too distanced from the members and/or co-opted by state power, they lose their legitimacy and intermediary capacity (see Waerniers & Hustinx’s chapter).

Cleavages, new identities and a new media landscape have made society more polycentric, which has made political representation more challenging (see Enjolras’ and Dekker’s chapters). Furthermore, as the corporatist structures that formed in many countries in the twentieth century have fallen apart, elites in dominant civic organisations that once represented citizens when collaborating with the state have lost legitimacy. Such processes have opened gaps in society and given way to protests and political positions challenging the establishment in the name of ‘the people’ (see Tudzarovska’s chapter). As established intermediary arenas and actors have dissolved, it seems as if intermediation must be reinvented to gain legitimacy in contemporary societies.

1.3 A History of Instability and Renegotiation

Climate change, increased migration streams and conflicts over identities and religious symbols have made the political situation more unpredictable and increased polarisation in European societies. In addition, new communicative technologies such as social media have changed the conditions for political activism (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013). Although we argue that many European countries are characterised by a dramatic and unstable political situation, this is not a novel or unique situation. The relations between state power and citizens have been renegotiated before in times of political instability.

The asymmetric power relation between the political system and its subjects has always needed some kind of legitimisation to be accepted and durable (cf. Habermas, 2006). While the religious cosmology prevailed, religious institutions were intermediaries that made the king or the emperor legitimate as expressions of the divine order. Along with secularisation and the emergence of political modernity, state power become legitimate by representing the will of ‘the people’, which made popular movements and civic organisations crucial as intermediaries between the political system and citizens (Terrier & Wagner, 2006).

Civic engagement and civic organisations contributed to the gradual development of democracy in the mid-nineteenth century by constituting an organisational infrastructure for political processes (e.g. Selle et al., 2019). When democracy was formally realised, these organisations became both counterparts to and a support structure for political institutions. This corporatist order was established after World War II, in Les trente glorieuses, when organised capitalism cooperated with social democratic and social liberal parties to rebuild Western Europe and establish systems of public welfare (Calhoun et al., 2022).

However, dominant popular movements gradually lost their credibility and support among wide parts of the population, causing gaps in the social fabric and fragmenting society. The discontent with established popular movement organisations—perceived to be too centralised, top-down managed and closely related to state power—became visible in the political activism of the late 1960s (Calhoun et al., 2022).

Like the political turmoil in 1968, the situation since the turn of the millennium is a reaction to the corporatist order which allowed established and powerful civic organisations to claim the role as intermediaries between the political establishment and citizens. As traditional organisations often still rely on class-based logics for representation, they exclude those who do not identify themselves according to class. In addition, since the organisations are more and more professionalised, citizens may feel that their involvement is limited or of limited use. But unlike the student revolts in 1968, civic engagement is not necessarily expressing opinions from the left side of the political spectrum. Instead, the political dynamic is more polarised between opinions on the political left and right. Furthermore, civic engagement does not always reflect bottom-up reactions by grassroots movements; it can also be used by the political establishment as a token of the will of ‘the people’ (see Domaradzka’s and Hien & Szabó’s chapters). Thus, the political significance of civic engagement is much more unpredictable than before.

No institutional system legitimising state power and upholding a societal structure lasts forever, and the current instability will probably lead to new intermediary organisations and practices. Perhaps managerialism and professionalisation of organisations in civil society will increase (see Meyer et al.’s chapter), or the use of technocrats and polls will reshape intermediary practices and arenas (see Dekker’s and Tudzarovska’s chapters). If this comes to pass, being a legitimate intermediating actor in civil society will no longer demand a broad member stock representing ‘the people’, but managerial skills and professional elites.

1.4 The Ambiguity of Democracy

It is argued that democracy is challenged and even threatened, and consequently there is a vital and often anxious scholarly discussion on the prospects of democracy (e.g. Calhoun et al., 2022; Lafont, 2020; Skocpol & Tervo, 2020; Urbinati, 2014). The present volume is meant to contribute to this academic discussion as it explores the interplay of civic engagement and institutionalised politics and its significance for democracy. The chapters limit their scope to European countries, but obviously this interplay needs to be explored also in other contexts, characterised by other traditions and political trajectories.

The meaning of democracy is often taken for granted; therefore, it can be seen as a ‘floating’ concept (Brown, 2011). Intuitively the term’s meaning seems to be straightforward, namely that political power emanates from the people. However, throughout history, democracy has been understood and put into practice in different ways. As the concept of democracy has an indefinite, and progressive, nature, Charles Taylor argues that it should be understood as a ‘telic’ concept (Calhoun et al., 2022). Treating democracy as a telic concept may be both frustrating, as the meaning of democracy is indefinite, and worrying, as it indicates that democracy is fragile. However, it also implies an optimistic perspective in that democracy can be improved, deepened and widened.

Bearing in mind the ambiguity of the concept, this volume is above all about the role of civic engagement in one specific version of democracy, namely liberal democracy. This is worth mentioning since ‘liberal democracy’ is also often taken for granted as the only possible or at least most sophisticated form of democracy. However, other forms of democracy exist, among them majoritarianism, meaning that only the will of the majority determines all political decisions (Rosenblum, 2008). In contrast, in liberal democracy, the political will of the majority is regulated and limited by the constitution so that the judicial system and constitutional law can maintain the political system, protect the rights of individuals and minorities and guarantee open political dissent.

As the political will of the majority is limited in liberal democracy by lawyers and experts, it comes as no surprise that they may be perceived as undemocratic elites. Sometimes this creates a gap between institutionalised politics and citizens, which places added pressure on the intermediary capacities of civic engagement. The tensions between the majority of the people and the (juridical) expertise limiting the will of the majority are fertile soil for populism and authoritarian disfigurements. An ‘illiberal democracy’, as Hungary’s ruling politicians call their alternative, claims that there are no elites standing between the people and the political system so that the majority of the people, at least formally, have unlimited power to determine political decisions (see Hien & Szabó’s chapter).

When representatives of civic organisations mediate between institutionalised politics and citizens they can be perceived as an elite representing other elites and as having an overly close relation with the government. Consequently, populistic movements can be hostile towards established forms of civic engagement and participation. Sometimes illiberal governments try to (re)establish social cohesion by making shortcuts between political leaders and the people. When there is mistrust towards established organisations and movements in civil society, governments can establish a more direct link between politics and ‘the people’ by creating or supporting popular movements friendly to the government (see Domaradzka’s and Hien & Szabó’s chapters). Another form of shortcut is to rely on technocrats and opinion polls rather than deliberations for public opinion-building (see Tudzarovska’s and Dekker’s chapters). In both versions, intermediation is bypassed and made superfluous.

The normative power that legitimises shortcuts between leaders and the population becomes visible in the ambiguous notion of the term ‘people’. The people can denote the entire population of a nation (ethnos). However, it can also denote the people (demos) as something other than or opposed to elites, as in the expression ‘ordinary people’ (Calhoun et al., 2022). This latter meaning of ‘people’ lends popular movements political significance and makes them normatively privileged. The gradual realisation of democracy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to some extent a product of the popular movements’ struggles against established elites to give ordinary people political rights. Considering this historical background, it is ironic that populist movements today are challenging liberal democracy by referring to the will of ‘ordinary people’.

The former meaning of ‘people’ (ethnos) may seem less normative and more descriptive and inclusive than ‘people’ as demos. However, by referring to the ‘real’ people, unwanted groups in society can be excluded, labelled as undeserving or alien. The sometime antagonistic separation between the people (ethnos) and foreigners is the flipside of a national identity, engendering both social cohesion in society and exclusion from society. However, there is also a legal separation between the people (ethnos) as citizens and other groups living in society but lacking citizen status. This is obviously of interest when exploring the interplay of civic engagement and institutionalised politics, as immigrants need to organise themselves as a political subject to be able to interact with institutionalised politics. Being non-citizens lacking political rights creates various alternative styles of political action (see Waerniers & Hustinx’s chapter).

1.5 Two Dimensions of Governance

The present volume is devoted to the capability of civic engagement to intermediate between citizens and the political system to keep democracy vital and accessible. However, the accessibility of democracy is dependent not only on the political system, or the input side of politics, but also on the output side of politics, which is the public administrative system implementing political decisions and providing services to citizens. A democratic society thus needs to balance the political system with public opinion and at the same time a centralised public administration with citizens’ preferences. Thus, civic engagement can play an intermediating role between citizens and institutionalised politics, as well as between citizens’ preferences and public administration. However, in research and academic debate, the political perspective and the economic/administrative perspective on the capacity to engage and include citizens in a pluralistic society are rarely examined together (Wagner, 2012). These two perspectives on society have been studied and discussed separately, the former by scholars in normative political thought and the latter by scholars in economics or public administration.

Much scholarly interest, not least in civil society research, has been directed towards the economic/administrative perspective on intermediation. Some scholars have studied how nonprofit or voluntary organisations make public administration accessible and offer alternatives to collective provision of welfare services by public administration and individualised welfare services in the marketplace (Wagner, 2012). This research has been conducted parallel to, seldom in dialogue with, research on the roles and capacities of civic organisations to intermediate between the political representative system and citizens. Although the present volume gravitates towards the input side of politics, we argue that the two perspectives should not be separated by demonstrating that also intermediating positions on the output side of politics have political significance (see Grubb’s and Ewert’s chapters).

The two opposites, individual–collective (output side) and public–private (input side), must not be treated as two independent pairs of opposites. Instead, to make a nuanced study of the interplay between civic engagement and institutionalised politics possible, the relations between the opposites should be understood as two tension lines. By keeping these two dimensions of governance together, the artificial boundary separating what is deemed as political from apolitical phenomena in society can be transgressed (Evers & von Essen, 2019). Processes and actions should be understood from a relational perspective so that they may be more or less politically significant depending on the actual context. Since we keep the political and administrative perspectives together, we can include processes and actions on both the input and output side of politics. Furthermore, this implies that we include politicians with formal positions in the representative political system alongside officials in governmental administration in what we call ‘institutionalised politics’.

We use an extended understanding of the notion of politics as a process that emerges when citizens come together to discuss and make decisions concerning public concerns. Due to this broad notion, we must differentiate between the formal political system exercising power and political phenomena in society. Therefore, we use the term ‘institutionalised politics’ to refer to politicians with formal positions in the representative political system and officials in governmental administration. By differentiating between ‘institutionalised politics’ and ‘the political’ (see Mouffe, 2005), we can attribute processes and actions outside the representative political system political significance without doing away with the formal boundaries between state and society, and without dissolving the conceptual divide between civic engagement and institutionalised politics.

2 The Plurality of Intermediation: Three Strands of Theory About the Interplay of Civic Engagement and Institutionalised Politics

In the first part of this introductory chapter, we concentrated on intermediation during periods when democracy gets disfigured or damaged in nation-states with a long democratic tradition. The key goals were to define roughly what we mean by civic engagement and institutionalised politics and how we understand intermediation as a special dimension of their interplay that is not a given but always contentious and fragile.

In this second part, the focus is on different ways of rethinking and innovating the intermediary capacities of democratic systems. As stated earlier, this challenge can be approached from different theoretical standpoints and normative ideals. In order to reflect this variety, we deliberately chose to invite colleagues from various schools and disciplines. Thus, the reader will notice that three different strands of social science theory-building and debate—political and democratic theory, civil society and recent governance models—can be found in these contributions. Each of these strands of thinking, which structure the respective chapters, has its own merits as well as limits. We thought it useful to bring these approaches together because in various ways they can be seen as complementary rather than mutually exclusive.

2.1 Intermediation Between Citizens and Political Representatives: Theories of Democracy

By tradition, institutionalised politics is discussed in the democracy theory strand with a focus on key elements such as representation, political parties and the respective pillars of democratic constituencies such as freedom of association, independence of media from government control and the autonomy of the judiciary.

Civic engagement is taken up in democratic theory mainly as a matter of individual citizens, exercising their political rights as voters and expressing their opinions through choices about rivalling parties, their leaders, programmes and promises. The interplay of both sides, the political representative system and the citizen-voters, depends on the extent to which the party system is able to reflect the intentions of the majority and to take them up. In pluralist democracies, this includes meeting the challenge of giving space and respect to minorities, contrary opinions and particular interests. This then is what distinguishes pluralist democracy from majoritarianism, which entails ‘bowing the decision of the half plus one as if it were the decision of the whole’ (Rosenblum, 2008, p. 50; see Domaradzka’s and Hien & Szabó’s chapters as especially telling examples of this tendency).

Given this background, in the debates on democratic policy-making, three major problems with intermediation stand at the centre of debates on democratic politics.

First is the impact of the ways digitalisation and the power of big international private companies have profoundly restructured the public sphere (Habermas, 2023). Since the 2010s, the internet has widened the possibilities for people to make their voices heard (Uldam & Vestergaard, 2015), but it has also revealed the dangers and shortcomings of a system that merely amasses individual opinions and represents fairly closed subcultures rather than debates.

Secondly, there are concerns about an increasingly individualistic culture among people who are less willing to commit themselves as members. As Enjolras’ contribution to this volume argues, new themes and attitudes have emerged, but waves of protest and anger have not been translated into stable commitments and forms of participation in politics. Membership and civic engagement as (political) partisanship do not really seem to pay off or change anything. This affects as well the role of political parties as prime intermediaries.

Thirdly, there are various facets of populism, with their quests for strong leadership and the turn from a culture of conflict to a culture of exclusion and battling enemies.

A major problem becomes immediately evident: the analysis of intermediation gets reduced to a debate limited to four elements—the party system, the media, the individual voter, and populist movements—omitting civic engagement with its plurality and diversity, the many forms of movements and associations and their roles (as highlighted in Domaradzka’s and Hien & Szabó’s chapters). Take, for example, a study such as Democracy Rules by Jan-Werner Müller (2021). Though his debate about populism includes a chapter on intermediary institutions, what he actually discusses there is solely the interplay of political parties and the media, old and new. In the chapter on ‘critical infrastructure’ and intermediation, Müller gets caught up in a scenario on populist movements on the one hand and the party and media system on the other. Populist movements get strictly isolated from the civil society. Its plurality of voices and dimensions of intermediation, and the degree to which they succeed or fail in staving off the shortcuts of ‘technopopulism’ (Bickerton & Accetti, 2021), discussed in this volume by Tudzarovska, are absent in that approach.

Similarly, Urbinati (2014) concentrates in her groundbreaking study of democracy as a ‘diarchy’ of representative organisations’ will and the plurality of peoples’ opinions on the ‘disfigurements’ in the interplay of these two elements. She deals with the gaps resulting from elitism and the shortcuts taken by plebiscitarian and populist tendencies. However, as Sintomer (2015) has rightly criticised, her reflections have little to offer when it comes to bridging the gap between these two sides through, for example, various forms of collective action, old and new forms of civic engagement, or direct and participatory democracy.

Such a neglect of intermediary elements that might ‘pluralise’ democratic legitimacy (Rosanvallon, 2011) mirrors the oft-occurring neglect of the various intermediation formats, such as referendums and firmly institutionalised forms of corporatism, as they developed over time in many democratic systems. It is no wonder that historical devices by which the once central class conflicts ought to be mediated by establishing a ‘social partnership’ have lost impact and efficiency. But likewise, there is not much to be found in this strand of research on the challenges of establishing new institutions for a better interplay between institutionalised politics and civic engagement as we deal with the key conflicts of today, such as environmentalism and migration.

In sum: democratic theory, while often successful in pinpointing and criticising various forms of polarisation and alienation between institutionalised politics and the ways civic engagement and concern are articulated today, has little to say when it comes to finding and evaluating formats of interplay where civic engagement is enacted in forms other than voting or commenting.

Yet some debates in democratic theory offer good examples for thinking of intermediation in innovative ways. Among those featured in this book, two deserve special attention.

The first derives from the still but vital debate on a political theory of parties as intermediary institutions and on partisanship as a special form of civic engagement (see here esp. Rosenblum, 2008; Herman, 2017; Wolkenstein, 2019). The contributions to this debate have an approach in common that sees the turn to state-reliant ‘cartel parties’ (Katz & Mair, 1995), focused on maximising voter support at all costs not as a natural state, but as something that might be challenged and reversed. What about the intermediary role of political parties beyond offering attractive packages of projects to people as voters? And moreover, what about partisanship as a special kind of action and membership usually excluded in debates on civic engagement and its manifold organisational forms? A key element of this viewpoint is the expectation that partisanship may still count, bridging party strategies and expectations in society. Given the general background of shifting norms of participation to more direct and deliberative forms, engagement in associations or movements and within political parties might be thought of as complementary. ‘The objective should be a reciprocal relation between civil society groups and parties; and the right mix is contextual and variable’ (Rosenblum, 2008, p. 272).

The second innovative way of thinking about intermediation sees it as a kind of participation in politics that strengthens deliberative dimensions. In fact, elements of participative democracy complementing representative institutions and professional politics are widespread. Besides referendums, one finds participative bodies that institutionalise forms of advocacy and of stakeholder participation, as well as advisory boards and forums intended to deal with the modes and details of public policy, making diverse concerns and particular interests more compatible with notions of the public good. Here the currently much-discussed citizen councils can be seen as democratic innovations. Features of nationwide forums or local ‘mini-publics’ (Smith & Setälä, 2018) may serve as tools of a more ‘deliberative democracy’ (Lafont, 2017). Public issues and projects are brought up by selected individuals as citizens rather than as representatives of special interests. Instead of seeking merely to negotiate a compromise between inflexibly rival interests, they aim at opinion-building, questioning and possibly changing the viewpoints of the respective sides. To the degree they have a sustainable impact on public opinion, such kinds of councils and forums could be an antidote to the shortcomings of various forms of participation such as lobbyism. In this volume, especially Kirby and Leggewie’s and Dekker’s chapters discuss the opportunities and difficulties of establishing such kinds of innovative intermediary forums.

2.2 More Than a Third Sector of Organisations: Intermediation in the Framework of the Civil Society Debate

Civil society can operate as a major intermediary force. However, the degree to which the guiding values and practices of this semi-autonomous sphere allow this depends on the ways the civil sphere (Alexander, 2006) interacts with society at large—state politics, market powers and the lifeworlds of families and communities.

There are various portraits of civil society that not only think of engagement and civil society organisations in relational terms, influencing discourses and values throughout society, but also subject to the rules set by institutionalised politics, economic challenges and the habits that govern private life (Evers & von Essen, 2019; Egholm & Kaspersen, 2020). At the end of the twentieth century, several influential books presented what were both colourful descriptions of and propositions for civil society. Let us take two prominent examples. Berger and Neuhaus (1996) focussed on the ‘mediating structures…standing between the individual in his private life and the large institutions of public life’, including neighbourhood, family, churches and voluntary associations. Hirst (1994) saw the potential of civil society as an ‘associative democracy’, as a ‘vital supplement’ to the existing institutions of market economy and democratic welfare states. Even though political orientations differed then—more conservative in works like the first book, more social-democratic in those like the second—many writings today share in various ways and across political camps a commitment to upgrading the socioeconomic and cultural (not-for-profit, nurturing solidarity and care) roles of civic engagement and civil society.

A similar way to understand such intersectoral interplay has been the debate on (new) welfare mixes, focusing on the interrelationships between the (welfare) state, the business sector and a ‘third sector’ of nonprofit organisations. The ‘welfare mix’ concept is different in that it is not just about the interrelations of state, markets, and the ‘organised civil society’ but ties in community, family and the private sphere as matters of public concern (Evers, 1995). In this version of mixed welfare systems, the civil society’s intermediating capacities are defined not only by its position as a third sector alongside state and market but as well by its relations with the lifeworlds of families and communities. This peculiar way of conceiving ‘mix’ and ‘interplay’ has been taken up again in the more recent debate on co-production (Ewert & Evers, 2014; Brandsen & Honingh, 2016). Here, service systems and logics are understood from the normative perspective of giving addressees and their various social support networks an active role as ‘prosumers’ and quasi co-designers in service arrangements.

The hybridity of civil society organisations results not only from merging sector logics, for example, for-profit tasks and commitment to the public good. It also points to the basic polyvalence of civil society organisations and networks, their ‘multipurpose hybridity’ (Hasenfeld & Gidron, 2005; Evers, 2020) that results from the ability to combine and maintain different roles: preserving or developing special sociocultural orientations, organising forms of services and support, and advertising and defending them. Meyer et al.’s chapter in this volume deals with the opportunities and difficulties organisations face when combining their role as schools of democracy, their concerns with advocacy and the design and management of services.

In this light, some features of the civil society debate may be seen as regressive. Under the label of ‘the organised civil society’, many approaches identify civil society with the operations of organisations and associations and their collective action. A further restriction takes place once their role is discussed mainly in terms of ‘nonprofit’ service provision and their potential for advocating better welfare arrangements and services. As Johansson’s chapter in this volume on elites with top intermediary roles in established associations shows, such organisations and practices still have considerable impact despite often being considered obsolete by the citizenry and the public. Thereby, other forms of engagement get largely ignored, especially social movements. The focus on civil society as an array of organisations tends to overlook forms of loose networking, protests and manifestations, both defending established personal and political rights and claiming new rights concerning issues of gender, race and identity—exactly those dimensions of civil society that have more impact and public attention. Some of these become intertwined with social and economic issues in new terms and ways. The claims for ‘climate justice’ are just one example.

Scholarly research can take at least three steps to avoid limitations of the civil society debate when it comes to the interplay of civic engagement and institutionalised politics and make analytical claims about the intermediary potential of civil society more concrete.

The first step would be to gain an understanding of civic engagement that is not limited to an exclusive sector issue. As Lichterman and Eliasoph (2014) have stated, civic engagement can emerge and be validated throughout society, in private settings and at the workplace, through partisanship as well as philanthropy. Civil society may be a key location for civic engagement, but motives and practices are not sector bound ‘as people can act together civically in a variety of institutions and at intersections between them, and not only in a specifically “civic” sector’ (Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014, p. 812).

A second step should be to overcome the fixation on organisations, the so-called organised civil society, and the resulting split between research on organisations and research on movements. This split is further widened once the organised civil society gets reduced to a sample of units acting as nonprofit service providers and once civic engagement in movements is associated solely with political activism and demonstrations. One should not forget that the power of social movements lies in the fact that they inspire a wide and diverse array of forms and format of engagement, loosely bound together by a central concern. Historically, the labour movement manifested itself both in trade unions and political parties, as well as in cooperatives, clubs, newspapers and social support networks. When it comes to the challenges of environmental decay and climate change, gender, race and migration, it is only possible to understand these features of civic engagement if movements in the streets, public debates and the operations of often quite professionalised advocacy and service organisations are thought of together, as, for instance, in Domaradzka’s and Ewert’s chapters. As Casas-Cortés et al. (2008) note, movements are about challenging and transforming expert scientific discourses, backing critical subjects and generating identities and common sense. Movements make a difference in politics through a complex interplay of context factors and strategies chosen and through their indirect presence in public discourse as well as their direct presence via representatives and organisations involved in political and administrative planning, negotiating and decision-making. Overcoming the popular yet misleading equation of social movement and protest, as well as the reduction of civil society to the operations of nonprofit or third sector organisations, can help in more fully capturing ‘democratic innovations from below’ (della Porta, 2020).

This leads to a third point, the need to strengthen a relational view (Evers & von Essen, 2019; Egholm & Kaspersen, 2020) of the civil society landscape and the various forms of civic engagement to be found there. This implies paying special attention to the many ways civic engagement in civil society is intermeshed with orientations in society at large, institutionalised politics, the strategies of parties of left and right, the economy, and the traditions in the social realms of religion, churches, lifestyles and convictions shared across sectors and borders.

Domaradzka’s chapter in this volume offers a vivid example, highlighting the manifold orientations—from anti-communist and pro-Catholic church-based voices to liberal and left-wing elite organisations—present in Polish civil society. It illustrates the importance of the mutual relationships between the plurality of institutional politics and forces on the one hand and their respective civic partners on the other hand, including those that are about supporting right-wing government actions. The Polish example shows the decisive role of politics and policy-making across sectoral boundaries on two levels. One concerns the impact of constitutional universal rights and basic freedoms of association, operations and voice that call for state guarantees and protection. Another concerns the many forms of selective support and discrimination, mirroring the priorities of governments and their supporters, to favour some and exclude other kinds of engagement. The Polish example demonstrates that civil society exists not on the basis of a single voice and common motives and purposes. Rather, its existence depends very much on the validity of basic constitutional rights and rules for a diversity of movements and actions. Intersectoral relationships as alliances between parties and movements (qualified by Domaradzka for Poland as fairly stable kinds of “pillarisation”) have a key role. In Poland’s and Hungary’s case, the rules and laws have been bent in such a way that the special legislative support for some has over time been accompanied by the aim to reduce the space to be guaranteed by basic rights for all.

A relational perspective is helpful not only in a highly politicised historical situation (as in Poland). It is needed as well to understand the everyday struggles in established welfare democracies. Several contributions to this volume (see especially Grubb’s, Ewert’s and Waerniers and Hustinx’s chapters) deal with attempts to overcome the traditional forms of separating and hierarchising public and private contributions to welfare. The culture of personal services, not only in the ‘third sector’, but also in state-public and commercial sectors, in schools, hospitals, and urban planning, has always been a concern of engaged citizens and user organisations. Today ‘co-production’ takes its meaning from a service culture that acknowledges the resources and contributions from various sides, especially that of the addressees (see Grubb’s and Ewert’s chapters). The notion implies respect, but also shared responsibility (see Loeffler & Bovaird, 2020). Here as well, engagement and activism for such goals are a matter of not only volunteers but also engaged politicians, experts and professionals in health, social and educational services. Through education and training, professionals have developed identities and concepts of their tasks and responsibilities. As Crouch (2011, p. 158f) argues, this has made professionalism an important element of civility and appropriate institutional designs that cannot eliminate the tensions between expertise and participation but can learn to manage them (Krick, 2021).

2.3 Intermediation Through Interactive Governance: Rethinking the Administrative Parts of Institutionalised Politics

Over almost two hundred years the development of modern statehood brought with it an enormous growth of public administrations. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, their traditional means of legitimation have changed. Public administration is no longer merely about executing policy decisions taken by political leaders, parties and parliaments. Nowadays, the tasks and boundaries between politicians and technical and professional elites increasingly overlap, since specialists and experts are much more involved in the development of systems of public service provision and regulation. Today, citizens are more likely to deal with political structures that intertwine the action of politicians and public administration professionals. Political ‘input’ and administrative ‘output’ are hard to disentangle.

Hence the subject of present governance debates and of the public management sciences has changed. It is no longer about governance as ‘new public management’ that takes its blueprints from the business sector, but about administrations as public organisations that must seek and constantly renew their mandate and legitimacy through interaction with citizens, clients, consumers, partners in public service and powerful business organisations. Here lies the focus of one of the strands of conceptual thinking on the interplay of institutionalised politics and civic engagement: the concept of ‘modern governance’ (Kooiman, 1993) under the heading of collaborative/intersectoral/interactive governance. Much of the related literature (see: Ansell & Gash, 2007; Hart, 2013; Torfing et al., 2019) comes from the administrative sciences. So, when they deal with ‘the state’, studies usually focus on the policies and politics of administrations and on policy fields rather than on actions of the party system or of the polity as a whole.

This strand’s common and basically progressive aim can be formulated like this: to study and discuss governance focusing on the development of organised forms of interplay—exchange, coordination, and cooperation—between actors from the public sector, civil society and the business sector. This means understanding the operations of administrations not as something that is already fully legitimated in advance by the decisions of political representatives but as something that has to create additional legitimacy by getting discussed with the addressees and that works only if respective stakeholders are willing to cooperate as co-producers.

There are two major problems with this strand of theory regarding the interplay between institutionalised politics and the people, whether ‘the people’ refers to the general public or to organisations that have a special ‘stake’ in this, that is, stakeholders.

One problem appears once forms of governance led by public administration in special policy fields are equated with the challenge of practising a more ‘interactive’ democracy in general, something that comprises the interaction of engaged citizens with actors both from administration and from parties and parliaments. The debate over new forms of governance has developed at a distance from the fundamental questions of democracy: power, the defence of basic institutions of democracy and societal voices that express general discontent or opposition to institutionalised politics, such as populist or environmental movements. The literature on governance in policy fields (Kooiman, 1993; Ansell & Gash, 2008; Torfing et al., 2012) has usually presupposed a given, fairly well-functioning democratic framework. Hence, there has been scant discussion about the present situation, where the opening of public administrations to a more interactive and collaborative style of working cannot take for granted the existence of a democratic terrain. In the preface to a new edition of the much-discussed book Interactive Governance by Torfing et al. (2019), the authors frankly admit that little thought has been given so far on the impact of politics and politicians, the challenges of populism and authoritarian turns on the envisaged concepts of new platforms and arenas of for a more interactive policy-making by administrations (2019, p. xiv f.). The orientation towards better governance by ‘interactive’ administration tends to turn from progressive pragmatism to an apolitical utopian thinking when it overlooks the present challenges to the democratic system.

The other major problem concerns the effects and viability of interactive governance as they may emerge once they are applied in the policy fields themselves, be it urban revitalisation, service systems in health, or in policy fields that aim to address the elderly and migrants (see Ewert’s, Grubb’s and Waerniers & Hustinx’s chapters). They result from the blurring of the boundaries between public and private actors. Under the heading of ‘stakeholder participation’, organised negotiations using various intermediation formats take shape, involving all those that have a special ‘stake’ in the respective problem field to be restructured, reformed and finally implemented. Lobbyism for one’s particular and private interest and civic engagement for public good can be found side by side. In local climate politics, stakeholder participation can mean, for example, setting up a committee with delegates from Fridays for Future, energy providers and the local traffic department to negotiate a compromise for a sustainable mobility concept. However, little is known so far about which factors make interactive platforms, roundtables or committees work. How and to what degree will a formalised participation of all kinds of organisations, those with very private interest and those engaged for public concerns, work? The instalment of a broader diversity of participants in platforms, commissions, advisory bodies and the like may become just a modernised version of corporatism. It might undermine rather than strengthen political parties’ impact on opinion-building and the authority of representative democratic institutions as parliaments. Will it enhance or inhibit the ability of public authorities to engage in future-oriented decision-making?

Concepts of interactive governance that focus on the administrative and managerial part of institutionalised politics and the various forms of intermediation that have been tried out and suggested in that context are without doubt part of the modernisation of the interplay of institutionalised politics and civic engagement. However, it is unclear to what degree they can be as well part of a course of democratisation. As one of their proponents frankly admits, ‘instead of juxtaposing interactive and representative democracy, future research should explore how these alternatives, yet complementary forms of democracy, can be combined’ (Torfing et al., 2019, p. XVI).

3 Intermediation Needs Democratic Experimentalism

Let us return to the problem and question we posed at the very beginning: ‘It is time to question the ability of the liberal-democratic political system in contemporary societies to both handle urgent crises and represent the political will of citizens’. The perspective from which we have dealt with this can be summarised now as follows: Many of the governance debates are about reform, that is, changes that are binding for all, perhaps because of previous long-standing debates and negotiations. What happens when civic engagement and quests for democratic innovations enter the world of political decision-making and governance? Civic engagement is often an important element that pushes such innovations. To what degree are the worlds of policy-making and administration open for promoting new, unconventional solutions and concepts? Social innovations bring in a new element and challenge: How should we deal with (encourage, take up or restrict) ‘divergent’ practices and solutions, be it in social or environmental policy fields, as they are mushrooming mostly at the ‘local’ level, in specific settings? This question points to a challenge concerning each of the three strands of thinking about intermediation introduced in the previous part: How can we explain the interaction between change-making through central binding reforms and decisions and change-making through ‘local’ innovative practices and their respective institutional devices? Concepts of a ‘democratic experimentalism’ (Dorf & Sabel, 1998) are suggesting a new style of policy-making. It is about embarking on a path on which something should be tried out and evaluated before it can possibly get translated into the given institutionalised politics, not only to be simply incorporated, but to also change this setting to some degree. This calls for new ways of combining pragmatism and openness to change.