Contested Civic Spaces

Shrinking Space for Civil Society development in Croatia

Gojko Bežovan

1 Introduction

In Croatia, as a part of the post-communist world, the topic of civil society was not a priority in the early 1990s. The brutal war for the country’s independence, the war in neighbouring countries, refugee crisis and economic collapse with a very high unemployment level and high inflation in the circumstances of an undemocratic political regime were parts of public and private concern.

In these complex circumstances, international humanitarian organisations came to provide relief to war victims at first. They also provided financial and technical support to local initiatives and organisations. For some of them, a high priority was to provide support ...