CANCELED: Claudia Matthes, ‘Safeguarding Democracy and the Rule of Law by Civil Society Actors? The Case of Poland’

Since the EU Commission’s tools to combat the decline of rule law in the EU member states are rather weak, the question is if the involvement of civil society actors in backsliding countries can make a difference. The expectations from existing research on civil society in new democracies are rather modest due to their socialist legacies. By looking at the Polish case, the talk discusses in how far the Polish civil society is able to navigate within the multi-level system of the EU and to circumvent existing difficulties in collective action.

Claudia Matthes is the director of studies, International MA Programs at Humboldt University, Berlin. She is also a research assistant in Humboldt’s Department of Social Sciences, with research interests including German and comparative politics, political governance; transition and democratic theory; and regional cooperation and EU-enlargement. Matthes previously held positions in the Administration of the Deutsche Bundestag and the Office of the Vice-President for International and Public Affairs of Humboldt. She holds a PhD from Freie Universität Berlin.

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