Foreign Influence Regulation in Liberal Democracies: Translations of Harmful Foreignness into Regulatory Designs

Abstract Restrictions on foreign funding for civil society organizations (CSOs) have traditionally been associated with autocratic regimes. However, established liberal democracies in Europe have increasingly regulated what they frame as “harmful” foreign influence, that is, societal or political influence by nonnational actors in domestic societies. This article systematically maps foreign influence regulation across 12 European countries since 2000, and examines how different notions of foreign influence as a regulatory problem within democratic regimes (jurisdictional, state-based, and community-based) have been translated into regulatory designs. We find that foreign influence regulation not only grew since 2015, but qualitatively transformed, shifting the regulatory focus from the lawfulness of cross-border exchanges to the protection of both state-based sovereignty and community-based self-determination. Furthermore, assessing these measures against their stated objectives, we find that while most are functionally tailored to the harm they purport to regulate, they often overreach their stated objective, likely to have detrimental effects on the CSO sector.