Right-wing populism and civil society organisations: patterns of constraint and resilience in Italy

This article examines how right-wing populist governments reconfigure relations with civil society organisations (CSOs). It argues that outcomes depend on the intersection of populist government incumbency, civil society embeddedness, and political opportunity structures. Rather than uniformly shrinking civic space, populist rule produces selective patterns of constraint and adaptation. Drawing on 16 interviews and documentary evidence, the Italian case illustrates this logic: under the Meloni government, welfare and faith-based CSOs retain formal access but lose substantive influence, while migration NGOs face intensified regulatory and discursive constraints. Reciprocal dependence in welfare provision and partially open opportunity structures limit systematic exclusion but enable procedural marginalisation. The framework explains how intersecting conditions produce differentiated patterns of vulnerability and resilience within civil society.