European Union (EU) funding of civil society organizations (CSOs) is a substantial and important part of EU governance, but study of such funding is scarce and theoretically underdeveloped. To fill this gap, this article analyzes the main features of EU funding of CSOs and its effects on the EU system of interest representation, drawing on policy documents and the EU register of interest representatives. The resulting analysis shows that EU funding of CSOs in the social sector tends to reflect many of the characteristics of the model of associative democracy. European funds are being directed to groups that voice the concerns of excluded groups and, in this way, address imbalances in EU interest representation. The EU also promotes certain healthy features among CSOs, since it restricts access to funding opportunities to interest groups fulfilling key normative criteria. Hence, the EU helps sustain, but does not significantly constrain, the development of European CSOs.

This article analyses how humanitarian and development Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have responded to the alteration of public funding opportunities over a long time period. Analysing a long time period allows for a better understanding of the potential impact of external shocks, such as the European sovereign and debt crisis. Data show that many CSOs severely affected by budget cuts at the national level in the context of the euro crisis have adopted a compensation strategy consisting on turning more frequently to international and European funds. Thus, in some countries, the economic crisis has contributed to the Europeanization of CSOs. This in-depth comparative qualitative analysis is based on the study of national humanitarian and development CSOs based in France and Spain.

European Union (EU)-based Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are usually pictured as well-established professionalized actors basing their advocacy strategies on the provision of expertise. Does the focus on expertise imply the removal of emotions and feelings from political communication? Following the emotion turn in social movement and collective action studies, this article investigates how and why EU-based CSOs use emotions in their advocacy strategies. The article shows first how CSOs use rhetorical appeals to emotions and rhetorical appeals to reason in their communication. Secondly, the focus is directed to emotion-inspired advocacy strategies, namely blaming and shaming, fear-mongering and boosting. The choice of rhetorical appeals and strategies is mainly explained by three different inter-related factors: the logics of influence, the logics of membership and media logics. Empirical data is drawn from a content analysis of press releases and policy documents of environmental (climate change) and human rights (refugee crisis) CSOs active at the EU level and from semi-structured interviews with key CSO representatives.

Are government funds an opportunity or a threat to interest groups' participation in policy-making? In answering this question, previous research has raised the question of the interrelatedness between access to policymakers and funding of interest groups' activities. A popular argument represents funding opportunities as inhibitors of interest group access to policy-making because of the funds' negative effect on an organization's autonomy. In opposition to this view, many authors have argued that public funds open access opportunities and contribute to an active involvement of funded organizations in the policy process. This article provides a novel explanation for these contrasting findings. The effect of public funds on access critically depends on the type of contacts organizations have with policymakers. Funding might positively affect access initiated by policymakers (high threshold), but might not affect access initiated by interest groups (low threshold). Using survey data collected from more than 2000 organizations active in four European countries and at the EU level, the article shows that public funds are associated to an organization's participation in policy-making but this correlation is indeed highly dependent on the type of contacts groups have with policymakers. KEYWORDS Interest groups; government funding; access; lobbying; insider State funding of interest group communities is described in the literature as a system of direct transfers from government agencies to an organisation that seeks financial support with the aim of implementing a project or support administrative and organizational changes (Crepaz and Hanegraaff 2020). 1 The existence of such mechanism is generally legitimised by the willingness of the state to support the development of civil society, ensure more efficient implementation, and add strength to the CONTACT

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