Europeanization through Funding

"Chapter 6 by Matteo Di Placido and Roberto Scaramuzzino focuses on funding dynamics. It investigates five organizations that have been granted funding through the European Social Fund (ESF) and analyzes both the selection mechanisms that facilitate access to ESF funding and the outcomes of such funding. Like other recent studies, it documents the ‘projectification’ of organized civil society’s activities and explores the distinct impact that this has for Swedish civil society. It documents the diverse set of motives that lead CSOs to seek EU funding and the factors that determine which applications are selected for funding, including personal acquaintances with EU officials and an in-depth understanding of the political realm in which funding decisions are taken. In other words, it illustrates the type and scope of the cultural and social capital necessary to be a successful player in EU competitions for funding. As in other chapters, the specificity of the Swedish model, and in particular the relative ease of access to national funding opportunities, emerges as a powerful filter that shapes the structure of Swedish civil society by limiting its dependency on financial Europeanization" (Ruzza 2019: xii-xiii).