1 Jonas Wolff Shrinking Civic Spaces as a complex challenge to human rights and peace Please cite as: Wolff, Jonas 2023: Shrinking Civic Spaces as a complex challenge to human rights and peace. Zeitschrift für Menschenrechte / Journal for Human Rights 17: 1, 171-184. DOI: https://doi.org/10.46499/2144.2761 Abstract: The academic essay discusses the relationship between human rights and peace in the context of the controversy over the phenomenon of shrinking civic spaces, that is, the global trend of increasing restrictions on the capacity, autonomy and collective action of civil society actors. Analyzing the recent wave of civic space restrictions from a political science perspective on both human rights and peace, the contribution particularly points to the complex, and at times counterintuitive, relationship between civic space restrictions, human rights, and peace. Der akademische Essay erörtert die Beziehung zwischen Menschenrechten und Frieden im Kontext der Kontroverse über das Phänomen der shrinking civic spaces, d.h. die globale Zunahme an Restriktionen, die die Kapazität, Autonomie und kollektive Handlungsfähigkeit zivilgesellschaftlicher Akteure einschränken. Genauer analysiert der Beitrag die jüngste Welle von Einschränkungen zivilgesellschaftlicher Handlungsspielräume aus einer politikwissenschaftlichen Perspektive auf Menschenrechte zum einen, Frieden zum anderen und weist dabei insbesondere auf die komplexen, mitunter kontraintuitiven Beziehungen zwischen diesen Einschränkungen, Menschenrechten und Frieden ein. 1. Introduction 1 The observation that the global spread of democracy has given way to a “democratic recession” (Diamond 2021), a period of “democratic backsliding” (Haggard/Kaufman 2021) or even a “wave of autocratization” (Lührmann/Lindberg 2019) is an important theme in current debates on the state of the world. At the core of this development is a phenomenon that has been dubbed “closing” or “shrinking civic spaces” (Carothers/Brechenmacher 2014, Poppe/Wolff 2017). Since the early 2000s, observers have been witnessing an increase in state restrictions that constrain the capacity, autonomy and collective action of civil society actors. 2 Usual restrictions 1 The author thanks two anonymous readers for their most constructive and helpful comments and suggestions. 2 For key studies on this phenomenon, see Bakke et al. (2020), Borgh/Terwindt (2012), Carothers/Brechenmacher (2014), Chaudhry (2022), Dupuy et al. (2016), Glasius et al. (2020), Howell et al. (2008), Krennerich (2015), Poppe/Wolff (2017), Rutzen (2015), and Smidt et al. (2021).