What should be the role of nonprofit organizations in a liberal democratic state?

With my PhD project, I intend to investigate, through the lenses of analytical political theory and illustrative examples of the European context what should the role be of nonprofit organizations in democratic decision-making. One of the most pressing issues with these organizations is the risk that they turn into a tool to bypass the democratic process for setting political agendas and making collective decisions. In the domain of public education for example, it happens that nonprofit organizations may offer money or means for the realization of specific public projects while tying this contribution to particular conditions. The project’s main aim is to investigate the conjecture that while nonprofit organizations might be valuable as a realm of citizens’ personal expression, their political contribution is questionable and should be carefully analyzed and normatively constrained to make it compatible with the grounding ideals of a liberal democracy. In particular, with special reference to the European context, the project’s key objective is to discuss how the political contribution of nonprofit organizations could be made compatible with the liberal democratic normative commitment to respecting citizens’ equality of opportunity to the decision-process. Thus, the project’s main result is a novel and unprecedented normative theory of the regulation of the political contribution of nonprofit organizations. This result is important because it will offer the normative grounds for investigating the boundaries of the state intervention to pose limits on citizens’ political activities.