A more ample discussion of the Arab civil society is first and foremost justified by the premise established at the beginning of this chapter: civil society is one of the five arenas of a democratic system. Therefore, in order to pave the way for an in-depth assessment of the chances of democratization in the Middle East, as well as the impact of concrete US policies, it is peremptory to first comprehend the configuration of the Arab civil society.
Alternatively, this section will touch upon one of the most widespread assumptions regarding the Middle East today, an assumption that joins up both scholars and policy-makers in their belief that “the vigorous civic activism can generate democratic regime change.[1]” To be more specific, those theoretically and/or practically concerned with Middle Eastern issues, extol the “magic” of a chain reaction that is thought to be the key to democratization in the Middle East: a vigorous associational life holds the huge potential of defying authoritarian establishments, thus forcing the state to adopt liberal reform and setting off the process of democratic transition.
Indeed, interpreting the regional parade of “people power” as a signal that the “snowball effect” has already been triggered, “Western scholars, development agencies, and policy makers reason that if Arab civil society organizations continue to pressure their authoritarian governments for meaningful reforms, then political transformation will ripple around the region.[2]” This translated in practice into consistent financial support provided by international institutions such as the World Bank, the UNDP, the EC (“the Barcelona process”) and USAID, all converging on the very same plank that sustaining opposition from below will generate regime shifts from above.
Nonetheless, this enthusiastic perspective needs to be lucidly tempered by a connection to the survival strategies of semi-authoritarian regimes that are thus constructed so as to display an appearance of liberalization, while in reality “they remain robust in their will and capacity to repress.[3]” This deceptive mechanism will be explained in detail as follows next posts.
[1] Sean L. YOM, Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World, The Middle east Review of International Affairs, Volume 9, No. 4, Article 2 – December 2005, p. 1
[2] Sean L. YOM, Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World, The Middle east Review of International Affairs, Volume 9, No. 4, Article 2 – December 2005, p. 3
[3] Anoushiravan EHTESHAMI, Is the Middle East Democratizing?, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, no. 26 (2), February 1999, p. 7
