*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
Civil Society Assistance Fails: Ignores Unique Cultural Contexts of Some States
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- FOREIGN FUNDED EFFORTS TO BUILD CIVIL SOCIETY EMPIRICALLY PROBLEMATIC – LACK CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE
- CIVIL SOCIETY IN MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES DOES NOT PROMOTE DEMOCRACY
- CIVIL SOCIETY IN ISLAMIC CULTURES ANTI-DEMOCRATIC
- U.S. CIVIL SOCIETY ASSISTANCE NOT WELL-SUITED TO UNIQUE CIRCUMSTANCES OF MIDDLE-EASTERN GOVERNMENTS
- ASSISTING CIVIL SOCIETY TO PROMOTE DEMOCRACY IGNORES UNIQUE CULTURAL FEATURES OF COUNTRIES
- CIVIL SOCIETY ORIENTATION DIFFERENT IN COUNTRIES WITH STRONG COMMUNAL FORCES
- JORDAN EXPERIENCE PROVES DIFFICULTY OF SPURRING GROWTH OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN STATES WITH AUTHORITARIAN TRADITIONS
- ARAB COUNTRIES LACK THE TYPE OF CIVIL SOCIETY THAT CAN MOUNT POLITICAL ACTIVISM
- ASSISTING NEW DEMOCRACIES BUILD THE BLOCKS OF DEMOCRACY MEANINGLESS WITHOUT ATTITUDINAL CHANGE AMONG THE PEOPLE
- EXPERT TRAINING INEFFECTIVE – FOREIGN EXPERTS DON’T UNDERSTAND LOCAL DYNAMICS
Civil Society Assistance Fails: Ignores Unique Cultural Contexts of Some StatesTRADITIONS OF CIVIL SOCIETY AND CIVIC ORGANIZATIONS DIFFER BETWEEN THE WEST AND ARAB WORLD Ayan M. Alsayed, Counselor in International Education and Development, 2008, Advancing Democracy Through Education: US influence abroad and domestic practices, eds. E. Stevic & B. Levinson, p. 82 Before addressing specific programs of civil society support in Palestine, however, it is important to understand what the civil sector looks like in that context, how it has developed over time, and how that history may affect donor success in programming for civic education through civil society. The Institute for Development Studies (1999) defines civil society as “an intermediate realm situated between state and household, populated by organized groups or associations which are separate from the state, enjoy some autonomy in relations with the state, and are formed voluntarily by” members of society to protect or extend their interests, values, or identities (p. 4). Brouwer (2000) contrasts civil society in the Arab world with that in the West, noting that although there are similarities between Western and Arab civil societies (including volunteerism, significant religious influence, and ideological bases, as well as sometimes strong political uses for associations), and although modern professional NGOs are increasing in Arab states, there are also important differences. For example, some kinds of organizations that are thought of as civil society in the West (like trade unions or cooperatives) are often established or directly controlled by governments in the Arab world. Arab civil society legislation also typically restricts organizations’ autonomy much more than in the West, and limits the space in which they can operate.
Doyle Stevick, Education Professor-University of South Carolina, 2008, Advancing Democracy Through Education: US influence abroad and domestic practices, eds. E. Stevic & B. Levinson, p. 111 The gap in language skills and the incentive to conceal difference made the pursuit of appropriate partners problematic, “Foreign financing in the form of grants meant that choices had to be made about who the appropriate grantees were. Donors were profoundly ill equipped to make these choices. They were easily outdone by Central and Eastern Europeans skilled in the necessary arts of self-preservation through their experiences under communism.” (Wedel, 2001, p. 87) In extreme cases, suppressed disagreements and the inability to judge the merit of potential partners would lead to the selection of people who were fundamentally opposed to the premise of the project. In two separate cases, for example, Holocaust education networks selected a partner who either: (1) believed that the Holocaust should be taught only in conjunction with the human rights abuses suffered by Estonians generally and not as a unique and important event that deserved specific independent study, or (2) was singled out in a book on racist extremism for writing a textbook that attributed Estonians’ participation in the Holocaust to revenge on Jews for the Bolshevik revolution (Stevick 2007). When even the domestic partners do not embrace the aims of a project, they are unlikely to be compelling ambassadors for the viewpoint themselves. For these reasons, I found little evidence that the specific interests, ideas or philosophies advocated by foreign partners ever had made much of an impact in Estonia.
Francesco Cavatorta & Vincent Durac, International Relations Lecturers Dublin City University and University College Dublin, 2011, Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World: the dynamics of activism, p. 23-4 The second view, following the revisionist approach outlined by Encarnacion (2006), conceptualizes civil society in neutral terms and refuses to assume that the concept is necessarily rooted in liberal democratic theory. The argument is that civil society does not per se have any normative liberal-democratic nature and does not necessarily promote liberal values. This means that what matters are the groups that make up civil society and, more importantly, the values to which they subscribe. The assumption here is that civil society can be both strong and “uncivil” at the same time. Therefore, it is a serious analytical error to examine the degree of civic activism in a state without questioning the nature of the groups involved in such activism because activism does not necessarily coincide with liberal and democratic values, as the case of the Ku Klux Klan amply demonstrates. If civil society is understood as neutral and simply taken to mean the space between the state and the individual where voluntary groups are formed with the intention of pursuing a specific social goal, its “positive nature” cannot be assumed. According to this approach, Arab civil society emerges as being strong and active because it manifests a significant number of groups and associations that operate autonomously from the state and attempt to influence the social and political system, while, at the same time, trying to keep it in check. Focusing specifically on the Middle East, Berman (2003) argues that civil society activism is strong where states are weak, lack popular legitimacy and are on the “retreat” from the public sphere. While Berman’s study concentrates on Egypt, the lessons from the Egyptian case can be generalized across the region where the number of civil society organizations has exploded since the late 1990s. The point of departure for those arguing that Arab civil society is very active is an overview of the nature of the Arab state. While the state, following decolonization, was strong and capable of mobilizing both resources and population to the needs of social and economic development, today’s picture is very different. Very few doubt that “the modern state in the Arab world continues to thrive, with little transparency, financial accountability, legislative or judicial autonomy, or rule of law.” But the scope and depth of the state’s intervention in society has been greatly reduced, due to the constraints of economic reforms, external political pressures and globalization. While the Arab state still retains a strong hold on its citizens, an increasing number of activities, including the provision of social services have fallen to private and autonomous organizations of civil society. Thus, “the region is replete with domestic political activism” which is not based on political parties, but on civil society organizations. The picture that emerges, therefore, is one of a strong civil society, which is, nonetheless, wholly unsuited to the promotion of democracy and human rights, because the main groups and associations within civil society are Islamist. CIVIL SOCIETY IN ISLAMIC CULTURES ANTI-DEMOCRATIC Francesco Cavatorta & Vincent Durac, International Relations Lecturers Dublin City University and University College Dublin, 2011, Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World: the dynamics of activism, p. 24 The assumption that Berman also makes about civil society in the Arab world is that it is “uncivil” because Islamist associations dominate it and the ethos of Islamist organizations is by nature, un-democratic and illiberal. According to Singerman (2004) Islamist social movements challenge Middle East regimes in two different ways. First, they pose a threat to the boundary between the public and the private sphere in terms of behavior and legislation. Second, they adopt forms of organization that are informal and difficult to track. The first type of challenge is particularly relevant for the analysis of civil society, because it highlights how problematic the nature of Islamism is for those who have a liberal conception of the democratic order. Islamists “want to re-articulate the boundary between the public and private itself to propose a less secular and autonomous vision of the good life and governance. This re-articulation is contrary to liberalism, where the imperative of secularism must be obeyed if a state is to construct a democratic political system to which the rights of the individual are core. Any ideology that proposes to blur the boundary between private and public in the name of religious teachings that cannot be questioned because of their “divine” origin is inherently anti-democratic. U.S. CIVIL SOCIETY ASSISTANCE NOT WELL-SUITED TO UNIQUE CIRCUMSTANCES OF MIDDLE-EASTERN GOVERNMENTS Julia Chocair-Vizoso, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2008, Beyond the Façade: political reform in the Arab world, eds. M. Ottaway & J. Choucair-Vizoso, p. 274-5 First, democracy promotion agencies and donors should recognize the real weaknesses of non-Islamist parties in the Arab world today. Conventional party assistance methods employed by various U.S. and European political party foundations are designed to help already-functioning parties overcome organizational weakness and improve election campaigning. The problems of the non-Islamist political organizations, however, are much deeper. As Ottaway and Riley demonstrate, Moroccan secular parties are uncertain of their identity, ineffective in reaching constituencies, and pessimistic about their future. In this context, the most important contribution to true democratic reform that the United States and Europe could make would be to facilitate the transformation and renewal of the major secular parties by pressuring their leadership to launch internal reforms, with a focus on long-term rather than immediate results.
Goran Hyden, Political Science Professor-University of Florida, 2010, Engaging Civil Society: Emerging Trends in Democratic Governance, eds. G. Cheema & V. Popovski, p. 252 The second problem is the neglect of the underlying structural conditions of civil society. This may be a particularly serious omission in the African context, where modernization has yet to take hold. Although attempts have been made to analyze Africa in terms of social class (e.g. Markovitz, 1998), there is a general understanding that societies on the continent tend to be divided primarily along ethnic (or possibly racial) rather than class or caste lines. A state was an influential factor in shaping social relations in countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda. The state, however, was a pre-capitalist or pre-modern institution. Many of these features have not disappeared, and therefore the underlying structural conditions in Africa to this day are quite different form those in Europe and North America, even Asia and Latin America. This is especially true with regard to the level of social alienation and anomie that served as a contributing factor to the growth of civil society in other places. African countries are made up of an assemblage of ethnic groups, all of which compete for influence and control over the state. These groups typically operate through individual patrons or “big men” whose role it is to advocate and ensure the interests of their respective communities. Politics in Africa is thus less dependent on organized interests and much more influenced by entrepreneurialism as practiced by individual patrons. Furthermore, there is at best only a weak civic public realm that makes it possible for civil society to develop. Unlike the kind of “public sphere” that follows of Jurgen Habermas emphasize, African societies typically rely on a “communitarian” public realm. Political discourse in African countries tends to lack the “universalist” character associated with Habermas’s notion of public sphere. Most of the analysis of civil society in Africa tends to ignore these structural differences, and proceeds on the assumption that they can be ignored or that autonomous associations stand ready to promote democracy at the national level. CIVIL SOCIETY ORIENTATION DIFFERENT IN COUNTRIES WITH STRONG COMMUNAL FORCES Goran Hyden, Political Science Professor-University of Florida, 2010, Engaging Civil Society: Emerging Trends in Democratic Governance, eds. G. Cheema & V. Popovski, p. 254-5 Democratic governance in Africa thus continues to be a hybrid involving individual and group values. For this reason it is difficult to disentangle voluntarism from communalism. The “civic” aspects of civil society tend to be weakened by communal forces that set group against group and sometimes lead to conflict. It is clear that one reason for civil and political violence in some African countries is a society lacking a universalist voluntarism based on adherence to particular ideas or interests. Another reason is the nature of the state.
Francesco Cavatorta & Vincent Durac, International Relations Lecturers Dublin City University and University College Dublin, 2011, Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World: the dynamics of activism, p. 5 Chapter 5 examines the case of Jordan and explores the contradictions of democratization in the Kingdom. In order to present an image of change, civil society has been allowed to grow, but patterns of conflict have emerged between different civil society actors. This is certainly due to ideological differences, personal rivalries and tactical concerns, but the role of “divide and conquer” strategies is also crucial. In Jordan, we look specifically at the issue of human rights. Despite the existence of civil society consensus over the issue, civil society actors of different persuasions have a very difficult time in building lasting and effective alliances spilling over to more overtly political demands. The authoritarian structures in place reinforce divisions between civil society actors and do not allow for civil society to have an impact on the political system because, in order to achieve their objectives, civil society actors have to use the authoritarian channels available, thereby undermining the creation of positive social capital.
Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 49-50 Bishara is very critical of the notion of civil society in the Arab world and develops the most critical and skeptical discourse of all. For him, there is no and cannot be any civil society in the Arab nation, for the simple reason that an individual lacks basic freedoms and autonomy, both vis-à-vis the state and vis-à-vis the biological or primordial groups (such as family, clan, tribe). For Bishara the latter is the more worrying part of the alienation of individual rights: he goes as far as speaking of the tyranny of the clan and tribe as the main danger towards the fulfillment of a true form of citizenship and political activism. For him, civil society is based on the autonomy (or self-drive, self impulsion) of individual and the basic premise of pluralism, understood as “the acceptance of the legitimacy of the differences of opinions and of the ways to express them.” In this reading civil society has a precise and separate function which must be independent from the individual sphere and from the public sphere. But the problem is that in the case of traditional Arabic societies, so argues Bishara, there are no individual rights that are fully guaranteed, and civil society cannot perform its precise function of acting independently of the individual sphere. Therefore, if civil society organizations (such as NGOs) are important elements for the emergence and consolidation of pluralism, they are not a sufficient condition to call it civil society. ASSISTING NEW DEMOCRACIES BUILD THE BLOCKS OF DEMOCRACY MEANINGLESS WITHOUT ATTITUDINAL CHANGE AMONG THE PEOPLE Robertson Work, Director Innovative Leadership Strategies, 2010, Engaging Civil Society: Emerging Trends in Democratic Governance, eds. G. Cheema & V. Popovski, p. 114 However much systems, policies, institutions and cultures are transformed, individual people within these structures, whether non-governmental or governmental, are still the bedrock of a society. In addition to competencies, it is the beliefs and attitudes that a person has in her mind that most influence behavior, both individual and organizational. If a new judicial system, for example, is in place but individual judges and attorneys are not deeply committed to reconciliation and justice, then new buildings, equipment and procedures are in themselves pointless. Or if a parliament is restructured but individual parliamentarians still believe in the appropriateness of corrupt practices, the new structure is subverted. For individuals to move beyond self and subgroup interests, and beyond current confusion and incompetence, individual abilities, values and skills must be enhanced.
Doyle Stevick, Education Professor-University of South Carolina, 2008, Advancing Democracy Through Education: US influence abroad and domestic practices, eds. E. Stevic & B. Levinson, p. Foreigners, however, are in a poor position to see beyond what they are told and have no obvious grounds to be suspicious of what they are told. Many foreigners come in – or are brought in – as experts or consultants only for brief visits, and are profoundly ill equipped to understand the local context, culture or language. They make their best guesses about what may be of interest, but have little information on which to base their decisions. The results can be condescending: a teacher whom I observed regularly told me after one such international seminar that, “They treat us like children” (personal communication, November 2003). One speaker at a civic education event in the Baltic states, who has flown in to give a lecture by his embassy, expressed concern at a coffee break to a domestic colleague that his talk might not have been useful or relevant for the audience. His colleague – who, unbeknownst to him, had arrived as the break began and had not actually been present for the talk – nevertheless reassured him that, “Oh no, I think that was exactly what our teachers needed to hear.” Directory: assets assets -> Northern territory of australia assets -> Number: caveat in the [Will/Will and Codicil/Estate of] assets -> Invitation for Bid Calact/mbta for Standard Floor and Low Floor Rural Duty Vehicles ifb no. 12-03 November 14, 2012 assets -> 12 Step Retreats For Everyone in Twelve Step Recovery Ratner Fellowship assets -> 12 Step Retreats For Everyone in Twelve Step Recovery Ratner Fellowship assets -> Sigaccess annual Report assets -> Central Government is expected to ask the seventh pay commission to consider merging 50% dearness allowance assets -> List of accessible executive records assets -> Emergency telephone numbers Call toll-free from anywhere in France Download 2.51 Mb. Share with your friends:
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