*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
Civil Society Assistance Fails: US Funds Groups that are Least Likely to Effectively Challenge Power
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- Durac, International Relations Lecturers Dublin City University and University College Dublin, 2011
- TARGETING DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE TO CIVIL SOCIETY FAILS TO CHALLENGE STATE AUTHORITY
- EXTERNAL CIVIL SOCIETY ASSSITANCE BYPASSES THE MOST IMPORTANT GROUPS
- CIVIL SOCIETY ASSISTANCE FAILS BECAUSE WE GIVE IT TO THE WRONG GROUPS
- FUNDING FOR SOCIAL SERVICE DELIVERY PROGRAMS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN FUNDING FOR CIVIL SERVICE ACTIVISTS
- CIVIL SOCIETY AID FAILS – LIMITS AID TO NARROW GROUP WITH TIES TO THE WEST
Civil Society Assistance Fails: US Funds Groups that are Least Likely to Effectively Challenge PowerFOREIGN FUNDING REDUCES EFFECTIVENESS OF CIVIL SOCIETY – FUND THOSE LEAST LIKELY TO BE EFFECTIVE AND CONVERT THEM TO PROFESSIONAL FUND-RAISERS 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. 150-1 As Cavatorta and Elanaza (2010) observe, “foreign funding enhances the separation between Islamist and secular-liberal groups within civil society through the exclusion of the former from any engagement and the perceived inclusion of the latter in a supposedly imperialist camp, which is then reduced through domestic institutional constraints to become either irrelevant or too close to the regime.” The issue of foreign funding creates a final problem, briefly mentioned earlier: it distorts associational life by creating a professionalized caste of civil society operators that are entirely dependent on it for jobs and status. There is already a cultural division in place within civil society because all Western donors privilege sectors of the population that are already converted to the cause and values of Western democracy and neglect organizations that might have more impact on the population at large, but do not share the same values, or at least do not interpret them in the same manner. Dauderstadt and Lerch argue that “it is an important task of civil society to break up ideological power networks by means of increased transparency and the demonstration of political alternatives and to call into question the legitimacy of political and military power networks” (2005: 159). The resources channeled into the Arab world have done very little in that respect and have created a caste of NGO professional that spends time and resources trying to get even more resources to carry out activities. Furthermore, the phenomenon of secular civil society activism is limited to the urban, usually Western-educated middle classes. This is not an obstacle to effectiveness per se because there are studies indicating that Islamic charities are also very much a middle-class product, run by and for middle class professionals. The contention is that, although Islamic charities have programs for the poor, their primary function is to employ and serve middle-class professionals and families that the state cannot or will not support. The implication is that, in contradiction of conventional wisdom, the vast masses of poor and disenfranchised are not organically integrated in an Islamist political and social project. In contrast, secular groups are not as deeply involved in the delivery of social services. While it is true that in some countries even Islamic charities are a middle-class phenomenon, their social work still carries considerable weight with the poor even though it might be a second-class service. This constituency in return rallies behind the more overtly political actions of the movement, such as marches, demonstrations or petitions. The secular sector is not as involved in this type of work and therefore does not enjoy anything like the same level of popularity. In addition, the lifestyle of and concerns of the secular middle-class across the Arab world do not strike a chord with the vast majority of the population while middle class Islamists are better able to connect with them because of their use of religious language and symbolism. This has an impact on the type of activities that are indeed carried out.
Sarah Phillips, National Democratic Institute-Yemen, 2008, Beyond the Façade: political reform in the Arab world, eds. M. Ottaway & J. Choucair-Vizoso, p. 257 Many Western donor-funded political party, civil society, and journalist training programs have been well received by the participants, but the success of programs targeting the grassroots has limited usefulness in the face of such heavily centralized executive control. These programs can assist in providing information and building the internal capacity of the groups they focus on, but alone they cannot do much to convince the regime to include these groups in political decision making. Without simultaneous pressure on those in power, these initiatives are unlikely to do more than chip away at the outer edges of centralized power. EXTERNAL CIVIL SOCIETY ASSSITANCE BYPASSES THE MOST IMPORTANT GROUPS Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 15-6 Put simply, there is a first Palestine in which mainstream discourses about civil society promotion (such as those advocated by a majority of international donors) reasonably manage to make their way and influence the work of a certain type of NGOs, namely those later described as professional developmentalist NGOs. On the contrary, the second Palestine is that where civil society promotion is less successful. For example, western aid’s discourse fails to substantially penetrate broad layers of the charitable NGO sector; the impact of aid in this sector is very small in terms of re-interpretation of international discourses by local charitable organizations, but it has to be stressed that funding to this type of organizations is also scarce. Finally, there is a whole sector of NGOs, those close to Islamist circles, which are totally impermeable to such civil society promotion efforts and discourses, because no funding is given by western donors, because the discourse of civil society promotion has no hold on the targeted population, or simply because such NGO leaders consciously refuse to make reference to the discourse of civil society. To the contrary, there is an inverted relation between the three types of organizations and their local constituencies, namely the Palestinian demos. For the sake of clarity of argumentation (which will be circumstantiated and refined in the subsequent chapters), one could sustain that there is a political paradox in the success of civil society promotion by western donors: if success of civil society promotion is measured in terms of institutional strength of the NGOs (understood as its developed capacity to deliver a service or to promote a cause from above), then NGOs that receive most of the international aid earmarked for civil society promotion tend to have actually less impact and influence upon their beneficiaries in terms of political mobilization (which would then be the counter-measure of the success of NGOs, in terms of capacities to organize social mobilization through a bottom-up mobilization force). On the contrary, NGOs with greater popular support (from below) are the less successful in terms of financial support from western aid. So on one hand, there is a first Palestine that is massively targeted by international aid, where some NGOs manage to deliver professional services but whose distance to their social base becomes looser from the early 1990s onwards. On the other, there would be a second Palestine characterized by a more symbiotic relationship between NGOs and their local constituencies, but where western aid either does not really interact with or simply does not consider for funding. A guiding hypothesis for this book is that external aid that does not take consciously into consideration the internal differences of Palestine (and of its civil society) will fail to have positive impact on political and democratic participation. CIVIL SOCIETY ASSISTANCE FAILS BECAUSE WE GIVE IT TO THE WRONG GROUPS Marina Ottaway & Thomas Carothers, Carnegie Endowment, 2005, Unchartered Journey: promoting democracy in the middle east, eds. T. Carothers & M. Ottaway, p. 260 For countries that are seeking to promote democracy in the Middle East, the absence of the kind of broad based constituencies needed to force autocratic governments to accept curbs on their own power create serious difficulties. Such constituencies will have to be developed. They cannot be developed by the elite, technocratic civil society organizations with which Western countries can work comfortably. As a result, Western countries face the challenge of learning to deal with the organizations that have sizable constituencies even if they are suspicious of the West and at best ambivalent about democracy. Attempting to understand such groups better, let alone trying to work with them, immediately pulls the United States and even European countries outside their comfort zone; but it has to be done. FUNDING FOR SOCIAL SERVICE DELIVERY PROGRAMS MORE EFFECTIVE THAN FUNDING FOR CIVIL SERVICE ACTIVISTS 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. 158-9 The focus of the bulk of funding initiatives should be on projects that have clear socio-economic implications. Democratization in the Arab world will not occur through the strengthening of civil society. At best, external donors can help to defend and promote individual rights and to build bridges on specific issues such as post-conflict reconciliation. From the evidence gathered, it emerges quite clearly that socio-economic issues are crucial for the large majority of citizens. Western discourse on human rights tends to concentrate overwhelmingly on political and civil rights, but, in the developing world, human rights discourse, if seen from the perspective of ordinary citizens, coincides with both political/civil rights and socio-economic ones. In this respect, the popularity of Islamist movements is largely the product of their ability to connect the delivery of essential services with demand for change and political openness. At the moment, secular/liberal associations are quite weak with respect to the delivery of services and it is on issues such as medical care, job creation programs and education services that capacity should be built. Thus, initiatives in the Arab world that receive support should only rarely include the holding of conferences or seminars and organizing training for civil society activists, but should concentrate on the delivery of socio-economic services, which would demonstrate that all human rights are taken seriously. Funding associations that deliver social services would have numerous advantages. First of all, it would reinforce the credibility of actors such as the EU as neutral and normative protagonists. Second, the delivery of social services would demonstrate that there is a link between socio-economic progress and the discourse of human rights, because local associations would be able to connect their more political work with concrete interventions. One of the most interesting findings of Clark’s study (2004) on Islamic charitable activities is that the “poor” tend to support Islamism, not out of ideology, but out of practical necessity. Islamic charities provide a minimum of services, and the poor and disenfranchised would just as easily turn to other groups a different ethos, and even to government services, when these are available. This means that, politically and ideologically, the allegiance of poorer sectors of the population are “up for grabs” and one of the ways to reduce extremism is to offer the prospect of a better life. Another advantage of supporting service-delivery associations is that it offers the possibility once again to “build bridges” with Islamist associations working in the same area. By offering financial help in exchange for cooperation between secular and Islamist groups, it would be possible to promote a culture of compromise and collaboration. If Islamist groups are not interested in receiving funding, then their “bluff,” so to speak, would be called and it could be inferred that they are unreasonable actors that do not have the real interest of citizens at heart. CIVIL SOCIETY AID FAILS – LIMITS AID TO NARROW GROUP WITH TIES TO THE WEST Benoit Challand, Research Fellow-European Institute in Florence, 2009, Palestinian Civil Society: foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude, p. 34 The distorted and frequent result of external NGO assistance is that prominent southern organizations are a core group of elite NGOs with connections abroad, namely with northern NGOs. The problem with that (encapsulated in the subtitle of her book) is that only these few elite NGOs promote democracy because of/thanks to their proximity to the donors. But as she notes, it would take more than that to have a profound democratizing impact. “Southern NGOs contribute to civil society only when they build organizational capacity at the community level, develop replicable service delivery models, and contribute to policy debates”. If only a few NGOs manage to exploit political opportunities and the framing process, and this at the expense of less experienced and often smaller NGOs, then external assistance will have only partly succeeded. Therefore, one needs to discover what makes people successful or not, through a study of personal trajectories. 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