*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
*Civil Society Assistance Fails/Bad*
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*Civil Society Assistance Fails/Bad*Civil Society/Education Assistance Fails: Front LineMULTIPLE PROBLEMS WITH USAID CIVIC EDUCATION PROGRAMS – PALESTINIAN EXAMPLE PROVES E. 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. xxiv A Palestinian educator and scholar, Ayman Alsayed presents a critical account of “discourse versus practice” in efforts by international donors to help develop democratic civic education in Palestine. In his chapter, Alsayed fundamentally questions the very meaning and direction of national “development.” He contrasts grassroots Palestinian normative goals of social justice, and fulfillment of human potential, with the prevailing developmentalist goals of free markets and macroeconomic prosperity. He notes that international donors consider democracy and “good governance” absolutely necessary to development, but then he wonders why donor-supported civic education programs tend to carry forth such a narrow vision of democratic education. Taking up the debate over what really constitutes “democracy” and democratization, Alsayed contrasts the urban and elite orientation of donor programs for democratic civic education with the often more radical, and popularly rooted, education of other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). He uses document analysis to focus his attention on these problems in a particular USAID program for adult civic education in Palestine, called Tamkeen (Arabic for “empowerment”). According to Alsayed, the Tamkeen program illustrates many of the problems with international donor funding of so-called democratic civic education. Because of geopolitical exigencies, he argues, the USAID program enforces narrow definitions of democracy, restricts participation to government (i.e. Palestinian National Authority) allies, exemplifies authoritarian rather than democratic means of governing, and marginalizes popular groups. In the end, the application of USAID funding rules has the effect of limiting the successes of civic education to the realm of formal, cognitive knowledge, while dampening the participation and behavioral transformation that democratic theorists agree are truly the ingredients of successful democratic citizenship.
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. 81 It is also not clear that out-of-school civic education programs contribute significantly to democratization. For example, we may be able to assess how much people acquire civic knowledge, but it is more difficult to tell with the same reliability which values they have internalized. Since values are the core of democracy, this gap is a matter of concern. Indeed, “the success of democracy depends ultimately on the emergence, sustaining and strengthening of values that make responsible democratic practice effective and consequential” (Sen, 1999, p. 9). If these values are not being strengthened, the impact of civic education efforts, limited as they are, is further reduced. Finally, research seems to show that civic education’s influence on people is positively correlated with such factors as levels of formal education, previous participatory orientation or membership in civic society organizations, and age (Finkel, 2003). In other words, civic education tends to reach and affect people who already have access to political resources, not the poor and marginalized. This impact pattern means that “the result of civic education is to reinforce existing levels of political stratification” (p. 15) rather than to expand freedom and participation. CIVIC EDUCATION ASSISTANCE DELIVERED THROUGH WESTERN, ELITE-ORIENTED NGOs 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. 80 To deliver nonschool programs of civic education, donors often choose civil society organizations that do not challenge the government. Yet such organizations are frequently poorly rooted in local social structures, and lack a broad public base for their activities. As McGowan (1997) mentions, foreign donors have always funded Western-style organizations that are elite-oriented and urban-biased—organizations that do not really represent the majority of the citizens in a particular country. In order to tap into donor money, leaders of these organizations are often willing to shape their priorities to match donor needs or conditions, regardless of the actual needs of their society. As Ottaway (2001) puts it, they are “more interested in speaking to donors than in speaking for, and to, their societies” (p. 2). Using these organizations to deliver programs of civic education limits the reach of the programs, and reduces the extent to which they address long-term substantial change. TARGETING AID TO BUILD UP THE STATE RATHER THAN TO NGOs AND “CIVIL SOCIETY” STRUCTURES BEST FOR REDUCING ETHNIC CONFLICT AND CORRUPTION Jens Stilhoff Sorensen, Research Fellow – Swedish Institute of International Affairs, 2010, Challenging the Aid Paradigm: Western Currents and Asian Alternatives, ed. J. S. Sorensen, p. 98-9 There are two crucial observations, or problematizations, here. First, in post-conflict reconstruction the critical issue is integration into state structures and institutions, but it order for the state to gain legitimacy there must be real improvement in the life-chances of the various groups in the populations, such as through service provision and employment. The state needs instruments to address ethnic integration, attract loyalty and gain legitimacy, and economic and developmental instruments may be crucial here. The tensions generated in an underdeveloped area by opening it up to market forces create an environment an insecurity that may block such a process, as well as create an environment where reliance on alternative traditional structures is cemented or exacerbated. Second, the idea of a division of society into autonomous “spheres” such as the “market”, the “political system” and “civil society,” needs to be rethought. Not only is there an inconsistency in the idea that “civil society” and the “market” should be separate spheres from the state, since the practice is to support civil society as a means of promoting better government, and since “civil society” in some cases has been promoted as organizations that could become part of state structures, but in addition, there is a particularly problematic relationship between ethnicity, community and civil society that becomes urgent when the latter is adopted for instrumental purposes by aid donors in ethno-plural societies. Thinking of civil society as an autonomous sphere that provides checks and balances for governments in an ethnically divided society where the state is subject to competition by ethnic groups constitutes a serious neglect of the forces of ethnic identity politics and the interconnections between state and society. A rethinking of the relationship between state, market and civil society can be undertaken with reference to Hegel’s concern that the state is a crucial safeguard against the particularistic interests of the market and in civil society. Promoting a state that is an active agent in social and economic development and a service provider for all ethnic communities might be the alternative that could offer a window of opportunity for some loyalties and trust to be transferred to the state and its institutions instead of relying on alternative loyalty and security networks. Certainly this risks the problem of ethnic and clan-based nepotism and corruption, but the alternative is regeneration of the particularistic interests in the private sector, where support to civil society carries the risk of contributing to the organization of platforms for ethnic polarization and hence fragmentation. Institutions are at least accountable and can be subject to public scrutiny. PROVIDING CIVIC EDUCATION ASSISTANCE TO GROUPS ANTAGONISTIC TO THE GOVERNMENT COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO GOOD GOVERNANCE 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. 80 When donors do support organizations that are not sympathetic to the current government, different problems result. Research indicates that when “the civil society groups who conduct civic education are antagonistic towards incumbents and existing political institutions, civic education produces greater levels of mistrust” in participants than before they entered the programs (Finkel, 2003, p. 13). This mistrust is not helpful in getting people to participate in democratization. It is also more likely that governments will respond to these activities by reducing rather than increasing rights and freedom of expression, which is the opposite of civic education’s desired effect on governance. CONDITIONALITIES UNDERMINE EFFECTIVENESS OF CIVIC EDUCATION ASSISTANCE 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. 77 The Palestinian case is a particularly complex example of the politics of donor involvement in democracy and governance, and clearly reflects the critiques of civic education and democratization for development that I have noted above. Aid that supports civic education in Palestine is high on the agenda of many donors. This aid is promoted as a support for peace and stability and the basis for a strong democracy in the future Palestinian state. While donors speak of empowering the Palestinian people and supporting the growth of their democratic institutions, however, they also—to varying extents—impose conditions and agendas on those institutions that in fact are not democratic and not in Palestinian interests for the long term. 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