Arab Civil Society — Not as Powerful as Thought

Rami G. Khouri writes in The Daily Star that foreign scholars and donors have viewed Arab political culture “through the lens of three arenas”: government, the private sector, and NGOs. Khouri argues that civil society, though “flourishing” in the region, has had a limited impact on democracy promotion in the Arab world. He proposes that the assumption that greater civil society will “spur a more democratic culture” in the Middle East “remains unproven,” stating that foreign governments and Arab activists continue to view the issue using “outmoded categories of analysis.” Khouri explains that the division between the private sector, the state, and NGOs is increasingly “blurring” in the Middle East and that while “state services are declining in quality,” services provided by the private sector attract the rich who can afford them, while the poor must rely on the low-quality services of the deteriorating state apparatus. Also, Khouri points out that NGOs in the Middle East are often led by “people whose day jobs are in the government, often in high places” and other social elites who use NGOs as “proxies” for political participation in autocratic Arab states, in which political institutions usually have “limited credibility and impact,” according to Khouri.