Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World

Cavatorta, Francesco; Durac, Vincent

doi:10.4324/9780203850589

Cited by 49 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…Theoretically, this means that the democratic role of civil society should not be assumed as a normative quality, but confirmed in each context (Encarnación, 2003). Acting like 'a mirror', civil society reflects the broader political context (Cavatorta & Durac, 2011). According to Edwards (2004), 'the big idea of civil society' is eventually a synthesis of its heterogeneous elements captured by both scholarships.…”

Section: Civil Society: What Is In a Name?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Turkey’s tamed civil society: Containment and appropriation under a competitive authoritarian regime

Yabancı

2019

Journal of Civil Society

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Under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, Turkey's civil society has enlarged both in size and diversity of civic engagement. This development is puzzling since Turkey's weak democratic credentials do not allow an enabling political and legal setting for civil society's expansion. This study argues that the expansion can be explained through a particular dilemma of rulers in competitive-authoritarian (CA) regimes. The AKP is caught between the conflicting interests of appropriating and containing civil society. While the government needs to cherish civil society to sustain CA regime, it also needs to repress it, as civil society is the only arena where dissenting social forces can still carve pockets of resistance and challenge the dominant paradigms of the regime. Based on extensive fieldwork, this study discusses the patterns of containment and appropriation that have led to the steady expansion of civil society under pressure. The AKP's dilemma has also rendered Turkey's civil society 'tamed', namely politicized, disabled and segregated. The study broadens the understanding of relations between civil society and the state in CA regimes by offering essential insights into how these regimes are sustained, entrenched and also contested through and within civil society.

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Section: Civil Society: What Is In a Name?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Turkey’s tamed civil society: Containment and appropriation under a competitive authoritarian regime

Yabancı

2019

Journal of Civil Society

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“…While the EU had previously acknowledged civil initiative as an important element of the implementation of European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and in the creation of a EU-friendly Mediterranean Neighbourhood, this new salience of civil society in political discourse nevertheless seems to have come as a surprise. As Cavatorta and Durac (2011) forcefully argued, this surprise stems in large part from a fundamental misreading of civil society and its socio-political role in Arab societies and, as a result, a search for Eurocentric coherence, conformity and recognizability in dealing with local civil society groups.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial imaginaries and selective in/visibility: Mediterranean neighbourhood and the European Union’s engagement with civil society after the ‘Arab Spring’

Bürkner

Scott

2018

European Urban and Regional Studies

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As part of a repertoire of the European Union’s (EU’s) geopolitical practices, the imaginary of Mediterranean Neighbourhood is a means with which to manage dissonance between the EU’s self-image as a normative power, changing political situations in the region and the Realpolitik of security. We argue that this also involved a ‘politics of in/visibility’ that promotes democratization and social modernization through structured cooperation while engaging selectively with local stakeholders. In directing attention to EU readings of and responses to the ‘Arab Spring’, we indicate how both a simplification of the issues at stake and highly selective political framings of local civil societies have operated in tandem. Drawing on a review of recent literature on civil society activism in the southern Mediterranean, we specifically deal with Eurocentric appropriations of civil society as a force for change and as a central element in the construction of the Mediterranean Neighbourhood. EU support for South Mediterranean civil society appears to be targeted at specific actors with whom the EU deems it can work: apart from national elites these include well-established, professionalized non-governmental organizations, and westernized elements of national civil societies. As a result, recognition of the heterogeneous and multilocal nature of the uprisings, as well as their causes, has only marginally translated into serious European Neighbourhood Policy reform. We suggest that an inclusive focus on civil society would reveal Neighbourhood as a contact zone and dialogic space, rather than a project upon which the EU is (rather unsuccessfully) attempting to superimpose a unifying narrative of EU-led modernization.

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“…Thus, for example, in their study of the Dominican Republic, Espinal et al (2006) demonstrate that increased civic engagement decreases political trust since it exposes citizens to the illegitimate and corrupt practices of government institutions. Other findings generated in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian settings and poorly consolidated democracies, such as the ones in the Arab world (Rahman 2002;Liverani 2008;Cavatorta and Durac 2010), seem to suggest that social capital is reasonably high and that 'trust' in institutions is also high, although it takes on a rather different meaning from the one generally employed. These findings also resonate with studies on South Asia, where examinations of whether civil society associations contribute to democratic citizenship show that association membership is only weakly related to generalised trust and toleration of social diversity, suggesting that the relationship between civic society activism and political trust across East Asia is more complicated than mainstream assumptions would hold (Park 2012).…”

Section: Consequences Of Political Trust In Authoritarian Settings: Smentioning

confidence: 98%

Functions of political trust in authoritarian settings

Rivetti¹,

Cavatorta²

2017

Handbook on Political Trust

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Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World

Cited by 49 publications

References 0 publications

Turkey’s tamed civil society: Containment and appropriation under a competitive authoritarian regime

Turkey’s tamed civil society: Containment and appropriation under a competitive authoritarian regime

Spatial imaginaries and selective in/visibility: Mediterranean neighbourhood and the European Union’s engagement with civil society after the ‘Arab Spring’

Functions of political trust in authoritarian settings

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