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| Knowledge Programme Briefing Note 2 | 2012Dignity Revolutions and Western Donors: Redefining Relevance
Introduction
‘It is the unthinkable that people nowthink, say and do. It is not the elite artistsor intellectuals who form the avant-garde,but the ordinary people. I consider myself an expert on Syria, but suddenly places arespringing up out of nowhere and we’rehearing dialects that we never knew about.Now it’s the simple people in the country,whom everyone considered illiterates,who are giving us an education’.
(Syrian writer Hassan Abbas, Syria’s Creative Resistance)
The dignity revolutions in the Middle East andNorth Africa (MENA) are ‘political Big Bangs’ thathave shocked and awed almost everyone in theworld, including the revolutionaries themselves.The Knowledge Programme Civil Society in WestAsia (CSWA) is certainly no exception. Until the fallof the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali on 14 January 2011,conventional wisdom – both in the region andbeyond – held that Arab autocrats were ‘here tostay’ and that the region was doomed to governanceby authoritarian regimes. Against this background,this Hivos CSWA Briefing Note argues that thereis a strategic and urgent need for two paradigmshifts and paying attention to six strategic principleswhen considering the role of Western donors insupporting social changes in MENA. Despite thedaunting challenges and possible setbacks ahead,Hivos believes the dignity revolutions are the startof the reconfiguration of state-society relations infavour of empowered citizens and actors who aredetermined to fight for and negotiate new socialcontracts aimed at achieving accountable, inclusiveand responsive political and economic systems.Western donors cannot fail to grasp the historicityand strategic momentum of this grassrootsmovement towards democracy and accordinglyaccompany tough transitions initiated, led andultimately determined by the people of the region.
This is not a Spring, this is a revolution
Terminologies form the foundation of policies andprojects aimed at supporting democratic reforms inMENA. What started as peaceful demonstrations inTunisia in December 2010 and continues to send
Highlights
– Western donors cannot fail tograsp the historicity and strategicmomentum of this grassrootsmovement towards democracy andaccordingly accompany toughtransitions initiated, led andultimately determined by thepeople of the region.– In order to comprehend the complexcontext in which transitions takeplace donors must partner with thinktanks, researchers and experts in theregion who can provide dynamicdemand driven context analysis toannual/strategic planning and prior tothe start of projects.– The lesson from these creativerevolutions is to be prepared andwilling to learn from local actors andcritically reflect on assumptions aboutsocial change and activism in generaland in particular in authoritarian,revolutionary and post-revolutionarycontexts.
shock waves across and beyond the region, is not aSpring, but rather a revolution in every sense of theword. The notion of a Spring is superficial, a passivephenomenon. It is a misleading concept that refersto a brief or limited transitional moment that soongives way to the next season. It does not reflect thetrue essence of democratic struggle by empoweredcitizens and groups that confront and bring downentrenched authoritarian regimes
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. Hivos believeswhat is unfolding in MENA is nothing less thanthe rewriting of history. This assessment does notminimise the hurdles to democratisation, nor doesit romanticise the resilient societies that confrontauthoritarian regimes. Rather, it is based on extensiveengagement with experts and activists in the regionwho understand the depth of social transformationsand are able to take the pulse of their societies.
 
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| Knowledge Programme Briefing Note 2 | 2012Dignity Revolutions and Western Donors: Redefining Relevance
Upgrading authoritarianism
Prior to the dignity revolutions, it was difficult toenvisage civic action leading to democratisation inMENA. The attention of external actors promotingdemocracy was focused on (mostly secular) formalcivil society, such as NGOs in the areas of humanrights, women’s rights, trade unions, etc. There wasa lack of deep knowledge on both the context inwhich these actors operated and, more importantly,how complex social change occurs in authoritariancontexts. Such knowledge is only acquired by doingaway with a formal (liberal) civil society concept,particularly formal NGOs and the expectations thatexternal actors have of them. The CWSA programmezoomed in on the authoritarian characteristics of thecontext that civil society actors operate in, dissectingits core components as well as its impacts on civicactivism. CWSA research revealed that both ‘hard’authoritarian regimes, such as Syria, and their ‘soft’pendants, like the Moroccan state, have reconfig-ured their relations with societies. Such regimessuccessfully appropriated democracy discourse andco-opted important segments of civil and politicalsociety in a strategy that can be called ‘upgradingauthoritarianism’. Take Syria: prior to the outburst of popular protest in March 2011, empirical researchrevealed that: ‘the borderline between civil societyand the state turns out to be less clear-cut thanassumed in theoretical discussions. Most actors havea rather ambivalent relationship to the state.Organizations can only survive if tolerated by thestate, and risk becoming instrumentalised by stateauthorities who can use them as a kind of fig leaf todemonstrate a façade of pluralism. The alternative isnot to organise into established groups, but tocooperate in loose networks’ (Junne, Gerd. CWSANewsletter, October 2009, Issue 1)
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. Social mediaenabled other forms of civic action, created avirtual space that confronts the culture of fear andenhanced trust among activists privileged with theaccess to new media. But by themselves, theseinstruments offer no magic bullet and can even be adouble-edged sword. The Syrian regime also usedthese media to infiltrate digital activism. Broadeningthe focus to other actors, specifically those outsideformal human rights and democracy NGOs, offeredmore insight into the interaction of social forces andthe state. In the case of Morocco, Farid Boussaideloquently analyses the rise and fall of a nascentindependent private sector. This ‘unusual suspect’could have been a genuine agent of democratisation,but it also had to operate in the same ambiguousauthoritarian atmosphere as the ‘usual suspects’ did.The monarch managed to break the increasingindependency of the umbrella group of businessassociations (CGEM) by gradually replacing theindependent leadership with pro- government onesand co-opting sections of the new business class
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.Despite the apparent successes of the regimes, priorto 2011, to limit attempts towards democratisation,upgrading authoritarianism was not a proactivestrategy. Rather, it was a reactive response to internaland external pressures to democratise the politicalsystem and provide more space for civil society. Theoutcome was that both traditional civil society andrelatively ‘new’ social actors such as social mediaactivists and the private sector operated in an ambig-uous authoritarian atmosphere. Such ambiguity doesnot render activists puppets of regimes; rather, itdemonstrates that the liberal notion of civil societyas the engine of democratisation does not reflect thereality. In this ambiguous authoritarian atmospherecivic actors walk a tightrope between co-optationand confrontation, between commissioned criticismand active citizenship.
Why did we not see it coming?
While regimes were engaged in upgrading processesand sharing ‘authoritarian best practices’, interna-tional donors stuck to project-by-project outcomeassessments that say little about contribution toqualitative change on the ground
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. The result was
1
Khouri, Rami,
 Arab Spring or Revolutions
, (www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/arab-spring-or-revolution/article2132994/. Accessed 1 May 2012).
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Shaery-Eisenlohr, Rosschanack,
Newsletter Knowledge Programme Civil Society in West Asia, October 2009, Issue 1
, University of Amsterdam/Hivos.
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Boussaid, Farid,
 State Business Relations in Morocco
, Working paper 6, Knowledge Programme Civil Society in West Asia, June2010, University of Amsterdam/Hivos.
4
Heydemann, Steven,
The Uncertain Future of Democracy Promotion
, Working paper 12, Knowledge Programme Civil Society inWest Asia , November 2010, University of Amsterdam/Hivos.
Notes
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