Civil Society, Ngos, and Egypt's 2011 Popular Uprising

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4440419
AutoresJoel Beinin (autor correspondente)
Ano2014
Volume113
Fascículo2
Páginas396-406
Data de publicação2014-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSouth Atlantic Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0038-2876 • E-ISSN: 1527-8026
EditoraDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00382876-2644185
OpenAlexW2330363629
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas14
Referências citadas9

Western policymakers, scholars, and foundations share a broad consensus that a dynamic civil society, often reduced to the presence of NGOs, is the essential ingredient of democracy. Although the concept of civil society is imprecisely and ubiquitously deployed, rendering it of dubious analytical utility, it has been widely applied to the Arab region. Despite the proliferation of Arab NGOs and other forms of association, authoritarian Arab regimes were fairly effective in blocking the emergence of truly independent associations of any sort. In fact, "civil society organizations" played only a small role in mobilizing the demonstrations and occupations of public space that were the emblematic expressions of the 2011 Arab uprisings. The Egyptian and other Arab popular uprisings were not the result of proliferating NGOs or "building civil society." Rather, they were the consequence of converging vectors of diverse social protest movements over the previous decades involving urban intelligentsias, disaffected educated youth, blue- and white-collar workers and professionals, and marginalized religious communities and regions

Authoritarianism · Civil society · Democracy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Political Conflict and Governance