In contrast to the dominant framework which celebrates the rise of NGOs as harbingers of democracy and development, this article critically examines the diffusion and adaptation of the NGO model among voluntary organizations in the Middle East. Specifically, this paper shows how the adoption of a project-based rationality—what we refer to as “project think”—shapes notions of social and political change and delimits the capacity of NGOs to mobilize citizens for substantive reform. We define “project think” as a distinctive rationality that shapes how NGOs understand social and political issues. Project think has four key components: 1) a short time frame, 2) an isolated group of beneficiaries who are distinguished by discernable characteristics, 3) a discrete set of “needs” or “problems” that can be addressed through targeted interventions, and 4) measurable outcomes that can be identified and reported upon. Project think has reconfigured associational and philanthropic practices, altered repertories of social mobilization and political activism, and led to the emergence of new norms of legitimation and modes of governance. In order to map the divergent dynamics of this multifaceted transformation, this article draws upon the authors’ ethnographic fieldwork with NGOs in Turkey, Egypt and Palestine and makes two interrelated arguments. First, we show that project-based thinking depoliticizes civil society by diverting civic energies away from collective mobilization efforts for the public good and, as a result, undermines the democratic and egalitarian potential of civil society organizations. Second, we contend that civic actors exercise agency instead of unquestionably adopting project think and use a number of creative strategies to negotiate, circumvent, and resist project-based ways of thinking about the public good. By examining the simultaneous processes of depoliticization and repoliticization, this study develops a new perspective for understanding the relationship between NGOs, development and democracy in the Middle East.

What if civil society could simultaneously be co-opted and contribute to democratic change? For social movement and democratization scholars, particularly those whose work centers on political transitions in Western polities, an autonomous civil society represents a powerful force balancing and keeping in check the authority of the state. It is well known that the notion of civil society, as a promising agent for political transformation, has a deep lineage in the American and European philosophical traditions. Thus, as an analytical tool the concept of civil society is largely infused with a specific type of Western normativity, making it rather impractical and unfitting when applied to non-Western political models. Nevertheless, in contemporary studies of political transitions anywhere in the world, civil society continues to be viewed as a crucial agent in explaining the process from authoritarianism to democratic change. According to this perspective, the emergence of autonomous societal associations can broaden the political space necessary for the emergence of a democratic system. Meanwhile, civil society is often invoked in studies of MENA to explain the survival of authoritarianism. Scholars of the region have often viewed civil society as either a co-opted institution, or structurally weak and hollow, thus lacking the characteristics deemed favourable for the production of liberal democracy. Cooptation, in particular, is frequently invoked by researchers to explain the failure of civil society institutions like labour unions, elsewhere understood to be effective challengers to state power. In this paper, I will argue that cooptation does not automatically render an organization ineffective as an agent for democratic change. By deconstructing the concept of cooptation and using data collected during 9 months of fieldwork on the Tunisian General Labor Union, I will present civil society as an abstract superstructure built from the assimilation of its heterogeneous subunits, within which a diverse membership engages in politics. Drawing insight from Taylor’s theory of ‘abeyance structures’, I will show how during periods of cooptation, internal transformation in patterns of civic engagement initiated by diverse groups within civil society, allows these actors to sustain their place as an important agent in countering the power of the state.

Against the backdrop of the remarkable stability of authoritarian rule in Jordan and given Jordan’s position as one of the main recipients of US and European ‘democracy promotion’ funds worldwide this presentation investigates the question of what US and European ‘democracy promoters’ in Jordan do when they promote democracy. It provides an ethnographically informed critique of the kind of liberal worldviews that underlie US and European attempts at ‘democracy promotion’ and explores the often unintended and contradictory consequences of these. Through analysis of a considerable range of original empirical material, it demonstrates how the interaction of a highly functionalist understanding of supposedly universal ideas of democracy with the local political context of Jordan (re-)produces seeming moral hierarchies, which then serve as an efficient rationale for an ongoing politics of control and intervention. The presentation seeks to challenge the vast body of normative literature on the topic, as well as critical literature, which thus far predominantly focuses on either ideational or material factors in the reproduction of ‘democracy promotion’ as a politics of domination, while however ignoring the forms of interaction between the two. In my work, I deploy both discourse and political economy approaches, in order to demonstrate the ways in which US and European efforts at ‘democracy promotion’ in Jordan produce political logics of control and intervention, and reinforce, rather than threaten authoritarian structures of power in the country, as well as deeply problematic assumptions of cultural difference. Discussing US and European attempts at ‘democracy promotion’ in Jordan through a focus on practice, my argument is based on approximately 160 semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted in Jordan, Brussels and Washington DC, on access to confidential and/or thus far unpublished documents, on Arabic sources and on participatory observation of various (non-)public events. While drawing on arguments that I also make in my forthcoming book publication with Cambridge University Press, this paper will move beyond these and also explores the implications of the reinforcement of authoritarian rule via ‘democracy promotion’ for political activists struggling to resist authoritarian power. Ultimately, I suggest that although contemporary support for Jordanian authoritarianism comes under the cloak of a universally applicable morality that claims the surmounting of authoritarianism as its objective, its effect is not that different to traditional modes of imperial support for authoritarian regimes, except for making resistance against it all the harder.

After the wave of independence of the 1940s and 1950s, developing countries followed protective development strategies (e.g., import-substitution industrialization), which were accompanied by related labour market and social policies. These development strategies and complementary labour market and social policies have come under attack since the 1980s. The so-called Washington Consensus (Williamson, 1990) pushed for the removal of protectionist strategies and social policies. Most developing countries have embarked on the path of reform, but the extent and direction of these reforms have varied from country to country. By building on the ‘institutional change’ framework, this paper examines legislation reforms in Tunisia and Lebanon that have taken place since the 1990s and aims to unfold the extent of flexibility brought by these reforms. While going through economic liberalization, Tunisia reformed its Labour Code in 1994/96. These labour legislation reforms later followed by the democratization that led to the adoption of the Social Contract on employment policy, labour relations and social policy in 2013. In the case of Lebanon, the democratic country which always followed a liberal model, the labour code was promulgated in 1946 and has been the subject of two attempts at reform (2001 and 2010) which have, up to now, failed to bring about the desired results. Concomitantly, the study aims to understand the institutional change through the role of ‘Social Pacts’ which represent specific forms of cooperation between representatives of government and organized interests (Advagic & al., 2005). In Lebanon, a so-called Social Pact was adopted after a national consulting process in 2010, and aims to reform the social protection and the employment policy. The goal is to understand the political and institutional factors that contributed to the reform of the individual labour relations (i.e fixed term contract, end of service benefits, etc.). Also, I aim to assess the influence of the regime type (authoritarian versus democracy) on reforms. The study is based on the comparable-cases method. The two countries display several historical and social similarities but differs in terms of outcomes. The paper relies on three sets of theories to explain institutional change: process (Mahonney & Thelen, 2010) and dynamics (Korpi, 2006) of change, and the role of external factors (Peck & Theodore, 2015). Those research questions are addressed by using a qualitative methodology and a process tracing research method to identify the causal mechanisms within each country cases and compare the reforms.