 | Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World Subjects: Civil society -- Arab countries; Civil society -- West Bank; Political participation -- Arab countries; Political participation -- West Bank; Social capital (Sociology) -- Arab countries; Social capital (Sociology) -- West Bank; Associations institutions; Democracy-building efforts from the early 1990s on have funneled billions of dollars into nongovernmental organizations across the developing world, with the U.S. administration of George W. Bush leading the charge since 2001. But are many such "civil society" initiatives fatally flawed? Focusing on the Palestinian West Bank and the Arab world, Barriers to Democracy mounts a powerful challenge to the core tenet of civil society initiatives: namely, that public participation in private associations necessarily yields the sort of civic engagement that, in turn, sustains effective democratic institutions. Such assertions tend to rely on evidence from states that are democratic to begin with. Here, Amaney Jamal investigates the role of civic associations in promoting democratic attitudes and behavioral patterns in contexts that are less than democratic. Amaney A. Jamal is assistant professor of politics at Princeton University. Named a Carnegie Scholar in 2005, she is co-principal investigator of the Arab Global Barometer Project, the first systematic cross-national survey gauging democratic attitudes and behaviors in the Arab world. |
