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Democracy and Civil Society: Essentially Contested Concepts?

The established grand narrative of modernity has been for the past few decades subject to revision and re-construction. Democracy has been declared since the early fifties of the twentieth century an “essentially contested concept”, open to redefinition and revision.^[1] The different conceptions of the self, the community and governance.

Re-inventing Democracy and the reflection about the necessary conditions for forming a strong civil society and civic culture are the concerns of different societies. The limits of liberal justice and democracy are addressed and new visions of Democracy are being constructed, from radical democracy on one hand to associative and deliberative democracy on the other. And it seems we are far from witnessing an “end of history” soon.

In the 2001 report by the EUROMESCO working group on EURO-MED CHARTER: SEARCHING FOR COMMON GROUND it was stated “Because of the differences between North and South over human rights and democracy, comprehensive security cannot constitute a common ground today.”

This statement implies that the disagreements and even contradiction are due to visions and world views, an approach that can lead us to assume an eventual “clash of civilizations” or at least prolonged tensions.

The report stressed that “importance should be given to civilian and human aspects when dealing with security”, which would surely bring us back to cultural diversity.

Finally, the report concluded on that point that the partners are “divided by the role human rights and democracy play in this concept”.

This brain-storming paper however looks at the matter from a different perspective, assuming that the problem is not a lack of devotion to human rights and democracy as such on the ME side but it is rather twofold: the different understandings of what this entails on one hand, and the structural economic and political obstacles embedded in the North-South relations that deprive the so called MENA region from attaining an aspired authentic self-constructed democratic condition on the other.

Debating Democracy in a Global Age:

One can trace some major issues that can form the key elements of debate and “conversation” on democracy in our global age:

The Universal Nature of Democracy: 

Which is a question linked to re-thinking the universal nature of modernity itself. Many writings argue that there are two senses of modernity: modernity as “rational mood” and modernity as “socio-political structures and conditions”.^[2]

Liberalism itself has “two faces” according to its critics: a universal one that sees disagreement as a mean to reach consensus, and another face that sees diversity as a necessary condition for freedom progress. The predominant liberal view of toleration sees it as a mean to a universal civilization. If we give up this view and welcome a world that contains many ways of living and regimes we will have to think afresh about rights and democratic government.^[3]

We can also refer in this regard to the absence of critical assessment of the potential contradictions that can emerge between the domestic public sphere and the “cosmopolitan public sphere”. The latter is studied as playing in increasing role to democratize the Third World , while the cultural differences and even the different political agendas for change are not given enough attention.^[4] Here the sponsoring of activities and the formulation of agendas that suit the “funding organization” can destroy the credibility and expected role from domestic NGOs, and the issues of women and gender are but an example, where the external influence enabled the NGOs to mushroom, and for the sake of keeping their legal status in tact many concessions were given to the government in return especially on the human rights level. The end result was the creation of an “civil” society that goes against its own democratizing role. Soon the key figures of that circle joined the newly established formal National Council of Women that is state manipulated, claiming that this is the available avenue for change. How much “civil” they remain is a question to be asked.

The Political Community Debate:

The relation between the individual and the political community, and the limits of freedom and toleration is in the heart of the discussion on re-inventing democracy. The liberal-communitarian debate is one of the major debates going on now in political theory as well as public debates in the Western democracies.

This debate includes re-defining the boundaries between the public and the private, and the definition of civic virtues as well as the nature of morality-thick or thin.

These debates are based on different conceptions of the self and the human nature. And here too there is little evidence that modernity could provide a conceptual framework that would claim universality. The search for answers is hence an ongoing process. Debates on “agonistic democracy” that gives the priority to the different expressions of the self and finds its roots in a radical understanding of democracy has been going on in political theory.^[5]

It relates in essence to the debates on the ummah and the individual, the rights of the person or the political agent and the necessary conditions for a minimal sense of community.

The shift from the homo politicus to the homohomo represented a shift from the body politic and the enlightenment’s quest for pure and powerful reason to the politics of the body and the call for giving priority to the individual body and chosen identity and invented morality over the community pre-set definitions of all of them.

This shift was considered by some as an “anti-liberal” shift rather than being simply “post-modern”, and provoked those who believe it goes against the original quest of enlightenment (the Kantian transcendental subject) which was driven by modernity to become more “immanent” than originally designed.^[6] The political implications of that “lucid modernity”^[7] are a major concern of many writers and critics as well as decision makers and politicians.

Real intellectual civil wars are going on between those who claim Liberalism is not about individualism,^[8] and those who shed doubts on any attempt to forward communitarianism as a solution.^[9]

New dimensions have been added to that debate by the turn of the twentieth century and the rise of the late capitalist global market with its economy of risk and flexible work places, corporate re-engineering and cult of short-termism. The resulting changes in social meaning and “self” perception, the personal and social sense of commitment, and the notions of identity and citizenship require a shift in the conceptual paradigm of democracy and the classic institutional requirements of its presence.^[10]

Shared challenges to political participation and even the “political” itself are issues that every culture is struggling with an age of globalization of the capitalist market. Though the challenge is common the responses need not be identical.

The Liberalism/Democracy Global Paradox:

While the relation between liberalism and democracy is assumed to be consistent it is on the global level quite contradictory.

Liberalism as an economic set of concepts and institutions that developed parallel to “early” and now “late” capitalism provided the infrastructure of democracy in the industrial countries. Yet on the global level

capitalism was not in support of democracy all the way but rather supported authoritarian political regimes that could provide the necessary security for the global market even if at the expense of freedom and individual dignity and “safety” on the domestic level.

This remains one of the major challenges to the democratic transformation in the MENA countries. Cases such as Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt can be very indicative in this regard, let alone the unconditioned support of the “democratic” Israel and the close economic support of its capitalist (rather colonial) nature.

What really happened was a shift over decades from liberal democracy to democratic liberalism, and the shift also from ethical to economic liberalism.^[11] A lot can be said in this regard and this is one of the most controversial issue that has to be openly discussed in any Euro-Med dialogues. Not only does it undermine the credibility of the European discourse on democracy and civil society but it even has negative implications on national attempts to formulate an authentic democratic project that is rooted in Islamic culture and frames the relation between Islam and democracy within the same frame of the relation between Islam and the West especially in times of tension and global security crisis.

The Paradox of Secularism:

The return of the debate over the role of religion in public life and “civil” society, as well as the turn of philosophy to religion is an additional reason why democracy should be contextualized and re-constructed in a “late modern” form, beyond radical secularism and radical theo-authoritarianism, towards a more complex understanding of the role of religion and different religious traditions, especially in conflict resolution and reconciliation is a major issue. 

Secularism as a solid ideology is now under attack in philosophy and political theory,^[12] and it needs to be included in our Euro-Med debates. While secularism has been a necessary condition in the democratization process in Europe, it has been a force of totalitarianism in many Islamic countries after dependence. If the domains of religion and politics are being now re-shaped as a result of the global changes and the need for a source of political and social morality is discussed, this debate would benefit from new Islamic formulation of the relation between religion and politics.

Only negative discourses on that are focused upon and there is a tendency to equate the non-secular Islamic arguments with fundamentalism, which obscures many attempts to introduce a complex process of revision and constructive thinking.^[13] The attention was rather given to the “modernized” writers and scholars who were thought to be closer to the “Liberal” home. The Western reading and analysis of those “Muslim Modernists” asserted that "Liberal Islam" is not a contradiction in terms, but rather a thriving tradition more than a century old and undergoing a revival within the last generation, who are concerned with the “separation of church and state”(!). This was the case while “Liberalism” itself was subject to criticism and re-invention.^[14]

Civil Society/Uncivil Society

If we can re-construct the debate over democracy we might as well turn to the “civil society”. Mixing form with content is also a major problem in the Euro-Med debate, a problem that many anthropologists and sociologists, as well as political scientists have been re-thinking lately.^[15]

While the Islamic civil society has been ignored or considered a “traditional” form that would fade away with modernization, new forms were facing severe challenges by the state in many countries in the MENA states. What we have in most of them is a state manipulated associative structure.

The Challenges of Sicherheit and Democracy

The German word for security, Sicherheit, means: security, safety and certainty. Liberal Democracy that was based on the visions of Modernity developed to become Democratic Liberalism, stressing the economic over the political, and using military tools to protect capitalist economic interests, hence the need to examine carefully the changing conceptual matrixes of the following concepts: Security-safety-justice-trust-certainty-order

This changing matrix should be analyzed on the regional/global as well as the domestic/national level and the tensions between those levels spotted and openly discussed. It should also be analyzed in its historical evolution as the contradictions led to historical clashes between the partners and to avoid future clashes the injustices of the past need to be reconciled.

Contradicting components of each set of concepts represent a challenge, so while modernity advocates individual freedom and individual human rights and leads to invented moralities and imagined communities (as nationalism itself wad called at a point). . it results in an increasing sense of insecurity on the social/cultural level, and while there is a need for security this might require more “order” and restrict individual freedom…etc. This became obvious in the post 9/11 security arrangements in the US and is emerging in the revision of immigration policies in Europe.

Human Security and Global Geographies

A major issue that is usually ignored in discussing the democratization process and the role of the civil society is the existential context... if we borrow Heidegger’s notion of “Being and Time”.

If modernity was about rationality and freedom, it was also about industrialization and urbanization. Yet the urban space in many cases proved to be very anti-democratic.

The city creates spaces of freedom yet it also creates a social distance that defies democratic deliberative and associative potentials and requirements. Sometimes this happens in a negative peaceful manner turning people’s attention to “the politics of every day life”, yet sometimes it happens with more violent consequences.^[16]

Uneven geographical development in a global age also challenges the equal distribution of democratic rights, when structures turns the democratic process into a re-production of injustice. Urban individualism and urban citizenship are not a given but rather a challenge that we all face in a time of globalization and the boom of cosmopolitan cities with all their complex structures and contradicting trends.^[17]

Here we can find one of the most important areas of common action to turn the urban spaces into spaces of hope instead of being spaces of injustice and despair.^[18] If global cities become centers for the capitalist system at the expense of the human dimension and the democratic process then there is little to hope for in regard of human rights and long term democratic transformation on the ground of any culture of civilization.^[19] This is a primary condition for the flourishing of a civil society that is “people oriented”, and that can provide the vehicle for human empowerment towards comprehensive safety and security. 

The urban space is not in itself liberal and modern and democratic. It can oppose the essential virtues of all the latter in the global age, which brings us back to the conflict between ethical and economic liberalism and global capitalism.

Europe and Islam: Reconciling the Past and Present:

The lesson of the fall of the Eastern block in the late twentieth century was basically that religious and cultural identities can not be erased by any ideology, and that the drama of their return is greatest where their repression was most severe. With globalization and international mobility, and the crisis of the nation state and the emergence of the cyberspace new forms of nomadic traditions are created. . and new and old tribes are becoming more important than the imagined national bonds. It is a shift from self determination to “self” determination. The result is a collective “divided self”, divided between its interests and roles, its different layers of identity and its ideals and values. As this “self” is capable of speaking with more than one moral voice it is capable of self-criticism and prone to doubt, anguish and uncertainty.^[20] This is how we can also look at the global “self” on personal/individual and collective/cultural levels.

If this global self is to contemplate on democracy the question would surely be: What are the political forms best suited to a condition of society marked by substantial cultural diversity?^[21]

This question is relevant to domestic politics as much as it is relevant to global debates on democracy.

So far the debates on multiculturalism has been concerned with politics of representation within Western Democracies. One can note the distinctive vision of European thought in this realm compared to the American one for example. The European conceptualization of multiculturalism and multicultural citizenship is more aware of the global dimension and the dialectical national/international aspects.^[22]

Not only in theory but also in practice Europe could accommodate multiculturalism efficiently within the European identity of the EU,^[23] including Islam, even if with different degrees according to the historical tradition of church-state relations and concepts of secularism.

This stands in contradiction with the early formation of European identity in the 17th century which was originally initiated as a project versus the Muslim World.^[24] Today Islam is part of the multicultural ideal of European citizenship. Excluding Islamic discourse and Muslim intellectuals from the debate about democratic citizenship and seeing them only as potential adherents of liberal democracy is an approach that should be deemed anti-democratic.. Seeing Islam as a global partner rather than a security threat is a necessary perceptional shift. It is a global moment that should be seized while reconciling a past of confrontations and conflict before and after the European Enlightenment. And as much as the self determination discourse in the colonies enabled Europe to overcome a situation of political double standards,^[25] this debate within the Euro-Med should help attain a fresh look at the nature of the debate and its importance for both parties.

If the return of the transcendental subject is a condition for reclaiming liberal democracy then there is a lot that can be discussed with the Muslim mind to “secure” our shared Mediterranean region. And if there is a growing sense of the need to restore a global post-modern Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism with the decline of Liberal Nationalism, then Ethno-cultural justice and equality on the regional and global level are necessary to build.^[26]

Europe also needs to debate global democracy with neighboring regions within an economic justice framework, as no region can stay unaffected by today’s global developments. If the EU is seeking to further its integration it can not do so without a strategy for handling the pressing challenges of globalization.^[27] The European integration agenda can not continue to focus only on the future of the NATO, and agricultural and trade policies, etc. It has to respond to new challenges of antagonism and tribalism that erupted in the heartland of Europe (in the Balkans) and in various European countries with the rise of the extreme right in recent elections especially in France and the Netherlands. European integration as a historic achievement should not obscure regional challenges, and the ongoing debate about democracy is as much needed for Europe as it is for its partners in the Mediterranean. Short term interests might imply that the rise of Islamic movements would threaten stability, yet the continuous repression of Islam in politics and society would only fuel more radicalism and polarization, and would threaten any economic progress with unpredictable backlash.

The paradox here is that while Europe is in need of stable regimes to forward its economic interests, these same regimes are very reluctant to undergo any democratic transformation. And while privatization led to the shrinking of the state in Europe,^[28] it fostered the totalitarian authority of many regimes in the MENA that exercised harsh measures against the civil society to avoid any critique or opposition to the ongoing Structural Adjustment Programs. Needles to say that the major opponents were the Socialists and the Islamists. In the case of Egypt the major party opposing the SAP was formed from a coalition of both. It is now halted and the various court rulings supporting its return are ignored by the authorities. After 9/11 and the undifferentiated view of the Islamic political forces, including the democratic ones, dominated the Western scene, and the regime gained additional support from the American administration and a crippled law regulating the civil society associations is about to be amended.^[29]

Listening to The People

Modernity has kept a tenacious grip on the imagination of intellectuals even if it has lost its hold on the world. modernity laid claim to exclusive rights on the course of history.

Those who discovered that “history has no end” are the people who are engaged in multi-cultural dialogue.

They, too, are concerned with security, but their insight is far complex than decision makers and academics. I will draw my reflections here to an end by referring to the example of the IC movement (Initiatives of Change-originally Moral Re-armament Movement).

This coming August 2002 they will be holding a seminar in Caux as part of the annual conference, and they are devoting it to “Human Security in a Changing World”.^[30] While this meetings definition of comprehensive security is stressing on human rights, democratization and civil society, they are aware that security should start from home, from the very basic social level upwards: at home, at work, in the environment and then in an interdependent world.

If a strategy for comprehensive security is to be successful it has to listen to the people and allow them to shape the agenda of the intellectuals and politicians. This is what democracy is really all about.

1-  W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, No. 56, 1955-6, p. p. 169. 171–172, 180.

2- See: Rennger, N. J., Political Theory, Modernity, and Postmodernity: Beyond Enlightenment and Critique, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

3- John Gray, Two Faces of Liberalism, Cambridge : Polity Press, 2000, pp. 105-139.

4- See for a fairly “neutral” assessment:

Martin Kohler, “From the National to the Cosmopolitan Public Sphere”, in: Danielle Archibugi, David Held and Martin Kohler, Re-imagining Political Community, Cambridge : Polity, 1998, pp. 213-251.

5- See for example:

Lois McNay, “Michael Foucault and Agonistic Democracy”, in: April Carter and Geoffrey Stokes (eds.), Liberal Democracy and its Critics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998, pp. 216-233; John Gray, Enlightenment’s Wake: Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age, London : Routledge, 1995, pp. 64-86; Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, London : Verso, 2000, pp. 80-107.

6- Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1982.

7- Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity, Cambridge : Polity Press, 2000, pp. 1-15.

8- Colin Bird, The Myth of Liberal Individualism, Cambridge : Cambridge , 1999.

9-  Elizabeth Frazer, The Problem of Communitarian Politics, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1999.

10- Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, London : W. W. Norton, 1998.

11- Richard Bellamy, Liberalism and Modern Society: An Historical Argument, Cambridge , Polity Press, 1992, pp. 1-8, 252-261.

12- See for example:

Hent De Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Baltimpore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000, pp. 1-39, 431-435; Nancy Rosenblum (ed.), Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith: Religious Accommodation in Pluralist Democracies, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2000.

13- See for example:

Tawfiq Al Shawi, Fiqh Al Shura Wa Al Istishara, Cairo: Dar Al Wafaa, 1992; John Esposito and John Voll, Islam and Democracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996., pp. 11-32; Azzam Tamimi (ed.), Power-Sharing Islam, London: Liberty for the Muslim World, 1994; Azzam Tamimi and John Esposito (eds.) Islam and Secularism in the Middle East, London: Hurst, 2000.

14- See for example:

Charles Kurzman (ed.), Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; John Cooper, Ronald Nettler and Mohamed Mahmoud (eds.), Islam and Modernity: Muslim Intellectuals Respond, London: I. B. Tauris, 1998.

15-  Janet Abu-Lughod, ”Civil/Uncivil Society: Confusing Form with Content:, in: Mike Douglass and John Friedmann (eds.), Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society, New York : John Wiley and Sons, 1998, pp. 227-238; John Keane, Reflections on Violence, London : Verso, 1996, pp. 107-128; John Keane, Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions, Cambridge : Polity, 1998, pp. 114-156.

16- Richard Sennett, The Fall of the Public Man, London : W. W. Norton, 1974; Zygmunt, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge : Polity, 1998, pp. 151-168, 184-188.

17- Robert Beauregard and Anna Bounds, “Urban Citizenship”, in: Engin F. Isin (ed.), Democracy, Citizenship and the Global City, London : Routeldge, 2000, pp. 243-256.

18- David Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2000; Charles Landry, The Creative City : A Toolkit for Urban Innovation, London : Earthscan, 2000.

19- Andy Merrifield and Erik Swyngedouw (eds.), The Urbanization of Injustice, London : Lawrence and Wishart, 1996; Ray Hudson, Producing Places, London : Guilford Press, 2001.

20- Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, 1994, pp. 63-104.

21- John Gray, Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought, London : Routledge, 1993, pp. 253-271.

22- Compare for example Will Kymlicka’s work in the American context with Bhikhu Parekh’s ideas in the British context. See:

Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1995; Will Kymlicka, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2001; Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory, Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2000.

23-  Juan M. Delgado-Moreira, Multicultural Citizenship of the European Union, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing 2000, pp. 135-153; Antje Wiener, European Citizenship Practice: Building Institutions of a Non-State, Oxford : Westview Press, 1998, pp. 215-251.

24- Tomaz Mastnak, Islam and the Creation of European Identity, London : University of Westminster (Center for the Study of Democracy Research Papers, No. 4, Autumn 1994.)

25- Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2000, pp. 69-72.

26- See: Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular, op. cit., pp. 69-90, 203-220.

27- For a vision on the challenges of European integration and the future of globalization see: Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty First Century, New York : Random House, 1993, pp. 255-289.

28- See: Harvey Feigenbaum, Jeffery Henig and Chris Hamnett, Shrinking the State: The Political Underpinnings of Privatization, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 1-58.

29-  For an American civil critical human rights’ and legal evaluation of the draft law

 see: www.lchr.org

30- www.caux.ch