Civil Society as Social Control: State Power in Jordan

Following the waves of democratization in Europe and Latin America, political scientists fervidly renewed their search for the requisite conditions of expanded political participation. Rather than focus on the possible link between economic and political development, as outlined in different versions of modernization theory and developmentalism, recent studies have instead highlighted the role of civil society in promoting political participation. Although plagued by definitional ambiguity, civil society is generally seen as the constellation of associational forms that occupy the terrain between individuals and the state. It is viewed as a mechanism of collective empowerment that enhances the ability of citizens to protect their interests and rights from arbitrary or capricious state power. The expansion of civil society is credited with numerous transitions to democracy and is frequently offered as a proscriptive remedy to despotic or authoritarian rule. The Middle East has recently joined the multitude of empirical testing grounds for the concept of civil society. Scholars, policymakers, and indigenous researchers alike hope that the growth of civil society in the region will promote democratic reform. Although experiments in political liberalization are still limited, there is guarded optimism about the prospects for change. This optimism is encouraged by the United States, which now channels substantial resources to grass-roots organizations in the Middle East with the intention of promoting democracy.1 The recent empirical growth of civil society in the region seems to add further credence to the potential for democratic change. This article presents a less sanguine view of civil society in the Middle East. Many regimes in the region initiated political liberalization to enhance legitimacy in a context of prolonged economic crisis. Rather than risk uncontrollable popular protest and collective action that could destabilize the political system, regimes such as those in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria (before 1992), and Jordan instead offered new, though oftentimes limited, opportunities for the creation of civil society organizations. Once created, these organizations were embedded in a web of bureaucratic practices and legal codes which allows those in power to monitor and regulate collective activities. This web reduces the possibility of a challenge to the state from civil society by rendering much of collective action visible to the administrative apparatus. Under such circumstances, civil society institutions are more an instrument of state social control than a mechanism of collective empowerment.2