Promoting Democracy in the Face of Autocracy

Chapter 5 reviews how President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, following his installation in 2014, quickly moved to consolidate power and repress Egypt’s NGO sector. The chapter describes how in 2017 the Egyptian government ratified an even more oppressive NGO law that further restricted foreign funding, eliminated loopholes for human rights organizations, curtailed permissible activities, and instituted more severe punishments for violating the law. Rather than a transition to democracy, Egypt seemed to have settled into even deeper autocracy, as President Sisi curtailed civil society even more repressively than had Mubarak. Chapter 5 draws on data collected in 2014 and 2017 to show how development NGO and foundation leaders persevered, finding new and creative ways to continue to fight for reform.

All You Need Is Tea

Chapter 4 presents the democracy building strategies of Egypt’s philanthropic foundations and development NGOs. Amidst widespread government repression of civil society and heightened suspicion of Western efforts to promote democracy, local organizations stepped in. They harnessed citizens’ desires to take part in Egypt’s trajectory and positioned themselves as facilitators of citizen-led initiatives. Instead of creating and imposing their own reform initiatives, Egyptian foundations and development NGOs worked closely with grassroots communities to cultivate democracy on their terms. Egyptians wanted political, economic, and social justice, not necessarily a Western-style democracy. The approach taken by local groups both respected grassroots priorities and cultures and allowed the organizations to evade government crackdowns.

The West’s Democracy Promotion Playbook

Chapter 3 outlines the West’s democracy promotion playbook and presents its promise and perils. It shows how democracy aid has been criticized by both scholars and leaders of Egyptian NGOs for failing to effectively confront dictators or to resonate with local populations in its focus on reforming procedures and institutions and technical outputs. But local foundations typically have fewer resources than their Western counterparts and may be constrained by government control and co-optation. So democracy aid often provides crucial funding for organizations that otherwise have limited sources of cash. This chapter introduces a range of perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of the West’s democracy promotion strategies.

The Widening and Narrowing of Egypt’s Civic Space

Chapter 2 begins in the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow when Egyptian citizens expressed a newfound desire to participate in bringing freedom and democracy to the country. It goes on to show how Egyptian NGOs and foundations perceived an opportunity to play an important role in harnessing that energy and involving activists in organized activities related to democratic political reform. Yet by late 2011, Egypt’s transitional government began to crack down on the NGO sector even more harshly than the Mubarak regime had. In addition, Egypt’s economy declined precipitously. Chapter 2 lays out the opportunities and challenges that the 2011 uprisings created for Egyptian civil society organizations and briefly describes how two sets of donors—Western aid organizations and Egyptian philanthropic foundations—responded in the months following Mubarak’s removal.

Introduction: Civil Society and Egypt’s Arab Spring

The introduction presents the book’s main argument: that civil society organizations operating in autocratic states can take advantage of a political opening to promote democracy and that their efforts can offer lessons to US policy makers about how to better structure and implement democracy aid. The chapter begins by laying out how Egyptian NGOs and philanthropic organizations understood the aims of Egypt’s 2011 uprisings and worked to promote democracy in their aftermath. It then situates these organizations’ efforts in existing literature on civil society in authoritarian contexts and studies of US democracy aid, demonstrates the book’s contributions, and outlines the book’s structure.

The Co-Optation of Egypt’s NGO Sector

Chapter 1 opens the book with an account of Egypt’s NGO sector as it existed under Mubarak. Tracing the growth of Egypt’s NGO sector through the latter half of the twentieth century, it introduces the reader to the types of organizations established and shows how the Mubarak regime used them to simultaneously divide Egyptian civil society and advance the government’s neoliberal economic agenda. It goes on to show how, through official laws, unofficial harassment, and clientelist relations, the Mubarak regime molded an NGO sector that addressed social welfare needs and presented a guise of liberalization while failing to unite in a cohesive oppositional bloc.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter ties together lessons learned and offers a set of policy recommendations aimed at making US democracy aid more relevant, sustainable, and effective. After summarizing the book’s argument, the chapter maintains that Egyptian NGOs’ perseverance in democracy promotion suggests that organizations operating in autocratic states can create incremental progress toward democracy in ways that existing theories overlook. It proposes that democracy aid could be reformed by de-compartmentalizing grantmaking, funding different types of grantees, reforming application and evaluation procedures, and driving national values instead of institutions. While the Arab Spring did not lead directly to democracy, the uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa gave citizens the space to demand freedom, dignity, and social justice. As this book has shown, local groups are still struggling for those rights as they work to build democracy from the ground up.