In the following, I am going to discuss the concept and evolution of civil society from two angles. First, I will outline my understanding of civil society. This will include the relationship between civil society and what I call "the third wave of democracy", the relation of civil society to the new concept of social capital, and the beginnings of civil society, not only as a concept but also in reality. In doing so, I will focus on the Arab experience of civil society, covering the period from pre-modern times - meaning pre-18^th Century - to the new Arab state and its relationship with civil society, i.e., the difficult birth of today’s civil society, which is coming into its second existence.

Secondly, I will look at the controversial issues surrounding civil societies, i.e., the place of religious movements, primordial organizations (family, tribe, etc.), and non-democratic organizations in civil society, as well as whether our values and traditions, history and uniqueness have any bearing on civil society. Furthermore, I will discuss the zero-sum game with state, i.e., whether a strong civil society takes from the state and vice versa, and finally civil society and the state in the age of globalization.

I define civil society as "a set of values, norms and organizations, which emanate from the free will of individuals in their pursuit of an interest, a cause or a quest to express a collective sentiment."

A value is a goal, a norm is a means to attain that objective. Free will is a very important element in the definition of civil society. The core value of civil society is liberty and tolerance is therefore a norm, i.e., the norm with regard to achieving liberty is tolerance, acceptance of diversity.

The ill-famed Mr. Huntington, who otherwise ought to be tried and lynched for his infamous book on the clash of civilizations, actually did some very good writing. In an earlier publication, The Third Wave of Democracy (1990-91), he talks about a worldwide phenomenon of democratization, witnessed in a number of countries in recent decades. The world, according to Huntington, has gone through three waves of democratization:

The first wave started in the late 18^th Century and ended at the beginning of the 20^th. In this period, which included the French and the American revolutions, 15 or 16 countries developed multiparty systems and democracies that came to be known later on as a ‘Westminster type of democracy’.

The second wave started in the 1920s and ended in the early 1960s when it was halted. Some 30 countries democratized during this period.

The third wave started in April 1974 with the event of the Portuguese Revolution as a symbolic date. Very quickly Portugal was followed by Spain, then Greece, Latin America, East Asia, South Asia and Eastern Europe. Between 1974 and 1994, some 60 countries democratized.

Huntington, however, does indicate that there have been reversals in some countries. That brings me to the Arab World. Some Arab countries have participated in all three waves. Egypt, for example, had its first democratic experience in 1866, when Khedive Ismail, opening the Suez Canal and having invited all the dignitaries from Europe, wanted to appear modern to the world. Having studied in Europe himself, he started building European-style districts like Zamalek and Garden City. These districts were built very quickly in preparation for the opening of the Suez Canal, with big boulevards and 19^th Century Parisian and Roman-style buildings. Ismail also built a modern opera house and contracted the most famous European composer of the time, Verdi, to write what came to be known as Aida for its opening. Then he learned that modernization requires a parliament, a democracy, so he built a parliament and held the first elections for deputies. He instructed his advisor Sherif Pasha, who had studied in Europe, to tell the deputies to appear like good parliamentarians when the dignitaries from Europe arrived. Sherif Pasha congratulated the new deputies on being elected, and told them that in Europe, the people who support the government usually sit on the right, while the opposition sits on the left. Consequently, everyone rushed to sit on the right - how could they even think of opposing their leader?

By 1876 those same people had become ardent opponents of the Khedive and the corruption that prevailed at the time to the point that the Khedive wanted to disband the parliament. He ordered the parliament to be dissolved, but the deputies refused and staged a sit-in, saying they would never leave the parliament unless dead. Mulhi Bey, who had been reading about the French Revolution, invoked the memory of Mirabeau. That very parliament that started as a rubber-stamp and was basically decorative, tells us that it is worth while to continue criticizing and never despair, because no matter how theoretical things appear, once they are taken seriously, they will strike roots and take a life of their own.

Egypt’s early experience in democratization came to a halt with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. The first wave, like so many things that started in the Arab World, was short-lived because of European invasions and interference.

Social capital means all the arrangements made by individuals and groups, informally or formally, to enable the members to accomplish things. The central value here is trust. Any arrangement that people engage in, based on trust, to help individuals get things done, is called social capital. Although this is very ambiguous and hard to measure, it nonetheless can be measured and the measurement is being refined every year.

Many sociologists and political scientists - among them James Coleman, Robert Puttman, and Frances Fukama - have referred to this concept in their attempt to explain why certain societies have done so well economically, although their resources appear to be similar to that of any other society. In all economic models used to explain the variance at the end, there was always a part left that could not be explained by the amount of investment or the productivity of labor, or physical and human capital. Some people then tried to explain the phenomenon by field investigation and they came up with the concept of social capital.

It was dramatized in a comparison of North and South Italy: the government was putting more investment into South Italy, and yet North Italy was always advancing faster. Robert Puttman, who spent ten years studying this phenomenon, suggested that it is civil society that makes the crucial difference. In Making Democracy Work, published in 1992/1993, Puttman applies Coleman’s concept to North Italy and finds that it explains why it is different to the South. Others, like Frances Fukama, added the word ‘trust’ and applied the concept to South and East Asia (Singapore, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea). His findings reinforced the idea of social capital and have been used as the explanatory factor for the distinct success of the so-called ‘Asian Tigers’.

In the 1990s, many new concepts evolved that try to explain development, such as participation, civil society, social capital and trust. These concepts are all interrelated and are the latest additions to the arsenal of development literature.

The word civil is derived from the root ‘civicus’, indicating a diversity of people living together peacefully (‘city’). The city represents a qualitative evolution from what initially was a small, primary, heterogeneous community, where everybody did basically the same thing and where solidarity, was based on similarity. A city has both diversity and organic solidarity, based on mutual interdependence. This is the beginning of civil society.

Civil society, therefore, is connected to the urban community and implies the coexistence of individuals who are able to find ways of resolving differences and disputes. As such, civil society can be traced back to the beginning of the city, the metropolis and its diversity. The idea as a concept along with the ‘social contract theorists’ appeared in the 17^th Century. The basic notion is that solidarity is a contractual relationship, between individuals or between different groups, or between groups and the state. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was fashionable to talk about the social contract and it was then that Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau all developed their own conceptions of civil society. While Hobbes argued that once a state is formed, it is supreme, Locke, Rousseau and other libertarians believed that the state must always be held accountable to civil society.

Conceptually speaking, civil society has the following three ancestral traditions:

The social contract theorists (17^th-20^th Century) Locke, Rousseau, Weber, Puttman, Fukama and others, whose idea is that civil society is the product of free will, that part of that free will is the formation of the state, and that the state, therefore, has to remain accountable to civil society.

The second tradition is based on the idea that the state is formed by the initial free will of the people, but once the state is in place it reigns supreme, and everything is abdicated to the state. This notion runs all the way from Hobbes to Fascism, populism and Arafatism.

A third conception is represented by Marx and Gromschi, who make a distinction between the civil and political societies: whereas civil society influences indirectly through social formation, the political community is the state, the police, the naked aspect of domination.

How does this relate to the traditional socioeconomic formations in the Arab World? A look at the traditional Arab city before the 18^th Century gives a first idea. There was a state from the time of the First Constitution of Medina, which was a contract between the Prophet Mohammed and the Muslim community of Medina on the one hand, and the non-Muslim groups (Jews and Christians) on the other. It specified that in worldly affairs everyone is equal and has the same rights and duties. Elsewhere, each person is answerable to God. That was the beginning of a social contract of a civil society that recognized diversity, in this case diversity of tribes and religions.

The Arab/Islamic state has known civil societies of sorts and contractual relationships – and with time, evolved into more crystallized social formations, the merchants, the ulema, guilds, sufi orders, etc. These all lived in the city, which was characterized by a diversity of religious, ethnic, and professional lines. Sometimes different quarters were named after the particular guild working there (e.g., Al-Nahassin, Al-Najjariin), sometimes according to its ethnic base, e.g., Haret Al-Yahud, or Haret Al-Nasara. Usually, the authority would put together what is called Ahl Al-Hal w’Al-‘Aqd (specialized group to solve disputes) from among the leaders of these groups, who then would function as the mediators between the rulers and the community at large. These groups also included the local notables and tribesmen, who were called on in important matters, such as preparing for a battle. Although they were not a parliament as such, they were nonetheless a very important medium between the ruler and the ruled, and would convey the grievances of the ruled to the ruler. Sometimes, of course, the authority was tyrannical and would not pay any attention to the Ahl Al-Hal w’Al-Aqd, in which case the latter would wash their hands of the affair, lead the crowds against the ruler, or welcome someone challenging the ruler from outside. Ibn Khaldoun has elaborated on this very interestingly and suggested a cycle in which the rise and fall of dynasties can be explained. He defines the relationship between Bilad Al-Siba, the hinterland, and Al-Maghzam, the civil society.

These features of the traditional Arab society had come to an end by the time of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt in the late 18^th Century, which also marked the beginning of the age of modernization. The equilibrium of the traditional society began to disintegrate, and it took all the 19^th Century to find a new equilibrium with modernizers, such as Mohammed Ali in Egypt, Barud Basha in Iraq and Hir Al-Din Al-Tunisi in Tunis. There were others, but these were the main three, who made state-building efforts and who tried to modernize the education system, etc. All these processes brought out new classes, the two most important of which were the new middle class and the new working class. The new middle class basically inherited the Ahl Al-Hal w’Al-Aqd, the notables, while the new working class inherited the guilds. Out of these two social formations the ‘modern’ civil society in the Arab World developed. By 1821, the first non-governmental organization (NGO) was founded in Alexandria and that new kind of organization rapidly mushroomed in Egypt, Syria and Palestine, where the number of NGOs increased with the Zionist influx. In fact, with foreign occupation NGOs begin to replace the nation state and to perform some of its functions. In Palestine, especially after the 1967 Israeli occupation, NGOs took over such roles in the absence of a national government and rendered virtually every service to the community.

With the new classes, their syndicates, trade unions, student organizations, charitable foundations, etc., emerged, grew and built an entire civil society network. NGOs also played a crucial role in the early stages of the struggle for independence, and many of the people who actually struggled were those who also formed NGOs: Talat Harb and Saad Zaghloul in Egypt, to name but two. Cairo University, for example, started as a NGO and was only taken over by the state after independence in 1923. All the great institutions in Egypt in the late 19^th and early 20^th Century were originally NGOs, initiated by civil society.

In the Liberal Age, after independence in Syria, Egypt and Iraq, the same leaders who had fought the colonialists were the ones who had founded civil society organizations; thus, they gave a lot of room to civil society. Then there was a phase of military intervention in politics, in which the ‘populist state’ emerged, which is only a polite term for ‘despotic’. The populist state had a very patriotic and ambitious agenda that wanted to unite the Arab World, bring social justice, liberate Palestine, and industrialize rapidly. This impressive list of objectives tantalized the minds of the Arab masses, who where willing to pay the small price for these big promises by suspending democracy for a while. They rallied to the populist social contract because it was initially very alluring and impressive, and the banner and slogans were carried by a very charismatic leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. For the first ten years, the populist state tried to accomplish its goals; it had credibility and the people were sincere about it. With the unprecedented defeat of the populist Arab states in 1967, however, the people had a dramatic, traumatic experience, which made them question the populist social contract. In the middle of their seeking answers and demonstrating came the 31 March declaration calling for the social contract to be revised and for democracy to be granted. The contract was worded very carefully: for example, it stated very symbolically "We will grant democracy as soon as the occupied territories are liberated". In Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, and others this kind of paradigm was soon adopted. The populist state, by suspending democracy, stunted civil society; the state was going to do everything, so there was no need for civil society. This was a big mistake: the state can never do everything, and can never do certain things as good as civil society. The state can never render the same services as cheaply as NGOs can; on the other hand, NGOs cannot do everything, and there are things they cannot do at all. Both the government and the civil society organizations must mutually recognize that there are certain things best done by one of them.

In the 30 years since 1967, we have seen a - sometimes disorganized - retreat of the populist Arab state, especially on the social front. Since it retreated without plan or system, the casualties were high: poverty and unemployment increased as the state began to give up its functions as the main employer and service provider without, however, informing people of its intention, and thus, carrying on the same promises without delivering them. People slowly began to realize that they will have to do things themselves and that is when a new wave of NGOs and civil society organizations emerged, a trend that has continued since the 1970s. Other factors that contributed to this were the increase in the level of education and increasing financial resources of individuals working abroad or in the private sector. There was also the inability of the state to remain as despotic as it was; some Arab individuals took advantage of the loopholes in the despotic structure of the state, and utilized the margin of freedom to start their own NGOs.

A strong civil society is crucial for the creation of an intangible infrastructure, for development and democracy. Increased participation and promotion of participation in the public sphere is a precondition for a well-functioning civil society. The following table illustrates how a society moves strategically from civil society to democracy and then to development: the bigger the proportion of NGOs to the population, the stronger is the civil society:

There are examples of civil society in non-democratic countries but I believe that democracy and civil society must be related, especially in the Arab World. In the last 30-40 years every calamity we have witnessed was brought on by a despotic, unaccountable ruler. The despotic ruler, even if he has the treasure of Harun, will disappear in the end. Society that is voluntary and based on liberty should be the main unit of analysis, not the state.

There is no absolute democracy as human affairs know no absolutes; there is only one, God. We are talking about processes that have beginnings, but no ends: a process of liberation, a process of education, a process of democratization, etc. It is like raising a child: it takes a lot of nourishment, there is no absolute formula, every child is ruled differently even if they have the same parents, and by the time the parents expect the second child they have accumulated experience from the first. There are no fast rules, although there is a direction, logic and a spirit. Civil society teaches tolerance and acceptance of diversity, and by working in an NGO one learns all the things required for statehood: how to plan, how to budget, how to spend money, how to pool resources together. Thus, someone who has worked in an NGO, and then gets elected to the parliament will be a better-prepared member. It is in that sense that civil society is the infrastructure.

In Palestine, we are witnessing the emergence of a new state that has to define its relationship with its own society, which is very complex. Had there been no tradition of civil society, then would not have been a report into corruption. Civil society puts a ceiling on how much corruption can be tolerated, and the Palestinians showed that they have a very low level of corruption tolerance. Due to their NGO tradition, Palestinians are in fact the best prepared for democracy among the Arab states. However, the draft law for NGOs the PNA was discussing is copied from Egypt’s 1964 Law, which is a disaster. Should that law be passed in Palestine it will suffocate the NGOs. All that is needed is a law that informs the government that this and that organization has been established. The right of free association should be on the top of the agenda.

There is always a temptation on the part of the state to try and control NGOs and, as a consequence, GNGOs emerge: governmental non-governmental organizations that are an extension of the government. These are different from officially elected bodies, which are somewhere in between civil society and political society or government; they are like mediators, above NGO-level and with local authority.

Civil society is a network of all the different organizations that have been created voluntarily, of their own free will. However, an NGO may have started on a voluntary basis and then developed an autocratic leadership. This is typical of many countries going through a phase of national liberation, an armed struggle. If the organization’s creation was for the aim of national liberation, then the leadership will remain as long as it takes to achieve that national liberation. The fact that something is a part of civil society does not mean it is all good, nor is everything that is not part of civil society necessarily bad. Families, tribes, sects and clans are not part of civil society, they are all involuntary; for example, one does not choose the family one is born into.

The ideal combination would be that of a strong civil society and a strong state. Switzerland is a good example: many people, including the Swiss themselves, do not know the name of the Swiss President. This indicates that society is working without a state figure imposing himself, or the state is functioning without people realizing it, unless they are violating a traffic light, for example.

Lebanon and Kuwait are interesting examples of civil society in a time of crisis. During the civil war in Lebanon the state nearly disappeared, as did the state in Kuwait in 1990 in the space of six hours. In both cases it was civil society that took over and maintained the society. In Kuwait, the Food Cooperation Council, which looked harmless to the Iraqis, took on shadow-government duties and even managed the cleaning of the streets. In Somalia, on the contrary, there was no civil society to take over when the state disappeared; there was a famine because the society disintegrated for the lack of viable NGOs.

In the Arab World, people are always promising the lost paradise and listen to false messiahs. It is time to learn and use history as a reference point. People need a space of freedom within which they can set their agendas. One should be wary of those who say "This is the National Agenda." If there is freedom, tolerance and participation, then people will have their own genius. No one would have thought in 1987 that the Palestinian people would perfect that popular genius that no one else had achieved. No one could have expected the kind of resistance that we saw in Lebanon - it was not the state, it was the people. If people have freedom, then they have the space to think and resolve problems.

In conclusion, I hope the Arab states will be able to catch the third wave of democratization. The current situation in the Arab World is still a far cry from democracy, out of the 24 and a half countries, half have pluralism. In 1983, when we wanted to hold a conference on the crisis of democracy in the Arab World, not a single Arab capital would let us hold it there, and in the end we went to Cyprus. Yet in 1998, at least half of the governments are pluralistic, so there is some reason for optimism.