Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
In recent decades the concept of civil society has become a major focus for political scientists analyzing the links between voluntary organizations of citizens, democracy and development. It is an arena for dialogue between different actors in society and helps generate the social basis for democracy.
As Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has noted, voluntary organizations such as non-governmental organizations build social capital and generalized trust and tolerance in society, which are crucial for a democratic political system.
But Putnam also introduced the concept of “negative social capital,” invested not towards positive ends but in support of anti-democratic practices. This may, he writes, result in “uncivil societies.”
How does this come about? It involves the contradiction between the bonding and bridging functions of the various social networks in a society.
Network bonding creates a tight and homogenous group, but a deficit of bridging – that is, those factors enabling the group to participate, with other groups, in the larger political sphere – may create a situation where the group is so inwardly-focused that it lacks trust, or even interest, in other ones.
In most non-western states, often clan-based or riven by ethnic or religious tensions, the bonding functions prevail over the bridging ones – resulting in the lack of effective institutions conducive to democracy or the rule of law.
A state that consists of strong internally integrated groups, but without many overarching connections between them, is so fragmented that it is little more than a “virtual” polity.
Elections become contests between rival, highly bonded groups, each with its own political organization, and adversaries never set aside their own interests for the common good.
Given the levels of mistrust, results are often disputed and assumed to be fraudulent. In all too many cases this leads to violence and military intervention.
Sometimes, as in Somalia or Congo, the state effectively disappears and other social structures, such as clans or ethnic tribes, become governing entities.
Two countries now in total disarray come immediately to mind: Iraq and Libya. In both cases, national unity was a veneer manufactured by a brutal dictatorship that, once removed, led to state collapse.
Today, both countries are wracked by warfare between the competing ethnic, religious and tribal factions that inhabit their respective territories.
Iraq is at the moment divided by three groups, corresponding roughly to its pre-war divisions.
In the north, the Kurds have established a self-governing region, independent in all but name. Its boundaries remain somewhat fluid, as some places, like Kirkuk, remain contested between them and Sunni Arabs.
Much of the Sunni Arab part of the country has fallen under the control of the Islamic State (ISIS), which is battling both the Kurds and the so-called national government.
The latter, which controls Baghdad and the southern part of Mesopotamia down to Basra, is really now a Shi’ite Arab vassal state under Iranian tutelage.
The most effective forces battling ISIS are not the army, but sectarian Shi’ite militias led by Iranian “advisors.”
Any sense of Iraqi identity is long gone, consigned to history along with Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath Party regime.
Libya, since the fall of Moammar Gadhafi, has unravelled into tribal and geographic splinters, with rival so-called governments in or near its two main cities, Tripoli and Benghazi. Here too extremist Islamists are taking advantage of the vacuum and are gaining influence.
Iraq and Libya have both held elections since their liberation from dictatorship, but they are, in Putnam’s sense, “uncivil societies,” lacking in compromise, trust and tolerance.
Elections do not solve their deep-seated problems and are, really, quite meaningless. They should not be seen as leading towards some sort of democratic political system.
It may take a long time, and different political and social experiments, to stabilize these societies.
Alternatively, it may become evident that the modern form of sovereign statehood is not a proper fit for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment