Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World

Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World Review

Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World Feature

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Democracy-building efforts from the early 1990s on have funneled billions of dollars into nongovernmental organizations across the developing world, with the U.S. administration of George W. Bush leading the charge since 2001. But are many such "civil society" initiatives fatally flawed? Focusing on the Palestinian West Bank and the Arab world, Barriers to Democracy mounts a powerful challenge to the core tenet of civil society initiatives: namely, that public participation in private associations necessarily yields the sort of civic engagement that, in turn, sustains effective democratic institutions. Such assertions tend to rely on evidence from states that are democratic to begin with. Here, Amaney Jamal investigates the role of civic associations in promoting democratic attitudes and behavioral patterns in contexts that are less than democratic.

Jamal argues that, in state-centralized environments, associations can just as easily promote civic qualities vital to authoritarian citizenship--such as support for the regime in power. Thus, any assessment of the influence of associational life on civic life must take into account political contexts, including the relationships among associations, their leaders, and political institutions.

Barriers to Democracy both builds on and critiques the multifaceted literature that has emerged since the mid-1990s on associational life and civil society. By critically examining associational life in the West Bank during the height of the Oslo Peace Process (1993-99), and extending her findings to Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan, Jamal provides vital new insights into a timely issue.

The Entrepreneurial Cities in Post-Socialist Countries: How Do Capital Cities Deal with the Global Market Competition? Bucharest vs. Budapest

The Entrepreneurial Cities in Post-Socialist Countries: How Do Capital Cities Deal with the Global Market Competition? Bucharest vs. Budapest Review

In order to create more opportunities, cities must be able to attract more investment, business, residents and visitors. In order to improve the country/city image, governments have lately been engaged in conventional marketing techniques used otherwise by private companies. A well designed program to attract foreign investment contains complementary elements: promotion, incentives, and policies designed to improve the investment climate. Actions like subsidizing investors, promotion of the city, branding, offering financial incentives to existing companies and to investors are only few of the strategies that are considered to be entrepreneurial. What entrepreneurial cities are, if the two analyzed cities can be considered entrepreneurial, what policies they adopted since the fall of the communist regimes and how these policies affected the local development of the respective cities are only few of the issues that will be addressed in this paper.