The changing role of civil society in the Euro-Mediterranean area

Abstract

Events since early 2011, variously grouped under the heading “Arab Spring” or “Arab Awakening”, have cast a new light on the role that civil society plays in the Euro-Mediterranean region, above all in the Southern Mediterranean societies of North Africa, now emerging from years of authoritarian governance. Given the prevalence of references to “civil society” in much of what has occurred in Tunisia and Egypt and is still evolving across the region, it would be a mistake to think that the term has any fixed or universally accepted meaning. Even where it is loosely used to mean “non-state actors”, or the interests of broader society, the notion of civil society continues to be fluid and differently interpreted even in mature democracies. Europeans, for example, are often struck by the use by American academics and non-state actors of the inclusive vocabulary of “we” when talking about the actions of the US government. In the UK, at least, the distinction between those directly in the employment of the state (namely, the civil service, public sector and government officials) and those who are independent of the state is more usually reflected in maintaining a distance between “us” and “them” in discussions about government policy and what public opinion expects of it.