Promoting Democracy. Manal A. Jamal

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СКАЧАТЬ settlement nature, and that the Palestinian leadership was predominately based abroad. It is important to note, however, that much of the Salvadoran FMLN leadership was also based abroad in the period before the peace accords. Very importantly, however, regardless of the type of conflict, polarization will result when a political settlement fails to garner the support of major domestic political actors or important societal constituencies. Moreover, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the internal divisions among Palestinians are rooted in political differences and not identity-based differences. Just as the economic basis of the conflict was not fully addressed in the Salvadoran case, the political bases of the conflict were not fully addressed in the Palestinian case.

      Others may contend that the Palestinian territories do not constitute a full-fledged state, and that this accounts for the divergent outcomes. The WBGS, however, are recognized as a state and treated as such by the international community and by the people who inhabit that territory.74 Moreover, the PA is an institutionalized political organization that carries out the functions of a state, such as tax extraction, education, and health provision.75 I am also examining the impact of the political settlement and Western donor assistance on social movement sectors. These social movement sectors were able to organize before the establishment of the PA.

      The political settlements also differed in terms of the stages embodied, the scope of the agreements, and, most significantly, the levels of inclusivity and extent of societal support they enjoyed. In the Palestinian case, the initial Declaration of Principles (DOP) culminated in agreements involving renegotiation and the spelling out of implementation details. Fatah, the leadership party, negotiated these agreements on behalf of the PLO. Although the accords in this case were meant to serve as only interim agreements and were nonbinding, they did not meet minimal Palestinian nationalist aspirations. Critics pointed out that the Palestinians had not received any guarantees for a future independent, sovereign, viable state, nor any guarantees to halt Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied territories. Ultimately, the Oslo peace process and related initiatives would enjoy little support among Palestinians in the territories.76 Most of the Palestinian political organizations, both leftist and Islamist, as well as prominent secular Palestinian intellectuals, did not support or endorse the peace accords. The renegotiation agreements did not expand beyond the bilateral, narrow participation of the PLO (represented by Fatah) and Israel that characterized the DOP interim agreements.77 While negotiations in the Palestinian context moved toward interim arrangements that sought independent statehood, in El Salvador negotiations moved toward a final and comprehensive agreement addressing human rights, land redistribution, and ex-combatant reintegration. Also, a United Nations peace operation was actively involved.

      By 1989, the Salvadoran government and the FMLN had reached a military stalemate with no clear victors.78 As a result, both parties agreed to a negotiated settlement. The Salvadoran agreements built consensus on the different issues and culminated in a comprehensive final framework agreement that included agreements reached over the preceding two years. In contrast to the Oslo Accords, the Salvadoran peace accords enjoyed high levels of political inclusion and societal support. Although groups such as the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats did not sit at the negotiating table, they were part of the Inter-Party Commission that endorsed the accords and were not marginalized by the terms of the agreement. Had these parties opposed the accords and been excluded as a result, similar polarization dynamics as in the Palestinian case would have transpired despite the variation in conflict type or extent of UN involvement. The conclusion of the Salvadoran civil war became known as the “negotiated revolution.”79

      Relatedly, some may argue that a key distinguishing feature that led to the divergent outcomes was the “settledness” or the extent to which the conflicts have been settled in these two cases. Democracy promotion will be a smoother process in more settled cases, and Anna Jarstad and Timothy Sisk’s recommendation that it is better to settle a conflict and then promote democracy certainly applies here.80 Regardless of the settledness of a conflict, however, democracy promotion in noninclusive contexts will exacerbate polarization and undermine the longer term prospects for democratization.

      More restrictive security environments and limited governmental support conceivably could also account for different civil society outcomes. Most notably, the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 and the continuation of Israel’s encroachments against the Palestinian territories may have further challenged civil society institutions, resulting in different trajectories. These factors alone, however, do not explain variation within a case, or the underlying rationale for governments or other dominant groups to favor one group over another. The Palestinian case had experienced a restrictive security environment prior to the Oslo Accords, and this did not prevent political mass-based mobilization. Moreover, such factors do not explain why cases also experiencing societal insecurity related to crime and poverty may undergo more constructive civil society developments, as in El Salvador.

      In chapter 7, I examine Iraq and South Africa. This examination departs from our standard two-by-two analysis that seeks to show the impact of my key explanatory factor in the absence of mediating factors. Such a treatment is not possible given that almost every country in the world is or has been a recipient of some form of democracy promotion assistance in the post–Cold War era. In both cases, however, associational life emerged from the political organizations of the pretransition period, yet we see divergent outcomes in the transition period. In Iraq, as a result of the noninclusive settlement, almost all institutions affiliated to the former ruling Baʿath Party were marginalized in the transition, and Western democracy promotion efforts worked to exclude all former affiliated associations and promote nonaffiliates, further exacerbating the ensuing polarization. Alternatively, in South Africa, the political settlement ensured that all political organizations and their affiliated institutions would be included in the transition. Democracy promotion efforts worked to facilitate this inclusion, and thus we witness the emergence of a much more coherent civil society and democratic development process.

      Assessing the Quality of Civil Society and Democratic Development

      Although the breadth of citizenship in a society is a useful indicator for gauging the quality of civil society and democracy in a given polity,81 a sole focus on rights does not tell us much about how broader changes affect the exercise of democracy. To this end, this study focuses on democratic outcomes, including changes in civil society. Pertaining to democratic outcomes, I assessed presidential, legislative, and local elections, focusing on the impact of timing, frequency, and the laws that govern these elections. I assessed changes in civil society by tracing how the mass-based organizations, and specifically women’s mass-based organizations, were reconstituted after the start of the conflict to peace transitions, and how access to funding, including Western donor assistance, shaped these processes. I studied the impact of the political settlement by determining which organizations and individuals could access Western donor funding depending on their position vis-à-vis the peace accords. Then I examined the patterns of interaction that transpired between the different tendencies, paying particular attention to the degree to which the relationship is horizontal versus vertical, and the degree of cooperation and polarization. I assessed the extent of horizontal linkages and cooperation between the professionalized NGOs by examining the number of cooperative meetings, joint programs, and coordinating mechanisms in which they participated. I assessed the quality of horizontal linkages between the professionalized NGOs and mass-based groups by examining the extent of incorporation and interaction that went beyond simply service provision. Throughout, I compared these dynamics to the presettlement period, the period before the peace accords. My examination also focused on the accessibility of the state to different women’s groups, and the ability of different tendencies of the women’s movement to make representative demands on the state at both the local and national levels. To this end, I also examined the extent of meetings and interactions between activists of the women’s sector and local and legislative government representatives.

      I assessed these patterns by examining all the women’s sector programs of the professionalized NGOs and grassroots organizations in the Ramallah and San Salvador areas. СКАЧАТЬ