IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v181y2024ics0305750x24001554.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Challenging and reinforcing the status quo: Services, civil society and conflict in the MENA region

Author

Listed:
  • Walton, Oliver
  • Aslam, Wali

Abstract

How and why do civil society organisations (CSOs) engage with service delivery and with what consequences for political change in conflict-affected contexts? Most existing work in this area focuses on specialist NGO service provision, concluding that this remains a relatively apolitical sphere of activity with little relevance for peace and conflict dynamics. By examining the experience of CSOs in three countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, we show that engagement with services plays a crucial, yet highly varied and hitherto under-studied, role in these organisations’ efforts to build legitimacy and pursue their political goals, with potentially important implications for peace and conflict dynamics. By bringing literature on social movements into conversation with research on NGOs and civil society in conflict settings, and drawing on interviews with key informants, we develop a novel tripartite framework for understanding civil society engagement with service delivery. We identify three main patterns where CSOs’ engagement with services contributes to political change and highlight the dynamic interaction between these three patterns: providing to initiate a challenge (where services provision is used as a means of establishing new organisations that are critical of the status quo by bolstering community-level legitimacy), protesting (where services are used as a focal point for critical groups’ mobilisation and coalition building) and providing to reinforce (where groups that are supportive of the status quo use civil society service provision to shore up support). We show that in the MENA region, civil society’s engagement with service delivery makes an important but mixed contribution to political change. While it can contribute indirectly to political transformation by cultivating the legitimacy of new civil society groups or provide a focal point for a wider critique of the status quo, it can also undermine a shift towards political transformation by entrenching the position of existing elites.

Suggested Citation

  • Walton, Oliver & Aslam, Wali, 2024. "Challenging and reinforcing the status quo: Services, civil society and conflict in the MENA region," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:181:y:2024:i:c:s0305750x24001554
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106685
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X24001554
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106685?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Catherine E. Herrold & Khaldoun AbouAssi, 2023. "Can service providing NGOs build democracy? Five contingent features," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(1), pages 80-91, February.
    2. Heydemann, Steven, 2020. "Rethinking social contracts in the MENA region: Economic governance, contingent citizenship, and state-society relations after the Arab uprisings," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    3. Markus Loewe & Tina Zintl, 2021. "State Fragility, Social Contracts and the Role of Social Protection: Perspectives from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-23, November.
    4. repec:bla:devpol:v:28:y:2010:i:2:p:131-154 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gasmi, Farid & Kouakou, Dorgyles & Noumba Um, Paul & Rojas Milla, Pedro, 2023. "An empirical analysis of the social contract in the MENA region and the role of digitalization in its transformation," TSE Working Papers 23-1423, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    2. Markus Loewe & Holger Albrecht, 2023. "The social contract in Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia: What do the people want?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(5), pages 838-855, July.
    3. Carly Beckerman, 2022. "Political Fragility and the Timing of Conflict Mediation," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-19, February.
    4. Mühlberger, Wolfgang, 2022. "Iraks Suche nach dem Gesellschaftsvertrag: Ein Ansatz zur Förderung gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalts und staatlicher Resilienz," IDOS Discussion Papers 13/2022, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    5. Francesco Burchi & Markus Loewe & Daniele Malerba & Julia Leininger, 2022. "Disentangling the Relationship Between Social Protection and Social Cohesion: Introduction to the Special Issue," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(3), pages 1195-1215, June.
    6. Sobhy, Hania, 2021. "The Lived Social Contract in Schools: From protection to the production of hegemony," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    7. Gisele Msann & Viswanathan Pozhamkandath Karthiayani, 2023. "Resource curse and growth challenges in MENA oil exporter countries: A case for governance reforms in the post Arab Spring uprisings context," Regional Science Policy & Practice, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(5), pages 992-1007, June.
    8. Daniel-Rareș Obadă & Dan-Cristian Dabija & Veronica Câmpian, 2024. "Predictors of social media users’ intention to donate online towards international NGOs in the fake news era," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-12, December.
    9. Mühlberger, Wolfgang, 2023. "Iraq's quest for a social contract: An approach to promoting social cohesion and state resilience," IDOS Discussion Papers 1/2023, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    10. Auktor, Georgeta Vidican & Loewe, Markus, 2021. "Subsidy reforms in the Middle East and North Africa: Strategic options and their consequences for the social contract," IDOS Discussion Papers 12/2021, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:181:y:2024:i:c:s0305750x24001554. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.