ABSTRACT
By putting the initial stress on the ambiguity and shortcomings of civil society promotion in the Middle East, two main questions were to be solved in this book. First: was the focus on cultural variables justified to explain the shortcomings of ‘civil society’ promotion in the region? Second: was there an over-emphasis of civil society at the expense of the political factors in the region (along the argument of Langhor 2004), and if so, how could that be explained? Rather than studying local NGOs in their domestic setting, the book argued for the necessity to study local NGOs in their interaction with international donors whose power in shaping and deciding which programmes and projects will be effectively run, are much more important than usually acknowledged in much of the literature dealing with civil society, where the role of donors is assumed to be equally benevolent across time and space.
