For the past twenty years people in the Arab world have been urging their governments to join the new wave of democratization that has been sweeping the world. While not averse to the idea, their leaders have been reluctant simply to import Western models of participation. What was needed were new mechanisms for giving people a voice in keeping with their own local customs and traditions. 

Despite many attempts to achieve this, reforms have so far been limited. There have been no serious efforts to make the necessary institutional and constitutional changes. Some countries however, have made significant steps forward. In a remarkable spirit of openness they have initiated reforms that have resulted in competitive elections at different levels of government. Among other places this has happened in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen – which is why these four countries were chosen by International IDEA to conduct a systematic assessment of the state of their democracies at the local level.

As International IDEA has already worked with these countries on a number of projects – and our State of Democracy methodology aligns well with our mission of ‘supporting democracy worldwide’, focusing on an approach that encourages ‘democracy from within’ – IDEA offered to find funding for a project that made it possible to apply this tried and tested approach to the four countries.

National conference in Cairo, Egypy, March 2009
Photo ©: IDEA

The resulting project aimed to enable citizens assess the way their towns and cities are run in as open and honest a way as possible; to develop policies for reforming local governance and giving a voice to local people; and to encourage appropriate decisions at national level to support these moves.

The main strength of the findings is the fact that they have been identified by local people working in their own communities, sensitive to the customs and traditions in the areas under review. This is central to IDEA’s State of Local Democracy (SoLD) methodology that has been guiding the work throughout. It helps give local ownership of the investigation and enables citizens to drive the case for reform based on their own conclusions. 

The assessment process was implemented in liaison with a local partner in each country, selected by IDEA from the most experienced civil society organizations. These are:

• Egypt: The Parliamentary Think Tank Centre (PTT).
• Jordan: New Jordan Research Centre (UJRC).
• Morocco: Moroccan Association for Solidarity and Development (AMSED).
• Yemen: The Human Rights Information and Training Centre (HRTIC).

Although it is the first time any of the countries have taken part in this sort of self-examination they achieved some remarkable results. The initial findings have attracted interest from people in national government and the media and there are high hopes they will lead to fresh initiatives to develop participatory democracy at all levels from within.

Findings

As can be seen from the individual national reports (see box), the assessments show a number of similarities in the experiences of the four countries. The most striking is that national governments and officials exercise a strong influence over the way local Administrations are run. In Egypt for example, although local council members are elected, they feel powerless in the face of local officials who are appointed by central government. Citizens felt overwhelmingly negative about local government – a view reflected in an extremely low turnout of between just five and seven per cent in the 2008 local elections.

IDEA's project coordinator Ayman Ayoub at a training in Yemen, July 2008
Photo©: IDEA

Another common theme is the lack of involvement of civic society groups at a local level. Although there is a growing number of these organizations, for example in Jordan’s towns and cities, their role is still largely concentrated in the capital, and they have no or limited relationships with the municipal councils. There is little awareness of the need for councils to develop cooperation and partnership with civic society.

In Yemen this gap was linked to a need for ‘social funds’ to develop participation in political life and help reduce the high levels of poverty and unemployment. The Yemen assessment also highlighted the shortage of data and information about different areas. It was considered to be important for all citizens and interested parties to be able to access relevant information.

Despite the failure of national and local governments to engage with civic society, Egypt reported a growth in their activity at local level, particularly in the areas of human rights and the empowerment of women. Young people were also starting to play a greater role in public debate, making use of new communication tools such as the internet. However the Yemen report noted a very low number of female candidates taking part in local elections.

National workshop in Amman, Jordan, March 2009
Photo©: IDEA

The perceived excessive control by the centre over local government activities was matched in Jordan by a lack of connection between local authorities and the rural hinterlands. There is a similar story in relation to local councils’ relationship with private sector businesses, which were also noted as having no social policies. 

Challenges and the way forward

Before the project started IDEA translated the SoLD toolkit into Arabic and delivered specially tailored training to the assessment teams in each country. Each group of assessors consisted of five or six experts for each targeted municipality from different backgrounds and specializations including at least one representative from the local administration. They drew evidence from four (five in Egypt) representative towns or cities in each country. The teams spent four months conducting their investigations under the guidance of IDEA’s project coordinator Ayman Ayoub, in partnership with the local civil society organizations mentioned above. This enabled them to get a good feel for local conditions and practices and to engage with stakeholders and players from all corners of the community.

One of the initial challenges was that although the participating countries were keen to avoid any imposition of Western styles of democracy, they needed some persuading that the investigations should be carried out by local self-assessment, in line with IDEA’s concept of encouraging ‘democracy from within’. Other obstacles to be overcome were the shortage of relevant data, and the need to persuade officials at local and national level of the importance of discussing such highly sensitive issues in an open-minded and constructive manner.

Project street banner in Morocco
Photo©: IDEA

However, the local teams were able to draw up local assessments drawing on the views and experience of all stakeholders and different sections of society. These were then analysed and distilled into four national reports. In each case these assessments identified major obstacles that have been hampering the development of local democracy – which is considered to be the starting point for promoting good governance at all levels of society. 

It is a mark of the project’s success that when the combined reports were presented at national conferences in each country the meetings were attended by Ministers and officials high up in government, as well as national press, broadcast and new media. The findings will now be publicised at a regional conference to which representatives from other Arab speaking countries will be invited. It is hoped other governments will learn from these experiences and initiate similar assessments to improve and develop democratic processes tailored to the customs and traditions in their own countries.