Arab experience of civil society is new, and because of the nature of the Arab state, it is difficult to find a single case in the region that is independent of the state and able to exert pressure on it. The case of Lebanon, when the Karami government was forced to resign in February 2005, will remain unique for some time to come. However, the fear of similar repetitions elsewhere has led to greater restrictions on civil society organizations, or it has led some Arab regimes to install their own organizations (GONGOS) to defuse the pressure from other organizations or to weaken their demands for democracy and transparency. The GONGOS were a typically Eastern and Russian phenomenon, and they quickly spread to a number of Arab countries that had experienced totalitarian regimes in the past and also to some of the countries in the Arab Mashreq and Maghreb, which have recently under gone a political transformation towards democracy.
University of California Press