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For decades, the United States has funded democracy promotion programs in the Middle East to little avail. Delta Democracy: Pathways to Incremental Civic Revolution in Egypt and Beyond argues that there is another way forward for US democracy aid. Drawing upon the author's ethnographic research on Egypt's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Delta Democracy uncovers the strategies that local NGOs used to incrementally build a more democratic and just society. As it takes the reader inside the walls of Egypt's NGOs, the book illuminates local activists' perspectives on democracy in Egypt and reveals how savvy organizations promoted it as they navigated rapidly evolving opportunities and constraints in the years following the uprisings.

The 2011 Arab Spring protests seemed to mark a turning point in Middle East politics, away from authoritarianism and toward democracy. Within a few years, however, most observers saw the protests as a failure given the outbreak of civil wars and re-emergence of authoritarian strongmen in countries like Egypt. But in Delta Democracy, Catherine E. Herrold argues that we should not overlook the ongoing mobilization taking place in grassroots civil society. Drawing upon ethnographic research on Egypt's nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the wake of the uprisings, Herrold uncovers the strategies that local NGOs used to build a more democratic and just society. Departing from US-based democracy advocates' attempts to reform national political institutions, local Egyptian organizations worked with communities to build a culture of democracy through public discussion, debate, and collective action. At present, these forms of participatory democracy are more attainable than establishing fair elections or parliaments, and they are helping Egyptians regain a sense of freedom that they have been denied as the long-time subjects of a dictator. Delta Democracy advances our understanding of how civil society organizations maneuver under state repression in order to combat authoritarianism. It also offers a concrete set of recommendations on how US policymakers can restructure foreign aid to better help local community organizations fighting to expand democracy.

In the wake of the January 25, 2011 Egyptian uprisings, local private and community foundations responded divergently to civil society's calls for political change. Egypt's community foundations quickly positioned themselves as leaders of democratic political reforms, while private foundations remained focused on their pre-2011 activities in the economic development realm. To explain the foundations' different responses to the uprisings, the article draws upon extant literature to develop a conceptual model of foundations' capacity to lead change. It then applies the model to the Egyptian case, arguing that community foundations' high levels of political independence and low levels of financial and civic independence facilitated their leadership efforts, while private foundations' low levels of political and financial independence and high levels of civic independence hampered their ability to lead reform initiatives. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

AbstractThis article studies the role of service providing NGOs in the Middle East in promoting democracy. Challenging the assumption that service providing NGOs are apolitical, the authors argue that service providing NGOs play important roles in promoting democracy. They do so by serving as public arenas, or spaces in which members and beneficiaries practice democratic habits such as discussion and debate, collective problem solving, free expression, rights claiming, and the like—all of which contribute to the cultivation of a participatory form of democracy. Drawing upon existing literature, interviews, and participant observation of NGOs in Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine, the authors argue that five features shape the role of service providing NGOs in promoting democracy. These include: (1) organizational readiness, or the organization's embeddedness in its beneficiary community and its organizational capacity; (2) organizational governance, or organization's commitment to participatory representation and transparency; (3) the nature of service an organization provides; (4) an NGOs' collaboration with other NGOs and the government; and (5) donor risk tolerance. The article's analysis contributes to our understanding of the varied, and often overlooked, roles of service providing NGOs, advancing the literature on NGO‐state relations, NGO‐donor relations, and democracy promotion.

By drawing from authors' fieldwork in Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey, this article critically examines perceptions of project-think among civic organizations in the Middle East. As a managerial rationality, project-think has four key components: (a) a prioritization of discrete needs and discrete groups, (b) an orientation toward funding, (c) a focus on short-term and measurable results, and (d) the positioning of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as career ladders. Through unpacking these four components, we find that project-think is perceived to contribute to the fragmentation of civil society by fracturing social issues, dividing the NGO sector, isolating organizational energy, and complicating relations between groups. Simultaneously, we demonstrate that, civic actors use various strategies to circumvent the perceived impacts of fragmentation. By mapping these intertwined meanings and experiences of fragmentation and defragmentation, this study contributes to debates concerning the political effects of managerialism among civil society in the Global South.