I thought Professor Hardig’s blog post clarifying civil society and political participation was extremely helpful and insightful. Personally, even after reading and researching civil societies in the MENA region, I feel as though I only understood the broad definition of the concept. At a basic level, I knew civil society consisted of grassroots organizations and associations that work towards improving some aspect of life for citizens in a country. This is only a baby definition of civil society, though. Throughout this course, we were taught that civil societies can (and have) played an influential role in democratization in the MENA region. Whether these civil societies are successful or not is a different story, however. When Hardig explained civil societies as a “space where various struggles take place”, I was able to understand the concept more clearly. Civil society is not just a “gateway” toward democratization. Sure, it can help the slow process toward democracy in the region, but that’s not what civil society fully entails. Like Hardig said, civil society is a “panacea for democratization”, and a place where “struggle takes place”; where actors make decisions and moves that will either negatively or positively affect the process democratization all together.
I also felt his clarifications were very helpful. Sometimes I feel like the scholarly articles we are constantly assigned in all of our classes are overwhelming. I feel like I need a basic explanation of a theory or topic before I'm thrown into reading such a high level analysis. Honestly, I feel like a lot of teachers, world politics in particular, don't realize how foreign a lot of these concepts are to students. Reading something like Hardig's explanation makes it so much easier to understand scholarly works, just because there is a basic explanation available for referral.
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