Democracy Building in Post-Soviet Armenia (Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe)

Democracy Building and Civil Society in Post-Soviet Armenia

This book considers the challenges of democracy building in post-Soviet Armenia and the role of civil society in that process. It is the first book of its kind to examine post-Soviet democracy building in Armenia. Although focusing on Armenia, the book also draws comparisons between the processes in Armenia and other former Soviet states. Based on extensive original research, including fieldwork interviews with participants, it provides a detailed account of democracy building and civil society strengthening programmes in Armenia since 1991. The book discusses the interplay and relations between structure and agency and the implications of this for the way in which new knowledge, ideologies, institutions and models are transferred, accepted, adapted, manipulated or resisted. Contrary to the expectations of Western aid agencies, who promoted civil society on the assumption that democratization would follow from the establishment of civil society, this book argues that democratic regimes have yet to materialize and, moreover, that a backlash against Western democracy promotion has emerged in various post-Soviet states. It explores how far the growth of civil society depends on a country’s historical, political and socio-cultural context, and how far foreign aid, often provided with conditions encouraging the promotion of civil society, can exert an impact on democratization. This book adds to the growing literature on democracy building and contributes to the broader debates about democracy promotion, civil society and democratization more generally, which are particularly important given the continued commitment by Western governments to promoting democracy in different parts of the world, e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan. Armine Ishkanian is a Lecturer at the London School of Economics Centre for Civil Society and a Research Associate at the LSE Centre for the Study of Global Governance. Her research interests focus on civil society, democracy building, development and gender. She has published widely on these topics in leading journals including Social Politics, Journal of International Development and Central Asian Survey.

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Democracy Building and Civil Society in Post-Soviet Armenia

Armine Ishkanian

First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business # 2008 Armine Ishkanian All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ishkanian, Armine, 1971Democracy building and civil society in post-Soviet Armenia/Armine Ishkanian. p. cm. – (Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern European Series) 1. Democracy–Armenia (Republic) 2. Political participation–Armenia (Republic) 3. Civil society–Armenia (Republic) 4. Armenia (Republic) – Politics and government–1991- I. Title. JQ1759.3.A91.I75 2008 320.94756–dc22 2007038428

ISBN 0-203-92922-5 Master e-book ISBN ISBN13: 978-0-415-43601-4 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-92922-3 (ebk)

Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction

viii x 1

1

Democracy, Civil Society and Power

12

2

Civil Society Participation in Elections

35

3

The Anti-Domestic Violence Campaign and Democracy Building

58

4

Culture and Democracy Building

85

5

The Soviet Legacy and Democracy Building

109

6

The Voices of the Donors

130

7

Conclusion

154

Epilogue

163

Notes Bibliography Index

165 170 191

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to the many people who have assisted me over the years and generously given their time and shared their knowledge and insights with me. First, I would like to thank my mentor F. G. Bailey who has always provided helpful, pragmatic advice and helped me to focus on what is important. I am also grateful to all my respondents who generously took the time to respond to my questions and to discuss their opinions. I could never have written this book without their help and willingness to share their time and ideas with me. Of my colleagues in Armenia, I would like to thank Anahit Bayandur, Gulnara Shahinian and Hranush Kharatyan and a number of anthropologists and archaeologists at the Institute for Ethnography and Archaeology, including Levon Abrahamian, Harutyun Marutyan, Mkrtich Zardarian and Seda Devejian. But this would also not have been possible without the support, encouragement and kindness of such people as my friends Anahit, Ani and Hasmik. Without the Salon evenings, my life in Armenia would have been harder and infinitely less enjoyable. I am also grateful to a number of institutions for their support throughout the different phases of this project. I am indebted to the Department of Anthropology at UC San Diego, the Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at UC Berkeley, the Department of Social Policy at LSE, the LSE Centre for Civil Society and the LSE Centre for the Study of Global Governance. I also benefited from discussions I had with colleagues in the UK and the US over the years, including Jude Howell, Mary Kaldor, Marlies Glasius, Hakan Seckinelgin, David Lewis, Ruth Mandel, Deniz Kandiyoti, Susan Pattie, Hratch Tchilingirian, Razmik Panossian, Khachig To¨lo¨lyan, Julie Hemment, Kristen Ghodsee and Jane Lewis, about different aspects of this book. I benefited hugely from attending research workshops organized by the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, DC. I am also grateful to IREX for funding the 2002–03 research with a postdoctoral Individual Advanced Research Opportunity grant, and to the National Research Council and the Academy of Educational Development which funded earlier research trips.

Acknowledgements

vii

Finally, last but definitely not least, I would like to thank my family. My aunt Lucy and cousin Tsoghik helped me through the difficult patches of being away from home, while I hugely enjoyed my discussions with Knar Alexandrovna, Victoria, Kolya, Jirig, Aida and others in Armenia. I was also blessed with the love and support of my parents Hagop and Chinar and my in-laws Edward and Arega. But there are three people in particular without whose love, support and encouragement this book would never have been written and I would not be where I am today either as a person or as a professional: they are my father Hagop, my husband Vitali and my son Haik. To these three, I dedicate this book. Thank you.

Abbreviations

AAA AMD ANM CASCM CEDAW CIS D/G DECIM DFID EBRD EIDHR ENP GTZ HCA IMF INGO IREX JAA MP NATO NED NGO NGOC OSI OSIAF OIDHR OSCE PACE PHARE PRSP

Armenian Assembly of America Armenian dram (currency) Armenian National Movement Central Asia, South Caucasus and Moldova Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women Commonwealth of Independent States Democracy/Governance Donor Exchange, Coordination and Information Mechanism Department for International Development United Kingdom European Bank for Reconstruction and Development European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights European Neighbourhood Policy Deutschen Gesellschaft fu¨r Technische Zusammenarbeit (German international co-operation enterprise) Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly International Monetary Fund International Non-Governmental Organization International Research and Exchanges Board Junior Achievement of Armenia Member of Parliament North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Endowment for Democracy Non-governmental organization Armenian NGO Resource and Training Centre Open Society Institute Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation Armenia Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Poland and Hungary: Assistance for Restructuring their Economies Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper

Abbreviations PSC PVO RFE/RL TACIS TOT VAW UNDEF UNDP USAID

ix

private service contractor private voluntary organization Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Technical Aid to the Commonwealth of Independent States training of trainers violence against women United Nations Fund for Democracy United Nations Development Program United States Agency for International Development

Introduction

The Karabakh Movement, which began in 1988 and culminated in Armenia’s independence in 1991, has been referred to as a renaissance or rebirth of the Armenian people; a time when Armenians believed and strove for democracy, freedom and independence. Two decades have passed since the Karabakh Movement began and, on 21 September 2008, Armenia will celebrate its seventeenth anniversary of independence. Today, there is far less enthusiasm and public debate about democracy than in 1988, and Armenians have come to remember the movement either nostalgically or, more often, in anger and with disappointment. In this book, I examine a number of questions concerning democratization and the role of civil society in that process in Armenia since 1991. I explore the social and political transformations of the post-Soviet ‘transition’1 through an extensive and grounded examination of democracy building and civil society strengthening programmes in Armenia since 1991. Of the various strands of the democracy building agenda that were implemented in Armenia, I focus on civil society strengthening programmes. My reasons for focusing on civil society strengthening programmes instead of programmes that are aimed at elections monitoring or state institution building are two-fold. First, civil society strengthening was viewed by Western policy makers and donors as an end itself as well as a means of furthering the other components (i.e. human rights, free and fair elections, etc.) within the democracy building agenda. Second, the current backlash against democracy promotion throughout the world is almost entirely directed at civil society strengthening programmes and involves legal and extralegal measures aimed at constraining, co-opting, coercing or closing foreign funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs)2 (Gershman and Allen 2006: 38; Howell et al. 2007). Foreign funding of NGOs is increasingly being described as a form of interventionism, neo-imperialism, and as the creation of a ‘fifth column’ in different parts of the world where democracy building programmes are being implemented. Armenia is a unique case study. Although it is the smallest of the former Soviet Republics, it continues to be the largest per capita foreign aid recipient in the region. Not only has Armenia received large amounts of foreign aid from bilateral and multilateral sources, it has also received significant

2

Introduction

amounts of aid and individual remittances from diaspora communities in North America and Western Europe. It should be noted that a small percentage of the diasporic aid is intended for democracy building. While recognizing the importance of understanding the impact of aid programmes, this book is not in any way intended to serve as a monitoring or evaluation exercise. I am far more concerned with how the ideas of democracy and civil society were defined, promoted and operationalized by donors and how the Armenian participants/implementers of these programmes subsequently adapted, translated, resisted and transformed those ideas. I analyse how micro processes and individual actions and responses affect the macro-level policies and programmes of democracy building and civil society strengthening. In doing so, I focus on the interplay and relations between structure and agency and the implications of this for how new knowledge, ideologies, institutions and models are accepted, adapted, manipulated or resisted. In this book, I examine the development of two very different civil society initiatives that were part of democracy building programmes: the training and monitoring campaign connected to the 2003 presidential elections and the 2002–4 anti-domestic violence campaign. Of course there were other projects and initiatives that focused on judicial reforms, legislative strengthening, civic education and other areas which are equally important; however, I do not explore these in this book.3 I ask the following questions. First, can democracy be promoted through civil society strengthening and what are the implications of attempting to create democracy and civil society from above? Second, does external assistance help to strengthen democratic constituencies or does it sometimes overwhelm genuine grass roots initiatives? Third, to what degree does the growth of democracy depend on a country’s historical, socio-economic, cultural and political context? Fourth, how do the actions as well as the expected utility motivations of individuals engaged in democracy building, both as implementers and as donors, affect democracy building and civil society strengthening? And finally, given that democracy appears to have near universal appeal and acceptance (at least at the level of rhetoric), why has there been a backlash in recent years against democracy promotion targeting civil society? I consider a range of arguments and, although I recognize that authoritarian legacies and culture shape perceptions, understanding and practices, I argue that the development of democracy and civil society in Armenia has been shaped by a combination of factors including: (a) the difficulties of simultaneous, multiple transitions (i.e. economic, political, nation building); (b) the impact of the Cold War as well as Soviet legacies; (c) the policies of donor agencies and the asymmetrical power relations between international and domestic actors involved in democracy building efforts; and (d) more recently, local perceptions of the double standards of Western governments engaged in democracy promotion. I argue that while the formal democratic institutions have been established, much remains to be done for Armenia to become a substantive democracy.4

Introduction

3

Despite the difficulties in establishing democratic regimes in the former Soviet states, strong civil societies are still seen by policy makers, scholars and NGOs as the best hope for democratization. Given the continued commitment by Western governments to promoting democracy in different parts of the world (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), discussions and debates about the effectiveness and probity of democracy building and civil society continue. This book strives to add to the growing literature on democracy building by examining the experience of Armenia and by contributing to the broader debates about democracy promotion, civil society and democratization more generally.

Contextualizing the Book Post-Socialist Civil Society and Democracy Building This book contributes to the growing literature on democratization, civil society and the post-socialist transitions produced by scholars from a number of social science disciplines including anthropology, sociology and political science. Scholarship in the area of post-socialist transitions has focused on the development and growth in the number of NGOs, their participation in advocacy and development, the privatization of social welfare delivery, the transfer of models, institutions and ideologies, the influence of donors and how civil society is perceived locally (Abramson 1999; Adamson 2002; Akiner 2004; Bruno 1997; Celichowski 2004; Chandler 2004; Freizer 2004; Hann 2002, 2004; Hemment 2004, 2007; Henderson 2003; Henry 2001; Ishkanian 2003, 2004; Kay 2004; McMahon 2002; Mandel 2002; Mendelson and Glenn 2002; Morje´ Howard 2003; Richter 2002; Rivkin-Fish 2004; Roy 2004; Sampson 1996, 2002). A common theme in some of these works has been to consider the impact of foreign aid on local developments as well as to explain the weakness of local civil society and how the exponential growth of professionalized NGOs has failed to increase civic participation, engagement and the legitimacy of NGOs among the local populations. What anthropological studies in particular, such as this book, contribute to the study of the post-socialist period is an understanding not only of the institutions, legal frameworks, policies and elites, but how policies, institutions and frameworks are locally understood, resisted and adapted. In many ways, anthropology provides the necessary corrective to the ‘deficits’ of the largely normative ‘transitology’, which celebrates the end of history paradigm and the triumph of capitalism (Hann 2002). Indeed, many postSoviet anthropological works offer a critique of the transition both as a ‘regime of signs’ and as a blueprint. The informants who speak in the anthropological accounts bear witness to the immense efforts at social engineering but also reveal the anomie local populations are currently experiencing (Wolfe 2000: 198). As vast knowledge projects and ‘regimes of signs’, the transitions open up opportunities to examine how old knowledge

4

Introduction

regimes and truths are destroyed and vilified and the outcomes of the attempts at replacing those knowledge regimes and truths with new ideologies, models and truths. Anthropologists’ focus on culture and individual agency, as well as a growing concern with the historical, has meant that most anthropological accounts of the post-socialist transitions have attempted to move away from the ideological proclamations in order to consider the micro processes inherent in the moments of transformation, which allow for an understanding of how people in those societies undergoing rapid changes are responding to the uncertainties and transformations (Burawoy and Verdery 1999: 2). The Anthropology of Development and Critical Development Studies This book also contributes to the anthropology of development (Escobar 1991) and critical development studies. Although there has been little contact between scholars of development and scholars of post-socialism until recently, there are now attempts to bring the two together and to examine the similarities (and differences) between development encounters, grand projects and master narratives in traditional development contexts (i.e. Africa, Asia, Latin America) and the post-socialist countries (Brandtsta¨dter 2007; Ishkanian 2006; Kandiyoti 2002). Similar to many studies that are part of the anthropology of development paradigm (Escobar 1991, 1994; Ferguson 1994; Fisher 1995; Gupta 1998; Pigg 1996), I also consider the claims of development (donor) agencies and their arguments regarding universality, the distribution and workings of power relations between the different actors involved, the impact of expert knowledge, the treatment of different types of knowledge and the essentialization by aid agencies of beneficiaries. Moreover, as many of the experts and staff of donor organizations promoting civil society in the post-socialist countries gained their work experience in developing countries, they often relied and drew on this experience when discussing interventions in Armenia (experts and donors are discussed in greater detail in Chapters Four and Six respectively).

The Armenian Context Armenia has a population of 3.2 million people, of which over 95 per cent are ethnic Armenians (Republic of Armenia National Statistic Service), the majority of whom belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenians pride themselves on being the first nation to have adopted Christianity as a state religion in 301 AD and, in 2001, the government organized celebrations to mark the 1700th anniversary of Christianity in Armenia. The 3000-year history of Armenia has been filled with a continual cycle of wars, violence and loss of independence, interspersed with brief periods of renewal, renaissance and autonomy (for more in-depth discussions of Armenian history, see Bournoutian 2002; Hovannisian 1967; Panossian

Introduction

5

2006; Suny 1993). When the last independent Armenian kingdom of Cilicia collapsed in 1375, Armenians became scattered around Anatolia, Persia, Transcaucasia and other smaller communities across Europe and South Asia. Over the next five centuries, Armenia would be ruled successively by the Mameluks of Egypt, Mongolian Tartars, the Ottoman Turks, Safavid Persians and the Russians. In these scattered communities, the Armenian Apostolic Church was the centre of communal life and the means by which a distinct Armenian ethnic and religious identity was maintained. From the fifteenth century to the nineteenth century, there were many unsuccessful attempts by individuals and organized groups to re-establish an independent or semi-autonomous Armenian state. By the end of the nineteenth century, most Armenians were peasants living in the Ottoman Empire where they were identified as the Ermeni Millet (the Armenian Community, which was identified upon a religious basis) and in the Russian Empire under a system of polozhenye (statutes). Beginning in the nineteenth century, Western educated Armenian intellectuals in both the Russian and the Ottoman Empires began to pursue an agenda for national independence, individual freedom and political rights. They were inspired by the ideals of liberte´, egalite´, fraternite´, the European revolutionary movements of 1830 and 1848, and encouraged by the revolts in the Balkans against the Ottomans and the rise of socialist and Marxist revolutionary movements in Russia. These revolutionaries felt eager to assert their independence from the sultan and the tsar and establish their own independent state. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Armenian schools were opened in both empires where Armenian language and history were taught. Although these schools were initially attended by elites, soon educational, benevolent and other societies (including Masonic lodges) were created by Armenian intellectuals living in Tbilisi or Constantinople (Istanbul) as a means of reaching out to the peasants and the newly emerging Armenian working class. According to Louise Nalbandian, at first, this movement only encompassed a handful of men, then small groups, then organizations and, finally, political parties, which would eventually produce the leaders of the first independent Armenian Republic of 1918–20. In the later decades of the nineteenth century, the Armenian revolutionary movement would begin to spread the doctrine of freedom among their countrymen who were living in the Ottoman and Russian Empires (Nalbandian 1963: 181). This revolutionary movement, Nalbandian argues, was the expression of a ‘new nationalism, which embodied a fervent desire for individual freedom and political rights’ (Nalbandian 1963: 1). These revolutionaries espoused ideas of freedom and democracy that were ‘not to the liking’ of the older leaders of the Armenian communities in the Ottoman and Russian Empires (Nalbandian 1963: 46). These older leaders, who included the wealthy Armenian merchants and clergy, supported non-political, charitable societies but, out of fear of losing their status and wealth, tended to espouse conservative political views for fear of being seen as ‘rocking the boat’

6

Introduction

(Panossian 2006: 98). The ideas being espoused by the individuals involved in the revolutionary movement on the other hand included the equality of individuals, representative government, constitutional rule, intellectual enlightenment and the secularization of politics. These ideas were supported by the middle and working classes who were organized in tradesmen’s or artisans’ guilds, but not by the merchants or clergy (Panossian 2006: 149). Although the level of impact of these intellectuals on the thinking of the masses is difficult to ascertain, Panossian contends that the intellectuals who went out into the villages and towns established ‘organic links’ with the masses (Panossian 2006: 146).5 Moreover, as Libaridian maintains, ‘revolutionary field workers’ were instrumental in single-handedly transforming slumbering villages into ‘pockets of resistance to oppression’ by preaching the gospel of the ‘new, self-respecting man’ (Libaridian 2004: 84). Although scholars (Libardian 2004; Matossian 1962; Panossian 2006; Suny 1993; Zekiyan 1997) who write about nineteenth century Armenian history do not use the concept civil society, what they describe in terms of institutions, practices and discourses in the late nineteenth century is very much a form of civil society activism.6 The secular nationalism of nineteenth century Armenian revolutionaries symbolized the emergence of a new national consciousness, often referred to as an awakening (zartonk), and marked a fundamental shift in Armenian thinking. As Ronald Suny maintains, it emphasized a break with the Church, the importance of the ethnic culture of the common folk, the vernacular languages of ordinary speech and the need to engage the modern world politically (Suny 1993: 9). The break with the Church was intended to create a new identity around the idea of an independent national polity and not as a religious community. Armenians’ calls for greater reform and freedom, particularly in the Ottoman Empire, were met with what has been referred to as the ‘ultimate repression’ (Libaridian 2004): genocide. The genocide of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire during World War I led to the massacre of over 1.5 million Armenians. Survivors either fled east and settled in what is now the Republic of Armenia or ended up as refugees in various countries in the Middle East (e.g. Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, etc.), Western and Eastern Europe (e.g. Bulgaria, France, Greece, Romania, etc.) and the Americas (e.g. Argentina, Canada, the US, etc.). In the east, Armenian forces held off the advancing Turkish army in 1918 and established the independent Republic of Armenia on 28 May 1918. The newly constituted government was made up of leaders who had been active in earlier revolutionary movements, including members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and other socialist and nationalist parties. The new government attempted to establish a parliamentary democracy, but its efforts were complicated by the severe internal and external difficulties facing the nation following the armistice. The population, which included hundreds of thousands of refugees and orphans, was suffering from famine, pestilence, shortages of shelter and medicine and lived in perpetual fear of armed

Introduction

7

military attacks from the Turks. Amidst this chaos, Prime Minister Alexandre Khatisian proclaimed Armenia to be a democratic republic by the Act of United Armenia in 1919. Although the adoption of the Act of United Armenia may have had only ‘symbolic’ value (Hovannisian 1967: 323), it led to the first popular parliamentary elections, which were held on 21–23 June 1919. The newly elected government did not survive very long, and eventually Armenia lost its independence in 1920 and became the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. Over the following seventy years of Soviet rule, the Communist authorities attempted to mediate Armenian nationalism and shift nationalist ideas to communist ones. In the 1930s and 1940s, tens of thousands of Armenian intellectuals, including Old Bolsheviks, second generation Armenian Communists and others were murdered under the Stalinist purges. Nevertheless, the ideas that had emerged in the late nineteenth century, in particular the ideology of national liberation, were never completely eradicated (Matossian 1962) and re-emerged following the Khruschevian thaw. As Mary Kilbourne Matossian writes, ‘The traditional patterns of behaviour have been largely destroyed, although strands from the old fabric are still visible. But Armenians have not lost their national consciousness: they have demonstrated it clearly since the death of Stalin.’ (Matossian 1962: 216). The culmination of Armenian nationalism under Soviet rule is associated with the events surrounding the fiftieth commemoration of the Armenian genocide in 1965. On 24 April 1965, the official day of remembrance and mourning for the victims of the genocide, public officials, representatives of the Armenian Apostolic Church and diaspora representatives met in the Spendarian Opera House in Yerevan as thousands of people also gathered down the street from the Opera House in Lenin Square. This was the first time that the genocide was publicly commemorated in Soviet Armenia. By mid-afternoon, the crowd of demonstrators had grown, and those gathered began to march from Lenin Square towards the Opera House via Stalin Boulevard chanting, singing and carrying Soviet flags and banners celebrating the Soviet brotherhood of peoples. The demonstrators’ aim was not to challenge the authority of the Soviet government; instead, it was to draw government attention to the 1915 genocide of the Armenians and to ask the Soviet government for assistance in reclaiming their lost lands. Indeed, as Razmik Panossian writes, the demonstration was ‘in accordance with, and constrained by, the ‘‘rules of the game’’ of the Soviet system’ (Panossian 2006: 321). While the demonstration began and proceeded in a peaceful manner, it turned disorderly when the police and KGB intervened and began to harass the peaceful demonstrators. At this point, rocks and punches were thrown, and the demonstration ended as many of the young demonstrators were arrested and jailed for several days. The Soviet government subsequently officially recognized the Armenian Genocide and built a memorial on Tsitsernakaberd Hill in Yerevan with a pylon and the eternal flame dedicated to the memory of the genocide victims. It never pursued any of the other demands of the demonstrators.

8

Introduction

The Karabakh Movement, which began in February 1988 and culminated in the declaration of Armenia’s independence in September 1991, in many ways embraced the ideas and concepts of the nineteenth century zartonk (awakening). What began initially as an ecological movement was rapidly transformed into calls for the reunification of the region of Nagorno Karabakh in the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan with the Soviet Republic of Armenia and subsequent calls for Armenian independence. The late 1980s was a period when Armenians believed in the ideals of civil society and the possibility of democratizing the Soviet system. This idealism brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of the capital Yerevan and made social and political activists out of many apathetic Soviet citizens. The post-independence transition was complicated by the conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh, the ensuing blockade that was initiated by Azerbaijan and Turkey and the influx of over 400,000 ethnic Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan who had fled pogroms in Sumgait and Baku. The situation was worsened by the collapse of the economy, skyrocketing inflation, the rapid implementation of privatization reforms and austerity measures, including limits on state spending and subsidies, which were part of the so-called shock therapies introduced by the international financial institutions. At that time, Armenia’s infrastructure was seriously debilitated, and there was mass unemployment and impoverishment. The blockade also led to long blackouts, stoppage of state-provided heat and hot water services and closures of factories, schools and institutes. Without energy, only a tiny number of private enterprises continued to operate. In northern Armenia, the already difficult situation was exacerbated by the fact that the authorities had to deal with the tens of thousands of people who were wounded and left homeless after the 7 December 1988 earthquake, which left 25,000 people dead and virtually destroyed the cities of Leninakan (now Gyumri) and Spitak. Given these harsh socio-economic conditions in the early post-Soviet years, most people did not have the time or inclination to participate in civic projects, and the civic activism that had become a part of Armenian life in the late 1980s was replaced by disillusion, apathy, frustration and dislocation in the 1990s. As in Soviet times, the extended family continued to be the primary mode of social protection and form of identification and advancement.7 What followed in the wake of the transition led to the devaluation of democracy and even to a re-evaluation of 1988. The first two years of independence are collectively referred to as the ‘years of darkness and cold’ (mti tsrti tarinery). Following the 1994 ceasefire, life began to improve incrementally. I began my fieldwork in Armenia in 1996.

Methods This book is based on twelve months of research conducted in Armenia from October 2002 to July 2003 and March–April 2005, but it also draws on seventeen months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted from March

Introduction

9

1996 to September 1997 and in September 1999. The bulk of my time was spent in Yerevan where the majority of NGOs and all the national government officials and foreign donors are based, but I also travelled to the cities of Gyumri, Goris and Vanazdor and the smaller towns of Charentsavan, Ijevan, Martuni and Vayk. I conducted formal as well as informal interviews with the leaders and members of twenty-five Armenian NGOs involved in various aspects of democracy promotion including advocating for human rights, women’s rights, civic participation, etc. In addition to interviewing NGO leaders and members, I conducted formal interviews with government officials from the Armenian Ministries of Health, Social Welfare, Justice and the Presidential Palace, representatives from four bilateral donor agencies, three multilateral donor agencies, three diaspora Armenian donor agencies, as well as twelve international grant making NGOs and Private Service Contractors (PSCs) that had been or were involved in civil society development projects of one type or another. I conducted formal and informal interviews with academics and journalists, but I also had numerous informal discussions with a number of members of the Institute of Ethnography. Finally, I conducted formal interviews with four Armenian businessmen who are commonly referred to as oligarchs. By ‘studying up’ (Nader 1972), I have sought to draw in elite actors’ diverse perspectives, which are not always included in anthropological accounts, but it was not always easy to organize some of these interviews. I faced challenges in setting up interviews with some representatives of international NGOs and private service consulting firms engaged in democracy building programmes. In two cases, in particular, I spent several months contacting the offices and was always being told that the people I wished to interview were ‘too busy’, ‘out of town’ or ‘otherwise engaged’. While I could certainly understand and appreciate how busy they were, I found their non-responsive attitude to my request for an hour of their time particularly hypocritical given how much time and effort such organizations spent preaching, through capacity building and training programmes, the values of accountability, transparency and democracy to Armenian NGOs. In order to encourage candid responses, I informed all of my respondents that I would not include their names or the organization they represented when quoting them in the book. In addition to interviews, my research included informal discussions with neighbours and acquaintances and participant observation in events organized by and for NGOs including meetings, seminars, conferences, master classes, capacity building and training of trainer exercises as well as public meetings, press conferences, demonstrations and rallies. I analysed newspapers and local and foreign NGO as well as donor publications including brochures, booklets, reports, pamphlets and websites. All translations are mine, and I have used the Armenian Review system of transliteration from Eastern Armenian. Finally, I also organized a number of focus groups with beneficiaries of various NGO programmes to include their impressions and understandings concerning the work of NGOs.

10

Introduction

Although I interviewed and have sought to include the perspectives of American and European as well as intergovernmental donor agencies, democracy building in Armenia during the 1990s and early 2000s was primarily an American supported process. While other bilateral and multilateral donors had some institutional mechanisms for engaging with or supporting civil society strengthening, not all explicitly focused on democracy building or civil society strengthening programmes in the same way as USAID and its US-based subcontractors and grantees. Moreover, as I will discuss in Chapter One, while the official US position is clear vis-a`-vis civil society and democracy promotion, the approach of the European Union and various leading European bilateral donors towards democracy promotion in general and civil society strengthening in particular is more ‘vague’ (Schmid and Braizat 2006: 3) and ‘opaque’ (Youngs 2006: 8). As a diaspora Armenian, I felt many doors opened for me which perhaps would not have done for a non-Armenian researcher; however, there were also instances in which having a different name and face would have made my task significantly easier. For instance, I speak both Eastern and Western Armenian fluently and, when conversing with or interviewing Armenian respondents, I only spoke Eastern Armenian. However, when arranging interviews with Western donor organizations, I found it far more useful to send an email from my university address, with full signature, rather than to telephone in order to establish credentials and mark myself as ‘Western’. If I had to telephone a donor organization, I spoke in either English or Western Armenian with the staff. Otherwise, I found if I spoke Eastern Armenian, I was viewed as a local Armenian and immediately received the proverbial brush-off.

Outline of the Book In Chapter One, I examine the definitions and theories of civil society and democracy and discuss how and why civil society strengthening became an integral part of the democracy building agenda. I analyse the operationalization of civil society and how civil society was turned into projects that were implemented under the rubric of democracy building programmes. As discussions and analysis of the agency of the various actors is a recurrent theme throughout the book, in Chapter One, I also discuss the theories of power and agency I am using as part of my analysis of how democracy building programmes were manifested. In the following two chapters, I present extended case studies. In Chapter Two, I examine the 2003 elections and the role that civil society actors played during the elections as well as during the pre- and post-election periods, while in Chapter Three, I examine the 2002–3 anti-domestic violence campaign which was funded under USAID’s democracy and governance programme and was cast as a human rights and democracy issue. In Chapters Four, Five and Six, I analyse the various arguments that have been

Introduction

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suggested as to why democracy building has not been as successful as hoped by the euphoric planners of the early 1990s. In Chapters Four and Five, I consider the cultural and historical (i.e. Soviet legacy) arguments, respectively, while in Chapter Six, I consider the impact of foreign donors. Finally, in Chapter Seven, I bring together the various arguments and also consider emerging trends in Armenia as well as globally which have the potential to affect democracy building in the future.

1

Democracy, Civil Society and Power

Although the concept of civil society has roots in ancient Roman and Greek philosophy and the European Enlightenment, it was dissident intellectuals in Eastern Europe and Latin American activists who revitalized the concept in the 1980s to express their resistance to authoritarian rule and their aspirations for a more democratic polity with a continued role for state regulation. Beginning during the Enlightenment and extending until the present, philosophers and scholars including Adam Ferguson, Georg Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx have been concerned with understanding the structure and operation of the modern polity, the arenas for meaningful citizenship, the social contract through which freedom was exchanged for rights guaranteed under civil law and the relationship between citizens and the state (Cohen and Arato 1992; Foley and Hodgkinson 2003; Howell and Pearce 2002; Kaldor 2003; Keane 1998; Kumar 1993). There have been debates about the meaning of civil society and its relation to democracy which I will discuss in this chapter. My aim in this chapter is to examine the theoretical debates around the concepts of civil society and democracy and to consider how these complex and polysemic concepts were simplified, operationalized and turned into projects in the context of post-Soviet democracy building.

The Re-discovery of Civil Society As civil society was becoming a rallying cry against oppressive regimes in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and Africa, the concept was also becoming the subject of definitional debates, each emphasizing to a greater or lesser degree the normative dimension (i.e. the civility) of civil society. Of the various definitions, I prefer Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato’s formulation, which defines civil society as ‘a sphere of social interaction between economy and state, composed above all of the intimate sphere (especially family), the sphere of associations (especially voluntary organisations), social movements and forms of public communication’ (Cohen and Arato 1992: ix). Others have defined it as the space for rational, critical

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discourse (Habermas 1992), the medium through which one or many social contracts between individuals and the political and economic centres of power are negotiated and reproduced (Kaldor 2003: 44–5) or ‘ a complex and dynamic ensemble of legally protected non-governmental institutions that tend to be non-violent, self-organising, self-reflexive and permanently in tension with each other and with the state institutions that ‘‘frame’’, construct, and enable their activities’ (Keane 1998: 6). Given this flexibility of the term, even the Western scholars and policy makers who championed the idea with an evangelical zeal in the late 1980s and early 1990s appear to have been less than sure of what civil society actually was and whether they themselves had it (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999: vii). Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that we are already in a ‘post-civil society’ era, in which civil society is no longer a possibility (Hardt 1995: 27), while others dismiss it as an inherently polymorphous, inchoate and unspecifiable signifier (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000: 331). Gordon White writes, ‘Surely a concept with this degree of elusiveness should be sent back to its coffin in the crypt of the great church of political theory?’ (2004: 9). In spite of this ‘elusiveness’ or perhaps because of it (i.e. it is many things to many people), the idea of civil society was seen as critical to development, good governance and successful transition by Western donors1 and policy makers in the 1990s. Western donors embraced the idea that civil society was critical not only for democratization, but also for creating the foundation of a market economy and in assisting economic development. Western donors’ euphoria for civil society arose out of a combination of factors. These included the growing disillusion of Western governments and donors with state-led development in the post-colonial states in Africa and Asia, the ascendancy of the neo-liberal paradigm of the New Policy Agenda (also referred to as the Washington Consensus), which supported the roll-back of the state and the privatization of social service delivery, and the growing emphasis on democracy promotion in US foreign policy, which advocated greater civic participation and good governance. It was believed that, through the strengthening of civil society, ‘democratic forms’ could be transformed into ‘democratic substance’ (Carothers 2000). In this context, civil society promotion became a new mantra in both aid and diplomatic circles (Ottaway and Carothers 2000: 6) as donor agencies began setting up special civil society units, creating civil society liaison positions and establishing programmes to strengthen civil society (Howell and Pearce 2002). Since 1989, very large sums of money have been spent by Western donor agencies, private foundations and other actors on strengthening, building, nurturing and supporting the institutions of civil society, training civil society activists and funding their projects as a means of promoting democracy. The US has by far been the largest donor of democracy building and civil society strengthening programmes globally since the early 1990s (Finkel et al. 2006).

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Democracy, civil society and power

In the former socialist countries, the aims of democracy promotion and civil society strengthening programmes have been to assist the countries to make the transition from socialism as well as to support good governance, free and fair elections, human rights and the rule of law. In developing countries, in addition to these aims, it was hoped that democracy promotion and civil society strengthening would also enhance aid effectiveness and support poverty reduction efforts. In conflict or postconflict areas, democracy promotion is seen as a tool for preventing or reducing conflict (Kaldor et al. 2007: 110). In addition to all these aims, after 11 September 2001, democracy also came to be seen as vital in countering terrorism. Nearly two decades have passed since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and, presently, there is widespread acknowledgement that democracy promotion efforts in various regions, including the former Soviet Union, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, have failed to produce democratic regimes and that the anticipated vibrant, independent civil societies do not exist. Even in countries where democracy building efforts are considered to have been a success (e.g. Eastern Europe), there is growing cynicism towards civil society (Hann 2004: 47). Furthermore, there is a rising backlash against democracy promotion as the euphoria and optimism which accompanied the collapse of Communism and the end of the Cold War have been replaced by disillusionment. In spite of the emerging pessimism and backlash, donors and policy makers describe democracy as a universal value and right (Ferrerro-Waldner 2006; McFaul 2004: 148; UNDEF website). I discuss this growing global backlash in greater detail in Chapter Seven.

Civil Society Examined A Normative Concept? Although he did not use the term civil society, Alexis de Tocqueville was the first to attribute the importance of associationalism and self-organization for democracy (Kaldor 2003: 19). In the late twentieth century, de Tocqueville’s work became quite popular among some American scholars, including Robert Putnam, Francis Fukuyama and Larry Diamond, and it was subsequently also influential in US policy circles. The neo-Toquevillian position is that democracy is strengthened, not weakened, when it faces a vigorous civil society (Putnam 1994) and that successful transitions to democracy are possible only if civil society or ‘something like it’ either predates the transition or is established in the course of a transition from authoritarian rule (Perez-Diaz 1993: 40). For many of these scholars, the assumption that civil society has a positive and beneficial influence on democracy is a given. Putnam for instance refers to civil society organizations as ‘schools for democracy’ (Putnam 2000: 338). Diamond meanwhile argues that not only

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does civil society check and limit the power of the state, but it also strengthens and legitimates democracy (1999). The belief that civil society is a bulwark against the ‘monstrous state’ (Weffort 1989: 349), ‘unaccountable and unresponsive leaders’(Lovell 1991: 1) and a counterweight to state power (Rueschemeyer et al. 1992: 6) supported the emphasis on civil society promotion in US foreign aid programmes and what some describe as the ‘democracy aid industry’ (Encarnacion 2003: 709). In the former socialist countries, civil society was considered an important element for ‘reconstituting a new, postcommunist order’ (Miller 1992: 2) as the future democratic progress of these countries was to be based on whether the new states could create or recreate, as the case may be, civil society. As Lovell writes, in the eyes of Western policy makers, the key to the success of political freedoms in the Soviet Union ‘depended on the revival or reinvigoration of civil society’ (Lovell 1991: 14). While these neo-Tocquevillian theories linking civil society to democracy became a key element of the post-Cold War zeitgeist and subsequently quite fashionable among certain donor agencies, they have not always been universally accepted among academics. During the height of the Cold War, a number of American scholars argued against the virtues of associationalism (Buchanan et al. 1981; Huntington 1968; O’Donnell 1973). At that time, maintaining political stability and warding off the spread of communism were key preoccupations in American foreign policy. In the late 1960s and 1970s, ‘overly active’ societies were seen as being potentially harmful for democracy (Bermeo 2003: 11). As Nancy Bermeo writes, ‘Rather than being portrayed as the possible saviour of democracy, civil society is often cast in the role of spoiler: it is portrayed as sometimes asking too much – as spoiling the chances for democracy’s survival’ (2003: 11). Samuel Huntington, for instance, wrote about the dangers of politicized social forces and their ability to not only dominate the agenda but to disrupt political stability (Huntington 1968). He noted the difference between ‘institutionalized societies’ in which organized civil society reduced tensions and ‘praetorian societies’ in which civil society exacerbated tensions, arguing that an ‘excess of democracy’ and ‘increased popular participation’ could erode a government’s capacity to deal with issues (1968). He insisted that political institutions must come to dominate these ‘raw social forces’ in order to maintain the stability of society (Huntington 1968: 9). Others, meanwhile, saw the danger of rent seeking by civil society groups (Buchanan et al. 1981) and the threat that such groups posed to the governability of Western democracies through their disproportionate influence on policy making (Thurow 1980). Although these arguments have largely fallen out of favour, there are some scholars who critically interrogate the unquestioning tendency to associate the presence of an active civil society with the emergence of a democratic order. Some argue that democracy can be weakened by civil society (Berman 1997; Bermeo and Nord 2000), while others contend that the nature of civil

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Democracy, civil society and power

society is far more important than the existence of civil society alone (Bayart 1986; White 2004). Philip Nord, for instance, writes, ‘Civic activism may well be the bedrock of democratic life, but not all civil societies, however dense and vibrant, give birth to democratic polities (Nord 2000: xvi). Sheri Berman, in particular, has pointed out the dangers of an active civil society, which can lead to illiberal regimes. Through an analysis of the collapse of the Weimar Republic, Berman argues that the active participation of citizens in civil society led to the weakening of democracy and the rise of the Nazi party (Berman 1997: 408). She maintains that middle-class tension and frustration sparked the growth and activism in voluntary associations and that their participation subverted republican virtue (Berman 1997: 417). She also contends that what is needed is a shift away from the normative view of civil society to a more politically neutral view, in which civil society or associationalism is neither ‘inherently good nor inherently bad, but rather dependent’ on the wider political context (1997: 426–27). David Rieff also criticizes the ‘dogma holding that civil society strengthening is the key to creating and sustaining a healthy polity’ (Rieff 1999). He views the rise in popularity of civil society in the late 1980s and 1990s as being part of a wider trend in the privatization of the state and the shrinking of overseas aid budgets, and argues for a greater focus on the nation state than on civil society. Although these critiques raise questions and challenges for the normative view of civil society, it was the normative neo-Tocquevillian model discussed earlier that most influenced policy making in the 1990s. While this model was popular among donors, it should be recalled that the Latin American and Eastern European intellectuals, dissidents and activists were far more inspired and influenced by the ideas of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. For Gramsci, civil society was more than political economy. He questioned the economism of the Marxist definition and went on to invert Marx’s vision by arguing that ideologies come before institutions and that ideology is the force capable of shaping new histories (Bobbio 1988: 88). Gramsci placed the emphasis on civil society’s politically relevant cultural dimension (Cohen 1999: 214) and considered civil society as the space for the (re)production and contestation of hegemonic as well as counterhegemonic discourses. In both Eastern Europe and Latin America, civil society referred to autonomy and self-organization, with an emphasis on withdrawal from the state and the creation instead of ‘islands of civic engagement’ (Kaldor 2003: 193). In the 1980s, Ju¨rgen Habermas’ work on civil society also became quite influential in academic circles. Habermas’ notion of the communicative public sphere envisaged a space in which people could discuss matters of mutual concern and learn about facts, events and others’ opinions (Habermas 1996). In contrast to de Toqueville’s vision in which public opinion was treated more as ‘a compulsion toward conformity’, for Habermas, public communication had the potential to provide the space in which the general or public interest could be

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rationally and critically discussed (Habermas 1992: 133). For Habermas, the public sphere was the arena for rational critical debate. Although Habermas saw this potential in the ideal model of the public sphere, he also expressed concern about the colonization of the ‘lifeworld’ by late capitalism, which he believed undermined the progressive potential of the project (Howell and Pearce 2002: 57). Various critics of Habermas have argued against his conceptualization of the public sphere. Nancy Fraser, for instance, has suggested that, instead of one public sphere, there are many competing counter-publics which are challenging for attention (Fraser 1994). While Fraser’s primary critique is aimed at Habermas’ bourgeois conception of the public sphere, her argument is also a critique of theories of actually existing democracy, and she warns against the overzealous promotion of democracy to others. She writes, . . . theory should expose the limits of the specific form of democracy we enjoy in late-capitalist societies. Perhaps it can thereby help inspire us to try to push back those limits, while also cautioning people in other parts of the world against heeding the call to install them. (Fraser 1994) As Vladimir Tismaneanu (1990) argues, the goal of many Eastern European dissidents was not the reconstruction of civil society, but rather the de-totalitarianization and the restoration of a constitutional state based on pluralism and the universal observance of laws (Tismaneanu 1990: 2). The Czechoslovakian group Charter 77, for instance, was keen to operate independently of official and formal political institutions and sought to influence ‘public opinion’ rather than to exercise political power (Isaac 1999: 137). Charter 77 activists rejected formal political organization and advocated an ‘anti-political politics’ which did not seek to influence public policy for they believed that ‘ . . . every system, even the best, conceals within itself a tendency to elevate itself above people’ (Charter 77 Document no. 2/1985 cited in Isaac 1999: 137). Even Chartists such as Vaclav Havel, Isaac writes, believed that any political system, including a liberal democracy, could disempower and oppress people because, even within liberal democracies, there is a threat that the individual will become an obedient consumer who does not share in the economic decision making or have free participation in political life (Isaac 1999). It was hoped that, following the collapse of communism, civil society would provide the means for sustaining individual freedom and empowerment in a modern mass society, thereby keeping liberal democracy reinvigorated and honest (Isaac 1999: 144). However, as the transitions in Eastern Europe progressed, the radical democratic ideas and visions dissipated, giving way to more established and less revolutionary ones. In the former Soviet states where the debates around civil society had not developed to the same extent, the dissipation of the visions for reform occurred even more rapidly.

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Democracy, civil society and power

Since the early 1990s, American civil society strengthening programmes throughout the former socialist countries have excluded political associations and parties (i.e. political society) in an attempt to appear ‘non-partisan’ and to avoid accusations of ‘playing politics’ (Ottaway and Carothers 2000: 12). Instead, although donors have recently sought to expand the definition of civil society to include more actors than just NGOs, in practice, civil society was often equated with the development and growth of NGOs. As a result, the infusion of donor funding and focus on civil society strengthening throughout the 1990s led to an unprecedented and exponential growth in the numbers of NGOs worldwide. While NGOs are an important institutional actor within civil society, they are only a subset of civil society. Other civil society actors include trade unions, faith based organizations, grassroots and informal associations, self-help groups and others. Yet, in practice, in Armenia during the 1990s, civil society was equated with professionalized, advocacy or service delivery NGOs which were committed to pursuing a normative liberal agenda. This narrowing of the definition of civil society to professionalized advocacy and service delivery NGOs has been referred to as the ‘NGOization’ of civil society. It also marks the depoliticization and taming of the emancipatory potential of the concept. Academic debates continue today around the meaning and role of civil society and its relationship to democracy. A Western Concept? Another contentious area of debate has concerned the Western origin of civil society and the applicability of the concept to other parts of the world (Chambers and Kymlicka 2002; Glasius et al. 2004; Sajoo 2004). Anthropologists in particular have problematized the export of civil society by pointing out that it is not a purely theoretical or politically neutral idea and that it is an ideal of social organization that seems to bear little relation to the current realities of the exporting countries. They argue that civil society is an ideal that developed in historical conditions that cannot be replicated in any other part of the world today (Alaverz et al. 1998; Hann and Dunn 1996). These arguments have given rise to charges that civil society is a Eurocentric concept that is inapplicable in non-Western contexts. For instance, Ernest Gellner (1994) questions whether civil society can exist in Islamic societies. His opinion is shared by others, such as Elie Kedourie or Serif Mardin, who have also claimed that civil society is a Western dream which does not translate well into Islamic societies (Mardin 1995, quoted in Sajoo 2004) or that Muslims have nothing in their own political traditions that is compatible with Western notions of democracy (Kedourie 1992). Others such as Mahmood Mamdani and Partha Chatterjee have argued that not only is civil society a Eurocentric concept, but uncivil societies are a reaction to European civil society and a consequence of the violent colonial encounters (Kaldor 2003: 41).

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Clearly, questions should be asked about the relevance of the concept beyond Europe; however, to argue that simply because the idea was developed in Europe it is not relevant elsewhere is problematic, in that it embraces a very rigid and static view of the development of ideas. As Kaldor contends, ‘Ideas have no borders and the evolution of human knowledge is characterized by an endless borrowing and mixing of concepts and insights’ (Kaldor 2003: 44). Neera Chandhoke also rejects the claim that civil society is inapplicable beyond European contexts. While recognizing the development of the concept in Europe, she argues that it should rather be viewed as a ‘peculiarly modern concept’ rather than a solely European one that is associated with and presupposes a rational thinking individual who is concerned with oppression and domination in society. She writes, ‘Civil society is the home of this concerned individual, who cares about participation and debate and the limited state, and who cares about rights and mutual respect in society’ (Chandhoke 1995: 244). As I already argued in the Introductory chapter, although NGOs were a new institutional form in Armenia in the early 1990s, there is a longer heritage of civil society organizing and activism which dates to the nineteenth century. Although there has been an active debate about the applicability of the concept beyond Europe, the debate concerning the development of the concept within Europe and the US has been less vocal. While Western donors vigorously promoted a particular model of civil society abroad, there was often little reflection on the state of civil society domestically. Instead, there was a ‘romanticization of civil society’, particularly among American donors and policy makers, based on ‘their mythicized Tocquevillian conception of their own society’ (Carothers 1999: 249). Yet, if we consider the health of contemporary American civil society, there are concerns that declining civic engagement and participation (i.e. ‘bowling alone’) are weakening and that this has implications for American democracy (Putnam 2000). Theda Skocpol and Morris Fiorina (1999) examine civic engagement in the US and identify the growing belief that democracy is weakening in the US. While Putnam reduces this weakening to the declining participation in civic associations and contrasts it with an actively engaged citizenry in the 1950s, Skocpol and Fiorina embrace a more critical stance and argue that civil society in the US is not necessarily weakening due to declining participation in local associations alone, but because of a process of ‘reinvention’ which has included a decline in the number of and participation in local membership organizations with concurrent growth in the number and strength of advocacy groups, based in Washington, DC, or New York, that have weak links to communities elsewhere in the country (Skocpol and Fiorina 1999). They maintain that ordinary Americans are being left by the wayside in this new, ‘oligarchic’ American civic universe which is populated by elite professional managers and where ‘doing with’ others has been replaced by ‘doing for’ others. In this new civic universe, individuals no

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Democracy, civil society and power

longer experience a shared sense of citizenship and engagement in community life (Skocpol 1999: 500). Jean Cohen questions Putnam’s assessment of the 1950s as the ‘paragon of civicness’, adding that it should not be forgotten that the 1950s were the ‘heyday of McCarthysim, institutionalised racial segregation, and exclusion of women from a wide range of economic and political institutions and associations’ (Cohen 1999: 215). Similar to Skocpol and Fiorina, Cohen argues that the concept of civil society, albeit being actively promoted abroad, has lost its progressive theoretical importance domestically in the US. The concept, she maintains, has been seized by neoconservatives and has come to mean the state’s non-interference in voluntary associations (Cohen 1999). Before turning to the discussion of how civil society was operationalized as part of the democracy building agenda, I briefly discuss the various definitions around democracy.

Democracy Similar to civil society, democracy is a contested concept. There is abundant scholarly literature available on democracy, and there are various definitions of and approaches to democracy (Beetham 1993; Green 1993; Held 2006; Pateman 1970; Schumpeter 1947; Whitehead 2002; Young 2000). My aim is not to cover the entire body of literature on democracy or democratization; rather, I simply wish to highlight the debates surrounding the meanings and understandings of democracy in order to show how, despite its complexity, the concept was simplified in order to facilitate its promotion globally. The minimalist or procedural definition of democracy is identified as originating with Joseph Schumpeter (1947), who argued that democracy at the conceptual level is the existence of citizens holding their rulers accountable and the existence of procedures by which they do so. These approaches are very influential in policy circles and have been used to measure countries’ transitions to democracy. The main argument for using the minimalist or procedural definition of democracy is that this provides the researcher with a useful tool for empirical research (Uhlin 2006: 16) and that formal institutions are easier to measure and evaluate (Finkel et al. 2006: 6–7). This narrow approach, which focuses on the formal institutions of democracy, does not consider social and economic inequalities and how they affect participation, access and decision making. Although this model fell out of favour among democratic theorists, it has remained popular among transitologists (Coles 2004; Dryzek and Holmes 2002: 7). The problem with the procedural definition is that it ignores questions of inclusion, participation, deliberation and diversity. Proponents of the broader, substantive conception of democracy argue that it is important to look beyond the formal institutions and to focus on the impact of structural

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inequalities, power relations and struggles by popular movements. Iris Marion Young, for instance, focuses on inclusion within democratic practices and argues that the normative legitimacy of a democratic decision depends on the degree to which those affected by it have been included in the decisionmaking processes and have had an opportunity to influence the outcomes (Young 2000: 6). Mary Kaldor and Ivan Vejvoda examine democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. In doing so, they differentiate between procedural (minimal) and substantive democracy arguing that, although procedural democratic institutions and mechanisms are necessary and in fact represent an a priori safeguard against the abuses of power and for the development of substantive democracy, local variants of democracy are being created in the Central East European countries (1997: 63). While this may be the case, it is also important to recognize that there are currently many ‘managed’ democracies in which the procedural elements are present but where substantive democracy is absent. ‘Managed democracy’ (upravlyayemaya demokratiya) is a phrase that was introduced by the Russian authorities in the early 2000s and is now increasingly used to describe the situation in other former Soviet states such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. It refers to a situation in which the formal/procedural institutions and practices (e.g. elections) of democracies exist but are controlled and managed by the authorities (Colton and McFaul, 2003).

Operationalizing Democracy and Civil Society in the Post-Socialist Countries While scholars continue to debate the definitions of civil society and democracy as well as the virtues, relationship and contributions of civil society to democracy, for nearly two decades, Western donors have been actively supporting civil society strengthening programmes driven by the belief that the relationship between civil society and democracy is natural and inevitable (Howell and Pearce 2002: 51). Inspired by neo-Tocquevillian thinking, it was believed that through financial and technical assistance to civil society, democracy could be built. When conducting interviews with donors in Armenia in 2002–3, I was struck by the fact that none of my respondents from donor agencies who were engaged in democracy promotion programmes ever questioned whether civil society should be strengthened as part of their democracy building efforts; the question was always how it could best be done. In the early 1990s, ‘transition to democracy’, Ken Jowitt argues, became an oft-repeated, ‘fetish-like’ phrase among certain scholars and policy makers (Jowitt 1999: 214). Katherine Verdery (1996) contends that, since the demise of communism, Western capitalist societies have come to believe that they have a monopoly on truth and can therefore dispense wisdom about how to build the ‘proper’ forms of democracy and capitalism. The

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‘transition to democracy’ project was conceptualized as being composed of two, equally important components (i.e. building democratic institutions and a market economy) which were to be promoted jointly (Howell and Pearce 2002; Lewis 1992:2). The onus was on post-socialist societies to rapidly ‘catch up’ and to simultaneously build capitalism, a new social structure, democracy, the nation, civil society, political society and new relations between the state and the new international system of power and money (Bunce 2000: 229). The transitions opened the door for ‘powerful international actors’ who began to play a very public role in policy making, raising questions about the sovereignty of leadership (Bermeo 2000: 249), not to mention the role of civil society. Given that the US government, through either official agencies (e.g. USAID or the US Information Service) or its subcontractors and grantees, was the largest donor of democracy building programmes in Armenia and in other former socialist countries, the programmes that were implemented in these countries promoted an American model of democracy and civil society. The US has been engaged in democracy promotion since the 1980s through a focus on election monitoring; civil society strengthening became a significant part of US foreign policy following the collapse of the socialist regimes (Ottaway and Carothers 2000). Since then, civil society assistance has come to be considered ‘a centrepiece of America’s international outreach’ (US Senate 2006: 1) and ‘a matter of principle’ (Tobias 2007). This position is reflected in the fact that, since the early 1990s, more money has been spent on civil society assistance than on any other sectors of USAID democracy assistance2 (Finkel et al. 2006: 33). From 1990 to 2003, most USAID democracy assistance was sent to countries in Eurasia (US$5.77 million), with the lowest levels of aid going to Africa (US$1.29 million) and Asia (US$1.29 million) (Finkel et al. 2006: 33–4). US-funded civil society assistance has largely been directed at NGOs, because the USAID position in the early 1990s was to provide vigorous support for local NGOs, which would ‘be a critical element of civil society strengthening’ (US Agency for International Development 1999: v). Although the earlier strong focus on NGOs has shifted somewhat and civil society is now defined more broadly, the assumption persists that ‘a strong civil society is desirable and makes democratic practices and traditions more likely to flourish’ (US Agency for International Development 1999: xi). As US Senator Joseph Biden stated in the 2006 Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on NGOs, ‘we must understand that an election does not a democracy make . . . A democracy must rest on the foundation of a strong civil society’ (Biden 2006, emphasis added). At the same committee hearing, Ambassador Mark Palmer argued that ‘achieving a 100% democratic world is possible over the next quarter century – but only with radical strengthening of our primary frontline fighters of freedom’ (2006, emphasis added). Palmer characterized these ‘frontline fighters of freedom’ (i.e. NGOs) not only as having assisted ‘a massive expansion in freedom’ but as being the

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‘heirs of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Lech Walesa’ (Palmer 2006). While few scholars of civil society would describe NGOs in such laudatory language, such thinking has fuelled democracy promotion efforts since the late 1980s. Funding in this area increased following 11 September 2001 when democracy promotion became a distinct national security concern and a ‘key objective of US foreign policy’ (USAID website). This, the critics charge, led to the Americanization of the debate around civil society and democracy (Howell and Pearce 2002) and, subsequently, to the promotion of a single (i.e. American) model of civil society that tended to ignore other traditions and understandings (Hann and Dunn 1996; Parekh 2004: 22). Instead of supporting the development of civil society, this model led to the operationalization of civil society which engendered the phenomenal growth of professionalized advocacy and service delivery NGOs. Indeed, as I have already argued, as the transitions progressed in all the former socialist countries, the radical democratic ideas and visions of civil society that had emerged in the late 1980s dissipated, giving way to more established and less revolutionary neo-liberal ones. Subsequently, civil society became a project that was implemented in the name of democracy building (Sampson 2002). While some have referred to this growth in the number of organizations and the robustness of NGO sectors around the world as a ‘global associational revolution’ (Salamon and Anheier 1997), others refer to this as the depoliticization or technicization of civil society (Foley and Hodgkinson 2003: xx; Howell and Pearce 2002: 2; Kaldor 2003). As Thomas Carothers writes, Democracy promoters pass through these countries [in Africa, Asia and the Middle East] on hurried civil society assessment missions and declare that ‘very little civil society exists’ because they have found only a handful of Westernised NGOs devoted to non-partisan public-interest advocacy work on the national side. (Carothers 1999: 248) As donor-defined civil society (i.e. professional NGOs) did not exist in many post-socialist countries or was believed to have been tainted by Communist ideologies, donors engaged in a process of building society from scratch (Mandel 2002: 282). In this context, ‘master solutions’ and ‘one-size-fits-all concepts and strategies’ were applied to the post-socialist region (Hemment 2007: 10). This led to the promotion of a particular model of civil society and democracy that encouraged the creation of what I refer to as ‘genetically engineered civil societies’ (Ishkanian 2007). With the injection of external funding (the growth hormones), these genetically engineered civil societies experienced spectacularly rapid growth that would have not occurred organically. Similar to genetically modified crops, they also began to colonize and squeeze out all indigenous competitors, becoming the dominant type in their environment. In the process, in Armenia as well as in many other post-socialist countries, existing

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civil society lost its diversity and was reduced to professionalized NGOs that were engaged in advocacy or service delivery and that supported, in theory if not in practice, liberal Western values. Through this approach, which has also been termed ‘institutional modelling’ (Carothers 2000), organizations and actors were rewarded on the basis of their success in imitating that particular model and its associated discourses. In Armenia, NGOs are known as public organizations (hasarakakan kazmakerputyun). NGOs register with the Ministry of Justice and are governed under the Republic of Armenia Civil Code (Kagkhatsiakan Orenskirk), which came into effect on 1 December 2001 (Professionals for Civil Society Armenian NGO site ‘a’). In order to register, a NGO must have more than two members and it must hold a founding meeting to elect its leaders and oversight (verahskogh) committee. The person designated to register the NGO submits the documentation, which includes an official registration application, minutes from the founding meeting, the passports of those present at the founding meeting and board members, two copies of the bylaws, and pays the registration fee (10,000 Armenian drams).3 Once registered with the Ministry of Justice, Armenian NGOs are also required to register with the Department for Revenue Collection and the State Social Fund (sotsialkan himnatram). Upon receipt of a tax code from the Department of Revenue Collection, the NGO can establish a bank account and begin operating as a legal entity. According to Article 8 of the Law on Profit Tax, Armenian NGOs are exempt from paying profit tax only on grants, donations and membership fees. Both NGOs and foundations may engage in entrepreneurial activities; however, NGOs are entitled to do this only through participating in or creating a separate commercial organization, whereas foundations may do so without creating a separate commercial entity (Professionals for Civil Society Armenian NGO site ‘a’). While western donors’ approach did lead to extraordinary growth in the number of NGOs that were engaged in lobbying or advocacy work, it did not generate broad based participation or public debate. Subsequently groups such as nationalist organizations and activist groups, which did not replicate these practices and discourses, were ignored or marginalized by donors and soon came to view themselves as real civil society, in contrast to the donor created and supported NGOs. Throughout the post-socialist countries, there are consistently low levels of organizational membership (Howard 2003: 2), participation (Celichowski 2004: 77) and growing cynicism towards the concept of civil society (Hann 2004: 47). The following quote, cited by Timothy Garton Ash from an Eastern European colleague, sums up the projectization which occurred in the 1990s: ‘We dreamed of civil society and got NGOs’ (Ash 2004). This phenomenon exists throughout the world. For instance, in Latin America, as Jenny Pearce (2004) discusses, this led to divisions between organizations that considered themselves builders and those that considered themselves critics of democracy building. The critics (social organizations) not only view the builders (professionalized NGOs) as

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having been co-opted by the state, but also consider them as advocates of the neo-liberal economic agenda (Pearce 2004: 63). Sabine Freizer meanwhile differentiates between the donor-supported ‘neo-liberal’ and the ‘communal’ civil societies that have developed in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and discusses the lack of mixing of goals and approaches between these parallel forms (Freizer 2004). She points out the lack of grassroots support or recognition for such neo-liberal organizations. Such developments have led to discussions about the unintended consequences of civil society strengthening programmes in many parts of the world and concerns that NGOs are donor driven, upwardly accountable and disconnected from their own communities and constituencies (Abramson 1999; Adamson 2002; Akiner 2004; Bruno 1997; Glasius et al. 2004; Hann 2004; Helms 2003; Hemment 2004; Henderson 2003; Howell and Pearce 2002; Ishkanian 2003, 2004; Mendelson 2002; McMahon 2002; Pearce 2004; Obadare 2004; Richter 2002; Roy 2004; Sampson 2002; Wedel 2001). Seeding Civil Society in Armenia In Armenia during the 1990s, democracy was defined by Western donors, policy makers, international NGOs and experts as encompassing free and fair elections, civic participation in decision making, a vibrant civil society, rule of law and good governance. Since 1992, the US government, as the largest donor of democracy building programmes in Armenia, has provided over US$50 million in support for the Democracy Program in Armenia alone (US Agency for International Development 2002: 42). The USAID Democracy Program is aimed at developing ‘ . . . more transparent, accountable, and responsive democratic governance’, and technical assistance and grants have been given to increase citizen participation in local and national government, develop NGOs and independent media, promote civic education in secondary schools, strengthen local government and the legislature and support legal reform (US Agency for International Development 2002: 32). The US Information Agency booklet, What is Democracy, which was translated and published in Armenian (Inch e Zhoghovurtavarutyunuh) in 1992, was distributed among NGOs and schools as a guidebook for understanding the meaning and practice of democracy. According to this booklet, democracy is a ‘set of ideas and principles about freedom’, ‘a set of practices and procedures’, but also a pluralism or diversity in which the ‘essence of democratic action is the active, freely chosen participation of its citizens in the public life of their community and nation’ (Cincotta 1992). These definitions of democracy as including free and fair elections, civil society participation, good governance and the protection of civil and political human rights have shaped the policies of US official assistance programmes and determined the types of projects and organizations that have received support over the past two decades in Armenia.

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In an effort to jumpstart the development of NGOs, the USAID funded the opening of the Armenian Assembly of America’s NGO Training and Resource Centre (NGOC) in Yerevan in 1994.4 The establishment of the NGOC was the watershed event in the development of Armenia’s NGO sector because it provided Armenians with a template of how to create a non-governmental organization and how to seek funding from donors in order to sustain that organization. The NGOC’s primary mission in the 1990s was, Supporting individuals and organizations in Armenia as they endeavour to construct the basic building blocks of democracy . . . . By serving vulnerable populations and advocating for citizens’ rights, non-governmental organizations are essential agents of change in creating and strengthening civil societies. (NGOC website) Throughout the 1990s, the NGOC was involved in both the promotion of civil society (i.e. NGOs) and the building of a democratic society in Armenia. According to a NGOC training handbook, ‘Democracy is based on the idea that ordinary people are entitled to participate in decisions that affect their lives’ (NGOC 1997: 5). The handbook authors argue that a ‘key factor’ in democracy building is the existence of a vibrant civil society and that NGOs are ‘the organized voice of the people’ because they allow citizens to ‘work collectively to solve their own problems, channel popular opinion and prevent government encroachments’ (NGOC 1997: 6). Until recently, the NGOC received the bulk of its funding from USAID and was able to provide a large number of services to NGOs. These included educational and training seminars to NGOs on capacity building, member training, partnership development, small grants programmes, media outreach, electronic communications, technical assistance, information and research, and legal reform and awareness. The NGOC also worked to build awareness about Armenia’s NGOs through a comprehensive website and by issuing various publications, including the Armenian NGO News in Brief, NGO Gazette and NGO Profiles. In addition to the training seminars and publications, the NGOC also offered registered NGOs access to telephone, facsimile and electronic mail services. Since April 2005, the NGOC has been registered with the Republic of Armenia Ministry of Justice as a local NGO and is no longer a project of the Washington-based Armenian Assembly of America. However, its objective continues to be the promotion of democracy through civil society development. In addition to NGOC, the USAID also funded many other US based organizations to implement civil society strengthening and democracy building programmes. These include the US based World Learning’s NGO Strengthening Programme which ran from 2000 to 2004. The objective of the World Learning programme was to introduce the use of advocacy

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campaigns by local NGOs. And from 2004 to 2007, USAID funded another US based NGO, the Academy for Educational Development, to implement the Youth and Community Action Programme aimed at supporting grassroots civic activism. Other bilateral and multilateral donor agencies, including the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Swiss Development Agency, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and foundations including the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the German Friedrich Ebert and Friedrich Naumann Foundations have also provided funding for different types of civil society strengthening projects in Armenia but to a lesser extent than the US. While democratization is by no means a new departure for the EU or European bilateral donors, Richard Gillespie and Richard Youngs contend that the US began focusing more systematically on democratization slightly earlier than the EU and that effective co-ordination of EU democracy promotion efforts has been conspicuously absent (Gillespie and Youngs 2002). They maintain that, until the late 1990s, the lack of mechanisms for marrying national initiatives to overall common guidelines on democracy presented a serious challenge to effective concerted European action (Gillespie and Youngs 2002: 6). Discussions on transatlantic democracy building efforts have intensified following 11 September 2001 (Schmid and Braizat 2006: 4) but, as Jeffrey Kopstein points out, following the war in Iraq, many European leaders and the European public remain suspicious of democracy promotion, interpreting it as ‘a repackaged commitment to the unilateral use of force as well as justification for war and occupation’ (Kopstein 2006: 85). Presently, the EU is intensifying its democracy promotion programmes. Of the three strands of EU democracy promotion, which include (1) enlargement, (2) the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) and (3) the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), the EIDHR is the EU structure that most specifically targets civil society. Created in 1994 and with a current annual budget of E100–30 million, the EIDHR supports human rights, democratization and conflict prevention activities. EIDHR can act entirely independently of national governments in partner countries and can work with a wider ranger of actors, including parliaments, political foundations and civil society organizations, but it has been criticized for failing to have a real impact because it lacks administrative flexibility, requires long lead times and tends to favour the capital-based NGOs, known as the ‘capital darlings’ (European Foundation for Democracy 2006: 6). A survey of European bilateral and multilateral democracy promotion policies from 2001 to 2006 by the Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior (FRIDE) also found that there was sufficient complexity and diversity to make it difficult to speak of ‘the European approach’ (Youngs 2006: 25, emphasis in original). Of the seven countries

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Democracy, civil society and power

surveyed (Denmark, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the UK), there was variation in the levels of ‘democracy-related competence’ and ‘manpower allocated specifically to democracy promotion responsibilities remained limited’, with Sweden having the most clearly articulated democracy promotion policies (Youngs 2006: 16–17). While various European bilateral donors, including the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (SIDA), actively support and engage with civil society actors through their programmes, they tend to view democracy as a means by which to eliminate or overcome poverty (DFID website ‘a’ and ‘b’) or as a means for achieving peace, justice and human rights (SIDA 1997). Democracy is not discussed as a matter of principle or as a centrepiece of policy, as in the US case discussed earlier. Moreover, there is relatively less focus on civil society as a key pillar of democracy promotion among European bilateral and multilateral donors compared with the US. Indeed, organizations such as the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which focus heavily on civil society promotion, were described as ‘pushy’ by some respondents in the FRIDE report (Youngs 2006: 18). Even the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights is far more focused on legislative processes, legal training, rule of law and political parties than on civil society. Among private foundations engaged in civil society and democracy building, the Open Society Institute’s Assistance Foundation Armenia (OSIAF – Armenia) has been a major donor of democracy building and civil society development. The Open Society Institute, which is also referred to as the Soros foundation among NGOs in Armenia, has provided funding to local NGOs and other civil society organizations promoting democratic governance, human rights and economic, legal and social reform. Its civil society programme is geared to fostering democratic processes and the rule of law, to assist in the protection of human rights and the interests of vulnerable groups, to contribute to the spread and advancement of liberal ideas and democratic values, as well as to encourage active citizen participation in the decision-making process (OSI website). Following the mass demonstrations in 2003 and 2004 that were sparked by the 5 March 2003 presidential elections, the OSIAF provided support in 2004 ‘to create political space for civil society groups to formulate alternative policies and conduct advocacy activities’ in response to the ‘[Armenian] government’s centralization of political power and stifling of discourse’ in 2004 (OSI website). In order to accomplish this goal, OSIAF initiated an informal and open alliance of NGOs and individuals called the Partnership for Open Society. This Partnership ‘was initiated by an active group of civil society actors to empower civil society to deal with a wide range of issues and to respond to all the challenges and developments in the social and political realm of the country’.

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Following the so-called colour revolutions in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), OSI’s work in the former Soviet states drew criticism from a number of governments in the region for interfering in what were deemed internal political developments. During a research trip to Armenia in 2005, I heard civil society activists speaking about government officials’ fear of ‘Sorosizatsiya’ (Sorosization) occurring in Armenia. ‘Sorosizatsiya’ refers to the process by which local NGOs are supported by the OSI, or similar Western organizations, to promote political demonstrations and regime change. The work of OSI and other donor organizations, particularly those engaged in democracy building such as the National Endowment for Democracy, is becoming more complicated following the colour revolutions. Unlike in the late 1980s when civil society and NGOs were locally hailed as the heroes of development and democratization, today they are increasingly being portrayed by post-Soviet governments as unaccountable, meddling opportunists, foreign agents or ‘puppets’ (BBC News 2006a). As of November 2007, no other colour revolutions have materialized. Some political analysts and scholars have begun to question whether the regime changes brought about by these revolutions in fact led to further democratic reforms and better governance in these countries or simply the continuation of older patterns of rule (Beissinger 2006). I discuss the growing backlash against democracy building and civil society in greater detail in Chapter Seven. Measuring Impact Once the definitions and rules of the game were made clear, Armenia and the other countries of the former Soviet Union were evaluated according to how much progress they made in their transitions. For instance, the US based think tank Freedom House, which annually publishes Nations in Transit, focuses on the political developments in the twenty-eight former Socialist states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union by evaluating the countries based on a checklist of questions pertaining to political rights and civil liberties that are derived in large measure from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The combined average of each country’s political rights and civil liberties ratings determines an overall status of Free, Partly Free or Not Free (Freedom House website). USAID meanwhile publishes an annual NGO Sustainability Index, which measures the viability and impact of NGOs in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The practice of measuring and categorising the development of postSoviet nations is also common among some scholars of post-socialist countries. While some use the Freedom House terminology (Nodia 2002a: 201), others employ different taxonomies (Brzezinkski 2002; Carothers 2004; Fairbanks 2002). What links them all are their attempts to quantify qualitative developments. While such measurements are certainly useful in terms

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Democracy, civil society and power

of determining aid allocations and investments, they fail to capture, let alone explain, the complexity and at times contradictory nature of transition processes. They also tend to focus on quantitative instead of qualitative developments. For instance, when the NGOC opened in 1994, there were only forty-four local NGOs registered with the Armenian Ministry of Justice. By 1996, there were over 1,500 and, as of June 2007, there are over 4,000 registered NGOs. Considering that Armenia has a population of 3.2 million, this is a very large number of NGOs. It is important to note that, although NGOs must register to become legally operational, there is no requirement for them to cancel their registration when they cease operating. Hence, anyone who is working with Armenian NGOs and is familiar with the sector knows that the large numbers are not a true reflection of the vibrancy of the sector. Indeed, most of the work or activism is on the part of less than 500 NGOs throughout the country. There are no provisions for de-registering a NGO and, consequently, quite a number of Armenian NGOs that cease operating due to the lack of funds never bother to remove their names from the Ministry’s register. As Marc Morje´ Howard points out, throughout the former socialist states, there is a greater tendency to focus on the ‘birth rates’ of NGOs and a lack of attention (and I would add data) to the disappearance or ‘death rates’ of organizations that have ceased functioning. The ‘pseudo-existence’ of NGOs, he adds, does not indicate corresponding levels of increased participation by ordinary citizens (Howard 2003: 52). In spite of this disconnect, the growth in the number of NGOs is frequently cited by donors as a sign of success because it is far easier to count the number of organizations and to cite increased numbers as evidence of the impact and success of donor programmes rather than to attempt to illustrate success by identifying changes in attitudes and behaviours. For instance, the ‘Lessons in Implementation: The NGO Story’ report published by USAID in 1999 examines the lessons learned in ‘building civil society in Central and Eastern Europe and the New Independent States’. The report acknowledges that the immense amount of aid led to an ‘explosive growth of local NGOs’ (US Agency for International Development 1999: 3), citing growth as one of the eight success indicators.5 But what they fail to mention is how many of these NGOs are active. It should be noted that the need to demonstrate success is driven by the pressures on all actors engaged in democracy building, whether donors or recipients, to demonstrate effectiveness and to give account to their own funders.

Agency and Power So far, I have described the role of donor agencies in defining and operationalizing civil society and NGOs, but I have not considered the role of local NGOs or individuals. Although donor policies are indeed an important

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factor, I do not mean to disregard the agency and the role of the NGO leaders and members who, for various reasons, ranging from a sincere belief in the values of civil society and democracy to the more banal, pragmatic need to make a living, embraced the models, discourses, ideologies and projects promoted by donors. On the contrary, I am very much interested in how they were engaged in the democracy building endeavour. In the context of economic upheaval, impoverishment and crises in Armenia, of course there was some opportunistic use of aid funding. The misuse of aid money is hardly a shocking revelation; however, the actual misappropriation or perceived misuse of funds intended for democracy and civil society promotion not only has a negative impact on how NGOs are perceived (such as corrupt and opportunistic), but also on how the ideas they promote are received. I recognize the diversity of civil society actors’ motivations and I do not wish in any way to portray all NGO actors as being driven by economic incentives. However, the fact remains that, in the 1990s, creating or joining NGOs became an economic survival strategy for countries as far apart as Albania and Zambia, thanks to the influx of donor aid (Celichowski 2004: 75; Ishkanian 2004; Mandel 2002: 286; Obadare 2004: 159; Sampson 2002: 307). These so-called ‘grant-eaters’ (Ishkanian 2003: 29), ‘civil society entrepreneurs’(Obadare 2004: 159) or ‘profiteers’ (Kaldor et al. 2007: 111) cashed in on the ‘gold rush’ by engaging in civil society strengthening programmes. Of course, individuals adapt, manipulate and negotiate ideologies, discourses and projects to fit their needs but, within the context of aid encounters, they very rarely publicly question the validity of these approaches and ideas, even if they do so privately and off the record. In order to examine the agency of the actors engaged in democracy building, I draw on practice theory (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1979; Ortner 1990, 2006). Pierre Bourdieu examined the ‘dialectics of the internalization of externality and the externalization of internality’ (1977: 72). He identified the concept of habitus, a system of lasting and transposable dispositions, appreciations and actions, as the link between the external or objective structures and the internal cognitive structures which they produce and which in turn reproduce them (Bourdieu 1977). Civil society actors, I argue, are embedded in webs of social relations and structures which influence their decisions and behaviours and, in turn, they influence those relations and structures. Without denying the agency of Armenian civil society actors, I recognize that the implications of the asymmetrical relations between the foreign and Armenian actors engaged in democracy building encounters cannot be overlooked, given that the power inequalities inherent in these encounters affect the definition of concepts, the production of knowledge, the circulation of information, decision making and, subsequently, the outcomes of projects and campaigns. A focus on power and agency therefore both recognizes the power geometries and also opens up opportunities for challenging the cultural and historical determinist arguments that

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I discuss in Chapters Four and Five respectively. My aim is to examine how certain knowledges, discourses and practices that were defined as essential to democracy building were introduced, presented, distributed and taught. Throughout the book, I not only consider how different forms of discourse are produced and maintained as authoritative systems (Asad 1973), but also how they are manipulated and used in different ways by different actors for their own purposes. By focusing on the agency of all actors engaged in democracy building (i.e. NGOs, donors, etc.), I seek to move away from the tendency to depersonalize or ignore the agency of Western actors (particularly donors) involved in these encounters because, as John and Jean Comaroff write, ‘ . . . the West and the rest, long locked in historical embrace, cannot but be interrogated together’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992: 45). Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams who examined the workings of power and how actors were to some degree in the grip of hegemonies (1977), Sherry Ortner considers how actors subvert hegemonies. Such a recognition of actors’ agency does not, however, assume that actors are free, unfettered individuals; it is important to consider the social embeddedness of actors as well as how actors are enmeshed within relations of inequality and competition in which ‘some have more and others less’ power and influence (Ortner 2006: 151–2). Through a focus on power and practice in my examination of democracy building, I consider how actors find ways to adapt, resist, evade or manipulate events to meet their needs. Recognizing how actors both manipulate their culture and are in turn constrained by that culture (Ortner 1990: 63), I am also concerned with the structures or institutions that constrain action. In analysing individuals’ use of power, F. G. Bailey (2003) contends that there are multiple and sometimes even contradictory structures which co-exist in social reality. Individuals use different structures, sometimes sequentially, sometimes simultaneously, to make sense of the world and to pursue their aims. Structures become repertories or like cards in a game which actors use strategically and selectively to pursue their aims and to meet their objectives (Bailey 2003: 176). In examining the strategic uses of structures and actors’ agency, I also draw on Michel Foucault’s work on power and governmentality. Foucault defined truth as ‘a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements’ (Foucault 1984: 74) and argued that truth is linked to systems of power which it produces and sustains and is in turn affected by power which induces and extends it. Foucault conceptualized power as circulating through society and in the everyday statements and practices that people use to observe, evaluate and discipline each other (Foucault 1980: 98). According to Foucault, an individual is not simply a conduit for the circulation of power but also the product of power (Foucault 1980: 98). He called this regime biopower and maintained that the subject (or body) was disciplined through workshops, schools, prisons and hospitals. Biopower is a form of power that regulates

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social life from its interior, following it, interpreting it, absorbing it and rearticulating it. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe international NGOs in the current period of globalization as ‘powerful pacific weapons of the new world order,’ adding, ‘These NGOs conduct ‘‘just wars’’ without arms, without violence, without borders. Like the Dominicans in the late medieval period and the Jesuits at the dawn of modernity, these groups strive to identify universal needs and defend human rights. Their modern universalism operates both at the level of rights and at the level of the most basic needs of life’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 36). Drawing on Foucault’s work, Hardt and Negri portray international NGOs as part of the biopower of empire, in which they are the ‘capillary ends of the contemporary networks of power’, because their political action rests on a universal moral call (Hardt and Negri 2000: 313). They argue against unequivocal acceptance of a global order and ask who will decide on the definitions of justice and order. Applying this to democracy promotion and civil society building, questions have been posed about the definitions of civil society and democracy by activists as well as government officials in different countries in which democracy promotion programmes have been implemented. In particular, the narrow equation of civil society to professionalized advocacy and service delivery NGOs has been problematized. In the context of democracy building in Armenia, many of the discourses and practices that were associated with the Communist past were considered illegitimate by donors and foreign experts or trainers who were instrumental in introducing the discourses, institutions and practices of civil society and democracy. Instead, new ideas, discourses, skills and practices were transferred and taught through capacity building and training exercises, which I discuss in greater detail in Chapter Four, and a new regime(s) of truth was introduced and promoted. Hence, the individuals who participated in the training programmes and seminars learned particular skills, but alongside the skills such as grant writing and fund-raising, they also learned the symbolic orders and discourses of the NGO world. By mastering NGOspeak or project speak, they learned how to communicate effectively with donors (Gal and Kligman 2000: 96; Sampson 1996: 123). This became an indispensable skill as NGO members discovered the importance of using certain key phrases in their grant proposals to present their organizations, projects and objectives as a good match with the funding priorities of donors. Yet, these NGO actors were far from being passive or docile subjects who were disciplined. On the contrary, while embracing the new knowledge, institutions and structures, they continued to draw on older knowledge, patterns of behaviour and networks of association, as well as structures.

Conclusion The process of democracy building in Armenia during the 1990s was based on particular definitions of civil society and democracy which were far

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Democracy, civil society and power

removed from the emancipatory vision of civil society envisaged by dissidents and activists. By equating civil society to professionalized advocacy and service delivery NGOs, donors began to promote the rise of NGOs through which they could claim that they were working to strengthen Armenia’s transition to a democracy and free market economy. The technologies of introducing these new institutional forms included the capacity building and training of trainer seminars which transmitted the new discourses, models and ideas that were later reinforced through the awarding of grants to those NGOs which most closely replicated those discourses and models. NGOs were a new institutional form in Armenia and, while their numbers have increased dramatically (from forty-four in 1994 to over 4,000 in 2007), it is questionable whether they have been able to develop a vibrant civil society or democracy. While recognizing that the nature of civil society is far more important than the existence of civil society alone (Bayart 1986; White 2004), I find that civil society as an arena for critical, rational discourse and debate is an important component of democracy building.

2

Civil Society Participation in Elections

Since the early 1990s, elections have been an important component in the democracy building programmes implemented and supported by Western donors in the former socialist states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. After explaining donors’ focus on and support for local civil society participation in elections, I examine the work of local human rights NGOs, independent media organizations and a youth movement led by students from Yerevan State University in the 2003 presidential elections and the 2004 aftermath. Based on participant observation, interviews with human rights NGO leaders, youth movement leaders, journalists and government officials as well as the analysis of local publications and websites, I demonstrate how civil society participation in elections is recognized and presented by donors and local human rights NGOs as a critical element in Armenia’s democracy building efforts. Finally, I analyse the government’s resistance to civil society participation in the elections and civil society responses to that resistance. I consider the implications of this resistance.

Civil Society and Elections Elections have been used as ‘benchmarks’ and ‘litmus tests’ (Nevitte and Canton 1997: 47) in measuring the level of democratization of the postSoviet countries and for assessing the progress the various countries have made in their transitions to democracy. A great deal of time and money has been spent training, preparing, as well as observing and monitoring elections by donors, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs over the past fifteen years in Armenia. Regardless of whether the preparation, training and monitoring of elections have had an impact in stopping fraud or decreasing the frequency of irregularities, and many observers of Armenia’s post-Soviet elections would emphatically argue that they have not, a focus on elections remains a key component of the democracy building programmes in the twenty-first century. Robert Pastor argues that most scholars of government would agree that elections are essential instruments of democracy and that ‘ . . . to many, democracy should be more than free and fair elections, but it cannot be less’ (1998: 154). Similarly, Neil Nevitte and Santiago Canton

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Civil society participation in elections

contend that free and fair elections are not only a litmus test of a regime’s devotion to democratic values, but that they also provide critical opportunities for voters to weaken or break the grip of authoritarian governments (Nevitte and Canton 1997: 47). While agreeing that elections are essential for democracies, Jorgen Elklit and Palle Svensson problematize the meaning of the phrase ‘free and fair elections’, arguing that there is no single, universal definition or standard of what constitutes a ‘free and fair election’ (Elklit and Svensson 1997: 32). Given the absence of a universal standard, they argue that a vibrant and independent civil society, in addition to an independent judiciary, legislature and media, are important components in any democracy (Elklit and Svensson 1997: 44). Civil society, they add, plays a particularly important role in that it helps to promote active civic participation, the building of social capital and trust and the existence of open spaces for dialogue and debate (Elklit and Svensson 1997). This perspective (i.e. that democracy includes free and fair elections, vibrant civil society, rule of law, etc.) is shared by donors working in Armenia. Civil Society Participation in the 2003 Election and its Aftermath The first elections in Armenia in 1991 were considered free and fair by both international observers and local civil society, and no one has since questioned the fairness or freeness of those elections. However, in every election thereafter, beginning with the 1995 parliamentary elections up to the most recent May 2007 parliamentary vote, elections have become, or are perceived as having become, steadily more corrupt and less ‘free and fair’. This has created immense public cynicism, apathy and disillusion towards the elections as well as democracy in general. I conducted fieldwork in Armenia from October 2002 to July 2003 and witnessed the run-up to the election, both rounds of the 2003 presidential elections and their aftermath (or at least a part of it). A great many promises were made by the authorities that these elections would break the mould with the past and become truly free and fair. The government, with the assistance of international organizations and donors, sought to implement reforms and improve the organization and management of elections. With financial assistance from The Netherlands, the UK, the Open Society Institute, the Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation, the Eurasia Foundation and the OSCE’s (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) among other bodies, nine of the largest communities in Armenia were involved in updating voter lists in preparation for the presidential elections. Twenty-eight domestic observer groups were accredited by the Armenian Central Electoral Commission to work throughout the country. Two thousand transparent ballot boxes were imported from Germany with the help of the OSCE Office in Yerevan and the first ever live televised debate was held between candidates.

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Civil society organization participation in the 2003 elections existed before, during and after the elections. Prior to the elections, human rights NGOs organized civic participation training, mock elections in schools, awareness raising seminars and debates, and monitored the media for fair and equal coverage of candidates. Some groups even checked the validity of voter lists to make sure that all current residents were duly registered and that those who had passed away were deleted from the list to avoid voting by the dead. During the elections, the NGOs were involved in monitoring polling stations as local observers. NGOs received training and funding for organizing many of these activities from international NGOs and foundation such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Foundation for Election Systems and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Their stated goals were to ensure the holding of free and fair elections, to fight against public cynicism and anomie, to prevent disillusioned voters from selling their votes and to provide a space for public discussion and debate. Many of these NGOs published their reports or publicized their work through press conferences or roundtable seminars. Independent media organizations, meanwhile, conducted monitoring of print and television coverage of the various candidates and their campaigns, while youth groups organized master classes and seminars to discuss the upcoming elections. Following the elections, human rights NGOs and other civil society organizations began to challenge the prevailing climate of fear (vakhi mtnolort) and increasing human rights violations, which I discuss throughout this chapter. In the 2003 presidential elections, incumbent Robert Kocharian was running for re-election against nearly a dozen candidates. The first round of the elections was held on 19 February 2003, in which Kocharian received 49.8 per cent of the vote, just 0.2 per cent short of the votes needed to declare victory. The opposition, led by Stepan Demirchian and Aram Zaveni Sarkissian, immediately organized demonstrations challenging the results, and crowds gathered near the Matenadaran repository of ancient manuscripts in central Yerevan. The opposition promised to continue the demonstrations until the second round of elections on 5 March. Following the 5 March second round of elections, Kocharian received 64.45 per cent of the vote. Although there was extensive coverage of the first and second round campaigns, with a bias towards the incumbent, there was a lack of coverage of the demonstrations that were being held on an almost daily basis following the first round of elections. Instead of reporting on the massive demonstrations taking place in the centre of the capital, most local television channels, which are by and large state run or pro-government, discussed the harsh weather conditions. People either turned to the Russian news channel NTV or Radio Liberty to obtain news of the events. Others, who lived near the centre, simply went out into the streets to learn what was going on because of the low coverage of the events on television. Following one of the largest demonstrations on 26 February, the Russian TV channel NTV aired scenes of police brutality against the demonstrators and, immediately thereafter, NTV began

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to experience ‘technical difficulties’ and remained off the air for nearly a week thereafter. Incidentally, NTV itself eventually fell foul of the Russian authorities and was subsequently bought by the gas giant Gazprom. Whenever the media silence was broken, the television channels mainly broadcast the government’s proclamations, warnings that illegal activity would be punished and the scaremongering speeches of pro-government pundits who argued that either the previous ruling party, the Armenian National Movement (Hayots Hamazgayin Sharzhum) or some secretive foreign forces, were behind the demonstrations and the opposition. In addition to the state-run media, information was also available from NGOs and independent media organizations. During this time, NGOs organized roundtables, master classes for youths and public meetings to discuss the events occurring in Armenia. However, as these events were held in Yerevan and were not widely publicised or televised, they were not very widely attended and subsequently failed to reach a broader audience. As people gathered day after day for the demonstrations, there was an almost revolutionary feeling in the air. The authorities began closing roads into the city to prevent the arrival of demonstrators from villages and towns neighbouring Yerevan. Stories about arrests, searches and the stopping of cars and buses from entering Yerevan began circulating throughout the city, and the more the authorities tried to control the situation by arresting or referring to demonstrators as ‘drunks’ (harpetzoghner), ‘vagabonds’ (bomzher) or ‘hooligans’ (khuliganner), by seizing cameras from journalists and by preventing people from coming to Yerevan, the more people became eager to join the demonstrations. As one human rights NGO leader told me, ‘The people have begun to believe in themselves and in their power once more. Civil society is coming back to life because people have not been so excited about elections for a long time.’ (Maro1 26 February 2003). In spite of the efforts by local and international NGOs as well as intergovernmental organizations, both rounds of the 2003 Armenian presidential elections were wracked with claims of fraud and irregularities. The OSCE declared that both rounds of the 2003 presidential elections, ‘fell short of international standards for democratic elections’ (OSCE/ODIHR 2003: 1). The 6 March 2003 press release issued by US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, concurred with this assessment and stated that the US State Department was ‘deeply disappointed by the electoral irregularities’ and that Armenia’s leadership ‘missed an important opportunity to advance democratisation by holding a credible election’. Following the second round of elections, the opposition once again took to the streets in protest. These demonstrations, however, unlike those in the interim period between the first and the second round, lacked momentum and petered out in a week’s time as the opposition candidates instead decided to challenge the results of the elections in Armenia’s Constitutional Court. Although their requests to declare the elections results null and void were denied, the Constitutional Court recommended that a confidence

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referendum be held in a year’s time. I discuss how this referendum, or absence of a referendum, in 2004 led to renewed protests by the opposition later in this chapter. According to many local observers, including human rights NGOs (Helsinki Committee of Armenia 2003) and political analysts (Ishkhanyan and Babajanyan 2004), the 2003 presidential elections were the most fraudulent elections in the post-Soviet period and also the ones that generated a climate of fear in society due to severe police repression, torture, beatings and arrests. As one human rights NGO leader said, Our organization observed both rounds of the elections as well as the pre-election campaign. We had a grounded approach (armadagan verapermoonk) to our work and worked throughout the country. On 10 March we made an announcement in which we listed all of the irregularities we observed. I can unreservedly say that even when compared with previous elections, this was the worst ever ballot-box stuffing we had ever seen in any Armenian election ever. (Harout 21 March 2003; emphasis added) The 2003 elections were watershed elections that dramatically changed how NGOs perceived their role in society and how they were perceived by government officials. As the government’s actions became more repressive, a climate of fear (vakhi mtnolort), as it was called locally, emerged in Armenia. As one NGO leader told me, ‘The spreading of a climate of fear will be the absolute worst result of these elections’ (Maro 18 March 2003). Her perspective was widely shared among human rights NGOs and other civil society actors. One journalist I interviewed argued, Yes, there was repression by the [Levon] Ter-Petrossian regime in the aftermath of the 1996 presidential elections, but it was never to this extent. In the past we had darkness outside because of the electricity crisis and blockade. Today, while we have twenty four hours of electricity there is darkness and fear in our souls. It is as if the Stalin years are returning. When I look around at this climate of fear which has been created in society I become very concerned. (Nane 22 March 2003) Similarly, political analysts Vahan Ishkhanyan2 and Avetis Babajanyan write the following in the book titled Reckoning: persecution and resistance (Hasvhehartar: halatzank yev timatrutyun), which documents the events of April 2004 and the worst cases of torture. Ishkhanyan and Babajanyan write, Who had ever seen people being arrested for demonstrating? It is true, in 1996 they also arrested demonstrators, but when did they do this?

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Civil society participation in elections They arrested them after the demonstrators had broken the [steel] railings [around the National Assembly] and they had assaulted and beaten the Speaker of the National Assembly Babken Ararkstian and the Deputy Speaker Ara Sahakian. Today they arrest peaceful demonstrators. (Ishkhanyan and Babajanyan 2004: 10; my translation)

In this tense climate, one event in particular (i.e. the arrest and incarceration of a leading human rights activist Arthur Sakunts) illustrates the shift experienced by NGOs. Sakunts’ arrest in March 2003 became a crystallizing event for many human rights NGOs in Armenia and prompted them to more actively address the emerging climate of fear and growing repression in Armenia. Their strategies in fighting the climate of fear included speaking out against unlawful arrests, defending detainees and organizing public gatherings where information was shared and disseminated. These efforts intensified following the elections in 2003 and even more so following the events of April 2004. Civil Society and the Growing Climate of Fear Arthur Sakunts is the leader of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly (HCA) Vanadzor chapter. He has been active for many years as a leading human rights defender in Armenia. During both rounds of the 2003 presidential elections, the HCA in Vanadzor conducted monitoring of elections, and the group had planned a public meeting on 15 March to announce and protest against alleged poll violations. The Mayor of Vanadzor had attempted to ban the HCA’s 15 March demonstration citing a decree that he had issued in 2002 which gave him the authority to regulate public gatherings. However, an appeals court had ruled that decree invalid following a legal challenge brought by Sakunts in 2003. The decree was ruled invalid because it did not comply with Articles 26 and 33 of the Armenian Constitution. The decree also defies Articles 20 and 21 of the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights which Armenia ratified in 1993. Defying the mayor’s ban, the HCA held the meeting on 15 March which was attended by nearly fifty people outside the HCA office. The slogan of the meeting was ‘Defend Your Vote’. During the previous night, on 14 March, the offices of the HCA were fire bombed by unknown assailants, which caused significant damage to the entry hall and ceiling of the premises. Soon after the meeting began, police arrived and dispersed the gathering. Sakunts was arrested and led away on the pretence that he was supposed to have a discussion with the local police chief. Instead, he was taken to court where he was immediately tried, sentenced and jailed for ten days under Article 182 of the Soviet-era Code of Administrative Offences. Sakunts did not have access to an attorney during this trial. Sakunts was not the only person to be detained under this code; many demonstrators were arrested and detained under this code during and

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after the 2003 elections, yet he was the most prominent person to have been arrested under Article 182. Information about the fire bomb and Sakunts’ arrest was immediately sent to international human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights by local human rights NGOs. These organizations arranged letter writing campaigns to free Sakunts (Amnesty International), sent representatives to meet with Vanadzor officials (Human Rights Watch) and addressed open letters to the Armenian President appealing for his release and for an immediate and impartial investigation into the fire bombing of the HCA offices (International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights). On 18 March 2003, I travelled with a group of local human rights NGO leaders, journalists and a representative of Human Rights Watch from Yerevan to Vanadzor. In Vanadzor, our group met with the Prosecutor of Lori Marz (region), the judge who had presided over Sakunts’ case and the Vanadzor police chief in order to secure Sakunts’ release, to question the legality of the arrest and to request an investigation into the fire bombing. These meetings were futile as each government official we met informed the group that the matter was beyond their jurisdiction and passed us on to the next person. During the last meeting of that day, which was held with the police chief, the group was denied permission to see Sakunts. The Vanadzor police chief also became quite angry at the presence of the foreign representative from Human Rights Watch saying, Who are these Europeans that they are going to teach us anything. They were climbing trees when we were already civilized. We have our own laws and a constitution; we don’t need their advice or interference (18 March 2003). This anger at the perceived interference by Western organizations permeated much of the political discourse of the authorities following the elections, as I discuss later in this chapter, and is an example of the re-emerging Cold War dialectics that are affecting political developments in Armenia and the wider former Soviet region. Recognizing that they had failed to achieve their intended objective of freeing Sakunts, the group of NGOs and journalists vowed to continue working on the matter in Yerevan. That same week, several of these organizations held a roundtable discussion to discuss the polling violations and continuing arrest and repression of demonstrators. During this roundtable, the NGOs and media organizations presented the results of their monitoring activities regarding both rounds of the elections and expressed their concern regarding the climate of fear which they argued was being created because of the arrests, beatings and detention of demonstrators. They vowed to fight the growing climate of fear by speaking out against unlawful arrests, detentions and the ill-treatment of detainees. Many of the people

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speaking at the roundtable argued that it was necessary to speak out publicly against the arrests, roadblocks and beatings in order to challenge the growing climate of fear that was emerging. As one NGO leader said during the roundtable, At least NGOs can speak out and express our views. I believe that our [NGO] publications, announcements, and political statements are important and they have an impact on the situation. And now there is the Arthur Sakunts case because for a long time the authorities kept claiming that they were arresting ‘hooligans’ and ‘people with criminal records’. And now they have arrested a well known human rights defender. Having arrested someone who is recognized internationally for his work on human rights has raised the issue of these arrests to a higher level and raises questions about the motives of the authorities in arresting demonstrators. (Armen 21 March 2003) In the months following the elections, human rights NGOs joined forces with independent media organizations to publicize the violations that had occurred before and during the elections. Their main methods of action included organizing debates, seminars and public meetings and issuing information pamphlets and press releases. Their goal was to preserve a space for civic participation and debate. A human rights NGO leader, Rosa, explained that, if NGOs did not counter the growing climate of fear, they would soon become irrelevant in Armenian society. In describing her experiences during both election days, Rosa discussed how she was careful about posting observers from her organization and later in citing violations so as to avoid any retribution against those observers. She said, I never wanted to put people in danger and that was why when citing violations I was careful not to name the polling stations where the violations had occurred otherwise they [the law enforcement officials] would try to figure out who had provided this information to me. It is true, we are afraid of them and they are not afraid of us. It is truly a sad day in Armenia when Penzagalonki Vartan [petrol station Vartan]3 has more power than NGOs and we have to fear them. At all the polling stations I visited they had posted gorillas [referring to the burly bodyguards] in order to instil fear in all of us. But if the NGO sector is not strong then we will continue to be afraid. We have to be stronger and not fear such people. This means we have to strengthen our organizations, ourselves, and to unite in our efforts. (Rosa 14 March 2003) In the above interview, Rosa refers to Penzagalonki (petrol station) Vartan. Such nicknames are common among oligarchs and their bodyguards, whom

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she refers to as ‘gorillas’ in the quote above. Many of these men are better known by these nicknames than by their proper names. For instance, the following are the nicknames of oligarchs who are also MPs in the Armenian National Assembly: Lfik (brassiere) Samo, Alyuragahtsi (flour mill) Lyovik, Tsaghik (flower) Rubo, Kombikormi (animal feed) Vlad, Lady Hagop and Dodi (idiot’s son) Gago. Most Armenians know these individuals solely by their monikers and would be hard pressed to give their proper names. Some of these names reflect the products these oligarchs traded in prior to becoming wealthy, while other monikers refer to some personal characteristic. Oligarchs are actively engaged in politics through their election to the National Assembly in 2003 or the creation of their own political parties. In 2006, one of the wealthiest oligarchs, Gagik (Dodi Gago) Tsarukian, established the Prosperous Armenia (Parkavatch Hayastan) political party. Within a few months, this newly created party had over 300,000 registered members and subsequently came in second, gaining 14.7 per cent of the votes behind the leading Republican Party. Given the criminal pasts and current shady dealings of many of these oligarchs, their entry into Armenia’s political life is considered to be very dangerous to the development of democracy, as these men continue to ‘solve’ problems through the use of force (i.e. burning the cars belonging to journalists, shooting opponents). They are not recognized as proponents of open and civil debate. Their bodyguards, as I explain later in this chapter, were believed to be involved in assaulting demonstrators and journalists during the April 2004 demonstrations. I interviewed several of these oligarchs in 2003 to ascertain their views regarding democracy building and civil society in Armenia (discussed in Chapter Six). In another interview, Rosa argued that the climate of fear would persist in Armenia until people’s thinking changed. She insisted that it was necessary to increase people’s awareness levels and participation in civic and political affairs, adding that few in Armenia consider themselves citizens. She said, Most people in Armenia still consider themselves ‘residents’ but the shift has to occur from feeling and thinking like a ‘resident’ (pnakich) to feeling and thinking like a ‘citizen’ (kaxakatzi). People must begin to feel that they have a greater stake in their society and also, more importantly, that they have the power to change the situation in their country. This lack of faith in their capacity to change things is a problem which we [NGOs] must address. (Rosa 3 April 2003) This opinion was shared by nearly all of the human rights NGO leaders I interviewed who maintained that it was necessary to challenge the growing public disillusion and apathy in order to make people realize that their actions and votes count. The campaigns initiated by NGOs (e.g. ‘Stand by Your Vote’ and ‘Defend Your Vote’) during this period reflect this.

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During the 2003 elections and their aftermath, many civil society activists discovered that challenging the powers that be was not without risk. In addition to the Sakunts case discussed earlier, the prominent and outspoken human rights activist Mikael Danielyan, who is the Chairman of the Armenian Helsinki Association, was attacked and severely beaten by four men on the morning of 30 March 2004. None of the perpetrators was ever arrested. One theory is that Danielyan was beaten because of his active monitoring of the daily demonstrations occurring in Yerevan during that time (Human Rights Watch 2004). Another theory was that he was beaten for having given a newspaper interview about the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in which he accused the Armenian authorities of manipulating the unresolved conflict in Nagorno Karabakh to silence dissent and protests at home. Danielyan’s statements in this interview were deemed unpatriotic. The unresolved, frozen conflict in Nagorno Karabakh has meant that the region is plagued by an uneasy situation of ‘no war, no peace’. Many observers have commented on how governments in both Armenia and Azerbaijan have sought to manipulate the situation of ‘no war, no peace’ in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict for internal political gains (Broers 2005; Musabayov 2005; Tchilingirian 2005). This has led to self-censorship among the respective civil societies as public protest and criticism towards the regimes are often construed as ‘unpatriotic’ acts that threaten the national security interests of the states. During the 2003 elections, pro-government political analysts appearing on Armenian state television often argued that the criticism of the elections was also ‘unpatriotic’ and a threat to Armenia’s political stability and national security. This line of reasoning was used to support the government’s resistance to the demonstrations, which I discuss in a later section. 12–13 April 2004 The November 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia inspired the Armenian opposition and, in the early spring of 2004, it resumed its public demonstrations. It was in this context that the opposition returned to the 2003 Constitutional Court recommendation regarding the holding of a confidence referendum that was supposed to have been held in March 2004. While this decision had been reached by the Constitutional Court in April 2003, over the course of the year, the Court had subsequently clarified its proposal, and hence no referendum was held in March 2004. As a result, the opposition began a series of demonstrations on 28 March demanding Kocharian’s resignation. The authorities in turn referred to the opposition’s demands and protests as blatant attempts at seizing power by force and did not authorize the demonstrations. President Kocharian mocked the opposition’s efforts calling it a ‘soap bubble revolution’ on state television (Makuchyan 2004). These demonstrations culminated on the night of 12– 13 April when government troops used force to break up a group of 2,000

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demonstrators by spraying them with water cannons, throwing stun grenades among the crowd, shocking demonstrators with electric prods and beating them with truncheons4 (Hakobyan and Alexanyan 2004; Hetq website ‘c’; Melkumian 2004). A number of protestors, including members of parliament, were arrested, and some individuals, according to various sources (Hakobyan and Alexanyan 2004; Ishkhanyan and Babajanyan 2004; Melkumian 2004), were tortured by the police while in custody. As in 2003, the roads leading to Yerevan were closed by police roadblocks in which cars were searched and passengers interrogated regarding their reasons for travelling to the capital. From the beginning, the demonstrations were disrupted by the young bodyguards of oligarchs. These individuals are variously described in press reports as ‘young men with shaved heads and very thick necks, wearing dark sunglasses and athletic or leather jackets’ (Sayadyan and Yeghiazaryan 2004), ‘burly men with shaven heads’ (Khachatrian and Melkumian 2004) or ‘youngsters of athletic build’ (RFE/RL 9 March 2003). These young men were seen throwing eggs and firecrackers into the crowd during one demonstration (5 April), and there are well documented cases of brutal physical assaults against journalists and the destruction of their video and still cameras as well as mobile telephones (Hetq website ‘a’; Khachatrian and Melkumian 2004). Local media sources claim that these young men are the paid bodyguards of oligarchs with strong ties to the regime, which they argue explains why they acted with such impunity (Danielyan 2004; Hetq website ‘b’; Khachatrian and Melkumian 2004). According to one source, Eyewitnesses, including an RFE/RL correspondent, say scores of police officers looked on as about two dozen thugs beat journalists and smashed cameras that documented their violent attempts to disrupt Sunday’s [4 April 2004] rally. The officers, among them the deputy chief of the national Police Service, ignored pleas to stop the rampage. The trouble-makers left the scene unimpeded. (Khachatrian and Melkumian 2004) None of the ‘heavy-set’ or ‘burly’ men were ever arrested during any of the rallies; instead, the police stood by and allowed them to carry on with their violent attacks. One of the independent online news agencies, Hetq.am, even published photographs of these individuals in order to assist prosecutors in their search for the perpetrators (Hetq website ‘c’), but it was only after complaints issued by the Council of Europe that three of these men were charged and tried for their attacks against the journalists. It should be noted, however, that the men were immediately released after paying nominal fines of US$200 each (Hetq website ‘d’). The fact that police were present and that they allowed the youths to attack demonstrators and journalists may be taken as evidence of the authorities’ implicit approval of and support for the

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attacks as well as the growing involvement of oligarchs in Armenia’s political life, which I discussed earlier. It is also an example of the outsourcing of repression to non-state actors. While demonstrations were occurring daily throughout this fortnight, many NGOs and independent media organizations claim that there was silence from the state controlled media regarding the demonstrations and the violent attacks by the oligarchs’ thugs (Human Rights Watch 2004; Hetq website ‘b’; Sayadyan and Yeghiazaryan 2004). Many of my respondents argued that, if the independent television channel, A1+, which was shut down in 2002, had been allowed to operate, this may not have been the case. However, as of December 2007, A1+ has remained closed in spite of over ten applications to the national broadcasting commission for a new broadcasting licence. The commission has consistently refused to grant them licences, arguing that their applications are flawed and incomplete. In spite of all these attempts at preventing the collection and broadcast and publication of events, information was still leaking out. While official news agencies were being blocked, independent Internet news sources including Armenia Now, Hetq, A1+ and Armenia Liberty, as well as RFE/RL, published information about the events. Most of these independent news sources are supported by grants from foreign donors. My respondents argued that donors’ support of independent media organizations as well as of human rights NGOs was very important, in that it provided space for debate and the expression of alternative viewpoints that were not covered in by the state-controlled print and television media outlets. Many of the worst cases of abuse, along with photographs, are documented in Ishkhanyan’s and Babajanyan’s book Reckoning: persecution and resistance (2004) which was published with a grant from USAID. Information about the events was also available from the online logs of diaspora Armenians living in Yerevan. The logs posted on 13 April, which I have included below, are the most telling. Most of the loggers expressed their dislike of the opposition, but also felt shocked at the unprecedented level of violence that was unleashed upon the demonstrators. For instance, one logger wrote, They [the government forces] turned off the lights on the street long enough to move the water cannons closer to the protesters. The riot police and Special Forces hid up and down every single escape route the protesters could have. And at 2 in the morning, when everything was completely peaceful, they attacked the protestors violently, treating them worse than animals. As they tried to run away, their every exit was blocked and they were beaten savagely (13 April 2004). What is the most telling is that these loggers, all of whom are diaspora Armenians and subsequently foreign nationals, were also wary of the danger and the prevailing climate of fear. One logger wrote,

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It’s encouraging to know that there is a larger purpose to these logs. Many are concerned about our safety. Speaking on my behalf, I can say that we are perhaps the safest of all – at least physically. Our spirits, and that of the Armenian nation, is a whole other issue (14 April 2004) (emphasis added). The use of excessive force, attacks on journalists, mass arrests and other violations including freedom of assembly and movement were condemned by human rights organizations, the OSCE and the US State Department. Even diaspora organizations such as the non-partisan Armenian Assembly of America issued a statement urging restraint and calm from the government and the opposition alike (Armenian Assembly 2004). The international criticism of the Armenian authorities’ response to the demonstrations, which led to the release of those detained after the April 2004 march, did not however affect the authorities’ approach towards human rights as many of my respondents argued in 2005. Governmental Resistance and Cold War Interpretations Unlike the resistance I will discuss in Chapter Three, which emerged from within civil society, the main source of resistance to civil society participation in the elections came from the authorities or pro-government journalists who not only questioned the loyalties and motivations of the local human rights NGOs and independent media organizations, but also portrayed international NGOs, donors and observers as meddlers who lacked knowledge of Armenian culture and ‘haykakan mentalitet’ (Armenian mentality). Western or Western-oriented organizations were accused by government officials and pro-government media sources of being biased in their observation of the elections. Disputes over how the elections were interpreted (i.e. free and fair or flawed) began immediately following the second round of elections when the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the OSCE observer teams provided radically different evaluations and interpretations of the elections. While the CIS observation team, led by Yuri Yarov from Russia, declared that the second round of elections held on 5 March was ‘free, transparent, democratic, and legitimate’ (RFE/RL 9 March 2003), the OSCE observers, led by Peter Eicher from the US, meanwhile pointed out irregularities in the voter lists as well as in the voting and counting processes (OSCE/ ODIHR 2003). The Armenian authorities refuted the OSCE claims that the elections were less than free and fair, arguing that, as the OSCE observers were unable to be present at all polling stations, their claims were based on a limited set of stations. Some politicians even claimed that the differing interpretations were due to the different mentalities of Western and CIS observers. For instance, in a 6 March 2003 interview, then Armenian Minister of Defence, Serj Sarkissian, who is considered to be one of the most powerful men in

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Armenia and is the leading candidate in the February 2008 presidential elections, argued that the differences between the two observation teams were due to the CIS observers’ knowledge of Armenian mentality (mentalitet) and daily reality. Sarkissian claimed that the CIS report was evidence that regional neighbours understand Armenians better than foreigners (i.e. Westerners). ‘The CIS observers know much better our mentality because we were born in the same Soviet territory’, Sarkissian said. He explained that that some European observers were surprised when Kocharian collected 30 per cent of votes at one polling station and 80 per cent at another polling station in the same district because they could not understand Armenian culture and mentalitet. He said, ‘For example if in the area around one polling station live my relatives, they vote for Kocharian. Europeans do not understand it because they have a different mentality and different rules’ (Abrahamyan and Hakobyan 2003). A few days later, the head of the Central Electoral Commission supported Sarkissian’s claims, adding that the types of irregularities observed in the 2003 elections were ‘normal’ occurrences in new democracies (Helsinki Committee of Armenia 2003: 3). Such claims were challenged by various local human rights NGO leaders as well as representatives of intergovernmental organizations. For instance, during televised interviews, the OSCE observers, such as Peter Eicher, argued that, as Armenia had opted to join the Council of Europe and had committed itself to democratic reforms, it should strive to meet those standards held among European nations and that claims of an ‘Armenian-style’ democracy would mean that Armenia was not being held to the same standards as other Council of Europe member states (Eicher interview 10 March 2003, Shant television channel). In response to the arguments made by some government officials (e.g. Serj Sarkissian) regarding the incompatibility of Armenian mentality with Western democracy, one human rights NGO leader said, With regards to criticisms directed at NGOs of importing Western mentality and the importance of Armenian mentality, perhaps there is some validity in these claims. Certainly, NGOs are importing Western notions of human rights, democracy and justice. But I ask you, are being against torture or supporting people’s rights to a fair trial solely Western values? My problem is when they [the authorities] start saying that democracy is alien to Armenian mentality. I ask them, then what is natural to Armenian mentality? (Vasken 24 March 2003) The Helsinki Committee of Armenia human rights NGO assesses the mentality issue as follows, What is the truth then? Are the traditions of election fraud or, on the contrary, of the struggle against them entrenched in Armenia? It is very difficult today to arrive at a simple conclusion as to which of those

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is more typical for the national mentality. This question remains unanswered and requires a detailed and comprehensive exploration. One thing, however, can be said with certainty: that the issue would not have arisen at all today, if the Armenian authorities had been loyal to democratic principles that they have declared and to obligations they have assumed and if they had sufficient political determination to conduct free and fair elections. The authorities’ mentality at least is quite clear. (Helsinki Committee of Armenia 2003: 7) While accusing NGOs of collusion with foreigners and of importing foreign values is one way of delegitimizing their activities, another method of curtailing independent NGO activity has been the proliferation of government-funded ‘front’ organizations or GONGOs (government-organized NGOs). In Armenia, government officials and political parties indirectly or directly sponsor or support particular groups, which have come to be known as ‘grbanayin’ (pocket) NGOs. Grbanayin NGOs are seen as working for or ‘are in the pocket of’ the authorities. During the period of elections, various grbanayin NGOs organized roundtables during which they praised the government’s efforts and highlighted the achievements of the Kocharian administration. Unlike the roundtables and other public events organized by independent NGOs, the events organized by the grbanayin NGOs received a great deal of media coverage on the state controlled television channels and state-run newspapers. Most of the human rights NGO leaders I interviewed said that the government had funded the creation of such grbanayin NGOs in the run-up to the elections in order to challenge independent NGOs and to demonstrate that a segment of civil society supported their policies and actions. As one NGO leader explained, I was an observer in a polling station in Yerevan when a man came in and said that he had been appointed to work as an observer by a women’s NGO. When I asked him which NGO had sent him he couldn’t give me the correct name at first. When I later inquired from that NGO whether they had sent an observer to that polling place they claimed that they did not and had no knowledge of such an individual. Such tactics call into question the activities of genuine NGOs and cast a shadow over our work. (Nvart 14 March 2003) A second NGO leader agreed with her colleague but went further to claim that the Armenian authorities created ‘fake NGOs’ and ‘fake observers’ in order to legitimize the elections. She argued that the creation of grbanayin NGOs was affecting the entire NGO community and causing it to lose legitimacy and respect in the eyes of the public. She said,

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Civil society participation in elections Grbanayin NGOs get support from the government because they interfere in the work of independent NGOs. They allow the government to appear as though they are supporting civil society and democracy, but in reality they tremendously harm the efforts of genuine, independent NGOs by delegitimizing our efforts. (Rosa 14 March 2003)

Rosa was not alone in her complaints; many NGO leaders I interviewed argued that the grbanayin NGOs were threatening the legitimacy of independent NGOs. This trend of creating government organized NGOs or social movements is increasing in the former Soviet states; I discuss the rise of such groups in a number of former Soviet countries in Chapter Seven. I also interviewed a number of government officials from various ministries and state departments that had some contact with NGOs in order to ascertain their views regarding NGOs. These interviews were not necessarily difficult to arrange but at times excruciatingly arduous to conduct as the officials were reluctant to discuss their views regarding NGO participation in democracy building. On a number of occasions, I was met with suspicion and, overall, I found the government officials very guarded and apprehensive. The mistrust, the highly evasive responses and the strange occurrences during interviews with government officials (i.e. an interview interrupted by a fainting spell) illustrate the pervasiveness of the climate of fear in Armenia at that time. For instance, during one interview, I arrived at a state ministry and was shown to the room of the official where I sat for about five minutes while he finished with his previous visitor. When their conversation was over, the man thanked the ministry official and said that he had something to say to him in private. They left me seated in the office and went into a side room. When they re-emerged from the side room a few minutes later, the man bade me farewell and left the office. When the door closed, the official related what the man had allegedly said to him. He said, ‘That man that just left is a university friend of mine. Do you know what he said to me? He said that I should be careful and that I should tape this conversation because you are from America. He said I should do this so that nothing is misinterpreted’ (26 March 2003). After recovering from the shock of this revelation, I proceeded to ask my questions. However, the official ignored all my questions, instead preferring to deliver a prepared speech about the importance of NGOs in Armenia. His main argument was that NGOs should support the work of the state and that their presence is evidence that ‘Armenia is striving to become a democracy’ (26 March 2003). He maintained that NGOs should focus on helping the poor and that they should avoid getting involved in politics. On another occasion, a government official I was interviewing had invited a witness to our interview. The official did not introduce me to the young man in the leather coat who sat with us during the entire interview. As the official warily answered my questions, the young man never uttered a word except to observe what I was typing on my laptop (16 April 2003). While I

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had been very interested in interviewing this particular official because of his direct contact with NGOs, the setting he created effectively closed off any worthwhile discussion from occurring. When I asked government officials about the grbanayin NGOs, some said they had never encountered the term, while one argued that it was another ploy by the opposition and grant-seeking NGOs to criticize all government efforts (27 June 2003). He added, NGOs should concentrate on working with the government and not against it. I think that donors’ advocacy and training seminars in the field of democracy building and human rights are irrelevant (avelort) because Armenia has a 3000-year history and we have a great deal of experience in statecraft. We want more practical assistance in the fields of delivering health care and social services (27 June 2003). This official’s comments regarding human rights and democracy programmes as ‘irrelevant’ illustrate the attempts by the government to shift the focus of NGO work from democracy building projects to economic development and social service delivery. In other words, he was questioning the advocacy role of NGOs and instead proposing that NGOs should take on a more technical role in service delivery. This interview came to an abrupt end midway through when three of the official’s secretaries burst into the office to announce that one of their colleagues had fainted. Everyone, including the official and I, rushed to see what had happened. One of the older women assisted the young woman who lay moaning on the floor with her hand on her forehead. The official apologized profusely that he had to cut our interview short, but said I should understand that his first duty was to assist his staff. I found the situation strange to say the least, but I packed up my laptop and notebook and left quickly. Knowing the hierarchical nature of bureaucratic management in Armenia, I found the official’s response somewhat surprising and strange. When I shared this experience with friends, they told me that it could be one of two things: either the stricken woman was the official’s mistress, hence his concern, or this was simply a clever ruse orchestrated to cut the interview short. What links these interviews was the firm belief and insistence by the officials that Armenian NGOs should play a more apolitical and technical role in Armenia by supporting the state’s delivery of social services. This is not unique to Armenia; in fact, many scholars of development have pointed out the tendency on the part of governments as well as donor aid agencies to support a less politicized, more technical role for NGOs (Cooke and Kothari 2001; Escobar 1994; Ferguson 1994; Kabeer 1994).

Adaptations and Responses In response to the growing climate of fear and increasing human rights violations following the 13 April 2004 events, seven local human rights NGOs issued a

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statement condemning what they defined as the ‘mass violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms’ in Armenia (13 April 2004; Human Rights in Armenia website). In addition, they organized a roundtable dedicated to the issue inviting journalists, government officials, representatives of international organizations and local NGOs. In their statement they cited the roadblocks, mass arrests, illegal house searches and administrative detentions as evidence of ‘state terror’. They went on to collaborate with the Yerevan State University student led youth movement to organize several protest actions including pickets in front of the state prosecutor’s office, photo exhibitions depicting the violence and marches near the National Assembly. During some of the protests, the participants placed adhesive tape over their mouths and wore white t-shirts with the image of a bull’s eye to protest against the authorities’ attacks against free speech and assembly. When I interviewed many of these individuals in March and April 2005 about their perceptions of and participation in the events associated with the April 2004 demonstrations, many related how they felt that the events of 13 April were a turning point for human rights NGOs in Armenia. They argued that human rights NGOs began to work together more than they had previously and also with other civil society actors (e.g. the youth movement leaders, independent media organizations) in order to counteract the growing climate of fear. As one of the leaders of the seven NGOs said, On 14 April last year [2004] our organization along with several other human rights NGOs that held the demonstrations, pickets at the prosecutor’s offices, and exhibitions. We tried to hold back the demons of fear and to destroy the growing climate of fear. We held a 40-day picket to release the political prisoners who were jailed after the April 12 demonstrations. This was a precedent because they were afraid because of the crowd in the courtroom. These are real steps that NGOs took. All of the people in the actions were volunteers. This was not a grant project and no one got any money. It was a civil society action and not a NGO action. (Souren 23 March 2003; emphasis added) This characterization of their initiatives as ‘a civil society action’ and not a ‘NGO action’ is quite significant because it meant that there was broader involvement in these initiatives from various civil society actors including, but not limited to, NGOs, independent media organizations and youth movement members. A number of the NGO leaders who had been involved in the civil society actions in the days following 12–13 April explained that they were not supporting the opposition but rather fighting against the human rights violations and the growing climate of fear in the country. This was a point that many human rights NGO leaders emphasized, adding that the opposition was also not known for its democratic tendencies, but that regardless of their opinion about the opposition candidates and parties, the

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NGO leaders emphasized that their role as human rights organizations was to support the freedoms and rights of all Armenians. One human rights NGO leader I interviewed explained that they were ‘a group of non-political and non-partisan NGOs’ whose main goals were to protest the human rights violations, to fight the growing climate of fear and to fight for democracy in Armenia (Aris 24 March 2005). Another human rights NGO leader explained how the human rights NGOs co-ordinated their efforts with the leaders of the youth movement. He said, We [the NGOs] had been thinking of holding a roundtable during those days and the youth leaders said, ‘Enough of roundtables! Let’s do an action’. The leaders of the youth movement were able to collect a large group of people who would participate in the march and pickets. That is how the initiative came into being. This was something new for us because all the NGO events in Armenia are the same; we either hold conferences, roundtables, seminars, or trainings. But this time we decided to define the problem and to address it in a more active way. (Armen 25 March 2005) He explained how their participation in these initiatives changed the image and perception of NGOs held by journalists and subsequently by the public. He argued that it transformed the way in which the public viewed NGOs because their actions were organized in reaction to what was taking place in Armenia and that these were not ‘grant’ projects. He added that it was important for the NGOs to participate on a voluntary basis and to avoid taking financial assistance from any donor organization so that their actions would not be seen as being directed by outside forces as implied by the authorities. For this reason, they kept emphasizing the fact that all participation in the post-April 13 initiatives was voluntary in nature and not supported by any grants. Some of the youth movement leaders I interviewed argued that they sought to work with NGOs because they felt they could be more effective if they combined efforts. One youth movement leader said, We had to convince them [the NGOs] to get out of their offices and meeting rooms and into the streets. Some of them were more willing than others and it became very clear in those days who was actually a genuine supporter of human rights and freedoms and who was in it [the NGO work] for the grants and trips abroad. (Davit 24 March 2005) As a result, NGOs that had once been solely involved in organizing roundtables and seminars took their activities to the streets and began to speak out against the prevailing climate of fear and repression. According to Ishkhanyan and Babajanyan, the political prisoners who were arrested

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during the night of 12–13 April cited two reasons why they were freed: the first was the April 28 Council of Europe resolution #1374 (2004) and the second was the civil society outcry (2004: 101). The aforementioned Council of Europe resolution #1374 (2004), which demanded the immediate release of individuals who had been imprisoned, defined the actions of the Armenian authorities as ‘ . . . contrary to the spirit and to the letter of the recommendations formulated in its Resolution 1361 (2004)5 on the honouring of obligations and commitments by Armenia, adopted in January 2004’ (Council of Europe 2004). They expressed concern over the reported ill-treatment by police and security forces of demonstrators and those in custody, the violent acts directed at journalists and the draft law on the procedure for conducting gatherings, meetings, rallies and demonstrations. The Resolution stated that the Armenian authorities had refused to authorize opposition rallies ‘for reasons not permitted under the European Convention on Human Rights’ and that the draft law on gatherings was evaluated as ‘excessively restrictive’ by the experts of the Venice Commission. While all prisoners were eventually released, other recommendations were not fulfilled, and the subsequent report entitled, ‘Implementation of Resolutions 1361 (2004) and 1374 (2004) on the honouring of obligations and commitments by Armenia’, which was prepared by co-rapporteurs Jerzy Jaskiernia and Rene Andre and issued by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), was criticized by local NGOs for being too lenient. One local political analyst argued that the observations in the PACE report, ‘do not reflect either the political or social realities of Armenia’ (Martirosyan 2004). Samvel Martirosyan claimed that the co-rapporteurs ‘overlooked all visible legal violations’ and that the events of 12–13 April ‘did not receive any serious consideration’ in the report. He ends the article by praising the actions of the NGOs that ‘united to express their attitude’ and writes, It proves the existence in Armenia of unified forces [the NGOs] able to conduct a real monitoring versus the monitoring conducted by the European structures, which increasingly remind [one of] the work style of the Politbureau [Politburo]. (Martirosyan 2004) The Yerevan based Partnership for Open Society meanwhile writes the following regarding the PACE report, Having read the document one can state that the co-rapporteurs have not made a detailed examination of the situation in Armenia or were somewhat careless, or else have taken for granted everything that the representative of the country administration said neglecting the viewpoints of representatives of the NGO community. Thus the lack of

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information is manifest not only in the points that the rapporteurs highlighted as positive but also in those that they present as negative. (Partnership for Open Society 2004) The article then provides a line by line critique of the PACE Report pointing out omissions and misrepresentations. One of the most outspoken human rights NGOs in Armenia, the Helsinki Association, also issued an open letter to the Council of Europe criticizing one of the co-rapporteurs, Jerzy Jaskiernia, for ‘non-objectivity’. The Helsinki Association argues in the letter for a more active response from the Council of Europe and other international bodies to the growing repression in Armenia, which they describe as becoming a ‘military-police state’ (Helsinki Association 2005). On 31 January 2006, a group of NGOs (two international NGOs and seven local NGOs) issued a joint declaration entitled ‘Regression of the Rule of Law and Democracy in Armenia’ (Human Rights in Armenia 2005). The declaration cites the removal of the ombudsperson on grounds that she was critical of the authorities, the growing power and extralegal activities of oligarchs and business clans, the continuing fraudulent elections and the problematic functioning of the judiciary. Two days later, on 2 February 2006, a group of NGOs, led by the Yerevan Press Club, issued a 200-page report on the fifth anniversary of Armenia’s accession to the Council of Europe documenting the lack of progress in Armenia’s democratization. According to the report, Armenia has ‘failed to democratize its political system and even regressed in some areas ever since being admitted into the Council of Europe’ (Avoyan 2006). The report, like the aforementioned declaration, cites the problematic elections and judiciary decisions, and it goes on to add that there have been regressions in the areas of free speech and free assembly following the closure of independent television channels such as A1+ and the violent crackdown on demonstrations in April 2004. Such a declaration and report, as well as the NGO critiques of the PACE Report and their pickets and marches against the authorities’ crackdown on the demonstrations in April 2004, are indications of their growing empowerment. Such actions, particularly criticism of an international body by local NGOs, would have been unheard of five let alone ten years ago and are evidence of the growing maturity of the organizations even in the face of growing repression. Through these actions, they are preserving a space for dialogue and debate; what impact their efforts will have on Armenia’s future political development remains to be seen because, in spite of these actions, these NGOs are quite small, mostly run by a few individuals, and they continue to lack broad based public support and membership.

Conclusion In this chapter I examined the participation of human rights NGOs and other civil society actors in the 2003 elections. In describing the 2003

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presidential elections as a watershed, I examined how civil society participation developed during the course of the elections and in the months that followed. While noting the empowerment of some civil society actors and their willingness to engage in public advocacy and dialogue, it is important to recognize that they still do not enjoy broad based support and, without access to the mass media, they are often only preaching to the converted and posting their reports and articles on their websites which have small readerships. As Mary Kaldor and Mient Jan Faber argue, South Caucasian states, while not entirely democratic, are also not ‘totalitarian’, and NGOs, independent media and critical intellectuals survive. They write, . . . although governments, ruling parties, and security services try to control all aspects of social life, increased openness, international liberalization and outside pressure for democratization, as well as the weakness of the state, mean that NGOs, independent media and critical intellectuals survive, albeit precariously. (Kaldor and Faber 2004: 4) But is survival enough? Many civil society activists and journalists argue that the various civil and political rights and freedoms that were won after the collapse of the Soviet Union are now under threat. Ishkhanyan and Babajanyan for instance argue that, by attacking the freedom of speech and assembly, the authorities are seizing the only ‘gifts’ granted by independence. They write, People fondly remember the Soviet Union as a time when they were not hungry, when their children were educated, when the elderly received decent pensions, etc. With independence they lost the meagre decent living standards they had. But during Soviet times there was one thing which they definitely lacked and that was the right to protest, to demonstrate and to assemble. In other words they lacked the freedom of speech. When the USSR collapsed, many lost out in independent Armenia, while very few won. But everyone gained the freedom to protest and assemble. The Kocharian government is now trying to take away that sole gift that was granted by independence. They are trying to seize it because the protest is the most apparent characteristic of a democracy and they are terrified of democracy because democracy could topple them from power. (Ishkhanyan and Babajanyan 2004: 10–11; my translation and emphasis added) What is happening in Armenia is part of a larger political, reactionary trend and backlash against civil society that has emerged in the former Soviet states and globally following the colour revolutions and arguments

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that foreign funded NGOs are used by foreign governments to advocate regime change. Armenian authorities are not alone in accusing NGOs of working for foreign governments and of attempting to destabilize the state. On the contrary, such accusations have become quite commonplace around the world and have led to a backlash against democracy promotion and civil society (Carothers 2006b; Howell et al. 2007). In spite of the growing criticism, a small number of independent NGOs and other civil society groups (e. g. the youth movement and independent media organizations) are continuing to engage in policy dialogue, public advocacy and debates, as I have demonstrated in this chapter. Whether these efforts will have any impact on the political situation remains to be seen, particularly given the limited reach of NGOs and their lack of broad based support, and is a question I will return to in other chapters.

3

The Anti-Domestic Violence Campaign and Democracy Building

Women’s NGOs and NGOs working on women’s or gender issues were targeted as an important component of civil society and as crucial players in the larger task of fostering democracy in the former Soviet Union by international donor agencies. Of the various programmes related to women’s or gender issues that have been promoted by donors since 1991, the largest focused on the issue of violence against women (VAW). The interest in supporting and funding programmes that combat VAW is influenced, as I will discuss below, by the global civil society campaign on the issue, which led to its recognition in international forums and among donor agencies. After explaining how VAW became a globally funded and discussed issue, I explain the development and implementation of the anti-domestic violence campaign of 2002–04 by local women’s rights and human rights NGOs in Armenia. Based on participant observation, interviews with women’s rights and human rights NGO leaders, journalists and academics as well as analysis of local publications, I demonstrate how VAW was framed by the donors and NGOs involved in the campaign as a human rights issue that has implications for democracy building. Finally, I explain and analyse the broad based civil society critique of and resistance to the campaign and discuss the implications of this for democracy building in Armenia.

Women’s Issues and Democracy Building: The Support for Women’s Rights Organizations As any form of civic organizing does not occur in a vacuum, it is important to examine the international, national and local political environments that have an important bearing on how people organize, the issues they articulate and the discourses they use (Howell 2005: 242–3). Throughout the world, including in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe, international donor agencies have played a key role in fostering the development of local NGOs and promoting gender agendas (Howell 2005: 243). This focus by donors on women began in the 1970s when international development agencies began to make ‘women’ visible as a category in development and research policy (Kabeer 1994: xi). This came to be known as the Women in

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Development (WID) approach. The thinking went thus: if policy makers, donors and planners could be made to see women’s concrete and valuable contributions to their economies, then women would no longer be marginalized in the development process. Donors and policy makers began to say that women were more ‘cost effective’ as beneficiaries of development and civil society aid than men (Buvinic 1996: 13). This trend became more marked in the 1990s and continues today, as many of the largest donors, including the World Bank, the USAID and various United Nations agencies, all have departments focused on gender issues intended to promote gender equality in development. In recent years, donor agencies have also begun to support gender mainstreaming in their institutional approaches to development.1 Following the collapse of communism, support for women’s organizations in the post-socialist states in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union became a significant component of democracy promotion and civil society development aid programmes. In discussing why women’s NGOs were included in democracy assistance programmes in Eastern Europe, Patrice McMahon writes that programme officers from the Ford Foundation, the German Marshall Fund and the Eurasia Foundation shared the belief that there was a direct link between democratization and women’s advocacy groups (2002: 35). Of the aforementioned three foundations, the Ford and Eurasia Foundations had programmes in the former Soviet states, and their attitudes towards supporting women’s NGOs in the former Soviet states were similar to those that were articulated with regards to NGOs in Eastern Europe (Hemment 2004; Henderson 2003; Richter 2002). Once women’s NGOs and NGOs working on women’s rights were identified as important to democracy promotion and civil society development in the former Soviet states, donors began providing support for women’s empowerment and leadership training, women’s rights education, skills development, electronic networking and health related projects (Hemment 2004: 219). Women’s NGOs currently represent a significant proportion of NGO activism in these countries (Berg 2004; Hemment 2004; Henderson 2003; Ishkanian 2004; Olson 2001; Richter 2002; Tohidi 2004). As in the other states of the former Soviet Union, the majority of NGOs in Armenia were run by women during the 1990s. According to the NGO Resource and Training Centre in Yerevan, 80 per cent of NGO leaders were women and over 80 per cent of members were women at that time (Democracy Today 2002: 19). Although there has been a balancing of the gender representation within NGOs, it is important to recognize and explain the various factors that contributed to the feminization of the NGO sector in Armenia during the first decade of independence. First, the removal of the Soviet era quota system led to a sharp decline in the number of women in official positions and, although women had been crucial in the independence movement by participating in the demonstrations, work and hunger strikes, making speeches and collecting money for the effort, once independence

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was achieved, women found themselves tacitly excluded from the new government. NGOs became a popular path for public participation for the women who were excluded from the political parties and government positions. Second, men initially demonstrated little interest in the ‘nongovernmental’ sector, as any man who wished to be active in political or public life could do so through the government or political parties. In addition, men generally regarded the rewards of NGO participation, in terms of grants and micro-credit programmes, as too small and the bureaucratic details of operating an NGO as too numerous. Men preferred the business sector where they felt they could make more money. Third, because NGOs are non-governmental and non-political (to some extent), most women view them as a better alternative for public participation than political parties that are seen as inherently dirty and corrupt (Ishkanian 2004). Finally, as argued earlier with reference to support for women’s organizations and issues in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states more broadly, donors’ support for and preference in supporting women’s initiatives (e.g. gender equality) and women’s organizations also played an instrumental role in Armenia. For instance, according to the USAID Mission to Armenia website, USAID has made a conscience effort over the years to promote women’s leadership and empowerment through the NGO sector–a sector in which, in Armenia, women already have an accepted leadership role. Since assistance began USAID has trained over 81 women NGO leaders. . . . However, the NGO sector is still nascent. NGOs have not yet developed a strong political voice or influence. USAID’s new NGOstrengthening program will include support to increase women’s political influence through NGOs. (USAID Gender Issues web page; emphasis added) The USAID’s policy of strengthening NGOs and supporting women’s ‘political voice’ and promoting their ‘empowerment’ is shared by other aid agencies and international NGOs. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) office in Armenia, for instance, has been very supportive of women’s issues throughout the 1990s. The UNDP office in Armenia supported the publication of several reports, including the UNDP Women Status Report Armenia 1999 (UNDP 1999) and the Millennium Gender Report (2001) and has provided funding for numerous conferences and seminars dedicated to women’s issues. In October 2002, the UNDP started the UN Theme Group on Gender Development to discuss issues concerning women in Armenia. Armenian women’s NGOs recognized the donor focus on gender issues, and many became quite adept at employing the appropriate discourses needed for winning grants. As one of my respondents explained, in the 1990s ‘talking gender’ became an important factor in winning grants. She said,

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You learn what the donors fund and then you talk about that in your grant proposal. They all like gender issues (genderi hartser) so women have a better chance at getting grants, as do women’s organizations. (Gohar 15 May 1996) In addition to the donor support, the rise of the international women’s movement and associated global civil society activism on women’s issues also influenced the growing focus on women’s issues in Armenia and affected local agenda setting and the framing of issues. The Global Campaign on Violence against Women: Beijing and Beyond Beginning in the 1980s, domestic violence was becoming an issue in Western feminist analyses and activism. By the mid-1990s, it had also become an issue that was being discussed in global forums. At that time, funding was becoming more readily available to support transnational collaborations (i.e. North–South and South–South) and national advocacy and action campaigns to raise awareness and to fight against the problem (Keck and Sikkink 1998; Sen 2003; Weldon 2002). Of the various global events and initiatives focusing on women, the event that had the greatest impact on the development of women’s NGOs in Armenia was the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. The women who attended it – either as members of the government delegation or as NGO members – returned to Armenia informed and educated about global gender discourses, issues and concerns, which they proceeded to translate into the local Armenian context. Beijing subsequently led to a sharp rise in the number of women’s NGOs and NGOs led by women in Armenia because it stimulated greater funding and interest in the role of women in developing and transition countries. This rise in the number of women’s NGOs is not unique to Armenia; scholars working in Asia and Latin America have also documented the impact of the various UN conferences (including Beijing) on local women’s organizing and discourses. For instance, according to Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, anticipation of the 1975 UN conference on women in Mexico City played an important role in the emergence of the contemporary women’s movement in India (1989). Sonia E. Alvarez meanwhile describes the Beijing conference as an effusive celebration of ‘global sisterhood’, adding that it was the site where professionalized, thematically specialized and transnationalized feminist NGOs focused their energies on influencing the International Platform for Action and in helping to articulate the ‘global women’s lobby’. Alvarez explains how this professionalization and specialization of women’s groups as the ‘NGOization’ of the Latin American women’s movements which led to a growth in the number of women’s NGOs throughout Latin America (1998: 293–6) In addition to sparking a growth in the number of women’s organizations globally, the Beijing conference also put the campaign combating VAW on a

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global platform. In examining the rise of the global women’s network, Margaret Keck and Kathyrn Sikkink (1998) discuss VAW as the issue that unified all women’s groups. They argue that, by the 1990s, the VAW issue was the most important international women’s issue that became the centrepiece of the platform at the 1995 Beijing conference and a common advocacy position. They describe how VAW differed from other issues being addressed by women’s groups transnationally in that it was the only issue that resonated with women from the global North and South and led to local organizing in many parts of the world. This global activism was intended, as Janet Johnson writes, to foster women’s mobilization, raise the national consciousness of the problem and encourage states to enact policy reform to fulfil their international obligations (Johnson 2007: 381). In order to achieve these aims, grants were made available to women’s organizations, and there was support for collaborative campaigns and publications of reports and booklets on the issue and state responses. In discussing the development of women’s NGOs in Russia, Julie Hemment examines the influence of Beijing and local developments. She describes the 1995 conference as ‘a pivotal moment’ in the global campaign in addressing VAW and on Russian women’s organizing. She writes, Combating violence against women emerged as a central policy agenda both of the international women’s movement and of international development. The campaigns have galvanized support across diverse constituencies, among politicians and donors. In the late eighties major US foundations decided to make violence against women a funding priority, channelling funds to NGOs that address the issue. (Hemment 2004: 819) Hemment links this discussion of how US foundations turned their focus on VAW and made it a funding priority to the introduction and popularity of the issue among Russian women’s NGOs (2004). This was true in Armenia as well and, as one women’s NGO leader who attended the Beijing conference explained, Even though back then my English was not as good as it is now, I spent my time going from one session to another just to be able to get as much information at the NGO forum in Beijing. I came back to Armenia more informed because I had learned a lot about the issues facing women in Beijing. I only came to think about this issue of domestic violence after attending that conference and it was not something I had considered as a serious problem facing Armenian women until that time. (Satenik 12 March 2003) Although the issue was being discussed in global forums and funding was becoming more readily available for awareness raising, advocacy and prevention

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in the mid-1990s, there were only two local Armenian NGOs working on domestic violence (undanegan prnootyun), as the issue of VAW is referred to locally, at the time. Both NGOs encountered difficulties in introducing the issue in Armenia and were criticized by other NGOs for their work in this area. According to the leader of one of the two NGOs working on domestic violence at that time, Many people, NGO leaders, and among them many women, were resistant to our efforts in this direction. They did not understand what domestic violence is and how widespread it is in Armenia. These people accused us of wanting to destroy Armenian families and Armenian society. But when World Learning announced a domestic violence grant program at the end of 2001, the number of NGOs working on the issue mushroomed. To my surprise over 120 NGOs applied for this grant. I couldn’t believe it! When did all these NGOs that had not been working on domestic violence become so interested in this issue all of the sudden? After all, only a few years before that they had accused us of all sorts of terrible things. (Satenik 12 March 2003) As the issue of domestic violence in the 1990s was not locally recognized in Armenia as a public or social issue that could be addressed (solved?) with the intervention of law enforcement and judicial bodies and crisis shelters, until it was identified as such by Western donors, consultants and experts, the problem itself as well as the proposed solutions were perceived as being artificially imported and imposed by donors. This led to widespread criticism of the efforts of the NGOs involved in the 2002–04 anti-domestic violence campaign. Although much of the criticism was directed at specific policy solutions (e.g. shelters, hotlines, law enforcement training), the metanarrative of the critique was much larger and directed at the influence of donors on the work of NGOs and post-Soviet political and social processes more generally. As the campaign unfolded, the greatest challenge for the six NGOs involved became countering the persistent civil society resistance to and critique of the campaign, which alleged that the issue was being imposed by donors and that the six NGOs’ involvement in the campaign was motivated by greed and grant seeking. This led the six NGOs involved to spend a great deal of their time demonstrating that the problem existed in Armenia, arguing that they were not working on the issue because of the grant money and explaining that they considered local cultural practices and beliefs while designing their programmes. In addition, the six NGOs defined VAW as a human rights issue and maintained that addressing the problem was in fact a critical component for democracy building. Before turning to a discussion of the civil society critique of the campaign and the NGOs’ responses, I trace the rise of the anti-domestic violence

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campaign in Armenia from a taboo subject to one of the largest directly funded NGO-led programmes of the past decade.

The Anti-Domestic Violence Campaign of 2002–04 From Taboo to Public Issue The Armenian authors of the August 1995 United Nations Department of Public Information Review dedicated to the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing wrote: Violence against women, although there are no records kept in Armenia, is a universal phenomenon. Therefore, Armenian women must have experienced some form of violence against them. Reporting of violence is not customary. The definition of violence is not clear. Psychological violence, violence of a sexual nature and physical violence are not clearly understood or identified or distinguished. (UN DPI Review 1995) In spite of this growing focus by both Western donors and global civil society activists on domestic violence, in the mid-1990s, domestic violence was still a new topic in Armenia’s NGO sector and to some extent a taboo subject. This was also the case in Georgia (Olson 2001), the five Central Asian states (Akiner 1997: 284) and Russia (Attwood 1997; Johnson 2007: 381). Women’s NGOs in Armenia opposed public discussion of what they deemed a private, family issue. In 1996, members of an international feminist NGO called the Young Women and Democracy Programme, which had funding from the European Union’s PHARE–TACIS programme, began work in Armenia. They set out to assist in creating a coalition of local women’s NGOs to address the issue of VAW, together with other women’s empowerment programmes. This group had funding to help local NGOs create crisis centres and hotlines, but local groups resisted working with the Young Women and Democracy Programme. They argued that domestic violence was not the most critical issue facing Armenian women and added, ‘We don’t air our dirty laundry in public’ (12 April 1996). Also in 1996, ‘Azniv’, an American-Armenian expatriate, created a study group to examine the problems of battered women. Azniv organized several meetings during the spring and summer of 1996 to discuss the issue of domestic violence in Armenia. These meetings were attended by American expatriates working in Armenia and by a few local Armenian scholars. At one meeting, which was held in the cafeteria at the American University of Armenia, one of the American participants suggested that women’s NGOs should be involved, and in fact take the lead, in addressing the issue of domestic violence in Armenia. In response to this suggestion, an American training co-ordinator at the Armenian Assembly of America’s NGO Center

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expressed her concern that many women’s NGOs did not want to address this issue and added, ‘Many of the women’s NGOs do not necessarily address women’s problems and the issue of domestic violence will not be well received by such groups’ (Mary 4 April 1996). Members of various women’s NGOs had been invited to attend, but none was present at any of the meetings I attended. When I asked one of these women’s NGO members why she did not attend, she replied, ‘That is not a problem we wish to discuss in public. If she [Azniv] wants to do so, it is her choice, but she will not receive any support from us’ (Bella 14 May 1996). While Azniv’s efforts were well met by the American expatriates and a few local women, nearly all of the women’s NGOs continued to avoid addressing the issue of domestic violence in 1996–97. According to the UNDP Women’s Status in Armenia Report, ‘Public opinion is what matters most [and] unfortunately, the opinion prevails that the family is an entirely private sphere and is not open to public intervention’ (1999: 47). This situation in Armenia and the other Soviet states began to change in 1999 when increased funding was made available by international donors for local NGOs to begin addressing the problem of domestic violence throughout the former Soviet Union. In Russia, for example, the campaign against VAW became one of the most prominent among Russian women’s organizations in that it was an issue addressed by almost all the main women’s NGOs in some form or another at that time (Hemment 2004: 816). Support for the campaign in various post-Soviet countries came from a number of sources including in 1999 the US State Department grants to the US-based NGOs Sister Cities International, Project Harmony and Winrock International to conduct anti-domestic violence programmes in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Georgia (US State Department website). Winrock International received a grant of US$1,558,656 (duration 1999–2001), Project Harmony received a total of US$1,518,442 (US$499,548 for 1998–2000 and US$1,018,894 for 2000–02), and Sister Cities International, which received two grants to conduct domestic violence prevention programmes from 1998 to 2001, did not have any projects in Armenia (US State Department website). In addition to the State Department’s domestic violence prevention grants, in 1999, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) was selected by USAID–Russia to administer the USAID Program to Support Crisis Centers for Women in Russia. This three-year US$600,000 programme was aimed at ‘strengthening and supporting Russian institutions that provide crisis counselling and other services to victims of domestic violence, that raise awareness of domestic violence issues among specialists and the general public, and that promote alternatives to violence’ (IREX website). Grants ranging from US $1,000 to US$10,000 were awarded to Russian NGOs. While IREX did not provide any grants to Armenian NGOs, its programme initiatives are similar to those of other organizations, including the Open Society Institute, the Global Fund for Women and World Learning, among others, that awarded

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grants to local NGOs in Armenia for addressing domestic violence. The largest grant programme in Armenia on this issue was funded by the USAID. In September 2002, the USAID awarded a total of US$476,367 US to six local NGOs in Armenia to address domestic violence. This grant supported the 2002–04 anti-domestic violence campaign which is discussed in this chapter. The grants given under this programme were the first direct USAID grants to local Armenian organizations for activities in Armenia (USAID 18 October 2002). The six local groups that received grants from USAID were the Helsinki Association, Maternity Fund, Women’s Rights Center, Ajakits, Martuni Women’s Community Council and Armenian Caritas NGOs. The grants, according to USAID, would allow the six NGOs involved to, . . . expand and enhance services that they already provide, and in some cases allow them to organize shelters for victims of domestic violence and their minor-age family members. Other services include court monitoring and training for lawyers and judges, public awareness campaigns and the promotion of alternatives to violence. (USAID 18 October 2002) According to an official USAID report on its assistance to Armenia, the grants to the six NGOs for fighting VAW were part of the USAID Democracy Program (US Agency for International Development 2002: 32–4). Activities under the Democracy Program are aimed at increasing citizen participation with government at the local and national levels, developing NGOs and independent media, promoting civic education in secondary schools, strengthening local government and the legislature and supporting legal reform. According to the report, USAID planned to achieve these goals by supporting programmes that increased citizen participation in policy development and oversight of government; increased the quantity and improved the quality of sources of information and analysis; supported more responsive and effective local government; assisted victims of domestic violence; encouraged parliament to be more effective and responsive; and developed a transparent, dependable and effective legal system (US Agency for International Development 2002: 33, emphasis added). Many local NGO leaders were shocked that USAID had provided direct funding to local NGOs and for such a large amount. This was an unprecedented event, and many felt that it was clear evidence of the imported nature of this issue. It is worth noting how, in the aforementioned report, assisting victims of domestic violence is listed as an important component of democracy building whereas assistance to victims of other forms of violence (e.g. victims of police torture, army conscripts) is omitted. Many of the civil society activists I interviewed discussed the overall increase in violence in Armenia over the past few years and argued that focusing on domestic violence in isolation and as

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a ‘women’s issue’ meant that the larger structural and economic factors leading to violence as well as public manifestations of violence were ignored. As one women’s NGO leader said, Why are we always talking of domestic violence? It is true that women are the majority of victims of domestic violence, but there is also violence against men, against children, and against the elderly both in the home and outside of it. When there are different forms of public and private violence, the narrow focus on women and domestic violence does not resonate with society. On the contrary, it is seen by many people as a ‘grant problem’ that is created by donors and for donors. (Rosa 3 April 2003) As I have already discussed, donor funding affects the type of organizations that are supported (i.e. women’s organizations or organizations working on gender issues) and the issues that receive funding (i.e. anti-domestic violence programmes). The processes by which donors determine funding priorities and policy initiatives are influenced by their own sources of funding as well as by global trends. I discuss how donor practices, policies and strategies influence the work of local NGOs in greater detail in Chapter Six. The 2002–04 Campaign The six NGOs that were awarded the USAID grant in 2002 engaged in a variety of programmes including women’s rights education training, court representations, crisis centres, shelters, hotlines and publishing projects. Although funded under the same programme, there was very little cooperation between the groups over the two-year period of the grant. In order to protect the anonymity of my respondents from the six NGOs involved in the anti-domestic violence campaign, I refer to them as NGO A, NGO B, NGO D, NGO E, NGO F and NGO G. So as to avoid confusion with the NGO Resource and Training Centre (NGOC), there is no NGO C. Once the grant ended in 2004, the projects or components of the projects organized by these NGOs also ended. In a follow-up research project2 conducted in 2005, I found that donor interest had shifted to other topics and that all but one of the shelter programmes had closed due to lack of funding. One of the six NGOs involved even denied any involvement in the 2002–04 campaign. There was broad consensus among the other five NGOs involved that, even though the anti-domestic violence campaign had not fully overcome the resistance and criticisms encountered from the outset, at least it had accomplished the difficult task of introducing the topic to the public and generating discussion about the issue. Less successful were the technical solutions, such as shelters and hotlines, employed by NGOs to try to combat the problem.

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Many of the NGO leaders I interviewed shared the belief that, while it was important to increase awareness of the issue, it was also essential to provide women with the skills necessary to make them economically self-sufficient because economic problems were seen as one of the primary causes of violence. For this reason, much attention was paid to the skills and human rights training and civic awareness programmes, which were identified as being the most successful components of the programme. As the leader of NGO D explained, In my opinion, the best part of the programme in our anti-domestic violence project was the skills training component. We hired hairdressers and tailors to teach women these skills. The women who participated in these skills training programmes learned one of those two skills – hairdressing or sewing. This helped them become more economically independent which helped them to protect their rights better. (NGO D 11 April 2005) The leader of NGO G also argued that skills training and women’s economic independence were important factors in combating domestic violence. Women need to acquire new skills and to find jobs through which they can provide for themselves and their families. Subsequently our programmes in this area were very well received by the community. Since the major cause of violence tends to be the difficult economic situation in Armenia, I believe that incidences of domestic violence will decrease as the economic situation in the country improves. I am not saying that the problem will disappear entirely, but I believe that those cases of violence which are brought on by the harsh socio-economic difficulties will be eliminated. What will remain are those rarer cases of violence that are perpetrated by barbaric (vayreni) people who have violence flowing in their veins. (NGO G 18 April 2005) There was also broad consensus that, even though the anti-violence campaign had not fully overcome the resistance and criticisms encountered from the outset, at least it had accomplished the difficult task of introducing the topic to the public. The NGO leaders argued that those segments of the population that had participated in the training had come to accept the problem, but that much remained to be done. Most agreed that there should be a more systematic approach to resolving the problem in the future, which might include government participation and support for the programmes so that it would not be seen as a foreign supported programme. There was disagreement, however, over the impact of the shelters and law enforcement trainings. Regarding the law enforcement trainings, the majority of the NGOs expressed deep concern regarding police attitudes towards the

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women who sought their assistance. As one of NGO leaders whose organization had conducted trainings with law enforcement officials said, The police don’t have good approaches to women who have been battered. They can be very rude to these women. Often the police will send a woman back to her husband if she seeks assistance blaming her for overreacting. Also people fear bringing the police into a dispute because it becomes a source for extorting bribes (kasharki aghpyur). The trainings haven’t done much to change police attitudes. (NGO E 6 May 2003) The leader of NGO D, whose organization did not conduct law enforcement trainings, went even further to add, ‘When you tell a policeman that you can’t beat a citizen and that that is a violation of a person’s human rights, he seems surprised. Most policemen in this country believe it is alright to beat detainees so how could any kind of one or two day training ever change these ingrained attitudes?’ (NGO D 19 May 2003). The leader of NGO F meanwhile felt that, while police were resistant to involving themselves in domestic disputes, the law enforcement trainings had made police officers more understanding of the plight of women, adding, ‘We had very good cooperation with law enforcement officials. Our agreement with them was such that whenever they received a call from our NGO they would immediately come without asking any questions because sometimes there were situations in which the angry husband would turn up at the office and begin creating a disturbance’ (21 April 2005). In addition to disagreements over the efficacy of law enforcement trainings, there were also different opinions regarding the impact of shelters, which were the most contentious component of the campaign. While some of the NGOs that sponsored shelters felt that they were successful initiatives, others did not agree. One of the NGO leaders whose organization did not sponsor a shelter under this grant said, ‘Shelters are not working now, we have four shelters but if we look normally it is too early to have shelters. It is not like America; people in Armenia still don’t understand the idea of shelters and it would be better if they were nationalized and supported by the state’ (NGO F 6 May 2003). This respondent added that, by nationalizing shelters, this would make them more sustainable and locally legitimate. The leader of NGO E, whose organization had sponsored a shelter, explained that the lack of interest in the shelter was influenced by structural, socioeconomic and cultural factors. The women weren’t coming to the shelter because the people in this city are very conservative and traditional. If the wife left the home the husband would not take her back and her parents would be upset that she had gone to a shelter instead of them for help. For this reason many women would not come to the shelter because they were afraid of what

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The anti-domestic violence campaign would happen to them after leaving the shelter. They would ask us, ‘Where will we go after the shelter?’ We often didn’t have a very good response to this question given the shortage of housing and the lack of funds to provide women with alternative housing choices. There was also the fear of public opinion and what their neighbours or family would think. Here people live for the opinion of others, so the fear of what their neighbours or friends would say about them meant that very few women came to the shelter and the shelter, even after two years of operation, remained too artificial and foreign to the majority of people. (NGO E 11 April 2005)

However, the leader of the NGO that still had the functioning shelter disagreed, saying, ‘We had so many people coming to the shelter that we had a problem deciding who to accept and who to turn away’ (NGO G 18 April 2005). This statement regarding the shelter being overrun by women contradicted the statements of the other NGOs that had run shelters in other locations. Furthermore, the statement seems particularly strange given the location of the shelter and the statements this respondent made in a 2003 interview in which I was told that people in the location where their organization worked were ‘very traditional’ (avantabashd) and ‘conservative’ (pahpanoghakan) and that they would look down upon the shelter if they knew its true purpose. Moreover, when I visited that shelter in June 2003, the only person present was the caretaker along with two stray cats. The lack of beneficiaries was not limited to this shelter; when I visited two of the other three shelters between April and June 2003, I also found them empty. Aside from this variance over the utility of shelters, the six NGOs involved in the campaign unanimously agreed that, unless public opinion on the matter changed, the resistance would continue and the problem could not be sufficiently addressed. They argued that two years was hardly enough time to overcome the resistance and criticism and that, if the programme had been longer, they would have made greater progress in changing public opinion regarding the issue.

Civil Society Resistance to the Campaign Unlike in the US or Europe where the issue of domestic violence was first raised and addressed by local women’s organizations and groups of battered women (Keck and Sikkink 1998: 174), in Armenia, there was no broad based grassroots movement pushing for recognition of the problem. Most of the women’s or human rights NGOs that worked on the issue did not begin doing so until the announcement of large grant programmes. Therefore, in spite of the amount of Western support, and more likely because of it, there was a great deal of local resistance towards and criticism of the anti-domestic violence campaign. The resistance and criticism came from the public, journalists, intellectuals and other NGOs. The main criticism was that the

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issue was being imported by donors and that domestic violence in Armenia was not as acute (i.e. one in three women is battered) as claimed by some of the NGOs involved in the campaign. Even some of the six NGO leaders of the campaign admitted that they too had initially not believed that domestic violence was a big problem in Armenia. As one NGO leader who was involved in the USAID grant said, In 2001 domestic violence was a new problem in Armenia except that Satenik was more active in it. None of us could comprehend the problem. I too did not accept it. When World Learning announced the grant programme, we did some research to see whether the problem existed and sadly we found out that domestic violence does exist in Armenia. So we decided to work on it by taking into account our national mentalitet (mentality) and traditions. Our goal was to prevent family conflict. (NGO B 23 April 2003) The leader of NGO E said that, while they had decided to work on the issue, it seemed that attention to the issue had emerged more from the urging of donors rather than from a locally perceived need. When I first became involved in this programme I thought that the issue of domestic violence, while existing in Armenia, was not an issue that was raised from below; it was suggested from above. The donors announced the funding proposal and everyone thought, ‘Why not, we can work on this’. It wasn’t as if we said, ‘We do not have water to drink, let’s find some water’. On the contrary, the situation was that they were giving us water and we thought, ‘Why shouldn’t we drink some water since it is available?’ (NGO E 11 April 2005) The primary donor, USAID, recognized the resistance and criticism directed at the campaign but felt there was a local need for such programmes. As a USAID representative said, The domestic violence programme was the first time in ten years that local NGOs were given a direct grant by USAID. The direct grant was prompted when we started a special initiative grant with World Learning and recognized the need for addressing this problem . . . We wanted the approaches to be adapted to local contexts. But we have received a great deal of criticism from the local press and there has been public resistance to the project given that they see it as coming from the outside (25 April 2003). Although she added that she believed that the programme had ‘evolved to meet local perspectives and needs and not Western ones’, a few days later

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during a conference on domestic violence, the same representative reiterated the point that the issue of domestic violence was not imported into Armenia. She argued, Violence against women is not a new phenomenon. We [USAID] did not import the problem to Armenia from abroad. It is something that women all around the globe experience. It is not a cultural or class bound issue . . . We understand that you [the NGOs and health workers in attendance] have a role to play in educating, preventing and helping victims. USAID has been supporting programmes combating violence against women all over the world. We have been involved in sponsoring shelter, educational and training programmes around the globe. We have worked with health professionals and we’ve supported programmes that help women become more financially independent (29 April 2003). These arguments that the issue was not imported and that the campaign was not donor led or driven were largely ignored by the critics of the campaign. Many journalists, academics and women’s and human rights NGO leaders I interviewed argued that the problem with the campaign was not that domestic violence did not occur in Armenia, but rather that the issue was defined by Western donors and their consultants and that the solutions (e.g. shelters, hotlines and law enforcement trainings) proposed were incompatible to Armenia. The definitive local study of domestic violence, Domestic Violence in the Republic of Armenia: A Sociological Survey (Undanekan Brrnutuiuneruh Hayastanoom: sociologiakan hedazotootyoon) was written by the Akunk Centre for Ethnosociological Studies NGO and funded by a grant from the US based World Learning NGO. The report was based on field research conducted from September 2001 to March 2002 by a ten-person team from the Akunk Centre who interviewed 2,715 respondents in the ten regions of Armenia using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Many of the respondents in the Akunk study said that the primary causes of violence were the difficult socio-economic conditions (57.3 per cent) and the cramped living conditions (25.6 per cent) in Armenia (Galstyan 2002: 43). The overwhelming majority of respondents identified the improvement in socio-economic conditions in Armenia as the best method (86.8 per cent) of addressing domestic violence compared with the 3.1 per cent of respondents who identified shelters as an appropriate approach (Galstyan 2002: 84) According to the report, We should note that shelters in several European countries and in the US are considered an important mechanism in the prevention (kankhargelman) of domestic violence. Based on our surveys with both the public and specialists, shelters received the lowest percentage as a prevention method – 3.1% [public] and 11.1% [specialists]. In the opinion

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of survey participants, shelters will not only not work in Armenia, but they will have the opposite effect of weakening families. Such an approach according to respondents was explained by ethno-psychological peculiarities, as well as by national traditions and practices. According to the respondents, the structure of the Armenian family and the strongly maintained kin ties provide an opportunity to prevent such occurrences, and particularly at the level of communities, social opinion does not support the creation of such shelters. (Galstyan 2002: 86; my translation) While the USAID representative quoted earlier acknowledged the importance of this report in demonstrating that domestic violence exists in Armenia, her comments are based on the brief English language executive summary. It is highly unlikely that the representative, who did not speak Armenian, had read the entire report given that it was only published in Armenian. Some of the local scholars who had worked on the report said they had expected that their report would be ignored given that their findings were highly critical of the proposed approaches (e.g. hotlines and shelters) which later received funding from USAID (12 May 2003). An academic whose research is focused on the family in Armenia and who had worked on the Akunk study told me, When we interviewed people across Armenia about their opinions regarding shelters, some people thought shelters would be like dormitories while others called them ‘brothels’. There is the common belief, even among women who have been subjected to violence, that shelters won’t work unless the woman has decided to leave her husband for good because if she is unsure, taking the step to go to the shelter will mean that she can never go back home. Yet USAID and the NGOs who received the USAID grant ignored our findings and went ahead with the shelters. I am certain the shelters will fail based on my knowledge of Armenian families. (Sarkis 8 June 2003) Given that the report was published in September 2002 and the shelters were opened a month later, this lent further weight to the argument that the campaign was being driven by donors, as the authors of the report had unequivocally argued that shelters would not work in Armenia. They had suggested alternative approaches, including community based mediation, to addressing the problem of domestic violence, which were subsequently ignored as the NGOs instead chose to implement the shelters, hotlines and training suggested by the international experts and funded by the donors. Unlike the government critique and repression of the NGOs’ monitoring of the elections, which I discuss in Chapter Two, the critique of and resistance to the anti-domestic violence programme emanated solely from civil society. Government officials working in the Ministries of Health and Social Welfare

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adopted an attitude of condescending indifference regarding the issue. The National Assembly, meanwhile, seemed prepared to accede to any international convention put before them addressing the rights of women including the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the UN Convention on Equal Pay for Women and Men, the UN Convention on the Political Rights of Women and the UN Convention on the Citizenship of Married Women (Democracy Today 2002: 7). Most of these conventions were adopted without much debate or resistance from MPs. The fact that most of these conventions are not enforced was a matter of concern for women’s NGO leaders I interviewed. While government officials remained dispassionate regarding the campaign, journalists, intellectuals and NGO leaders were fervently critical. Journalists, in particular, often wrote disparagingly of the campaign and took any opportunity to question the motivations and programmes of the campaign. For instance, at a conference on gender issues in Armenia, one journalist asked a keynote speaker, ‘Why do you keep working on this domestic violence issue? Isn’t it better to deal with the actual problems facing poor women and children in Armenia instead of implementing what the foreign anti-national (odar apazgayin) organizations want?’ (25 April 2003). The speaker ignored the question saying the press should learn to accept that the problem exists in Armenia. One journalist I interviewed argued, ‘All they do is talk about the results of violence, but what about the causes that have led to violence? Why are women being beaten? They ignore the economic aspects and focus on feminist arguments’ (29 April 2003). In response to a three-day training seminar that was held for police officials at the OSCE offices in Armenia in June 2003 to enable Armenian police officers to combat domestic violence more efficiently, a journalist for the progovernment Hayots Ashkhar (Armenian World) daily newspaper wrote, These international organizations are making us angry as they widen their scope of work day by day. First they poked their noses into our bedrooms and private lives under the guise of ‘family planning’, next they began to tell us what to do regarding ‘violence against women’ and trafficking. And now, the matter has come down to ‘family violence’ and the role of the police in this matter. But in truth, this is just another opportunity for some people to ‘snatch’ grants and to enrich themselves. (Matevossian 2003) The opposition AybFe newspaper, while always disagreeing with the interpretation of Hayots Ashkhar, surprisingly had a similar response with regard to the training, In Armenia the problem [of domestic violence] needs to be solved in a specific way. Armenians will still avoid appealing to the police over the violence in families. Nothing will change in the Armenian families, as

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neither an Armenian woman nor other family members will ever call the police to accuse their relative. (A1+ website) Several academics who work on women’s issues also agreed that the approach adopted by donors was problematic. One went so far as to argue, It [this campaign] is an attempt to destroy our culture. The donors have other intentions in mind when they began promoting these projects and for local NGOs, it is all about getting the grant money. They don’t care about what they are doing as long as they have their grants. Even these attempts at trying to ‘liberate’ women from their families are false. Their [donors] efforts are similar to those employed by the Soviet in the 1920s. All this talk about domestic violence is just another attempt to free and liberate us from ourselves. (Sasha 14 May 2003) Even the leaders of various women’s NGOs criticized the campaign. For instance, the leader of one of the oldest and largest women’s NGOs argued that the problem of domestic violence exists in Armenia as it does elsewhere in the world, but that addressing the issue without considering the social, cultural, economic and political context of Armenia was problematic. The argument that this campaign has ignored the Armenian context was shared by other women’s NGO leaders who agreed that, while the problem of domestic violence exists in Armenia, the solutions for dealing with the problem had to be locally generated. I interviewed a number of women’s NGO leaders who disagreed with what they perceived were donor recommended solutions, arguing that these solutions, particularly the shelters, did not take into account local socio-economic realities and cultural beliefs. For instance, the leader of a prominent women’s NGO argued, I am categorically opposed to shelters (categorik dem em). I believe that they do not work. They are only a temporary thing and they do not solve the problem of violence. But let’s look, for argument’s sake, at what the US does to solve this problem [of domestic violence] and see if it fits our situation. In the US there are shelters. If a woman is subjected to violence, she and her children go and live in the shelter for, say, 6 months. In those 6 months either the woman reconciles with her husband and moves back home or the shelter and government agencies help her find a job or they provide her with a job-training programme. The shelter staff and the government help the woman find an apartment and they enrol her children in school. There is an entire social welfare system that supports the shelter approach, but this social welfare system does not exist in Armenia. We don’t have the ability to provide a woman with a job, an apartment and financial assistance. So what are

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The anti-domestic violence campaign we asking her to do? All we are asking the woman to do is to leave her home, stay a few weeks or months in that shelter and then she will either have to return to her home or end up in the streets somewhere. We have an organization that gives women temporary shelter. But if all the poor, hungry and tired people in Armenia hear about this crisis shelter, the NGO will be inundated with requests and applications. I predict that over 100,000 women will want to go there not because they are battered, but because they are tired, hungry and living in a crisis situation. The Armenian family has for seven centuries helped to sustain the Armenian nation (azg) in the absence of a state. During those centuries [when Armenia was stateless] the family, particularly the mothers of the family, helped to sustain the Armenian language, the religion and culture. To bring in these practices and approaches [shelters] that threaten the stability of the Armenian family is wrong. We are an NGO that respects our [Armenian] traditions and is sensitive to our traditions. We don’t support approaches that are tradition threatening. (Flora 25 March 2003)

Some of the leaders of the six NGOs involved in the anti-domestic violence campaign were particularly defensive on this matter of being portrayed as destroyers of families or traditions. One of the NGOs, the Women’s Rights Center, continued to defend itself even after the campaign had ended. For instance, in a booklet the Center published in 2005, it states, When we started working in the sphere of violence against women we often heard people saying that there was no such problem in Armenia, that it was artificially imported from foreign countries. We have even been accused of selling ourselves and by supporting the process of implementation of [an] alien life-style, participating in the destruction of traditionally strong families . . . according to which by destroying the families they [donors] want to destroy the country. This exquisitely developed tactics [sic] hindered the noble cause and defamed the activity of the organization whose aim was to support women subjected to violence to properly evaluate and protect their rights. (Women’s Rights Center 2005: 41; emphasis added) The report rails against the critics, arguing that their actions mitigated the impact of the campaign by accusing the NGOs involved of being driven by greed and for implementing a donor driven agenda. In order to fully understand why the anti-domestic violence campaign sparked such widespread protest and resistance, it is important also to understand the importance of family in Armenian culture and society, which I discuss in greater detail in Chapter Four. In the next section, I examine the failed family planning campaign of the late 1990s and the negative public reaction it unleashed,

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because many of the six NGO leaders involved in the anti-domestic violence campaign were wary of the failure of that initiative and sought to avoid making the same mistakes in attempting to transform and reinterpret gender relations and roles. The Family Planning Campaign as Prelude The ‘Green Path’ family planning programme that was initiated in June 2000 was intended to provide women with a greater choice of contraceptives in order to reduce the number of abortions, which are the primary method of birth control for many Armenian women. As part of the programme, the Armenian Ministry of Health, with support from USAID, launched Armenia’s first major mass media campaign to improve women’s reproductive health. The Ministry received technical assistance in developing the radio, television and print materials from the Johns Hopkins University Population Communication Services (JHU/PCS) (USAID Green Path webpage). According to the USAID press release, a distinctive campaign logo featuring a family walking on a green path and the campaign slogan ‘Family Planning: The Right Path for Your Family’ were used to identify all materials. The logo depicts the outline of a man, a woman and a child walking along a green path. Far from achieving its stated objectives, the programme sparked such a level of public resistance and criticism that, even three years later, people were still discussing it as one of the worst planned, marketed and implemented development initiatives of the post-Soviet period. According to my respondents, the primary problem was the way in which the issue was framed and presented to the public. The phrase ‘family planning’ (undanekan planavorum) was literally translated from English, and the advertisement campaigns on television and newspapers featured a man, a woman, one child and a dog. This is not a model Armenian family, and its use led the campaign to be locally perceived as an endorsement for single child families. As one journalist explained, Their approach to the issue was all wrong. They aired an advertisement on television for family planning in which they showed a young family which included the husband, the wife, a child and their dog in a park. A voice would then say, ‘Plan your family’ (Plannavorek tzer undanikuh). People were extremely upset and angry and so was I. Why were they only showing one child? What was that supposed to mean? They used the wrong propaganda and approaches to the problem. It was seen as a foreign intrusion into the family and attempts to decrease the Armenian population because they only showed one child and told people to ‘plan’ their families. When they used that advertisement and the word ‘planning’ it was as if they were saying, ‘Have only one child’. (Nane 22 May 2003)

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Many of the leaders of the six NGOs involved in the anti-domestic violence campaign recalled the failure of the family planning initiative when interviewed in 2003 and vowed that they would not repeat its mistakes. As the leader of NGO G explained, I knew if we began to discuss domestic violence in the same way as they discussed family planning then our efforts would meet with the same fate as theirs. In that campaign the public relations was so severely flawed that it gave the opportunity for some people to argue that USAID did not want Armenians to have any children. We decided to start with a more positive PR campaign by highlighting harmonious and strong families instead of talking about the levels of violence in the country . . . It is all how you talk about problems. If we had put posters or advertisements on television showing images of battered women with bruised faces and broken noses and then proceeded to argue that the husbands are evil, we would have been run out of town. (NGO G 11 July 2003) The leader of NGO B meanwhile argued, The family planning programme was implemented using a flawed advertising campaign and it failed miserably because the wrong message was being sent to people. Everyone was shouting that this was an attempt to stop population growth in Armenia. We understood this from the outset and felt that we needed to sensitively approach and introduce the issues of domestic violence if we wanted to avoid that mistake. (NGO B 23 April 2003) An official from the Armenian Ministry of Health who had been instrumental in the planning and implementation of the campaign explained how family planning became a priority for the Ministry of Health in late 1997 and why the 2000 Green Path programme failed to achieve its objectives. She said, When we began to implement the family planning programme the doctors received training, the contraceptives were distributed to pharmacies and clinics, but public awareness, education and good public relations were lacking. This led some members of the intelligentsia and the press to criticize and accuse the Ministry of colluding with foreign donors in their attempts to harm Armenia. They argued that the family planning programme was aimed at controlling population growth. They said that Armenians didn’t need such programmes because birth rates were already quite low (22 May 2003). She explained how attempts at explaining how the use of contraceptives could help increase fertility and birth rates by decreasing incidences of

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secondary infertility linked to high numbers of abortions were ignored. She added, They ignored all the explanations we issued about how family planning helped women avoid numerous abortions which studies had shown to be linked to secondary infertility rates. They chose to ignore our findings and instead spent several days demonstrating in front of the Ministry. One famous poet who joined the demonstration even accused USAID and Johns Hopkins University of attempted genocide and the Ministry of collusion (22 May 2003). Eventually, the programme was significantly altered and renamed as the Preventing Unwanted Pregnancies initiative. While this was the case in Armenia, US assistance for women’s reproductive health programmes worldwide was drastically affected when President George W. Bush signed a law, which is commonly referred to as ‘The Global Gag Rule’, on his second day in office. This law denies foreign organizations receiving US aid the right to use their own non-US funds to provide legal abortion, counselling, references for abortion or lobbying for the legalization of abortion in their country. Although the gag refers to abortions and abortion counselling, it is seen by many women’s organizations as an attack on free speech and as a blow to family planning programmes in general. The gag rule was originally announced by the Reagan administration at the 1984 United Nations International Conference on Population in Mexico City. It was rescinded in 1993 by then President Bill Clinton only to be reinstated in 2001 by President George W. Bush (Population Action International website).

Adaptations and Responses Recognizing the broad based resistance and criticism against the antidomestic violence campaign, the six NGOs employed various strategies to overcome the resistance. Several of the NGOs used a two pronged strategy in which they claimed that they were localizing the solutions for addressing domestic violence and simultaneously promoting democracy in Armenia by fighting to protect the rights of women. Most, though not all, of the NGOs that worked on this campaign began to use locally legitimate pro-family discourses in response to the criticism that they were transposing imported solutions. For instance, the Maternity Fund of Armenia NGO, whose objective is ‘helping strengthen families’ described its efforts in addressing domestic violence as a means ‘to remove the conflict generating causes and restore the peace in your family’ (Maternity Fund of Armenia 2002). The Armenian Caritas NGO’s slogan, ‘Say ‘‘No’’ to Violence – Let’s Preserve the Sacredness of Our Families’ (Caritas brochure)3 and the Ajakits NGO’s slogan, ‘Strong is the Nation (azg) that Has Strong Families’ (Ajakits Charitable

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NGO 2002: 5), are two other examples of NGOs attempting to frame the issue in culturally accepted pro-family terms. In addition to reframing the problem, the Maternity Fund also tried to portray their shelter as a Soviet-era style rest home (sanatoria) for mothers and their children. She explained that they decided to work with the husbands of the battered women in order to avoid accusations that they were advocating divorce. She said, We work with the families involved in violence and not with the women in isolation. This is how we implement our national (azgayin) approach. We say to the husbands of the women that come to us for help, ‘You need to hear what your wife and family are saying and we can help you listen to them’. We tell them about our crisis centre and we suggest to them that their children and wife come there to rest. We tend to ask the husband for permission, unless it is an extreme case of brutality, and when we present it in such a way most of the men acquiesce. In the Communist period we had mother and child sanatoria and the men we work with think that this is where their wives are going. We present the shelter as a rest home and not as a shelter. In our culture there is a practice of a wife returning to visit her parent’s home (darz) and if we can show the men that the wife is in a safe environment, they will be less likely to become aggressive and there will be an opportunity to ease the return of the women to her home. The family meetings and combined counselling sessions help to foster reconciliation and to speed her return. So this is how the national tradition is implemented in this project. We pay special attention to work with husbands. First they complain, then they agree to work with us and most often they are not ill disposed to the process (28 April 2003). The leader of the Women’s Rights Center, who was not keen on localizing approaches when I interviewed her in 2003, wrote the following two years later, . . . there is no need ‘to invent a bicycle’ [sic]. In our case [in Armenia], like in all other spheres, the problem is also the careful adoption of positive experience of foreign countries in such a way that it harmonizes with our national character, lifestyle and culture. (Women’s Rights Center 2005: 41) Even though she continues to argue that there was no need to reinvent the bicycle, her claim for ‘careful adoption’ was something new and, I argue, is in response to the civil society criticism of and resistance to the campaign. The second strategy that was embraced by all six NGOs was to demonstrate the link between their initiatives and democracy building. Because, as discussed earlier, the anti-domestic violence campaign was funded under the

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USAID’s Democracy Program, the NGOs felt more than justified in making this connection. The crux of their argument was to define domestic violence as a human rights violation and to contend that, as the protection of human rights is a necessary if not obligatory component of democracy building, the anti-domestic violence campaign was contributing to democratization processes in Armenia. The NGO leaders maintained that it was necessary to promote knowledge of and respect for human rights in order to combat domestic violence. They referred to the place of women traditionally and in Armenian history in order to demonstrate that promoting women’s rights through the anti-domestic violence campaign was not intended as a critique of or attack on Armenian culture. During interviews, in public addresses and in their publications, the leaders of the six NGOs often made the connection between their work and the larger goal of democracy promotion. The leader of NGO E, for instance, explicitly linked their decision to work on the issue of domestic violence with their work on democracy promotion, saying, It is a matter of keeping up with the times. You need to recognize the breath of the times (zhamanki shunjuh) in order to see the needs and decide what should be done. In 2002 we decided to work on the domestic violence issue. This is a new programme and the problem itself is not recognized in Armenia. However, since it is a matter of human rights and because our organization works toward the strengthening of democracy and the protection of human rights is part of our mission, we decided to work on it. (NGO E 6 May 2003) The following two excerpts from NGO publications further illustrate this tendency: [The] High moral and material costs paid for violence against women breach the principles of a democratic state based on rule of law and [it becomes essential to] prioritize the importance of finding solutions to this problem. (Maternity Fund of Armenia 2004: 4) It is necessary to raise this issue [of domestic violence] in society because it is an important condition to becoming civilized and for building civil society. Because, wherever any one person’s rights are violated, that place is not perfect. (Ajakits Charitable NGO 2002: 9) In order to further demonstrate the link between their work on domestic violence and democracy building, several of the six NGOs sponsored human rights, civic awareness and empowerment training programmes in schools and within the communities where they worked. Topics covered in these

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training sessions included the rights and responsibilities of citizens, the importance of community based volunteering and the need for greater participation in civic affairs. Unlike feminism, which was derided and ridiculed, democracy was considered a legitimating ideology by the Armenian NGO leaders. They hoped to justify their actions by using the language of democracy and civil society to frame their anti-domestic violence interventions by arguing that addressing the problem of domestic violence was an essential component of democracy building. Although their attempts to frame domestic violence as an obstacle to democratization did not ameliorate civil society resistance or criticism of their work, it is interesting that they chose to use this alternative framing in attempting to defuse the criticism they were encountering. It should be noted that the idea (if not the practice) of democracy is also very popular at a global level such that even ‘despots’ (Rieffer and Mercer 2005: 385) and ‘tyrants’ (McFaul 2004: 151) who are suspicious of Western-led democracy building efforts (particularly after the Iraq war) pretend to be democrats or claim they are charting an evolutionary (or revolutionary) transition to democracy (Ishkanian 2007b). I explore the arguments and the relationship between rights, culture and democracy building in further detail in Chapter Four.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the challenges involved in changing public opinions, values and behaviours and the local implications of foreign aid and global developments (i.e. the gag rule, the international movement against VAW). Understanding why the anti-domestic violence campaign met with such great resistance is important as it contributes to understanding the challenges that civil society organizations face in promoting democracy. In this case, the framing of the issue, the nature of the solutions being proposed, the absence of a grassroots movement supporting the campaign and the way in which it was funded (i.e. a direct grant from the USAID) generated widespread criticism that it was an ‘invented’ or ‘imported’ problem. This was not the case in the case study discussed in Chapter Two. In the case of civil society participation in the 2003 elections, civil society actors were actively involved in defining and addressing what they referred to as the ‘climate of fear’ (vakhi mtnolort) in Armenia, and many of my respondents were very adamant in stating that this was a civil society action and not a NGO action (i.e. one that is supported by grants). The anti-domestic violence campaign, meanwhile, was unequivocally and almost universally perceived as a donor driven NGO project. As scholars studying the dominance of the issue of VAW globally argue, the issue was strengthened and became widespread because it was universally understood and localized. Local manifestations of the VAW campaign include women’s activism against dowry deaths in India, protests against domestic violence and state sponsored disappearances in Latin

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America and discussion about female genital mutilation in Africa. Such local organizing did not occur in Armenia as I have demonstrated. On the contrary, following the Beijing conference, only two local NGOs were addressing this issue. These two NGOs were part of the six that received funding from USAID, but the remaining four groups had never addressed domestic violence until funding was made available by World Learning and USAID in 2001 and 2002 respectively. The fact that the majority of the NGOs that received funding from World Learning and USAID had not been working on the issue previously delegitimized the campaign as accusations of grant chasing hounded the six NGOs during the two years of the campaign. The motivations of the NGO leaders involved in the campaign were questioned by fellow NGO activists as well as by journalists and intellectuals. This questioning of the motivations of the leaders of the NGOs involved in the campaign further limited the impact they had on public opinion. The increased poverty in Armenia has meant that few organizations are membership based and supported. This has meant that the overwhelming majority of funds for NGOs come from foreign donors. Given that some NGOs, for reasons of economic dependency, are compelled to address issues that are deemed important by donors, to constantly keep up with the shifting demands of these donors and to address issues in the paradigms suggested by donors, this has brought local NGOs into disrepute, because they are seen as grant seekers who shift priorities and address issues promoted by donors instead of addressing issues that are considered important locally. This tendency has intensified the existing disillusion with democratization and civil society, and has led to accusations of grant eating (grantakerutvun).4 Accusations of NGO corruption or grant eating have harmed the development of the sector. Even one of the six NGO leaders involved in the campaign argued that the behaviour of some of her colleagues had a detrimental impact on their work. She said, ‘I can say that certain NGOs dealing with women’s issues that are part of this campaign have to some extent ruined our image through their grant eating’ (NGO G 18 April 2005). The two cases explored in this and the previous chapter are very different in terms of how civil society actions and the role of donors were perceived. Whereas in the anti-domestic violence case, the NGOs involved were perceived as carrying out donors’ orders and the donors were seen as controlling and intervening in the development of civil society organizations, in the case of the elections, the human rights NGOs and the youth movement were seen as acting in response to the growing climate of fear and their actions were independent of donors. In that case, donors were perceived as playing an important role by providing support for NGOs to publicize and disseminate information about the growing number of human rights violations. In addition to the varying perceptions of civil society actions and the role of donors, the two cases also differed in terms of source of resistance.

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While the anti-domestic violence campaign met with broad based resistance and criticism from civil society, in the case of the human rights NGOs involved in the elections, the primary source of resistance and criticism was the government. The authorities were very suspicious of the NGOs’ actions and questioned the intentions of donors supporting those NGOs. In the case of domestic violence, the authorities did not actively criticize or resist the actions of the NGOs; on the contrary, they adopted an attitude of condescending indifference. These two case studies have examined the role and impact of civil society in democracy building, the role and perceptions of donors, the actions and motivations of various stakeholders (NGOs, government officials, etc.) and the different perceptions of various democracy building initiatives which will be analysed further throughout the book. They demonstrate the complexity of democracy building in Armenia and how it is shaped by Armenia’s historical, political and socio-cultural context and foreign aid, as well as by the agency of the various actors involved.

4

Culture and Democracy Building

In analysing why the transitions to democracy have not yielded the expected results, a common claim is that a society’s propensity or ‘fitness’ for democracy is predicated on its cultural and geographic proximity to the West (Nodia 2002a, b; McFaul 2002). In this chapter, I begin by discussing the culture concept and how culture has been used as an explanation to explain the lack of democratization. I then ask, ‘What is considered to be Armenian culture’? and, in doing so, I focus on those cultural narratives that are seen as affecting democracy building. I then examine the attempts by Western donors and democracy promoters to ‘manage’ culture through capacity building and training of trainer exercises in order to affect the cultural attitudes and behaviours that they believe are obstacles to democratization. While I would argue that cultural beliefs and ideologies are certainly important and do affect individuals’ understanding, behaviours and acceptance or rejection of particular ideas and paradigms, I am sceptical of the essentializing discourses which view culture as an essential, monolithic and static entity. Furthermore, I find the tendency in some of the ‘transitological’1 works that describe culture as a mitigating factor to democratization to speak of the ‘other’ as being affected by culture, while claiming to be objective or simply ignoring how one’s own behaviours and understanding are also influenced by cultural beliefs, quite problematic. I suggest taking a more flexible and dynamic view of culture which also considers the impact of the culture of Western policy makers and foreign experts engaged in democracy building. Otherwise, there is an implicit assumption that those transmitting the ideas or conducting the trainings are objective and neutral, while the recipients of those ideas and training are beholden to and constrained by their cultures.

The Culture Concept and Democracy The debate around the culture concept emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in anthropology, and it was initially a strong reaction against the essentializing discourses and tendencies within earlier anthropological works, which sought to define ‘the culture’ of any given people. These depictions often

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portrayed said culture as a timeless, static, pristine element that had no history and had not been affected by national or global political developments (Ortner 2006). Discussions around the culture concept triggered a critique of the essentializing tendencies and the practice of stereotyping which was used (or could be used) not only for positive means, e.g. the X are a peaceful people, but also to stereotype negatively, e.g. the X are prone to violence, to terrorism, etc. These debates around the culture concept also engendered several developments including post-modernist and post-colonial critiques in anthropology, which raised questions about the politics of representation. The post-modern critics claimed that culture was a text that is interpreted by the anthropologist and that the writing of such texts is influenced both by the subjectivity of the anthropologist as well as his/her biases, views and, of course, choice of informants (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986). This led to a crisis of representation and knowledge, as questions arose as to whether it was really possible to claim to understand let alone explain other cultures. The post-colonial critics focused on anthropology’s complicity with colonialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, arguing that anthropology’s role had been to either salvage and record the practices and beliefs of societies undergoing rapid transformation or help colonial administrators understand the ‘natives’ better, thereby assisting in colonial administration and rule (Asad 1973). The critics claimed that anthropological representations tended to dichotomize the peoples of the world into two parties in which the ‘others’ were portrayed as an undifferentiated group that was backward, irrational, superstitious, emotional and violent (Said 1979). Anthropology has since engaged in a great deal of soul searching and, although the post-modern critique has faded, one of its lasting legacies is the view that ethnography should represent a variety of discordant voices in order to avoid essentializing a people or a way of life by insisting on a static representation (Kuper 1999: 208) and that it should also consider the impact of global processes, movements of people, transnational flow of ideas, etc. (Gupta and Ferguson 1997). Beyond this debate within anthropology, we find less deconstructed uses of the culture concept. Indeed, within the disciplines of economics or political science, not to mention in policy documents, culture remains an unproblematic category that is used to account for a particular group of people embracing or rejecting particular changes or technologies. Essentialist representations of the ‘other’ strip away the complexities within societies and depict a group of people as having a static, monolithic culture that is unaffected by local or global political, economic and cultural processes and transformations. Such sweeping generalizations and claims, which blame culture for the lack of change, are hardly new; they have been around for decades and are examples of the interpretations that have been used to explain the failure of development, industrialization and modernization programmes since the 1950s. As Adam Kuper writes, ‘Culture was invoked when it became necessary to explain why people were clinging to irrational

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goals and self-destructive strategies. Development projects were defeated by cultural resistance. Democracy crumbled because it was alien to the traditions of a nation’ (Kuper 1999: 10). When the rational choice theorists failed to explain and account for the resistance to change, culture was used to explain such irrational behaviour. While modernization theories have been subjected to a rigorous critique, the tendency among some Western policy makers and planners to identify culture as an impediment and obstacle to development, change and modernization remains. As Elizabeth Crewe and Emma Harrison write, When development flounders, self-criticism is often limited to an acceptance that insufficient attention has been paid to the recipients of aid. Implicit in this, however, is a tendency to root the explanation in the culture of recipients. Colonial denigration of the ‘customs of the natives’ may be long gone, but the reification of culture as a ‘barrier to development’ is still common. (Crewe and Harrison 1998: 15) In 2007, a book entitled The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save it From Itself was published, which revives and recycles the ideas of cultural determinism and its affects on development (Harrison 2007). Why do such representations and arguments that blame culture persist? One explanation seems to be the problem of having to explain or deal with development or aid failures, which makes it far easier to blame the lack of development, democracy or modernization not on misguided policies and implementation practices, but rather on the culture of the recipient governments (i.e. endemic corruption), communities (i.e. backward and traditional) and organizations (i.e. lacking professionalism) (Cooke and Kothari 2001; Escobar 1994; Ferguson 1994; Kabeer 1994: Mosse 2005). In the context of the post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe, ‘transitologists’ often ‘invoke ‘‘culture’’, that amorphous, omnibus concept’ as an explanation for why certain Western policies or blueprints have been resisted (Burawoy and Verdery 1999: 14), viewing these countries as ‘backward, communal, Eastern or slavish’ (Wolfe 2000: 201). As David Chandler argues, in Bosnia, culture or ethnic mentality were cited as reasons for the inability to embrace civil society development and democratization. Chandler discusses the disparaging ways in which the Bosnian people and society were viewed by some international actors and internationally funded local NGOs who viewed Bosnian society as ‘deeply sick’, ‘feudalistic’ or as ‘the flock’ (2004: 240–41). He argues that this focus on the perceived incapacities of Bosnians is only one side of the story and that greater attention must be paid to the ‘failing within international democratization practice itself’ (Chandler 2004: 228). In the former Soviet states, one of the most common claims made by transitologists is that whether a society (or civilization) is considered ‘fit’

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for democracy is determined by how close (culturally and geographically) that society is to the West (McFaul 2002; Nodia 2002a, b). As Nodia claims, Democracy (along with other traits of ‘modernity’) arose first in the West. In light of that fact, democracy appears in history as something ‘Western’ and a choice in favour or democracy assumes a cultural as well as political character. Thus feeling culturally close to the West will tilt a country toward political democracy. Conversely, a country where the West is seen as alien will be a country that is less likely for that reason to choose democracy. (Nodia 2002b: 204–5) Nodia brings together the modernization and democracy arguments, echoing the implicit assumption found in other transitological texts, which posit that Western policies and approaches were unable to counter the cultural resistance in post-socialist societies. Meanwhile, Marc Plattner argues, ‘Although Western policy was flawed in numerous respects, it is doubtful that even the most enlightened Western policies would have brought a comparable success in Russia’ (Plattner 2002: xx). Examining the challenges to democracy building in countries of the South Caucasus, Zbigniew Brzezinkski assigns a causal role to historical experience and cultural formation, which create predispositions for ‘certain mechanisms to work or not work in this or that particular case’ (2002: 197). While I recognize the influence that culture and history have on people’s understanding and behaviours, as I discussed in Chapters Two and Three, I find the emphasis on ‘cultural formation’ or ‘historical experience’ in some transitological accounts or by some donors and democracy promoters fails to take full account of how the process of democracy building was and continues to be an interactive, dialectical process that is inevitably shaped and affected by the practices, policies, beliefs and ideologies of individuals working in the donor agencies. As Burawoy and Verdery argue, the responses or resistances to any macro policy (whether privatization, liberalization or any other policy) are cultural and political as well as economic (Burawoy and Verdery 1999). Therefore, the tendency to isolate culture as a barrier to democratization is a flawed and myopic strategy that ignores the broader political, social and economic factors. Michael Herzfeld criticizes the ‘misuse of the culture concept’ in the media and among some academics who decry ‘Balkan nationalism’ and ‘religious fundamentalism’, all the while failing to recognize their own, Western cultural fundamentalisms. Yet, as Herzfeld adds, rejecting the essentialization of other cultures does not legitimate meting out the same treatment to the ‘West’ and for treating the West as a generic bogey (Herzfeld 2001: 152). Such views, Herzfeld maintains, not only essentialize the ‘other’, but they also essentialize ‘the West’.

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Hence, it is important to recognize how the culture concept is also (mis) used by authoritarian leaders who argue that democracy or human rights are incompatible with local traditions and values. Such claims are hardly new. From African dictators in the 1970s to Asian government officials in the 1990s, there have been two sets of arguments about cultural incompatibility with democratic or human rights norms. The first argument is that democracy is a luxury that can and should only come after a certain stage of economic development and stability has been achieved. The second argument is that democracy is a Western individualistic value that is not compatible with more ‘traditional’ or kin-based societies. These arguments held great sway in the 1990s until the financial crisis in Asia undermined the ‘Asian values’ argument and silenced most of its proponents (Thompson 2001: 154). As discussed in Chapter Two, following the 2003 Armenian presidential elections, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) observation team declared that the second round of elections was ‘free, transparent, democratic, and legitimate’, while the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers pointed out the vast number of irregularities in the voter lists and the problems in the voting and counting processes to describe the elections as ‘flawed’ and ‘not free and fair’. Some Armenian politicians, most prominently then Defence Minister Serj Sarkissian, sought to explain the vastly different interpretations as a matter of shared cultural understanding and Armenian mentality (Haykakan mentalitet). Such claims were challenged by local NGOs and journalists. Nonetheless, such thinking persists in Armenia, and it is not limited to Armenian politicians who are part of the ruling party. Although Western donor or international NGO (INGO) representatives do not use the language of ‘mentality’, a number of respondents from these organizations whom I interviewed expressed an opinion that Armenians’ devotion to family mitigated the development of civil society and democracy in the country. For instance, one INGO representative told me, ‘Armenians focus on their immediate family’s needs more than they do on community issues. This hurts civil society organizing’ (7 May 2003). Two other representatives from a bilateral donor agency and an INGO claimed that Armenians viewed NGOs as a family business (30 April 2003 INGO; 29 March 2005 bilateral donor). These arguments are reminiscent of Edward Banfield’s arguments of ‘amoral familism’ (1958). Banfield described the inhabitants of Montegrano as maximizing the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family and assuming that all others will do the same (1958: 85). Such an attitude was seen as mitigating co-operation, solidarity, participation and association in order to pursue common goals. Amoral familism, Banfield argued, is a situation in which social solidarity does not extend beyond the nuclear family, thereby preventing wider social and civic cooperation. Robert Putnam famously developed this argument through his study of participation in community or civic associations in northern and southern Italy and argued that attachment to family in southern Italy

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prevented the development of civic associations and, ultimately, democracy. Without launching into the diverse critiques of Putnam’s neo-Toquevillian ‘making democracy work’ or social capital arguments (Cohen 1999; Harriss 2002; Skocpol and Fiorina 1999; Tarrow 1994), which has nonetheless been so popular among policy makers, my question is as follows: does Armenians’ devotion to family inhibit the development of democracy in Armenia? In the next section, I discuss two key cultural narratives that are considered to be fundamental components of Armenian culture. To be clear, I am not focusing on material culture or artefacts including food, crafts, literature, arts, architecture, music, carpets, ceramics, etc. (Abrahamian and Sweezy 2001). First, I examine the linking of the family with the nation (azg) and, in so doing, I consider the primacy of the family within Armenian society and how it shapes Armenians’ worldviews, ethos and understanding. Second, I examine Armenians’ focus on history and how this narrative of being between empires (e.g. Russian, Ottoman, Persian) or East and West shapes Armenians’ world views.

Armenian Cultural Narratives Family and Nation In Armenia, family is seen as the foundation and core of society. Abrahamian (2005) asserts that, when the modern concepts of nation and nationalism emerged in European political discourse in the nineteenth century, Armenians gave preference to the Armenian word azg because it embraced such meanings as ‘tribe’, ‘clan’, ‘people’, ‘order’ and ‘class’. He contends that, in Armenia, the ‘azg family’ is seen as assisting the Armenian ‘azg nation’ to survive. Stephanie Platz concurs and suggests that not only is kinship a central part of what it means to be ‘Armenian’, but that it is central to the daily imagining of the nation through which the concepts of Armenianness and the family are mutually reinforced (Platz 2000: 118). Svetlana Lourie, meanwhile, argues that the family and nation (azg) are the two key elements in the hierarchy of universal values in Armenian consciousness (Lourie 1993: 184). She writes, All other relationships in and with the world are secondary and depend on those inside the family and the nation. They are closely connected and family is so important for the Armenian that, in a certain sense, he belongs to his nation not as a [sic] individual, but as a member of his family. (Lourie 1993: 184) The following excerpt from the 1998 UNDP Armenia Human Development Report written by Armenian experts exemplifies popular perceptions and

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thinking about the importance of the family in Armenia and the role of women in the family. . . . family has been more than just a basic societal unit. In Armenian national mentality, it has traditionally been perceived as being of the highest value in its capacity as an intermediary, situated in between the individual and the state. In the absence of statehood, the concept of ‘Nation-as-a-Family,’ a sui generis ‘familism,’ has evolved in Armenian society. The core and the unifying power of these ideas has traditionally been the Armenian woman, whose role is unique and decisive in the national history and culture. A history replete with war, invasion, massacre, genocide, and natural disasters shaped the Armenian family into a basic unit for viability and self-preservation [Emphasis added]. (UNDP (1998: 17) In Armenia, without strong family ties, people feel isolated, vulnerable, marginalized and unable to advance socially, economically or politically. On account of the neo-liberal reforms implemented in the 1990s, which curtailed state spending on social services during the post-Soviet period, family has not only come to play an increasingly important role in providing care and support but, at times, it has become the sole source of support for individuals in need. The above quote not only highlights the importance of family in Armenia, but it also refers to the fundamental role of women within the family. While men are expected to be leaders and decision makers in the political and economic realms, women are expected to be the self-sacrificing nurturers and supporters of their families as well as the nation, which is perceived as the family writ large. In Armenia, motherhood is seen as sacred (soorp),2 and women are often referred to as the hearth (odjakh), pillar (syun) and light (jrak) of the family. In spite of legal and formal equality,3 Armenian women have suffered many setbacks in the political and economic sectors during the post-Soviet period. Currently, women in Armenia are not only the majority of the unemployed and the poor (Gyuzalyan 2000), but they have also largely been left out of the government and political parties (Democracy Today 2002). When the Bolsheviks came to power in the 1920s, they attempted to transform family relations and shift individuals’ loyalty from the family to the Communist Party and the state, but their efforts at ‘breaking the cake of custom’ did not fundamentally change the nature of Armenian families. Gregory Massell’s study, The Surrogate Proletariat (1974), illustrates the process through which the Soviet government attempted to penetrate the traditional solidarity of kinship in Central Asia. In Armenia, these efforts at transforming the family began in the early 1920s as the Communist Party identified the traditional Armenian family as a ‘backward’ institution. There were two main reasons for this: first, the political imperative to include women in the class war; second, the economic need to draw women

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into socialized production. To do this, the Party leadership created the Women’s Division of the Communist Party (Zhenotdel in Russian or Kinbazhin in Armenian) with the aim of emancipating Armenian women by educating them, encouraging them to take jobs outside the home and drawing them into the arena of public life (Matossian 1962: 63). During the 1920s Kinbazhin workers would select representatives (delegatki) who would visit homes and give women ‘scientific’ advice on how to raise children and on simple rules of hygiene. These delegatki would also try to establish rapport with the children of the household and encourage them to report cases of child beating, wife beating and forced marriages, which Mary Kilbourne Matossian argues had ‘immense potentialities for disrupting traditional family patterns’ (1962: 66). In addition to Kinbazhin, the Commission for the Improvement of the Way of Life of Women (Kanants Kentsaghe Barelavogh Handznazhogov) was created in 1923 to ‘advise government organs, conduct propaganda campaigns, offer legal advice to women, and provide an ‘‘inspection service’’ to see that Soviet legislation regarding the family and traditional offences was put into effect’ (Matossian 1962: 67). While the Soviet regime attempted to modernize the Armenian family at the micro level, it did not alter some of its basic dynamics, including patriarchal relations, the primary role of women as homemakers and its ‘national character’. Throughout the Soviet period, family continued to be the site for cultural and national reproduction (Panossian 2006: 272). This status quo was reinforced further because the traditional family was presented in the official discourse as ‘progressive’ and as the key to the individual’s happiness and ‘bright future’ (Panossian 2006: 272). Subsequently, the policies and practices of Soviet institutions, including the Commission for the Improvement of the Way of Life of Women and the Women’s Division of the Communist Party, were resented and resisted, with the paradoxical effect of strengthening family and kinship networks. Family not only became a mode of resistance to the state, but also remained as the primary means of identification, support and advancement during the Soviet period (Suny 1993). In the post-Soviet period, family and kinship networks (KhTsB)4 continue to be vitally important, not only for career advancement but also for sheer physical survival. Although traditional Armenian family patterns have been threatened by temporary labour migration as well as permanent emigration in recent years, at least in the first generation, most families maintain ties within a transnational context. While there are no official figures, it is commonly acknowledged by most scholars that, since 1991, at least 500,000 and quite possibly as many as 1 million Armenians (out of a total population of almost 3.7 million in 1990) have left Armenia (International Organization of Migration 2002: 8). It is difficult to estimate the actual number of people as many migrants leave Armenia by illegal means and do not register their departure with the appropriate government agencies. According to the 1996 UNDP Human Development Report, in 1995, nearly one out of five registered residents of

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Armenia was living abroad temporarily or permanently, and every fifth family out of 1,000 families interviewed reported having received assistance from relatives and friends in the previous month.5 Every tenth family reported having provided such assistance to others with remittances they had received from abroad (UNDP 1996). According to the Armenian Central Bank, over US$740 million in remittances was sent in 2005 (Danielyan 2005). As discussed in Chapter Three, in the early 1990s, women’s and gender issues became a key component of foreign aid programmes in Armenia and the other former socialist states. The family was once again seen as an important site for remaking and challenging accepted norms, attitudes and behaviours (Gal and Kligman 2000). Gender became a central battlefield of the transition because it was one of the areas of direct ideological confrontation between capitalism and socialism (Brandtsta¨dter 2007: 140). Later in this chapter, I examine how, through capacity building and training of trainers programmes, foreign experts attempted to change cultural attitudes and ideologies concerning gender roles and relations as well as understanding about individual responsibility and leadership. Such training was an important component of the anti-domestic violence campaign as well as the civic participation and education campaigns related to elections, as discussed in Chapters Three and Two respectively. Similar to the Soviet planners, the Western experts also experienced difficulties in introducing new norms, understandings and attitudes, in particular around the family. The resistance and critique that emerged in response to the domestic violence trainings in particular was based on perceptions that the Westerners were not only making value judgements about Armenian families, but they were rejecting traditional patterns and attempting to replace them with foreign, imported patterns which were not held in very high regard locally. One of the most problematic framings of the domestic violence campaign was that of discussing the problem, which many considered to be private and personal, as a public or social issue. This framing was driven by the American feminist notion that the personal is political. While some Western feminists recognize that domestic violence was formerly a private issue in the West, they underestimate the historical, cultural and social differences that determine how issues are addressed and resolved in different societies. Writing in response to Habermas’ work on the bourgeois public sphere, Nancy Fraser raises important questions of how private issues become matters for common concern. She argues, ‘Only participants themselves can decide what is and what is not of common concern to them’ (Fraser 1994: 129). Fraser argues that, in the US, feminists had an uphill struggle in making domestic violence a public issue. She writes, Until quite recently, feminists were in the minority in thinking that domestic violence was a matter of common concern and thus a legitimate topic of public discourse. The great majority of people considered this issue to be a private matter . . . then feminists formed a subaltern

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Fraser emphasizes the point that there are no naturally given or a priori boundaries that mark or define which issues are ‘public’ and which ‘private’. On the contrary, she maintains, issues become a ‘matter of common concern’ precisely through a process of ‘discursive contestation’ (Fraser 1994: 129). For many women in post-socialist countries, Susan Gal and Gail Kligman claim that the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’6 was alarming because it sounded as if it would bring not only politics but also the government into the family, inviting surveillance, corruption and humiliation into the home, destroying the ‘only social arena, despite its actual problems, that seemed to many a realm relatively free of state intrusion’ (2000: 101).7 This politicization, they add, implied that women should criticize their families and perhaps even give up their devotion to this one institution that many felt should, ideally, be safe and constant in a changing and highly politicized and volatile world.8 Given the high value placed on family, feminism has not been very popular and there has not been a coherent women’s or feminist movement in Armenia since independence. Even women leaders who criticize the government for not doing enough to support gender equality rarely (if ever) define themselves as feminists. Indeed, they often take offence at being referred to as feminists. The vilification of feminism is partly due to seventy years of state opposition to feminism as a bourgeois and counter-revolutionary ideology. This is not just the case in the former Soviet states. As Gal and Kligman maintain, in East Central Europe, men and women treat feminism with ridicule and derision in public forums and view it as a controversial concept (2000: 98). In Armenia, female academics reinforce this perspective. For instance, in the article ‘This is not about Women’s Struggle, but about Society’s Common Sense’, a prominent female academic, civil society activist and politician, Lyudmila Harutyunyan, argues against a feminist approach. She writes, I don’t place the emphasis on the women’s movement, since the woman in Armenian society is the pillar of stability and she does not have the right to cause a social implosion that will threaten that stability. Especially since our society is under crisis. Simply, it is important to initiate constructive steps to insure that women play a role in political affairs and governance. (Harutyunyan 2000: 21) Many leaders of women’s NGOs in Armenia agree with Harutyunyan’s views and consider NGOs to be organizational forms that allow women to

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pursue critical social, educational and health care needs, rather than a feminist agenda. This leads them to define themselves and their organizations as ‘feminine’ (kanatzi) rather than ‘feminist’. This distinction is crucial because ‘feminine’ denotes continuity with the past and traditional gender roles and ideologies, whereas ‘feminist’ clearly denotes a break with the past. In examining the importance of the private realm, Ken Jowitt writes ‘ . . . the Leninist experience reinforced the exclusive distinction and dichotomic antagonism between the official and private realms’ (1999: 216). What this meant, Jowitt maintains, is that no Leninist regime ever created a ‘culture of impersonal measured action’ (1999: 218) and, subsequently, the post-socialist period is characterized by a worldview in which political life continues to be viewed as ‘suspect, distasteful, and possibly dangerous; to be kept at bay by dissimulation, made tolerable by private intimacy’ (Jowitt 1999: 219). Collective Memory and being at the Crossroads of East and West A second Armenian cultural narrativerefers tothe importance ofhistoryand the understanding that, historically, Armenia has always been situated between competing empires or centres of power. For Armenians, the past is not just something in history books. As Stephanie Platz found through her ethnographic fieldwork in Armenia, Armenians used history to ‘talk about themselves and their circumstances’ on a daily basis. She writes, ‘Through the representation of history, Armenians resisted rupture and regression by constructing a national space–time through social memory’ (Platz 2000: 137). Lourie cites how this ‘memory of the past’ is not simply ‘vague nostalgic reminiscences of a lost Golden Age’ but that it also points to the current belief of the ‘priority of national statehood’ which is absolute (1993: 186). Nora Dudwick suggests that many patterns of thinking and behaviour in Armenia today can be traced back to the pre-Soviet era and Armenian society in the Ottoman Empire. She claims that Armenians often attribute their ‘national failings’ as being due to their centuries of statelessness when they kept their heads low and adapted to the prevailing political climate (Dudwick 1997: 72). The key element in this narrative of remembering of the past is the sense of being betwixt and between empires, continents and competing powers. In formal interviews and informal discussions, Armenians commonly referred to themselves as being geographically, culturally and politically at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. Discussions and debates around foreign policy are also often framed in this language of being between the political centres of the East and the West. For instance, discussions of whether or not to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Council of Europe or to strive for European Union membership are shaped by this narrative as well as by geopolitical, economic and financial considerations and concerns. Recognizing Armenians’ beliefs about the family, the personal versus the political and understandings about their role in the world, as I have already

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stated, democracy promoters considered some of these beliefs to be hindrances to democracy building. Culture, in other words, has come to be seen as a barrier to democratization and to transition policies in general. According to Burawoy and Verdery, this view has led to the production of ‘how to’ manuals for cultural ‘management’ by practitioners in the worlds of development and business that are aimed at providing information on how that prickly, amorphous ‘thing’ (i.e. culture) can be managed and put to best use (Burawoy and Verdery 1999). This trend reflects the growing managerialism within development, which seeks to tame, discipline and depoliticize processes that are inherently political and affected by complex geometries of power (Cooke 2004; Escobar 1994; Ferguson 1994).

Managing Culture: International Interventions, Capacity Building and the Training of Trainers Capacity building is an approach to development (Eade 1997) that involves ‘an explicit outside intervention to improve an organization’s effectiveness and sustainability in relation to its mission and context’ (James 1994: 5). Northern NGOs engage in capacity building in order to train and pass on skills to the Southern NGO partners which they consider to be essential for better development interventions.9 Capacity building became extremely popular with bilateral and multilateral donors in the 1990s because it was believed that money alone was not enough and that Southern NGOs needed technical assistance and training to improve their capacities (Lewis 2001). Capacity building can be considered a manifestation of the oft-repeated parable within development, which states that if you give a man a fish, he will not go hungry today but, if you teach a man to fish, he will be able to feed himself all the days of his life. Setting aside the question as to whether the man (or woman) actually has access to a body of water (i.e. the problematic question of access to resources, markets, etc), this thinking is quite dominant in development circles. But, as Deborah Eade writes, What if those of us who claim to do the teaching do not know how to fish? This is not at all far-fetched. Can we – as NGOs, as donors, as governmental extension services – honestly claim to have achieved that much capacity in our own organizations, we who strive to teach others? Have we really mastered what we teach, have we been able to organize ourselves sufficiently to achieve meaningful results? Clearly we have not. (Eade 1997: 26) Importantly, Eade raises the question of whether implementing agencies or actors have mastered these capacities, which in many cases they have not. The strongest critique to emerge of capacity building comes from NGOs and activists based in the global South, who argue that much of the capacity building discourse is paternalistic and based on the assumption that Northern NGOs

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have more and better capacity than Southern NGOs (Fisher 1995; Simbi and Thom 2001). Simbi and Thom (2001), for instance, argue that some of the activities and tools found in capacity building trainings can be used to control and manage the dependent partner, serving to pass down systems needed to meet the requirements of the more ‘capacitated’ partners, rather than to meet the dependent partner’s own needs. In Armenia, capacity building has been used to teach individuals a series of skills, including how to create and manage NGOs, how to apply for grants, how to prepare reports, how to lobby and engage in advocacy, etc. In an effort to change cultural perceptions, behaviours and attitudes, capacity building training has also provided empowerment, leadership and advocacy trainings for NGO members. Having participated in a number of capacity building training exercises designed for NGO members in Armenia, I found that trainings in addition to teaching a particular skill (i.e. how to fundraise) also implicitly communicated the donors’ expectations by teaching local actors which topics were open to discussion and which knowledge and discourses were considered valuable. There are two kinds of capacity building training. The first is organized and led by foreign trainers and experts who travel to Armenia for a few days or weeks and provide training to local NGO members or other stakeholders (e.g. law enforcement officials, civil servants, etc.). These training exercises are generally run in English or some other European language and are accompanied by an Armenian interpreter. Sometimes, this training is also referred to as the training of trainers (TOTs), implying that those trained by the foreign experts will go on to train others in their own communities. The second type of training is that conducted by Armenians who have been trained by foreign experts. The establishment of the NGO Resource and Training Centre in Armenia in 1994, which I discussed in Chapter One, reflected the mood of the early 1990s when Western organizations were engaged in and heavily invested in the transfer of ‘know-how’ to the East (i.e. the British ‘Know-How Fund’). Janine Wedel describes how Western consultants were dispatched across the ocean as ‘agents of change’, who would presumably transfer the knowledge that would speed the transition along (Wedel 2001: 85). Steven Sampson has also described how, in the Western view, the transition was most often envisaged as being a transfer of models or, as the Danish agency for which he worked called it, ‘systems-export’ (Sampson 1996: 125). In this transfer of models or systems-export, those being ‘transitioned’ were encouraged to learn the new language or jargon of the NGO/project/ funding world. Training was often seen as the initial step that NGOs had to pass before they could successfully apply for grants. As one INGO representative told me, For the past two years we have been providing advocacy trainings. NGOs have had opportunities to learn about and get trainings on advocacy. They now have the opportunity to apply for advocacy grants from us

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Culture and democracy building and other donors. Having gone through the trainings we organized, will certainly increase their chances of getting the grant (17 April 2003).

When I asked why their chances would increase, I was told this was because the NGOs would have learned what advocacy was and could better demonstrate their knowledge of and skills in advocacy when preparing grant proposals. Scholars have analysed the interactions between Western donors and experts and local NGOs (Bruno 1997; Creed and Wedel 1997; Mendelson 2002; Sampson 1996; Wedel 2001). Yet, as Sarah Mendelson argues, the experts have tended to be good architects but poor interior designers, in that they may know how to build new structures, but they lack the skills and knowledge that will help them to promote projects that will help those structures to operate (Mendelson 2002). Through my participant observation of trainings, I found that they often involved a negation of previous knowledge and behaviours. For example, any knowledge or skills gained during the Soviet period (however innocuous) were considered tainted and problematic. What trainings also did at times was to imply that the problems facing Armenian society could be overcome through the acquisition of particular technical skills, capacities and knowledge, and to portray the lack of democracy as a technical issue that could be resolved through the acquisition and application of new technologies and capacities. In the anti-domestic violence campaign, for instance, discussed in Chapter Three, technical solutions, such as hotlines and shelters, were implemented in the place of more ambitious programmes that would address the structural and economic inequalities that would provide more long-term and sustainable solutions. As one women’s rights NGO leader told me with reference to domestic violence trainings, We often see that donors, instead of taking this context into account, prefer to give technologiakan (technological) commands to local NGOs. When we [local NGOs] conduct trainings we give our trainees both education and technology. Meaning that we teach them the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of addressing a problem. When some western trainers conduct trainings, they only teach the technological aspects or the ‘how’. . . . The same goes with domestic violence and trafficking, they say ‘fight it’ with shelters, but they don’t stop to see how it works. That is what I am talking about with the shelters – the focus is on the technological methods. They say, ‘Open shelters’, but they don’t take into account how Armenians will view shelters. For a country like Armenia, which unlike many other countries in the world has such a tight knit social system and family network, if something goes wrong people often turn to their friends, their families, and their neighbours. They are not likely to take their concerns to strangers. Battered women won’t go to shelters; they will go to their friends and family. (Rosa 3 April 2003)

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Rosa raises a key issue with international interventions by arguing that, at heart, they were seen as technical, and problems were treated as being a lack of technology rather than being more complex and multi-causal. In writing about development discourses and how those discourses are used to justify donor interventions, James Ferguson argues that development agencies are often looking for ways to ‘move money’ and to ‘plug’ themselves in. This leads them to search for technical solutions to problems, which often ignore the political and structural dimensions of a problem (Ferguson 1994). Many of the trainers who worked in Armenia or who delivered expert advice often possessed very little information about the country and its history, politics and culture. This was not limited to Armenia, but also occurred in other post-Soviet states including Georgia (Haindrava 2003) and Russia (Hemment 2007; Rivkin-Fish 2004). In neighbouring Georgia, where many of the same policies and training exercises were implemented, a Georgian NGO leader writes, Some [Western] specialists come without the slightest knowledge of the countries they are advising. The latter generously share the American experience in organizing election campaigns and fundraising for candidates for state legislatures, or perhaps the Indian experience of community-building in traditionally caste-bound villages. I do not deny that all the information may be of some theoretical interest to some local specialists, but I will say that in Georgia the practical use of all those lectures, seminars, and training sessions was pretty much nonexistent . . . Expert knowledge of India, combined with complete ignorance of Georgia . . . was both insulting and humorous, neither facilitating the learning process nor contributing to the reputation of the international experts. (Haindrava 2003: 77) Clearly, not all training was seen as irrelevant or useless. Moreover, not all trainers are so uninformed or paternalistic in their approaches. On the contrary, there were training exercises that were considered beneficial and useful by participants. These included vocational training (e.g. bookkeeping, dressmaking, hairdressing, etc.) and training that taught a specific skill (i.e. how to write grant proposals, how to prepare business plans, etc.). Those training exercises that were criticized most often were those that were imposed by donors without local requests for such training and those that were theoretical in scope but lacked practical applications. One such training exercise that was considered ‘useless’ focused on promoting direct mail campaigns. The expert running the campaign was clearly unaware that the domestic postal service in Armenia was not functioning in the late 1990s. Below, I examine an example of a training exercise that was organized by an international NGO and conducted by an American trainer. The training was funded by a grant from USAID. By analysing the interactions

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between local NGO members and the American trainer, I consider the methods through which NGO members were ‘trained’ to be ‘advocates’, to use particular discourses and to think using specific models and logic. I examine the power relationships and the stances of these actors. A Training Exercise Examined This training of trainers programme was held in October 2002 and was organized by a USAID funded legal strengthening and advocacy training NGO in Armenia. The office of this NGO was in a very upmarket neighbourhood in Yerevan and, in contrast to local NGO offices (i.e. when local NGOs have offices outside the homes of their leaders), was exquisitely furnished and technologically equipped, immediately and quite dramatically marking out this INGO’s differential access to resources compared with that of local Armenian NGOs. This NGO had invited a gender expert from the US to conduct training exercises with women’s rights and human rights NGOs to encourage NGOs’ participation in policy making and facilitate their work with local government so that they could help local officials to improve the delivery, design and administration of public services. Among the twenty participants, there was only one man as the title of this particular training was ‘Increasing the Capacity of NGOs for Promoting Gender Policy’. Gender policy, the trainer explained, included political advocacy, coalition building, human rights, lobbying, strategic planning, financing and fund-raising work. Before the official training could begin, the director of the American NGO hosting the event gave the participants a sheet of paper laying out the rules of the meeting, which were: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

To speak in turn. To speak concisely and to the topic. To speak only on your behalf. To be positive and not critical of others. To be gender sensitive. To recognize that everyone is here voluntarily. To maintain secrecy if anyone should reveal anything of a confidential nature.

She added that there were two rules that were not on the printed list but were equally important, and these were: 1. To turn off cell phones. 2. And not to smoke. During the eight-hour training session, the trainer spoke and we listened. The only times that participants were given space to speak was when the

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trainer allowed us to speak and, even then, she masterfully steered the discussion to topics that she felt were relevant. The first problem that the group encountered was in finding a suitable translation for ‘advocacy’. As the trainer was speaking in English, the interpreter who translated advocacy used the Armenian word karozchutuiun (to preach). Similar to ‘monitoring’ (hskel or vera-hskel), another donor favourite, the word ‘advocacy’ when translated into Armenian takes on a negative connotation and conjures up images of the repressive Soviet state that kept citizens under surveillance (hskvumeyin) and sought so shape their opinions through the massive state propaganda machine. The Oxford English Dictionary links ‘advocacy’ to the word ‘advocate’ and defines it as the act of publicly supporting or recommending a particular cause or policy. As of 2007, ‘advocacy’ is now being translated into Armenian as ‘the protection of interests’ (shaheri pashpanutyun), which in my opinion again does not capture the meaning of the English word ‘advocacy’. For this reason, many NGO members I interviewed prefer to use the English terms in order to avoid problems involved in the translation of foreign words and concepts into Armenian. But the interpreter at the training, who was a young student, was apparently unaware of the history or politics attached to these terms, and she managed to anger the older participants by translating ‘advocacy’ as karozchutuiun (to preach) and ‘monitoring’ as hskel (to engage in surveillance). This sparked a debate among the Armenian participants as they argued over which words should be used. The debate was quickly managed and quietened down by the trainer who said, ‘We can discuss definitions later. Now it is more important how we define what advocacy entails. So, when you think of ‘‘advocacy’’ what comes to mind and what do you include in that definition?’ One participant said, ‘Protection of rights, freedom, politics implemented by co-thinkers or lobbying to pressure the government and authorities into action’. The trainer approved of this broad definition and went to add, ‘It takes different kinds of logic to think through processes. This model and its logic we are presenting here today are taken from a US non-profit organization’. Without considering whether this model or logic is appropriate for Armenia, she then proceeded to divide the participants into working groups and to have us work on an ‘advocacy process’ exercise in order to assess whether we had acquired the particular logic she had in mind. The task consisted of taking three inch by five inch cards with the following words and pasting them on a poster board in the logical order: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Advocacy goal. Building support and fund-raising. Channels of communication. Co-ordinating policy analysis. Implementation.

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6. Message development. 7. Problem/issue definition. 8. Target audience. After 10 minutes in our working groups, we returned to the seminar room where we were asked to fix our posters on the boards. Three of the four groups put ‘advocacy goal’ before ‘problem definition’. This led the trainer to correct us adding that the ‘problem’ should have come before the ‘goal’. She explained that we had to learn this logic in order to become successful in advocacy work. I wondered why other models or logic would not work and whether putting ‘problem definition’ before ‘advocacy goal’ would really jeopardize the success of an advocacy campaign. While I would have loved to ask this question, I decided it was more prudent to keep silent like all the other participants in the training and avoid drawing undue attention to myself. Following a long lecture by the trainer, we had lunch and were then invited to participate in another exercise. This time our assignment was to write a sample proposal for an advocacy programme on one of the four topics: protection of consumer rights, education, employment or human rights. As part of the exercise, we had to not only define our problem and goal, but also identify the target audience. We were given an hour to work on this assignment. My group was working on education, and we decided to write a proposal about improving access to preschool education. There was some confusion over the term ‘target audience’. We interpreted this to mean the beneficiaries who included preschool age children and their parents. Little did we know that, in the trainer’s context, the ‘target audience’ referred to the lobbying targets, not to the ‘beneficiaries’. When we presented our proposal, the trainer pointed out our error in identifying the ‘target audience’. Yet, as one of my group colleagues whispered to me in Armenian, ‘If you are proposing advocacy and lobbying in Armenia, then you can only have one target audience – the government. Who else is one going to lobby? Who else do Americans lobby?’ What she meant by this question was that, as the state is the only target audience, why spend time defining the target audience. She felt too shy to ask the trainer this question, and so we never learned the answer to this particular question, but we learned that, in order to have successful advocacy grant proposals, we had better learn the correct use of target audience and the logic that followed. This left little room for debate let alone critical thinking or reflection. The message was clear: this is the only correct model and it was better to learn that model rather than to ask questions about its logic. In addition to participating in trainings such as this, I also interviewed trainers who had been engaged in training and capacity building programmes in Armenia during the 1990s. I was interested in their perspectives and how they viewed what they were doing and what they saw as the problems involved in their jobs.

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The Views of Foreign Trainers In a unique book, Jerry Johnson, a trainer who once worked in Armenia, writes reflectively about his experiences and argues for greater emphasis on intercultural learning and adjustment within development. In 1995, Johnson was hired as a consultant for the UNDP to develop a substance abuse prevention programme in Yerevan. According to the Letter of Reference, which was based on ‘the popular perception of teenagers gathered informally’, it was claimed that ‘50% to 60% of teenagers in Yerevan are abusing injectable drugs such as morphine’ (Johnson 2000: 10). The Letter of Reference went on to add that ‘ . . . there is no evidence to support such an extravagant claim and, moreover, the current economic realities of many people [in Armenia] make it seem impossible that so many can afford drugs to that extent, it nonetheless reveals the perception of younger people regarding this issue’ (Johnson 2000: 10). Although the hiring agency, UNDP, doubted the veracity or reliability of these figures, as demonstrated in the wording of the Letter of Reference, and officials within the UNDP told Johnson that these statistics were ‘absurd’ (Johnson 2000: 96), Johnson was nonetheless hired and flown to Armenia. Apart from having trouble locating Armenia on a map (2000: vii), Johnson admits he was also unable to locate the purported 60 per cent of Armenian youths who were identified as drug users. Instead, he decided to conduct an informal survey to determine citizens’ perceptions about how widespread drug use was in Armenia. He met with over 350 Armenians from all walks of life as well as international workers, none of whom identified a drug abuse problem among Armenia’s youth (Johnson 2000: 97). While I would like to believe that this example is unique, after conducting fieldwork in Armenia over a ten year period from 1996 to 2006, I found that, sadly, such examples of providing definitions of problems and defining cures for those problems were not that uncommon. What is in fact unique is Johnson’s candid account of his experiences as an international consultant and trainer. As Johnson describes his experiences in Armenia, he not only questions the purpose of his posting, but also confesses to being influenced by Cold War ideologies in which he learned to mistrust ‘anyplace and anybody Communist’ (Johnson 2000: 11). He writes a great deal about how his thinking was shaped by ‘Cold War propaganda’ while growing up in the US. In an interesting anecdote, he writes of how, as a student in the 1960s in the US, he had to memorize the ‘evils of communism’ in order to pass his civics exam (Johnson 2000: 35). There are different types of trainers, and some I found were more reflective and willing to engage than others. For instance, in one workshop held in a five star hotel in the capital Yerevan, an American gender expert used the example of how Nicaraguan village women were dealing with domestic violence. Most of the Nicaraguan women she spoke about were illiterate, uneducated peasants. As she spoke, the Armenians in the audience, most of whom were highly educated physicians, social workers or NGO professionals, began whispering

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and complaining about her choice of example. One woman who was seated behind me said, ‘Why is she comparing us to illiterate peasants?’ Their anger was not only because they felt the trainer was making inappropriate comparisons, but also because, by 2003, Armenians had grown tired of foreign experts giving them advice when they knew so little about the Armenian social, economic, political and cultural context. During the coffee break, I decided to mention the complaints I had heard to the expert. When I did so, she became visibly upset and, once the meeting reconvened, she took the podium, even though it was not her turn to speak, in order to clarify why she had chosen to use the Nicaraguan example and that it was in no way meant as a form of disrespect to the Armenian women gathered there. This woman’s and Johnson’s approach are at one end of the spectrum and at the other end is the approach of the trainer conducting the gender advocacy I discussed earlier. Not only was that trainer adamant in having us learn the steps of an advocacy campaign in the correct order, but I found her attitude during the breaks equally domineering and paternalistic. During one of the coffee breaks, she began to cough uncontrollably and drank water with ice in an effort to quell her cough. One of the Armenian participants, a physician in her late fifties, said to the interpreter, ‘I am a physician, tell her to drink warm water and she will stop coughing. The cold water is worsening her cough’. The interpreter duly translated the physician’s suggestion. Not only did the trainer fail to acknowledge the physician and her suggestion, but she began to gulp the water down even faster, as if to say, ‘I don’t need your advice’. At this point, the physician expressed her discontent by rolling her eyes and saying in Armenian, ‘This is how they are. They come to teach, but are incapable of learning anything themselves’. Her frustration was quite apparent and, within 15 minutes, she gathered her things and left the room saying she was needed at the hospital. This brief exchange between the American trainer and the Armenian training participant exemplified the asymmetrical power relations involved in this context, as the trainer felt comfortable laying out the ground rules, enforcing them and teaching the Armenian participants ‘the truth’ and ‘the way’ but refused to acknowledge the Armenian participants’ perspectives and insights even when they did not relate to the course material. In another training session I attended, a Swedish expert presented a discussion about the importance of democracy to conflict prevention and peace building. His main thesis was that democracy is the key to conflict prevention and peace building and that there are never any wars between democratic nations nor do democratic nations experience internal conflicts or famines. He refused to be drawn into any debate on these topics; instead, he continually emphasized how important it was for Armenians to embrace democracy and how democracy would lead to the resolution of the Karabakh conflict. Following the training session, a number of the participants sat around smoking and discussing the session. They all complained about ‘foreigners (artashamantsiner) who come to push their ideas’. One man said,

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‘Why don’t they want to see that there are many different types of democracy? Why do they push their ways on us?’, while another complained, ‘Again, they come here to tell us what to do’. These were common objections, as were the complaints concerning the large sums spent on the trainers’ daily costs, their four or five star hotel stays and business air travel. Gerald Creed and Janine Wedel refer to such experts as the ‘Marriott Brigade’ who jetted around Eastern Europe in the 1990s dispensing advice on how to effect the transition to democracy and a free market economy (1997). The Value(s) of Training While these arguments are valid, it is important to avoid ‘essentialising the West’ (Herzfeld 2001) as I wrote earlier. As one British trainer I interviewed said, ‘In their [the Armenians’ eyes] we are all seen as ‘‘Westerners’’, but there were many rivalries and misunderstandings among the multinational group of trainers I was working with which included Americans, Brits, Danes, and Germans’ (10 September 2004). The rivalry, he explained, was over which particular Western model should be promoted and how best to do so. He argued that the biggest gap was between the Americans and Western European trainers, but added that there were also disagreements between the British and German trainers over the content of training programmes. He added, The American trainers that were brought in to conduct trainings had a distinctive cultural specificity of ‘this is how we do it and this is how you will also learn to do it’. There was no room for negotiation or dialogue because it was as though the trainers knew all and they were not interested in what the Armenians thought (10 September 2004). An American trainer explained that, while there were unequal relationships between the Armenian participants and international actors, there were some powerful Armenians who were able to open up or deny access to trainers as well (17 November 2004). Although many of the participants in the various training sessions I attended would sneer and gossip in Armenian or Russian during the coffee and lunch breaks about how tired they were of being trained, over the ten months of my fieldwork in 2002–3, I would encounter some of the same people over and over again in these training sessions and workshops. No matter how much Armenians complained about the training and the trainers or argued against the promotion of particular models or ways of thinking, in none of the training sessions, workshops, seminars or roundtables that I attended did anyone publicly challenge the trainers or experts to ask them ‘Why do you train us?’ or ‘Why do you promote this particular model?’ Of course, individuals adapted, manipulated and negotiated ideologies, discourses and projects to fit their needs but, within the context of these democracy building encounters, I found that it was very rare

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for individuals to publicly question the validity of the training approaches and ideas even if they often did so privately and off the record. Whereas I understand the potential costs of speaking out (i.e. losing funding, being labelled a ‘troublemaker’), unfortunately silence is often interpreted by donors and democracy promoters as a sign of acceptance of the status quo. When interviewing Armenian NGO members, I asked why they attended training sessions if they believed the training was sometimes irrelevant and tedious. I was given several reasons. First, I was told that all NGOs have to organize trainings as part of their work and that attending each others’ training sessions is considered a form of reciprocity and mutual support to which members of the NGO community are expected to adhere. In other words, you attend their events so that they will attend your events. Second, training participants are often given certificates upon completion. As many participants list training sessions they have attended on their curriculum vitae (CVs), the certificates are needed to substantiate attendance. Indeed, I often saw certificates or diplomas from training programmes prominently displayed in NGO offices as symbols or badges of knowledge and expertise. Finally, NGO members saw an instrumental value in training. One women’s rights NGO member told me, ‘I wish there were more training so I could learn more’ (24 October 2002), while others have used NGO experience to find jobs abroad. Trainings are a means by which to acquire the skills and discourses of the development industry. For those individuals who wish to find work abroad, this is also a strategy by which to become familiar and well-versed in the development discourses of Western agencies. This is not unique to Armenia. Ruth Mandel examines how work for international NGOs and agencies has become a launching pad for Central Asian elites (2002). Trainers also recognize the instrumental value of trainings. As one trainer I interviewed told me, For Armenians who want to move to the US or UK to work, learning the Western models becomes very important. They get themselves into the mode of thinking that in order to advance my career I need to learn these models. I consider them cosmopolitan locals. They are the ones who go to the global conferences and they feel part of the cosmopolitan culture that is not locally rooted. But not everyone is like that; some are more strongly rooted than others (10 September 2004). Training individuals in order to advance their foreign careers is not one of the intended aims of the capacity building training programmes. Indeed, such an aim would be antithetical to the stated goals of democracy building and development, which are intended to build, strengthen and empower local capacity and not to facilitate the brain drain to the West!

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined how culture is used as an argument by some transitological scholars as well as donors and democracy promoters to explain why democracy building or civil society promotion has not been as successful as hoped. While recognizing the importance of cultural narratives on people’s perceptions and understanding, I argue that, if the cultural argument is to be applied, it is important not to isolate culture but, instead, to consider how cultural understandings are affected by social, economic and political developments. Moreover, if we accept the argument that democracy building has been hindered by cultural beliefs, it is necessary to critically examine the cultural attitudes and biases of both donors and recipients who are engaged in democracy building encounters and who selectively and strategically use various discourses and tactics to achieve their goals. The tendency to assume that donors and democracy promoters are neutral and objective while claiming that the recipients of the training are driven by their culture is problematic because, as I have argued and will continue to demonstrate in subsequent chapters, all actors engaged in democracy building have implicit or explicit strategic goals. If we take Armenian NGO members’ attitudes towards training, for instance, while on the surface it would appear that these training exercises are imposing particular models, ideas and logics as well as serving to discipline patterns of behaviour, in reality, it becomes clear that the participants use training exercises strategically to meet their various goals and needs. Whether those are reciprocity or career needs, it is clear that, far from disciplining, these training sessions also provide a strategic tool kit for participants. While critiquing the essentialist arguments and calling into question stereotypes, I nonetheless recognize how the mentalitet argument persists in Armenia. The Armenian human rights NGO, the Helsinki Committee of Armenia, states, Each election that has been conducted unfairly [1996, 1998, 2003] was accompanied by a strong nationwide opposition movement. And one cannot help attributing this fact of refusing to tolerate injustice and fraud to national mentality . . . What is the truth then? Are the traditions of election fraud or, on the contrary, of the struggle against them entrenched in Armenia’? (Helsinki Committee of Armenia 2003: 6–7) There is no answer to this question; should we even strive to find the answer to the question of mentalitet? After all, mentalitet can be seen as another form of stereotyping and labelling. What I have tried to demonstrate in this chapter is that, instead of attempting to define or locate Armenian mentalitet, it is far better to recognize the complexity and diversity of approaches and ideas that co-exist. It is problematic to claim that all Armenians share

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one particular mentality, just as it is improbable to claim that all Americans, Chinese, Russians or Swedes think in a particular manner. It is far more important to recognize that culture matters, and cultural understanding does shape people’s worldviews, but cultural narratives as well as social structures neither exist nor operate in isolation; they are influenced by political, social and economic factors as well as the interpersonal relationships between and strategic interests of the actors involved in democracy building endeavours. So, if indeed we continue to use the cultural argument, I would argue that we need to look at the culture of the developers, the donors, the democracy promoters and experts because their own experience and views also shape practices, relations and behaviour.

5

The Soviet Legacy and Democracy Building

As discussed in Chapter Four, in addition to arguing that culture is a barrier to democracy promotion, some policy makers and scholars have maintained that the authoritarian legacies in various post-Soviet countries mitigate the development of a vibrant civil society and democracy (Brzezinkski 2002: 196; Gershman and Allen 2006; McFaul 2002: 264; Nodia 2002b: 203) as well as being an obstacle to poverty reduction and development (Department for International Development 2004). In an article co-written with Michael Allen, the President of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Carl Gershman suggests that the failures of and backlash against democracy promotion are a ‘by-product of so-called hybrid regimes’ (Gershman and Allen 2006: 37). Hybrid regimes, according to Gershman and Allen, are those that have certain formally democratic procedures, including the holding of relatively free (if not fair) elections and allowing civil society organizations to function. In other words, hybrid regimes are procedural democracies in which the substantive elements are either weakly constituted or missing. Clearly, societies do not exist in a vacuum, and it is very important to examine and understand how the past has influenced and continues to influence the present. In the post-Soviet states, certain practices (such as corruption and clan-based rule), which were common under Communist rule, persist and have influenced how the current policies have been interpreted, adapted and operationalized. In this chapter, I examine what is considered to be the legacy of the Soviet Union and how this legacy is believed to have affected the transitions to democracy building and civil society development. I argue that, in addition to examining the Soviet legacy, it is important to consider the impact of the Cold War and the legacy it has left not only on the thinking and behaviour of indigenous people in the former Soviet citizens, but also on the thinking and behaviour of Western donors, democracy promoters, policy makers, planners and experts. In the field of democracy building, in particular, Cold War ideologies have influenced and shaped the design and implementation of policies and practices. In the early 1990s, these ideologies engendered the notion that everything created prior to the collapse of communism was either ‘not true civil society’ or was polluted and contaminated by the

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Communist legacy and had to be purged before true civil society and democracy could flourish (Mandel 2002). The reality is far more complex, and it is worth considering how the past is interpreted and instrumentalized by different parties under different circumstances. In recent years, there has been growing selective remembrance (i.e. forgetting about the political repressions and lack of freedoms) and intensifying nostalgia for the ‘stability’ of the Soviet past and a questioning of the benefits of democracy, which is linked in the minds of many post-Soviet citizens with the introduction of the shock therapies that led to poverty, gross inequality, social exclusion, gangster capitalism and the rise of the oligarchs. I begin by examining the debate over whether civil society existed under the Soviet regime, because this debate subsequently shaped donor democracy building policies and programmes. I contend that civil society did exist, albeit in an embryonic and weak form, and was growing in the 1980s in Armenia. I describe briefly the various movements that emerged throughout the Soviet states in the late 1980s focusing on developments in Armenia. After this, I examine what is considered to be the Soviet legacy according to Western academics, policy makers and donors, and juxtapose that with what is understood to be the Soviet legacy by Armenians. I argue that the purely negative understanding regarding the Soviet past which exists among most Westerners engaged in democracy building is not shared by Armenians. On the contrary, as the emerging nostalgia in Armenia and elsewhere in the former Soviet states demonstrates, the Soviet past is increasingly being viewed by people as an era of prosperity and stability, whereas the present is seen as one of loss, exploitation, instability, inequality and violence.

The Debate over the Existence of Soviet Civil Society When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and began instituting the reforms of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), many Western Sovietologists, particularly those who subscribed to the totalitarian school of thought (Schapiro 1972; Friedrich and Brzezinkski 1965), were caught off guard and were unable to analyse the impact of those reforms (Lewin 1988: 1; Lovell 1991:3; Tismaneanu and Turner 1995: 3). These scholars of the totalitarian school of thought used Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism as a theoretical framework through which to understand the Soviet system (Lewin 1988). They believed that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state in which all dissent and life was controlled by the state. The rise of the independence movements and organizations in the 1980s challenged not only Soviet bureaucratic rule, but also the perceptions of these Sovietologists who had viewed the Soviet state as an immutable totalitarian monolith. Because those who subscribed to this line of thinking argued that the system had colonized all independent thought and life, they were very sceptical of anything that arose in the Soviet period. Indeed, many Sovietologists believed that perestroika was another temporary thaw, such as the

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earlier Khruschevian thaw of the 1960s, which would sooner or later be followed by a freeze. As Moshe Lewin writes, ‘Although Western observers admit that things look extremely promising, they are rather sceptical, if not baffled, for many, among whom the US specialists are the most influential, do not believe that the USSR can produce meaningful social, economic or political change’(Lewin 1988: 1). This commitment to totalitarianism as an ideological explanation meant that most Western perceptions of the Soviet Union were hampered by a cognitive schema that prevented them seeing the world in a realistic way (Lewin 1988). Levon Abrahamian analyses the failure of Western Sovietologists to grasp the changes that were occurring in the Soviet Union as being a result of the exclusive attention such scholars paid to questions of leadership, ideology and politics while simultaneously ignoring the question of what has happening in society. He describes this as a methodological ‘trap’ in which the Sovietologists sought to interpret Soviet culture using solely written sources, which at times reflected a reality that did not exist (Abrahamian 2005: 171). Alfred Evans, for example, argues that civil society did not exist in the Soviet Union. He writes, ‘Most scholars have agreed that civil society as usually defined by Western theoretical approaches, did not exist in the Soviet Union’ (Evans 2006: 28). He argues that there were no organizations that were free from state or party control and that even the informal groups that emerged in Russia in the late 1980s had ‘shallow roots’, and their existence did not lead to ‘the birth of organizations formed by the initiative of citizens and drawing on society’s independent resources’ (Evans 2006: 29). While citing the dissident movement, he contends that these dissidents were ‘isolated’ from the population and viewed as reckless dissenters whom people feared associating with (Evans 2006: 43). Evans employs a very narrow, normative, neo-Tocquevillian definition of civil society which considers professionalized advocacy or service delivery NGOs as the only legitimate representatives of civil society. This view, as I argued in Chapter One, was also embraced by Western donors and democracy promoters in the early 1990s. Certainly, if we apply this definition, then we may argue that there was no civil society in the Soviet Union; however, such a narrow perspective ignores the bevy of voluntary groups and informal associations that were emerging in a number of Soviet republics beginning in the mid-1980s. Other scholars, such as Andrew Arato, who embrace a broader stance, recognize the arguments of the proponents of the ‘totalitarian paradigm’, but add that developments following Stalin’s death and the Khruschevian thaw allowed for growing ‘societal complexity’ and the loosening of total state control over society (Arato 1991). Rigby maintains that, although civil society was all but wiped out under Stalin, vestigial elements of civil society remained even in the darkest days of Stalinism (Rigby 1992: 16), while Lewin contends that civil society in the late Soviet period was not only an effect of Gorbachev’s policies but, more importantly, it was the cause of the introduction of the policies of perestroika (restructuring) and

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glasnost (openness) (1991). Henry Huttenbach, meanwhile, points to the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, public demonstrations on the pollution of Lake Baikal and calls by ethnic groups for the right to return to ancestral homelands (i.e. Crimean Tatars) or to emigrate (Jews, Armenians and Germans) as trends that increased in the late 1970s and 1980s leading up to Gorbachev’s reforms. He cites these as evidence of a ‘proto- or pre-civil society in the making’ (Huttenbach 1995: 338). Interestingly, a number of scholars use biological terms, such as ‘embryonic’, ‘vestigial’ or ‘germs’, to describe the nascent development stage of civil society in the Soviet Union in the 1980s (Abrahamian 2001; Lapidus 1989; Rigby 1992). But, to be clear, no one writing in the late 1980s or 1990s went so far as to claim that a vibrant civil society had already emerged in the Soviet Union. In the South Caucasus, Armenia enjoyed the greatest official tolerance. It was Moscow’s showpiece to the world to prove that religious freedom prevailed in the USSR. Not only were Armenian churches operating in the 1980s, but centuries old monasteries and chapels were also being renovated, and there were social clubs and societies, such as the compatriotic unions, that helped to maintain Armenian national identity. This ‘duality of life’ in Soviet Armenia, Razmik Panossian contends, was composed of the official acceptance of the Soviet/Marxist line alongside the perpetuation of nationalist ideologies (Panossian 2006: 289). In spite of the political limits placed by the Soviet regime, Armenians managed to develop a ‘degree of autonomy and self-expression’ under Soviet rule (Suny 1993: 190). If, as I stated earlier, the rise of civil society was a phenomenon that predated Gorbachev, we can see how he recognized it and seized upon it for his own agenda of ‘humanizing socialism’ (Tismaneanu and Turner 1995: 5). For instance, Russian human rights activist, Ludmilla Alexeyeva, writes in a 1990 Human Rights Watch report entitled Civil Society in the USSR that the informal associations (nyeformalniye obyedinyeniya) were ‘sowing the seeds of democracy’ and that the emergence of the informal associations was facilitated rather than mandated by Gorbachev. She writes, ‘The wave of spontaneous civic energy and self-expression that gave birth to many of the Soviet informal associations is one that Gorbachev released rather than ordained. Not the product of an official initiative, it is the response from below to the relaxation of pressure from above (Alexeyeva 1990: 3). Russian writer and dissident, Boris Kagarlitsky, meanwhile describes the efforts of students protesting against the demolition of historical buildings, the rehabilitation of political prisoners and exiles, the intensified publishing of samizdat (clandestine publications) and the election of ‘wrong candidates’. Kagarlitsky argues that changes were already occurring in the Soviet system in the 1980s and that 1986 marked the ‘golden age’ of perestroika when the ‘life of society was reviving’ (Kagarlitsky 1989: 337–41). Abrahamian maintains that the ‘embryos of civil society’ (Abrahamian 2001: 125) were present in Armenia in the late 1980s. To illustrate this, he

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refers to the emergence of the information tables (stoliki) that sprang up in Theatre Square in central Yerevan in 1988, describing them as promoters of change and the ‘germs’ (i.e. seeds) of civil society. The stoliki were places where people could receive written or oral information about elections, deputies, registration rules, electoral and polling districts and many other details about the constitutional rights of Soviet citizens from those versed in Soviet constitutional law (Abrahamian 2005: 242). Abrahamian maintains that, in 1988, Armenians ‘began their education in democracy’ and, in several months, there were many people who would use the constitution to legally win a number of electoral campaigns. He writes, The members of these groups were at the same time the first agitators of the campaigns. Without their scrupulous and routine work the movement would hardly have won the first and following elections. The tables disappeared when the festival ended and have not been seen since. (Abrahamian 2001: 129) At the peak of the Karabakh Movement (Karabaghian Sharzhum),1 in November 1988, the Movement’s leaders, informed by Soviet constitutional law, collected the required number of deputies’ signatures which gave them the right to call an extraordinary session of the Supreme Soviet. Although the Communist authorities banned the session, the Movement’s leaders defied them and called an alternative extraordinary session to be held at the Opera House in Theatre Square on 24 November 1988. According to Abrahamian, the deputies were asked to gather at the Opera House in Theatre Square. When some deputies failed to turn up, the ‘hunt for deputies’ began. The people in the Movement, Abrahamian argues, were absolutely convinced that, when a legitimate session was called, the deputies should not refuse to participate in it. Demonstrators from Theatre Square went to the homes and offices of the absentee deputies and compelled them, sometimes even dragging them kicking and screaming, into the Opera House where they were obliged to carry out their duties as representatives of the Soviet Armenian people (Abrahamian 2001: 129–30). While the stoliki and other non-violent demonstrations and actions led by the leaders of the Karabakh Movement and the demonstrators in Theatre Square eventually prompted the authorities to declare a state of emergency and to arrest the Movement’s leaders in late November 1988, nonetheless an important event had occurred which inspired people’s faith in democracy. Abrahamian writes, ‘The communist authorities seemed to be so shocked by the people’s rapidly increasing legislative experience, that they failed to create some effective illegal preventive structures to resist their activity’ (2005: 241). It is important to remember that the stoliki emerged without the capacity building or civic education grants that became a common and popular funding initiative among Western donors promoting democracy in the post-Soviet period. On the contrary, the stoliki were

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grassroots, indigenous efforts at self-education and empowerment that disappeared in the post-Soviet period. Abrahamian ends by writing, ‘After independence, which was in a sense an offspring of the festival in the square, one of the first parliamentary sessions of the new republic reasserted the resolutions of its festive progenitor, thus taking upon itself the difficult task of constructing, step by step, a real, and not a festive, civil society in Armenia’ (Abrahamian 2001: 131). The debate over the existence of civil society during the Soviet period is important because it illustrates how understanding of the Soviet Union was influenced by Cold War ideologies (e.g. totalitarianism), and how these ideologies subsequently informed and affected the nature and type of policies that were designed and implemented in the former Soviet states. In the next section, I describe the various social movements to illustrate common themes, before moving on to a discussion of the different perceptions and understandings of the Soviet legacy.

The Soviet ‘Velvet’ Revolutions Inspired by glasnost and perestroika and using Gorbachev’s arguments and rationale, several popular movements emerged in the late 1980s in a number of Soviet republics including Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia, Ukraine and Georgia. There were very small movements in Azerbaijan, Belarus and Moldova, whereas the five Central Asian Republics, as Pauline Jones Luong argues, attained independent statehood ‘suddenly’ and ‘unexpectedly’ as broad-based movements failed to materialize (Luong 2004:1). Nearly all the movements that emerged in the Soviet states began with calls for ecological policy reforms because ecological movements had been partially tolerated in the Soviet Union (Aves 1992; Hosking 1992: 10; Lieven 1993: 220). The first demonstrations began in Latvia in 1986 with the public petition of 30,000 signatures in a call to abandon the plans to build a hydroelectric plant on the Daugava River (Hosking 1992: 10). This was followed in October 1987 by the demonstrations in Armenia against the dangers posed by the Nayarit chemical and the Medzamor nuclear power plants. The Chernobyl disaster was the watershed event (Kagarlitsky 1989: 333; Lapidus 1989: 134; Lovell 1991: 5), in that the accident was a political embarrassment for the state, and the subsequent cover-up only fed fuel to the fire of the nationalists who argued that the Soviet government not only deliberately withheld information that could have saved many people’s lives, but also knowingly sent workers into the contaminated area without proper warning or protection. As Catherine Wanner writes, Chernobyl powerfully and irrevocably destroyed the legitimacy of the Soviet state in the minds of many Soviet citizens who were taken aback by the bureaucracy’s blatant subservience to image over real people and real injury . . . The legacy of lies, disinformation, and cover-up has left

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in its wake a readiness to believe the worst, not only about the accident, but about the whole Soviet experience. (Wanner 1998: 33) By 1988, many of the ecological movements had transformed into movements that were calling for increased national rights, political reforms and, eventually, independence. Mobilization around ethnonationalist issues significantly outweighed mobilization around other issues including liberalization of the economy. Once again, Latvia was the pioneer in the national liberation demonstrations and in remembrances of the past. On 14 June 1987, the group Helsinki–86, founded by dissidents, called a demonstration in Riga to mark the anniversary of the Stalinist deportations of 1941. These so-called ‘calendar demonstrations’, which were intended to commemorate vital anniversaries, eventually became regular occurrences over the following three years. Members of Helsinki–86 were harassed and scrutinized by the KGB but, because the group had targeted a Stalinist crime and not attacked the current regime, they were allowed to exist (Lieven 1993). The demonstrations in Latvia inspired similar actions in the neighbouring Baltic republics of Lithuania and Estonia, culminating with the ‘human chain across the Baltic’ on 23 August 1989. The Baltic republics were the forerunners in the Soviet movements, from the first actions in Latvia to the declaration of independence by Lithuania on 11 March 1990; they were both inspired by the events in Eastern Europe but also added impetus to the movements emerging elsewhere in the Soviet Union including Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine. The Karabakh Movement in Armenia Armenia’s struggle for independence began in October 1987 when Green Union protesters took to the streets of Yerevan and began demanding improvements in Soviet ecological policies in Armenia. These ecological demonstrations, as mentioned earlier, were held to protest against the pollution caused by the Nayarit chemical plant and the Medzamor nuclear power plant in and near Yerevan respectively.2 Unlike in the past, the government did not immediately crush the demonstrations but, in the spirit of glasnost, allowed for peaceful demonstrations (mitingner) to continue. While the demonstrations had begun as protests against Soviet ecological policies, by February 1988, the ecological issues were combined with calls for political reform as well as the re-unification of the territory of Nagorno Karabakh [hereafter Karabakh] with Armenia (Chorbajian et al. 1994; Malkasian 1996). Although after World War I and during the early 1920s, the population of Karabakh was 95 per cent Armenian, the territory was allocated to Azerbaijan instead of Armenia by the Soviet government in 1923. This was a reflection of the Soviet policy of divide and rule (Chorbajian et al. 1994). From the 1920s until 1988, Armenians in Karabakh attempted to have this decision

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reversed on several occasions, but all efforts failed and their complaints of Azeri mismanagement and injustice fell on deaf ears. But on this occasion, when the governments in Moscow and Baku failed to recognize the 20 February declaration of Karabakh’s sovereignty, 150,000 Armenians gathered in Yerevan’s Opera Square on 22 February to demand that the Armenian Central Committee of the Communist Party call for a meeting of the Supreme Soviet and recognize the decision of the Karabakh National Assembly. This action is considered the official beginning of the national independence movement, which came to be known as the Karabakh Movement. By 26 February 1988, there were approximately one million demonstrators in Yerevan as residents of Yerevan were joined by people from the villages and provincial towns (Malkasian 1996). As Mark Malkasian points out, neither the activists nor the authorities had expected that people would turn out in such force and with such enthusiasm to define the Movement (Malkasian 1996: 41). Abrahamian, who documented the demonstrations, describes the initial period (i.e. early 1988) as a carnival or festival in which normal hierarchies were suspended as intense feelings of solidarity were felt across Armenian society (Abrahamian 2001: 121). Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s work, Abrahamian analyses the Movement as an example of the ancient cosmos rituals in which chaos was allowed to reign in order for society to maintain its equilibrium (Abrahamian 2005: 235–38).3 The carnival-like ritual, however, eventually led to the dissipation of the Soviet state’s monopoly on discourse and challenged its omniscience and omnipotence (Fischer and Grigorian 1993). The Movement, he maintains, generated a feeling of solidarity which, albeit short-lived, nonetheless brought together groups that would never come together otherwise, such as the rural and urban populations or workers and intellectuals. He writes, ‘It [the Movement] had a united spirit, a common thought and finally a common sense of national self-consciousness. According to the statements of many participants, they had a wonderful feeling of being present everywhere, in every place occupied by that huge body of people’ (Abrahamian 2005: 226). Workers and peasants participated in the demonstrations, but it was the intellectuals who formed the eleven-member Karabakh Committee to lead the Movement, which would begin by calling for self-determination and the re-unification of the territory of Karabakh with Armenia and end with demanding that Armenia secede from the Soviet Union and establish an independent state. It should be remembered that, initially, the Karabakh Movement was not an anti-Soviet independence movement; it sought to address the problems facing Armenians in Karabakh within the context and framework of the Soviet Union. Only after it became clear that the Soviet authorities were opposed to Armenian demands and were willing to allow acts of violence against Armenians in Azerbaijan (e.g. in Sumgait and Baku) did the Movement put forth the demands for autonomy and independence.

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The Soviet authorities’ response to the various movements that emerged in the late 1980s fluctuated from tolerance to fear to co-optation (Sedaitis and Butterfield 1991). At times, the authorities were gripped by fear that increased social autonomy would threaten their social control (Lapidus 1989: 124). They were concerned that, if the political, economic and social reforms were not properly managed, they would accelerate and lead society into chaos. Establishment intellectuals called for ‘enlightened authoritarianism’ instead of tolerance of mass movements (Yanowitch 1991: 71–5). They argued that there had never been a transition from a pre-market to a market economy in conjunction with and simultaneously with a transition to democracy. Unlike in previous decades, the authorities did not strive to totally eliminate the emerging social movements, and there was relatively little harassment. There were no mass arrests, exiles, show trials or summary executions. Even those who were arrested were released after relatively short periods of incarceration. For instance, in December 1988, the eleven members of the Karabakh Committee were arrested but were released after six months. Furthermore, instead of breaking the Karabakh Movement, the arrest of the Committee members only further galvanized public political activism and support. Furthermore, it weakened the Armenian Communists’ claims of being a legitimate national government. Upon the release of the Committee members in May 1989, the political party known as the Armenian National Movement (ANM; Hayots Hamazgayin Sharzhum) was created. The ANM won a majority in parliament in the 1990 elections, and Armenia declared sovereignty on 23 August 1990. A year later, on 21 September 1991, Armenia became an independent republic. Some scholars argue that the Karabakh Movement had two parts: an Armenian part and a Karabakh part. The Armenian side was linked with the desire to promote democracy and independence, whereas the Karabakh side had a single aim – independence of Karabakh from Azerbaijan (Abrahamian 2001, 2005; Libaridian 1999). A number of intellectuals and political activists, some of whom were active in the Karabakh Movement, were writing in the late 1980s about the importance of creating a democratic state, moving beyond the fear towards neighbours (i.e. the Turks) and to avoid seeking a ‘third force’ (yerrort uzh) as a protector in international affairs (Ishkhanian 1991; Manukian 1991; Ter-Petrossian 1991). Many of their ideas were quite groundbreaking and revolutionary in Armenian political thought. Rafael Ishkhanian,4 for instance, argued that the political leaders as well as the historians were responsible for the perpetuation of a particular line of thinking which led Armenians to rely on ‘a third force (party)’ to assist them in their foreign relations. Such a stance, he maintained, reinforced ‘slavishness’ and ‘subservience’ (Ishkhanian 1991: 26). This pragmatism, as it was referred to, was a radical critique of the dominant paradigm in Armenian political thought, which viewed Armenia’s security as relying on a third party and considered Armenian patriotism to be the ‘love of

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Russia/Europe and the hatred of Turks’ (Ishkhanian 1991: 9). Pragmatists, many of whom, though not Rafael Ishkhanian, were part of the ANM governing circle, sought to move away from this thinking and to establish relations with Turkey. These views, it should be recognized, were not necessarily embraced by ANM rank and file members. Various nationalist parties accused the ANM leaders, particularly TerPetrossian, of being ‘anti-national’ and unpatriotic because of these challenges to conventional wisdom (Libaridian 1999: 83). A radical critique and rethinking of traditional nationalist paradigms did not develop and find a wider audience beyond a small coterie of intellectuals and politicians. Most politicians instead chose the path of nationalism and speaking in the language of national ideology. If the ANM was at the height of its power and popularity in 1991, by 1997, it had become complacent, arrogant and careless (Libaridian 1999: 11). Following the February 1998 coup, the ANM lost nearly its entire membership as individuals who had rushed to join the party in 1991 immediately abandoned it once it lost power. Until Ter-Petrossian’s resignation in February 1998 the two worldviews remained (i.e. the pragmatist versus national ideology); today, only the national ideology position remains as the pragmatists lost the ‘battle for the soul of the nation’ (Libaridian 1999: 71).

Perceptions of the Soviet Legacy in Western Academic and Policy Literature Nationalism and Lack of Liberalism Although the Soviet Union expounded an explicit anti-nationalist ideology, its nationalities policies paradoxically created and strengthened national identity, which is viewed by many scholars as having led to its demise (Beissinger 2002; Brubaker 1996; Connor 1994; Glenn 1997; Munck 1986; Smith 1996). In addition to being one of the drivers of Soviet collapse, in the years following the collapse, Soviet nationalities policy and the ‘hyper-ethnonationalism’ (Huttenbach 1995) that they engendered are also seen as the primary factor inhibiting democratization and the establishment of civil society in the region (Gellner 1994; Huttenbach 1995; Lapidus 1989: 144; Miller 1992: 133; Rigby 1992: 23). As a number of ethnic conflicts emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union, nationalism came to be seen as a major stumbling block to civil society and democracy building. For instance, Huttenbach maintains that the ‘Leninist heritage’ is too deeply ingrained, which only suggests a long and difficult path towards ‘a genuine culture of a free and tolerant civil society committed to liberal democratic principles’ (1995: 339). He maintains that this legacy of authoritarianism and hyper-ethnonationalism has fostered anti-democratic, ethnocentric political cultures that have ‘erected antiliberal barriers against bona fide civil societies in all three Transcaucasian

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republics’ (Huttenbach 1995: 339). Huttenbach maintains that independence came too soon and that the great waves of emotional enthusiasm and the independistas leading the charge left no legacy of structures to replace the weakening Soviet order. He writes, They provided a dream, they conjured up vague agendas, but – due in part to the speed of events – they showed no inclination toward practical preparations, not unlike many zealous anticolonialists or revolutionaries, strong on rhetoric and resistance but weak on substance and state building as has been painfully evident in virtually all postcolonial African states. (Huttenbach 1995: 342) Gray similarly describes the Caucasus as particularly problematic countries for the development of civil society, arguing that they are a ‘wild’ and ‘murderous terrain’ on which civil society development would be ‘extremely unlikely’ (Gray 1991: 151). In writing about Armenia, Nora Dudwick contends that most Armenian political parties appeal to the entire Armenian nation and present themselves as the bearers and protectors of ‘national ideology’, which revolves around the defence of the Armenian nation which they see as under threat from Turkey and Turks in general as well as from the West by the onslaught of globalization (Dudwick 1997: 85). She argues that nationalism created contradictions in contemporary Armenian political life over those who see the goal as the building of an Armenian national state and that of building an open and democratic society. Dudwick maintains that Armenian irredentism, and the need to guarantee Armenia’s physical security, has at times threatened the civil rights of dissenting or critical Armenian citizens, adding that the war in Karabakh increased Armenian nationalism and the sense of being under siege, which have led to the use of nationalist discourses to quell opposition and criticism in the name of a ‘united front’ (Dudwick 1997: 99). Lack of Trust and Participation in Politics A second legacy, according to Western scholars and democracy promoters, is the suspicion and mistrust towards actors in the public sphere that has not been conducive to the development of civil society, as people question the ‘true’ motivation of these actors. Given this suspicion, people tend to view anyone who engages in volunteer work for the community, as opposed to work for the family, as being naive and open to exploitation (Dudwick 1997: 74). This is not unique to Armenia; Creed and Wedel argue that, living under socialism, many citizens of the former Soviet Union and the states of Eastern Europe had learned to intuitively doubt all official explanations and, as Vaclav Havel argued, to live in a lie. Creed and Wedel write,

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The Soviet legacy . . . because so much had to be ‘arranged’ under the table in economies of shortage, many transactions were shrouded in secrecy. Everyday life thus required considerable political skill: who was doing and getting what, and people’s real motivations and loyalties were often not what they appeared. This led to interminable speculation and suspicion throughout society. (Creed and Wedel 1997: 255)

Some academics have argued that the Soviet or Leninist legacy has also persisted because of the continuity of Communist political and business leaders (Jowitt 1999; Libaridian 2004; Wilson 2005). Gerard Libaridian a historian, who worked as Presidential Adviser in Armenia from 1991 to 1997, describes how, after independence, there were ‘no witch hunts, no zeal to avenge the abuses of the past or punish former leaders for the state of affairs at the time the ANM took over the government from the Communists’ (Libaridian 2004: 211). On the contrary, Libaridian maintains, there was a great deal of continuity of personnel from the Communist regime in the ranks of the ANM. While this magnanimous approach meant that internal clashes were avoided, it also meant, as Libaridian goes on to write that there was, . . . no critique of the former regime, no evaluation of the impact of Soviet rule on the economy, political culture, morals, and intellectual health of society. The ‘intellectual’ class failed to examine the values by which intellectuals, writers, and artists were promoted and the impact of the values they represented on the spiritual and cultural well-being of society. By and large industry managers did not address the financial bankruptcy, management failure, infrastructural decay, and obsolete machinery that would make economic recovery difficult. Physicians failed to expose the antiquated and disastrous health system and medical practices . . . Educators failed to challenge an educational system that was antiquated and [driven by] colonial mentality, Stalinist pedagogy, and rotten to the core. (Libaridian 2004: 211) Instead of a critique, he adds, segments of the privileged Soviet elites attempted to protect their positions by covering up the failures of the past, opposing every effort to change and denouncing the ANM for all the problems as if they had all been the fault of the new administration. Donors and democracy promoters also subscribe to this argument. For instance, a USAID sponsored report entitled ‘Democracy and Governance Assessment of Armenia’ claims that seventy years of Soviet rule has effectively wiped out traditions that were ‘supported strongly for two millennia’ (ARD, Inc. 2002). Setting aside the questions of how and why Soviet traditions, which only lasted for seventy years, have completely wiped out

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traditions that had until then lasted for two millennia, it is interesting to note the assessment that the Soviet experience successfully eradicated volunteerism and philanthropy. This view appears in a number of donor publications and was also expressed by various representatives of donor organizations and INGOs I interviewed. For instance, Robert Herman, writing in the USAID 2004 NGO Sustainability Index, describes the absence of philanthropy and volunteerism in the former Soviet states as ‘ . . . the sad legacies of the communist past’ (2004: 5). The authors of the USAID ‘Lessons in Implementation: the NGO Story’ meanwhile claim that the challenges to NGO co-operation and coalition building in the former socialist states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are also due to the ‘legacy of communism’ where ‘voluntary association was mandatory, [leading to] intense competition for scarce resources, and scepticism regarding the basic benefits of cooperation’ (1999: 16). In the most recent USAID strategy report for Armenia, the authors argue, A major legacy of the Soviet system is a politically passive population coupled with institutions that do not enable civic participation. The notion that citizens might organize without the state was limited to a few dissidents. The initial democratic fervor prompted by the political opening of the Gorbachev period produced massive civic activism in the country around independence. But the extremely difficult socioeconomic situation following independence and discouragement over the many problems with the development of the democratic system since then have led to cynicism among many citizens. While they are not apathetic, they are discouraged by the events over the past decade that suggest citizens’ voices find few sympathetic ears in state institutions and politics, and have withdrawn from participation in public life into private concerns. According to a recent USAID-funded survey, 74% (down from 88% in 2001) of the respondents strongly or somewhat agreed that people like them have little or no influence on the way things are run in Armenia. Forty-six percent indicated that they did not contact an elected official because it would do no good. Recent demonstrations to protest the flawed 2003 presidential elections are reminiscent of the mass rallies just prior to the demise of the Soviet Union. It remains to be seen, however, whether the public will channel this energy into greater political involvement or whether the government’s refusal to recognize citizen demands will create a populace that is dejected by the futility of its efforts and becomes even more politically reclusive than before. (USAID (2004a: 27; emphasis added) While these arguments are certainly important, one problem is that, in reifying the impact of the Soviet policies and practices on people’s participation, these arguments fail to sufficiently address and explain why nearly two

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decades of active interventions aimed at ‘strengthening’, ‘nurturing’ and ‘building’ civil society have not been able to remedy this passivity and lack of trust. Corruption and Lack of Good Governance Finally, it is widely acknowledged that corruption and the shadow economy are legacies of the Soviet past. According to the 2004 DFID Regional Assistance Plan for Central Asia, South Caucasus and Moldova (CASCM), the Soviet legacy is seen as the root cause of the problematic ‘governance environment’ in the region. The authors of the Plan state, Throughout the CASCM the governance environment is the major obstacle to poverty reduction. The Soviet legacy has left CASCM countries with weak institutions and even weaker policy-making capacities. Corruption is endemic. (DFID 2004: 6, emphasis added) This recourse to the Soviet legacy or inheritance to explain corruption is also found in official USAID and USAID funded publications. For instance, the Democracy and Governance page of the USAID website claims, ‘Armenia inherited tremendous challenges upon regaining its independence in 1991. In a little more than a decade of transition, the country has had mixed progress in transforming the Soviet system into a democratic system of government’ (USAID 2004a). Meanwhile, a USAID funded report entitled ‘Democracy and Governance Assessment of Armenia’ claims, From a democracy and good governance perspective, Armenia’s democratic transition confronts serious challenges. Soviet-era strong executive traditions and the Nagorno-Karabakh war led voters in 1995 to approve a constitution for the Third Republic of Armenia that concentrates power in the executive branch. Consequently, formal institutional arrangements encourage the executive branch to dominate the polity, impeding progress on D/G (democracy and governance) issues. (ARD, Inc. 2002: vi) A number of Western academics also share this view. For example, Edmund Herzig (1999: 39) writes that one of the serious political challenges facing Armenia and other Caucasian states is the high levels of corruption and the susceptibility to political influence of the judiciary as well as the lack of new legitimizing ideologies for governments. Herzig writes, Even the Soviet regime always paid diligent lip-service to democracy; it organized elections and urged the electorate to vote for the party. The

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Soviet experience has done a great deal to shape public understanding of elections and party politics: the opportunity to vote in rigged multiparty elections does not signify an ideological watershed for people accustomed all their adult lives to voting in meaningless one-party elections. (Herzig 1999: 40) As is clear, the overwhelming perception of the Soviet legacy is largely negative. The Soviet period is seen to have left in its wake a passive, apathetic populace that is prone to corruption and only willing to respond to nationalist agitation. In the next section, I examine Armenians’ perceptions of the Soviet legacy.

Armenians’ Views of the Soviet Legacy The idea that the Soviet legacy exists is not only prevalent among Western actors; many of my Armenian respondents also argued that some elements from the Soviet past remained and continued to influence people’s ideologies and behaviour in the post-Soviet period. However, unlike the Western analyses I discussed above, which view the legacy as largely if not wholly negative, many of my Armenian respondents, even those who claimed to have firmly embraced democracy and market reforms, did not exclusively portray the Soviet past as negative and flawed. On the contrary, I often heard positive remarks about the Soviet period. A number of my respondents even challenged me to consider my own prejudices which they thought I had accumulated growing up in the US. ‘The Red Cow Never Changes its Colour’ Since 1991, it has been common for Armenian politicians to shift their party affiliation whenever and however it suits their political ambitions and needs. This lack of loyalty to any party, faction and, even worse, ideology or platform has increased the disillusionment among Armenians towards political parties and, to some extent, democracy, particularly when those who profess to be ‘democrats’ lack any convictions or loyalty to a cause, party or ideology. For instance, in 1998, the same ‘reformed’ Communists who had abandoned the Communist Party in 1991 in order to join the ANM just as quickly abandoned the sinking ANM ship to join the Republican Party (Hanrapetakan Kuskatsutyun) following Ter-Petrossian’s resignation in February of that year. As one respondent told me, The majority of those in power [today] had been in power before [under the Soviet regime]. The new rich, well they had money before, they just were more cautious about flaunting it. Nothing has changed, nor will it. As the old folk saying goes, the ‘red cow never changes its colour’

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The Soviet legacy (karmir kovy kashin chi poxum). Things are different on the outside, but on the inside, nothing has changed, at least not fundamentally. They pretended to be Communists and now they pretend to be democrats. (Alex 22 July 1996)

The anger at such pretenders and what came to be perceived as their ‘false ideas’ was also expressed by a participant in a roundtable meeting on democracy in Armenia that I attended in September 1999. The following remark by a participant garnered loud applause from the other participants. He said, At least the Communists were honest. They did not pretend to be democratic or act as if they were promoting free speech and participation. They made their beliefs and positions quite clear. The current government is characterized by a high degree of brazenness (lkdiootyoon). It pretends to be accountable, responsible, and democratic when it is not any of those things (19 September 1999). Some respondents in 2003 told me that elites had not changed much from the previous period, except that what was previously done in secret (i.e. accumulating wealth) was now done openly and often audaciously. Many respondents spoke of the brazen or lawless (bezpredel) attitude that has been embraced by post-Soviet Armenian economic and political elites since 1991. I was told that this brazenness was something that had intensified in the post-Soviet period as the restrictions on conspicuous consumption and the accumulation of power and wealth were held in check by the Communist Party and Moscow’s influence. In the current context, respondents argued, this did not exist and there were ostentatious displays of wealth, unchecked use of violence and brazen attitudes. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, many of the Soviet era elites were succumbing to old age, illness or redundancy. In their place, new economic elites, the so-called oligarchs, were emerging. None of these oligarchs was part of the Soviet power system. In fact, most were either too young to be Soviet era elites or were part of the criminal or shadow economy underworlds. The rise of oligarchic capitalism has had a significant influence not only on economic developments in Armenia but on political ones as well. Since the late 1990s, Armenia has witnessed increased growth in the power and influence of the oligarchs who have joined the National Assembly en masse. Their entry to the National Assembly is intended to provide them with greater political clout, opportunities to strengthen their political ties with the regime through demonstrations of loyal voting and, quite conveniently, also immunity from prosecution. Their low levels of attendance and participation in the National Assembly, which has been commented on repeatedly in the Armenian newspapers (Bedevian 2006), are seen as evidence that their entry into the National Assembly is more for securing

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economic power and to be part of the ruling clique than as a result of their interest in playing a role in drafting legislation. According to Bedevian, ‘The absenteeism record belongs to Gagik Tsarukian . . . He missed at least 171 of the 202 votes that took place on the parliament floor in the second half of 2005’ (Bedevian 2006). The majority of oligarchs are not known for their ideological convictions. While they are not influencing ideological debates or introducing new platforms for change, the oligarchs’ presence is felt in Yerevan and some of the other large cities in Armenia (e.g. Gyumri, Goris, Vanadzor) where they travel with large entourages consisting of bodyguards. These bodyguards, as described in Chapter Two, are locally referred to as ‘shaved heads’, ‘thick necks’ and ‘burly’ men. The oligarchs have brought a new manner of dealing with issues: the violent street battles known locally as razborka (a sorting out). Such violent incidents have become quite common in recent years and, while these battles may begin over economic issues, given that so many oligarchs are currently members of parliament in the Armenian National Assembly, these conflicts also have political consequences. I found that discussions about the real or imagined predilections and excesses of some of the more colourful and flamboyant oligarchs was a source of entertainment for many Armenians. In some ways, the oligarchs are celebrities about whom stories and gossip circulate in society. For instance, one story I heard while doing fieldwork in 2002–03 was that one of these oligarchs kept several lions at his home. At first, I thought the story was some kind of urban myth until I had the opportunity to interview this individual and see the five caged lions as well as the deer and horses that roamed throughout his compound. Finally, while many of my respondents argued that there was a continuation of Soviet era bribe taking (kasharakerutyun), they added that it had worsened in the post-Soviet period because bribes have also been subjected to market reforms. I was often told that whereas in the past you could ask a friend for a favour, now you still needed to find a friend to ask a favour from, but you also had to pay the friend for the favour. While a bottle of cognac, box of chocolates or a bouquet of flowers would have sufficed in the past, current demands were much higher and hard currency was the preferred mode of exchange. Nostalgia and Positive Recollections of the Soviet Era Having been part of the Soviet Union, Armenians considered themselves as having been part of one of the world’s two superpowers. In the post-Soviet period, being told that their past and their knowledge and experience were worthless and irrelevant, sometimes by people who did not even know the first thing about Armenia, was not taken favourably. However much they may have resented the lack of freedom in the past and certain Communist era practices, having foreigners criticize their past, especially when they had

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not lived it or had experienced some of the more positive attributes, was resented. There is a nostalgia emerging in many of the former Soviet countries. In contrast to the social and economic difficulties of the present, the past has taken on a rosy glow in which life under the Communists is remembered as one of plenty, of stability and of global dominance. This is not just the case in Armenia; writing with regard to Ukraine, Catherine Wanner argues that nostalgia for the Soviet period persists in spite of the fact that it is ‘universally lambasted as unacceptably bad’ (Wanner 1998: 18). She maintains that attachments based on cultural, familial, professional and ideological grounds constitute the residual aspects of Soviet culture that are difficult to shed. In Russia as well, there is growing nostalgia for the Soviet past. There are proposals to erect statues of Stalin in several provincial towns, and Russian state TV is reported to have cancelled plans in 2006 for a special documentary on the anniversary of Khrushchev’s secret speech in which he exposed the crimes committed under Stalin’s rule. As one journalist writes, ‘Now, after 15 years when many Russians have faced growing impoverishment and watched the decline of their country’s power and prestige, they have begun to imagine the Stalin era as a time of discipline, order – and glory . . . ’ (Whewell 2006). In Armenia, the nostalgia manifested itself in the resurrection and rise to power of the former Communist Party First Secretary of Armenia, Karen Demirchian, who held the post from 1974 until 1988. His fourteen years in power is remembered as a period of prosperity and economic growth in Armenia as there was a construction boom, and grand projects, including the main sports and culture complex (hamalir) and the Yerevan metro system, were built during his reign. However, this period was also marked by increased corruption and bribe taking in Armenia (Panossian 2006: 285). Immediately following independence, Demirchian became the head of the Armelectromash electrical equipment plant and kept out of politics until his surprise re-emergence following the February 1998 coup, which led to TerPetrossian’s resignation. Demirchian not only participated in the March 1998 presidential elections as an independent candidate, but he also garnered 40 per cent of the vote and only lost to current president Robert Kocharian after a second round of voting. Demirchian’s platform was largely based on addressing the poor state of the economy. This belief that he would address Armenia’s economic woes was why many respondents told me they believed people had voted for Demirchian. One Armenian friend told me, ‘They [those who voted for Demirchian] expected to have kolbasa (salami) and trips to Sochi [a Black Sea resort] if Demirchian was elected’ (5 April 2003). Following his defeat, Demirchian went on to found the People’s Party, which subsequently joined forces with then Defence Minister Vazgen Sarkissian to form the Unity (Miasnutyun) coalition. The coalition, which comprised Demirchian’s People’s Party and Sarkissian’s Republican (Hanrapetakan)

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Party, won 43 per cent of the vote in the May 1999 parliamentary elections. As a result of this victory, Demirchian was voted Speaker of the National Assembly. He served in this capacity until his assassination by armed gunmen who stormed the Armenian National Assembly during an attack on 27 October 1999.5 In 2003, his son, Stepan Demirchian, ran for president again making a challenge to the incumbent and taking the race to a second round, leading to mass protests by the opposition about vote rigging and fraud (discussed in Chapter Two). While in 1996–97 I had identified a simmering nostalgia for the Soviet past, that nostalgia has significantly increased in recent years in Armenia as well as in the other states of the former Soviet Union. The Soviet past is praised, and is described as having contributed positively to Armenia and Armenians during the twentieth century. Many Armenians genuinely believe that Armenia would not have become a modern, industrialized state had it not been for the Soviet Union. They point to the construction of universities, institutes, the metro and public transportation as evidence of Armenia’s modernization and rapid industrialization during the course of seventy years of Soviet rule. The rapid modernization and industrialization that occurred under Communism are undeniable, yet these reflections and recollections often overlook the human costs of such rapid progress and how the system that created the universities and built the metro was also responsible for the gulags as well as the purges, executions and exile of tens of thousands of Armenians.

Conclusion In this chapter I critically examined and deconstructed the concept of ‘Soviet legacy’, which is an argument made by many donors, democracy promoters, policy makers and academics as to why the economic and political transitions in the former socialist states have not proceeded as was initially hoped. History, collective memories and shared experiences certainly do play a part in shaping individuals’ behaviour and understanding, as well as conceptualizations. However, in recognizing the impact of history, it is important to broaden the focus from solely considering the Soviet legacy to also examine the legacy of the Cold War. As ‘exorcising the legacies of communism itself’ was a fundamental component of the transition to democracy project (Wedel 2001: 21), there has been a tendency to view everything that went before as tainted by communism. As Ruth Mandel writes, The developers and their acolytes share a faith that they are moving out of bad thinking and into enlightened thinking. This enlightened perspective requires that everything which went before should be discredited, and so there has been a wholesale discounting of the entire socialist value system . . . Elsewhere in developing countries local development professionals have sometimes been able to adopt critical

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The Soviet legacy postures towards some of the ideas and messages of the developers, whereas in Central Asia much more is taken as gospel. (Mandel 2002: 294)

Civil society in the post-Soviet period was to be ‘constitutive and preservative of the liberal-democratic political systems and free-market’ (Miller 1992: 8) as the newly established NGOs were expected to be proponents, and not critics, of both the free market as well as democratic reforms. Yet the promotion of this dual agenda affected how democracy and civil society were locally perceived, and how democracy promotion in the former Soviet states as well as in Eastern Europe was affected by the close association of the democracy and market reform programmes. As the rapidly implemented market reforms and shock therapies of the early 1990s led to vast inequality, poverty and social exclusion, people soon became disillusioned not only with the market reforms but also with the associated programme of democracy building. From the perspective of many Armenians, life has worsened in the postSoviet period. The socio-economic reforms left many Armenians worse off, destroyed families and communities through temporary labour migration and permanent emigration and created vast inequalities. The negative impact of the post-Soviet reforms throughout the region is widely recognized by both academics (Burawoy and Verdery 1999; Stiglitz 2002: 133–34; Townsend 2002) and policy makers and donors (Bransten 2007; Dudwick et al. 2003). A 2007 survey conducted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for instance, maps the trauma of transition, arguing that there were many who suffered and few who benefited from the transition (Bransten 2007). This ‘trauma’ not only left many worse off than before the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it also raised questions in the minds of many of the probity of market and democratic reforms. According to the report, ‘the results show that many people remain unconvinced by the virtues of markets and democracy’ (Bransten 2007). The linking of the two agendas and transitions has affected how people have come to view democratic reforms. Even proponents of democratic reforms argue that the transition took much and gave little in return (Ishkhanyan and Babajanyan 2004: 10–11). As Armenian anthropologist and member of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) Working Group, Hranush Kharatyan, writes in the World Bank sponsored Voices of the Poor, Today Armenia is one of the world’s poorest countries. In only ten years this country which had a prosperous and relatively stable and functioning socio-economic system has undergone a drastic impoverishment and is now faced with serious material poverty and a social crisis. Time and life has been divided into the ‘past’ (until 1990) and the ‘present’ (post-1990) . . . The present is filled with hunger, illness, apathy, failure, fear, cruelty, shame, and a loss of faith, values, imagination and will. (Kharatyan 2001: 8, my translation)

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As long as the social inequality, un/under-employment and poverty remain unaddressed, the problems of the past, which included long queues, shortages of goods and political repression, will continue to be overlooked as the past is seen more favourably than the present. Nancy Fraser talks of the ‘post-socialist condition’, which is characterized by the absence or loss of a progressive vision of a just social order (1997), and Katherine Verdery argues that it is important to move beyond the category of ‘post-socialist’ and to reconceptualize and rename post-socialist studies ‘post-Cold War Studies’ given that the post-socialist condition is shaped by the ideological opposition between socialism and capitalism (Verdery 2002). She argues that the Cold War is not over, pointing to the ‘troika of Western’ ideas (‘privatization’, ‘marketization’ and ‘democratization’) which were ‘imposed on the socialist ‘‘other’’’ and asks, ‘Is the emphasis on these features driven by the ideological goal of compelling ‘‘them’’ [the socialist ‘‘others’’] to be like our outdated image of ‘‘us’’’? (2002: 20–21). With regard to democracy building and civil society strengthening, this has certainly been the case where ideal models of democracy and civil society, which do not exist in the West, were enthusiastically promoted in the former socialist countries. Following the war in Iraq, criticisms about Western democracy have intensified in many of these former socialist countries as I discuss in Chapter Seven.

6

The Voices of the Donors

In Chapters Four and Five, I examined the arguments about culture and the Soviet legacy and how these were seen as barriers to democracy building. In this chapter, I consider the impact that Western donors1 have had on democracy building and civil society development in Armenia. Academics have examined how the policies, discourses and practices of donors have affected the definitions of concepts of civil society and democracy, the framing of problems and the reification of certain topics, discourses and project types over others (Abramson 1999; Adamson 2002; Akiner 2004; Bruno 1997; Ghodsee 2004; Hann 2004; Helms 2003; Hemment 2004, Henderson 2003; Howell and Pearce 2002; Ishkanian 2003, 2004; Kay 2004; Mandel 2002; McMahon 2002; Mendelson and Glenn 2002; Richter 2002; Rivkin-Fish 2004; Roy 2004; Sampson 2002; Wedel 2001). Some have identified the tendency among donors to downplay their role and, at times, to obscure their impact on local processes and developments. For instance, as Jude Howell and Jenny Pearce argue, Interestingly international donor agencies, the fourth actor [the state, market and civil society are the other three actors], hidden from view by the triadic unity that is limited to national boundaries, assume the arbiter role . . . The appearance of neutrality serves inadvertently, or indeed intentionally, as a powerful, political tool for furthering particular agendas, for the broker appears not to have any agenda of its own, to be value-free and ideologically open to remain beyond capture by competing discourses. (Howell and Pearce 2002: 116) The desire to appear neutral, value free and ideologically open is driven by the desire, as discussed in Chapter One, to depoliticize and technicize interventions. Even before the current backlash against democracy building, donors sought to play down their role in order to avoid accusations of interventionism. The aim, however far from reality it may be, is to appear as supporters of local initiatives and processes, not instigators. As the head of one large foundation working in the post-Soviet countries said during a

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conference in New York, ‘We don’t control the impact or work of the NGOs. All we can do is make sure they do what they said they will do in their grant application . . . and we don’t organise civic movements. We only give grants to NGOs that might be part of civic movements’ (14 April 2007). While at a workshop held in Washington, DC, a representative from a bilateral agency argued that academics should not exaggerate the role played by donors and should consider donors’ actions as one of many factors that have affected democracy building in the former Soviet region (7 December 2007). Clearly, the outcomes of democracy building projects are affected by multiple factors; however, the tendency that appears to be emerging among some donors (in particular American ones) to argue that donors have not had as significant an influence as once presumed obscures the power of donor agencies in shaping the discourses, agendas, policies and practices of local civil society organizations. Armenian NGO leaders and members I interviewed and, as I have demonstrated in previous chapters (see Chapters Two, Three and Four), often complained about the impact of donor agencies on shaping agendas through their funding priorities and policies, as well as unexpressed preferences for particular NGOs or individual NGO leaders (i.e. favourites) over others. My aim in this chapter is to deconstruct the category of ‘donor’ in order to consider the diversity of donors and their perspectives. My goal is to highlight the ‘voices of the donors’. I use this phrase intentionally as it is a play on the World Bank phrase, ‘voices of the poor’. The ‘Voices of the Poor’ was a project initiated by the Bank in 2000 to collect the voices of more than 60,000 poor women and men from sixty countries in an ‘unprecedented effort to understand poverty from the perspective of the poor themselves . . . Poor people are the true poverty experts’ (World Bank website). In using the phrase, I do not wish to imply that the donors are voiceless or powerless – far from it! While donor agencies are quite powerful in not only shaping the discourses and framing the problems and issues, in spite of this power, they attempt to obscure their influence or to write themselves out of the script by presenting themselves simply or solely as supporters of local developments and transformations instead of the drivers or instigators. Drawing on interviews conducted with individuals working at twentyfive donor organizations based in Armenia,2 I examine their characterizations of their work and how they assess and evaluate the situation. Before moving on to a discussion of these ‘voices’ of donors, I discuss the architecture of the aid system, which includes different types and tiers of donors.

Donors and Donors As the individual representatives of the international NGOs, foundations, as well as bilateral and multilateral donor agencies, whom I interviewed told me again and again, there are donors and there are donors. In fact, I have heard

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this many times in conferences, seminars and discussions in Armenia and elsewhere as donors have been critical of tendencies among some NGOs and academics to essentialize donors. Clearly, there are differences between ‘donors and donors’, but what are these differences? All donors engage in some form of technical and/or financial assistance that is intended to improve the lives of the target communities or individual beneficiaries. That is after all the overarching goal of the aid system. Moreover, donors seem to be driven by a desire to ‘do good’ but, these characteristics aside, there are differences and variations in different donor agencies’ access to power and resources, their ability to influence and make policy, their ability to influence public debates, their structures of accountability and levels of transparency and, finally, their structures and systems of monitoring and evaluation. By examining the architecture of the aid system and how it is manifested in Armenia, I present the different types of donors that have been involved in civil society development and democracy building since 1991. In doing so, I map out the relationships between different types of donors and how these relationships are manifested on the ground. Multilateral Agencies Multilateral agencies are organizations that are financed by their member countries and play an important role in aid and development assistance. Multilateral agencies working in Armenia include the various United Nations agencies (e.g. the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, etc.), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the European Commission, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.3 These organizations have complex systems of governance, and their headquarters are often based in Washington, New York, London or Brussels. They are usually founded through an intergovernmental agreement and, in theory, are to be independent of the interests of any single member country, although the latter point is one of contention as wealthier members are often seen has having greater power in influencing decision making, policy design and budgeting issues. Of these agencies, while not all have specific civil society strengthening programmes, let alone democracy promotion projects, all have introduced some institutional mechanism since the 1990s for engaging with civil society organizations. The UN, for instance, does not consider democracy a precondition for UN membership, and the word ‘democracy’ does not appear in the UN charter. According to Newman and Rich, It is not one of the stated purposes of the United Nations to foster democracy, to initiate the process of democratization or to legitimize other actors’ efforts in this field [democracy promotion]. (Newman and Rich 2004: 5)

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Since 2005, however, the UN has made a foray into democracy promotion. Although various UN agencies, including the UN Development Programme and the Office for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, have engaged with civil society through their programme activities or civil society consultative forums, including the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the UN (CONGO),4 the establishment of the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF)5 in July 2005 was the first time that a separate structure was created within the UN specifically to promote democracy. Of UNDEF’s six funding priority areas, three focus on civil society and provide funding for civil society empowerment, civic education and citizens’ access to information. Although this demonstrates a focus on civil society in democratization, there are concerns as to how UNDEF will decide on funding to NGOs and other civil society organizations that are critical of a member state’s authority. According to the executive head of UNDEF, Magdy Martinez-Soliman, active democracy promotion is only a recently admissible part of the UN mandate and one that has been problematic because it can eventually go against the will of the non-democratic representative of a member state (Martinez-Soliman 2006: 2). There is concern with maintaining a balance between respecting national ownership on political transitions while providing external support to democrats and democratic values, so that democracy assistance is not seen as regime change or interference. For this reason, Martinez-Soliman argues that democracy assistance from the UN should be provided only at a member state’s request; otherwise, democracy promotion in hostile environments can be ‘the kiss of death’ by bolstering the authoritarians’ argument that democrats are not representative of the national community and are supported from abroad. Bilateral Agencies Bilateral agencies are the departments or ministries of national governments whose mandates are to grant or loan money for development on a nation-tonation mandate. As stated already, USAID has been the largest bilateral donor in Armenia since independence, but other bilateral agencies that have worked in Armenia in the 1990s include the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the German government funded international co-operation enterprise known as the Deutsche Gesellschaft fu¨r Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and the Swiss Development Agency. In addition to these agencies, there were some bilateral agencies that did not have offices in Yerevan or Armenia-only programmes, but funded Armenian NGOs through regional programmes in the South Caucasus. These included the Swedish International Development Agency, the Canadian International Development Agency and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. None of these agencies, however, has had such a long-standing or comprehensive focus on democracy building and civil society strengthening as USAID.

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Therefore, it can be stated that, in many ways, democracy building in Armenia has largely been an American enterprise. Bilateral agencies receive their funding from their respective governments and are accountable to those governments and ostensibly to the taxpayers in those countries. Although representatives of bilateral agencies would only state this privately, the agendas of bilateral agencies are affected to varying degrees by the geopolitical and foreign policy stances of their governments. Often, this is manifested in the clash of differing agendas and priorities between the embassies and the development agencies working in one country. In bilateral agencies, decisions about strategy and funding are made in the home country but often with consultation with field offices. For instance, when USAID drew up its five year strategy, it did so after consulting with members of Ministries, the Armenian Central Bank, other donors, embassies and NGOs in Armenia (USAID Strategy Report 2004a: 15). While there is some flexibility in decision making, very often the bilateral agencies are obliged to follow a certain line, and the strategies designed by field offices are subject to approval in their home country. For instance, as discussed in Chapter Three, when George Bush came into office, he banned any US agency or organization that received federal funds from promoting family planning (i.e. the gag rule). Assistance to Armenian civil society organizations from bilateral agencies was provided either through direct grants, technical assistance and capacity building programmes or through the bilateral agencies’ contractors or grantees. These contractors or grantees include NGOs, private voluntary organizations (PVOs) or private service contractors (PSCs) from the bilateral agency’s home country. USAID, for instance, until 2002 provided all assistance to Armenian NGOs through US based non-profit organizations, PVOs or PSCs. Globally, USAID funds the work of such organizations through grants, co-operative agreements or contracts6 (USAID 2006: 22–3). The first time that USAID made a direct grant to Armenian organizations was in 2002 when it funded the domestic violence programme, which was discussed in detail in Chapter Three. The remaining funding was provided to and through US based organizations. Foundations, NGOs, PVOs and PSCs In addition to bilateral and multilateral agencies, non-state actors, including private foundations, international NGOs, PSCs, political parties and others, have been involved in democracy promotion. There are differences among these various actors in terms of their objectives and missions, as well as their levels of financial independence and autonomy. These organizations have different sources of funding, including private endowments, members fees, as well as grants or contracts from bilateral donors. Although these organizations tend to be far less wealthy and influential than the multilateral and bilateral donors discussed above, they have nevertheless been important

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actors in Armenian civil society strengthening programmes because of their grant-making and capacity building roles, through which they have helped to frame and shape discourses as well as project designs. Moreover, these organizations vary in terms of their accountability, but they are generally beholden to their primary donors. Once again, decision making on programmatic issues varies and, although some field offices have greater power and autonomy than others, most are influenced by the decision making and policies of their headquarters. Some organizations, such as the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation, are funded by private endowments and consider democracy promotion as an integral part of their mission. They have been actively engaged in democracy promotion and civil society strengthening globally. Meanwhile, NGOs or quasi-NGOs, such as the US based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) or the UK based Westminster Foundation for Democracy (website), which are also committed to promoting democracy around the world, have less financial independence than the aforementioned private foundations and are dependent on government funding.7 For instance, NED receives an annual appropriation from the US Congress through the Department of State (NED website), while the Westminster Foundation is an independent body that receives £4.1 million annual funding from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In addition to these various types of foundations, there are also political parties or organizations affiliated to political parties that engage in democracy promotion. In Germany, for instance, there are a number of organizations, including the Friedrich Ebert, Friedrich Naumann, Heinrich Bo¨ll and Konrad Adenauer foundations, that are associated with various political parties and have been active in democracy promotion. Foundations, PVOs, PSCs and international NGOs have been actively engaged in various types of civil society strengthening and democracy promotion programmes in Armenia. In Armenia, these included the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation, the National Democratic Institute, the Caucasus Media Institute, World Learning, Eurasia Foundation, Catholic Relief Services, IFES, the Academy for Educational Development, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the American Bar Association Central and Eastern Europe Legal Initiative. Finally, among non-state actors, there were the US based PSCs or consulting companies, such as the Planning and Development Collaborative International (PADCO) and Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), which procured contracts and carried out democracy promotion, civil society strengthening and governance on behalf of and based on the specifications of USAID. In recent years, USAID has provided a significant number of contracts to such consulting companies and PSCs. In 2004 alone, it provided US$8 billion to contractors engaged in carrying out

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international development projects throughout the world6 (USAID 2006). US based PSC firms are sometimes referred to among aid industry insiders as the ‘Beltway Bandits’ because their headquarters are based in and around the Washington, DC ring road known as the Capital Beltway. These contractors compete with one another for US government contracts, often undercutting and underbidding one another in order to procure contracts. Diaspora Donors Finally, there are diaspora organizations working in Armenia. While diaspora organizations have been instrumental in providing humanitarian relief, development aid and assistance for cultural or religious projects since 1988 (Ishkanian 2005), they have not been actively involved in civil society strengthening or democracy building programmes with a few notable exceptions. Before discussing these initiatives, I will provide a brief background discussion on the Armenian diaspora (for more on the diaspora and Armenia–diaspora relations, see Aslanian 2002; Bakalian 1992; Libaridian 1991, 1999; Masih and Krikorian 1999; Panossian 1998, 2006; Pattie 1996, 2001; Suny 1993; To¨lo¨lyan 1996; To¨lo¨lyan and Beledian 1998). The Armenian Diaspora Although dispersion and exile have been a near constant in Armenians’ two and a half millennia history (Suny 1993: 214), in the twentieth century, the Armenian diaspora underwent a tremendous transformation as a result of the genocide. The modern Armenian diaspora was created because of the genocide, and the genocide has subsequently shaped the identity construction, collective memory and politics of survivors and their children. These survivors sought refuge in various countries in the Middle East, Europe and North and South America where they established new diaspora communities or joined pre-existing centres (Pattie 2001: 4). They began to rebuild their lives and communities by establishing schools and churches, as well as civil society organizations including social and cultural clubs, sports teams and compatriotic organizations. Maintaining the Armenian language, religion and traditions became sacred objectives in these communities. According to most estimates, there are four to five million Armenians in the diaspora. Diaspora communities are divided into two broad categories: ‘internal’ and ‘external’. The first is called ‘internal’ because, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it consisted of the Armenian communities outside Soviet Armenia but within the same overall state (i.e. the USSR). The second category, ‘external’, refers to the communities in the Middle East, Europe and the Americas (Panossian 1998: 151). In recent years, because of emigration of Armenians from Armenia and the Middle East, the US9 has

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become the largest ‘external’ diaspora community (with approximately one million Armenians) and the centre of diaspora life in the twenty-first century.10 The members of the various diaspora communities speak different dialects of Armenian and possess different ideas about Armenianness and the homeland (hayrenik). In spite of these differences, non-assimilated Armenians continue to identify themselves as ‘Armenian’ (Hai), consider themselves part of the Armenian nation (azg) and believe that they share a common origin and history. To be a true member, Khachig To¨lo¨lyan argues (To¨lo¨lyan 1996: 7), it is not enough to claim that one is an Armenian, it is necessary to act as one, which means one has to accept certain responsibilities and duties for the nation and Armenian cause or question (Hai Tad).11 To¨lo¨lyan refers to ethnically conscious Armenians as ‘diasporics’ and distinguishes them from the ‘ethnics’ and those Armenians who are assimilated in all but name. According to this definition, a ‘diasporic’ is a dedicated Armenian who maintains ties with counterparts in other parts of the world and with the homeland. Diasporics share the ‘ruling assumption’ that: (a) despite all its faults and whatever its borders, the Republic of Armenia must survive and (b) the diaspora must help Armenia to survive. In this shift from subjectivity to agency, internalized sentiments and beliefs about one’s identity and origins lead diasporics to ‘help Armenia’. An ‘ethnic’, meanwhile, is an Armenian who acknowledges his/her Armenian identity and demonstrates it in small ways such as going to an Armenian church once or twice a year, but is not as committed to any Armenian organization or cause in particular (To¨lo¨lyan and Beledian 1998: 62). When Armenia regained independence in 1991, there was a great deal of excitement and anticipation in Armenia and the diaspora communities over the impending reunion of Armenians in the homeland. On an emotional and abstract level, the people of Armenia were devoted to the idea of one Armenian nation and one Armenian people. On a practical level, however, questions and concerns were raised about what was the proper role for diasporans (Masih and Krikorian 1999: 38). Over fifteen years after independence, many of these questions remain unanswered. There is still disagreement on the extent to which the Armenian government should claim, let alone assume, responsibility for Armenians beyond its borders and the degree to which diasporans should influence or help to determine Armenia’s state and national policies, agendas and priorities. Although some diaspora organizations and parties had been claiming to want a free and independent Armenia (azad angagh Hayastan), the Karabakh Movement came as a surprise to them (Libaridian 1999: 136). Libaridian maintains that the diaspora political parties were in a difficult situation: they were scrambling to find an explanation to offer to the public on the momentous events that had received the world’s attention but in which they had no role and next to which all else was eclipsed (Libaridian 1999: 137). But, instead of rejoicing and joining the struggle, the three

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diaspora political parties, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Ramgavar Liberal Democratic Party and the Hunchakian Social Democratic Party, issued a joint communique´ on 1 October 1988 that was in direct opposition to the steps taken by homeland Armenians involved in the Karabakh Movement. These parties, Joseph Masih and Robert O. Krikorian contend, felt that the overriding national interests demanded extreme caution and that precipitous action could lead to disaster. The final paragraph of the communique´ states, We call upon our valiant brethren in Armenia and Karabagh to forgo such extreme acts as work stoppages, student strikes, and some radical calls and expressions which unsettle the law and order of the public life in the homeland and subject to heavy losses the economic, productive, educational, and cultural life as well as the good standing of our nation in its relation with the higher Soviet bodies and also with the other Soviet republics. These zealous attitudes also provide the fodder for the ulterior motives of the enemies of our people. Above all, we should safeguard the unity of our people, wherein lies our strength, and we should pursue our ultimate interests with farsightedness and determination. (Text of communique´ reprinted in Libaridian 1991: 129) Armenians in Armenia reacted with consternation and felt betrayed by the diaspora political parties. The National Self-Determination Union Group, led by Soviet dissident Parouyr Hayrikian, wrote the following in response to the diaspora parties that had produced the communique´, Your silence was insulting; but your words were even more so. . . . what a disappointment to see [that what you had produced] was a rehash of appeals received from the ‘Soviet Union’. This is when we said, ‘As if our pain wasn’t enough, now you have become a pain yourself’. What can we do? You merely accelerated [the process of] our assessment of your [position]. As if there was no other way you could have made your existence felt in Armenia. Months after the beginning of major events inspired by [our love] of our people [in Armenia] your ‘national leaders’ sat around a round table, measured the good and the bad in Marlboro smoke-filled rooms and outlined their position with regard to events taking place in Armenia and to Hayastansis [Armenians living in then Soviet Armenia] living a critical time. (Quoted in Libaridian 1991: 131) Many people in Armenia felt that these three political parties, having been isolated and detached from the developments in Armenia for decades, had lost touch with the reality of life in Soviet Armenia and misunderstood the democratic nature of developments there. Masih and

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Krikorian write, ‘This declaration came as a blow to the people of Armenia who were actively engaged in what they saw as a struggle for human rights and democracy and planted the seed of suspicion towards the diaspora which would eventually lead to serious conflict in the years after independence’ (Masih and Krikorian 1999: 13). Of course, the political parties’ position was not shared by all diaspora Armenians. On the contrary, in the West and East Coast cities of the United States, Armenians held rallies and meetings in support of the Armenians in Armenia (Najarian 1999: 13–24).12 Although the diaspora political parties were ambivalent with regard to the Karabakh Movement, many diaspora individuals and organizations sent assistance to Armenia in the aftermath of the earthquake. Others travelled to Armenia to provide medical care, equipment, supplies and medicine, as well as psychological counselling and support for survivors of the quake. The author of the ‘Diaspora Humanitarian Assistance to Armenia’ report, Hratch Tchilingirian, points out how diaspora assistance, which began after the earthquake and intensified after Armenia’s declaration of independence in 1991, has tended to peak when major national emergencies (e.g. earthquakes, energy crises, etc.) occur (Tchilingirian 1999). The assistance from the diaspora to Armenia would continue and intensify after Armenia declared independence on 21 September 1991. However, the questions concerning the role of the diaspora vis-a`-vis Armenia remained unanswered. Were diasporans going to repatriate to Armenia from their adopted homelands? Were they going to receive dual citizenship? What role were they going to play in Armenia’s nation-building process? What rights would/should diasporans have in a newly independent Armenia? What responsibilities would accompany those rights? Finally, were the diaspora and homeland, as some intellectuals in the diaspora and Armenia maintained, the two wings of the same bird? (Panossian 1998: 165). After independence, some diasporans, including Gerard (Jirair) Libaridian, Raffi Hovannisian and Sebouh Tashjian, were invited to work in the new government. But, given the dire economic situation in Armenia, the continuing conflict in Karabakh and the difficult daily living conditions, most diasporans continued to interact with Armenia transnationally. While many diasporans have purchased homes in Armenia, only a small number have permanently repatriated to Armenia after independence, and presumably even fewer have received Armenian citizenship. Diasporics who have no immediate or kin-based ties to people in Armenia tend to ‘help Armenia’ by supporting the work of the many diasporic nonprofit organizations that sponsor projects in Armenia. Through sustained, committed contact, organizations such as the Armenian University of Armenia, the Armenian Health Alliance, the Armenian General Benevolent Union, the Armenian Relief Society, Aznavour pour l’Armenie, the Armenian Assembly of America, the Lincy Foundation, Jinishian Foundation,

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Cafesjian Foundation, Tufenkian Foundation, the Armenian American Mammography University Center, Medical Outreach for Armenia, the Organization for Developmental Services in Armenia and the United Armenian Fund, among others, have provided important guidance and assistance to aid Armenia’s post-Soviet transition. At the project level, these organizations have been quite successful, and many Armenians have benefited from their services. However, these organizations have not been able to alleviate widespread poverty, mitigate emigration and promote long-term sustainable development in Armenia (Ishkanian 2005). The majority of the organizations listed above have also not engaged in any type of civil society strengthening or democracy building types of projects. By and large, these organizations have shied away from engaging in activities or making statements that may be perceived by the Armenian authorities as political or politically motivated. As such, they have embraced a very technical, apolitical approach to their relief and development work, which addresses the consequences of poverty, but not the causes or the implications of the growing socio-economic inequality and polarization. This approach has been met with approval by the authorities and, as I discussed in Chapter Two, the authorities would prefer it if local Armenian NGOs would also embrace such an apolitical, technical stance instead of focusing on issues that are seen as political (e.g. human rights, democracy, etc.). Of the few diaspora organizations that have engaged in democracy building and civil society strengthening, the first and foremost is the Armenian Assembly of America’s (AAA) NGO Resource and Training Centre (NGOC). As discussed in Chapter One, the NGOC has been a very important institution in supporting the development of a particular model of civil society in Armenia. Funded by USAID, it was instrumental in shaping the discourses, models and patterns. Since 1996, I have met with and visited the Centre a number of times and interviewed representatives of the NGOC. The NGOC’s opening in 1994, as I have stated, played a significant role in the development of Armenia’s NGO sector and, although the NGOC has been a locally registered NGO since 2005, it is important to note that the bulk of its work in the area of seeding NGOs occurred when it was a diaspora initiative. The second organization created and run by diaspora Armenians is the Junior Achievement of Armenia (JAA). In addition to providing economics training, JAA has also supported a civics education programme in Armenia’s schools. According to the organization, over 150,000 students have participated in the Junior Achievement courses. Although both the JAA and NGOC were created and run (at least initially in the case of NGOC) by diaspora Armenians, a significant portion of their funding has come from USAID. NGOC was created with a USAID grant, while JAA lists USAID as a ‘primary source of funding’ (JAA website). Therefore, the division between these organizations and the above category of PVOs and INGOs is perhaps not as distinct as it would appear.

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Donor Co-ordination and Other Issues in the Aid Industry Given this diversity of donors, how are these different types of donors related to one another? Some of the aforementioned organizations work together in coalitions while others do not, and there are monthly donor meetings to which bilateral and multilateral agencies are invited. I was told that, in Armenia, most donors would participate in the formal monthly donor meetings that were co-chaired by the World Bank, the UNDP and the USAID. There were also twenty sector-specific theme groups that would meet periodically (USAID Strategy 2004a: 160). The aim of such meetings is to enhance co-ordination and information sharing, and for donors to complement each other’s efforts. While this was true on paper, a number of respondents working for donor agencies told me that, in practice, there was often overlap, replication and even implementation of programmes that were at cross-purposes to one another. Furthermore, because many of the international NGOs, PVOs and PSCs were competing directly for the same sources of funding and contracts, the co-operation and co-ordination that was demanded of local NGOs was at times absent among the implementing donor agencies. Such that, while they would strive to develop and encourage co-operation, collaboration and networking among Armenian NGOs, they often did not practise what they preached. As one particularly candid INGO representative told me, The challenge is the unhealthy competition among [Armenian] NGOs which leads organizations to slander one another and also to make claims that the grant money is going into the pockets of certain expat [expatriate] staff. Armenian NGOs fight with each other and refuse to come to events if they know their rivals will be there. There is just too much lack of trust in the NGO sector. No one trusts each other and they also don’t trust the donors. But we, the international NGOs are also facing similar problems. The problem of working with other organizations is that you can’t borrow and cooperate and not be considered an ‘idea stealer’. There is a competitive factor among international NGOs just like what goes on among local NGOs. We also live off grants and we also have to please our own donors. So we are in the same boat and are always looking over our shoulders at the competition (30 April 2003). Another INGO representative told me, We are trying to promote civil society and democratization in Armenia . . . We have been accused of ‘mushrooming’ NGOs. But at the same time other people have also been praised for helping to advance NGOs. But people shouldn’t see us as simply creating proposal writing and grant getting machines. In any case, if we cease to fund NGOs and

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The view of ‘if not us, then someone else’ was prevalent among INGOs, highlighting the competition and territoriality that exists among those who advocate co-operation and co-ordination to others. In recent years, the question of aid co-ordination has come to the forefront in development debates. The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness13 found that improvements in aid effectiveness are contingent on greater donor co-ordination and aid harmonization. The Declaration subsequently led to the creation of the Donor Exchange, Co-ordination and Information Mechanism (DECIM) initiated by the World Bank and the European Commission. DECIM is a voluntary donor co-ordination process, based on the principles of transparency, information sharing and pro-active efforts to seek effective synergies and encourage ‘light co-ordination’ among the participating agencies that foster civil society development in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Western Balkans and Turkey, as well as the countries of the Mediterranean and Middle East. It is open to bilateral and multilateral donors and private foundations, and the aim is to include a wide range of civil society organizations in the process (DECIM 2006 press release). Having participated in a number of DECIM roundtables and meetings, I can state that there is enthusiasm among the donor agencies involved to support such a mechanism; whether the process, which was only signed into effect in December 2006, can be implemented and will succeed, however, remains to be seen. Despite the public declarations and vows, there remains a gap between policy and practice. Speaking at an international workshop, one multilateral donor representative said, ‘We claim to be a community of practice, but you see the lack of donor coordination wherever you go. It’s as though we are simply crossing paths in Sarajevo airport’ (27 October 2005). Another multilateral donor argued that it was not simply a matter of the lack of interagency co-ordination and communication, but that there was a distinct lack of intra-agency co-ordination as well. He said, ‘We zip around the continents but we don’t go two floors above to see what the other departments are doing’ (28 October 2005). Such lack of co-ordination is driven by inter- and intra-agency competition over resources, influence and power. While the majority of bilateral and multilateral agencies and foundations claim to want greater co-ordination and co-operation among aid agencies, the questions of who will lead the co-ordination process and how they will achieve buy-in when there is so much territoriality, competition and political wrangling remain unanswered. Foundations and INGOs are resistant to too much co-ordination from bilateral and multilateral organizations, which they consider to be too bureaucratic and ossified. Their fear of cooptation and loss of independence also inhibits greater co-ordination. Recognition and knowledge of the obstacles to and, in some cases, failures

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of donor co-ordination and co-operation efforts, however, does not inhibit donors from encouraging the NGOs they fund to co-operate and co-ordinate their efforts as I will discuss below.

The Voices of Donors When I began my interviews with donors, I was interested in understanding individual donor representatives’ views and attitudes towards Armenian civil society and how they assessed their role in the democracy building process. How did they view the Armenian NGOs? What did they consider to be the challenges facing the Armenian NGOs? What did they consider to be the successes of their programmes in the areas of democracy building and civil society strengthening? In order to protect the identity of respondents, I have omitted the names of individuals and organizations, instead listing the type of organization they represent. I began by asking all my interviewees why and how their organizations were engaged in promoting democracy and civil society. Interestingly, no one questioned the link between civil society and democracy building; rather, it was taken for granted that a vibrant civil society would lead to democracy. The assumption, particularly among US based organizations, was very much influenced by a neo-Tocquevillian vision of civil society in which associations and membership build trust leading to greater democracy. One American INGO respondent kept citing Robert Putnam throughout our interview and suggested I read Putnam’s Bowling Alone in order to understand what needed to be done in Armenia. He said, If we believe that as far back as in 23 BC [the time of Jesus] we had local governance and participation, then we can have it now. You should look at Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. He makes a good argument about the need for civic participation in democracies. The myth that only the rich volunteer or that it takes education or time or upbringing is not true. The Soviet era inculcated certain community values but there is no one stimulating them now. People focus on their immediate family’s needs, but I am certain that when the opportunity exists people will join in civic initiatives and that this will be good for Armenia’s democratic development (7 May 2003). While few respondents seemed to share his zealous faith in the virtues of associationalism, most of the donors I interviewed said that they linked civil society to the development of NGOs or, as some preferred to call it, the development of the ‘third sector’. They argued that NGOs or third sector organizations would in turn support and advance the democracy building process in Armenia. In 2003, the majority of the donors engaged in civil society strengthening were still primarily involved in funding NGOs, but some were already arguing that a wider definition of civil society, one which

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would include media organizations, self-help groups and trade unions, was necessary. As one bilateral donor said, Civil society isn’t just NGOs. We have to move beyond NGOs. For me civil society is also the media and other non-state actors such as trade unions, but up until now this organization has not worked with trade unions or religious groups or loose associations of people, or even traditional or business associations; we have primarily focused on NGOs (25 April 2003). Two years later, another bilateral donor went even further and questioned the probity of NGOs, saying, The [Armenian] NGOs are alienated and isolated from society and people. For this reason they can’t find solutions to society’s problems. We need alternative ways to create civil society other than NGOs because we see that NGOs are not working (29 March 2005). Recognizing that civil society is more than NGOs is one thing. The fact of the matter was that, up until recently, civil society strengthening in Armenia had by and large focused on supporting the development of NGOs; therefore, when I asked donors to evaluate their efforts in civil society strengthening programmes, the discussion centred on NGOs. Achievements and Challenges A number of respondents pointed to the growing professionalism of NGOs, which included the creation of bureaucratic structures and the acquisition of particular skills, as strong signs of success. They cited Armenian NGOs’ increased ability to engage in project management, grant writing, record keeping and accounting as signs of success. These managerial skills were seen as improvements over the earlier situation in which NGOs were said to have been managed in a more ad hoc manner. A number of respondents mentioned the Armenian NGO, Mission Armenia, which provides assistance to lonely elders and refugees, as a particularly successful Armenian NGO. Mission Armenia was considered a success because it had created bureaucratic structures, detailed managerial positions and portfolios and a complex system of organizational record keeping. Donors tend to prefer professionalized NGOs as these groups have, or can be trained to have, the administrative capabilities that donors need for their own bureaucratic budgets, accounting reports, project reports and all the other documents that beneficiaries are asked to submit (Ottaway and Carothers 2000: 13). Less professional, more informal organizations are sometimes overlooked by donors. This tendency preserves and accentuates previous hierarchies, in which almost everything depends on patronage and

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personal connection (Hann and Dunn 1996). Within the civic universe constructed by donors in Armenia, Yerevan based, professionalized advocacy and service delivery NGOs that have the administrative capacity, the knowledge of grants and international trends, as well as the social connections, have greater chances of success and survival than less professionalized, informal NGOs in smaller towns and villages. Aside from improving the level of professionalism and managerial capacity, donors also argued that they had been successful in implementing their goals because the Armenian NGOs they had funded or provided training to had come to recognize the benefits of advocacy and were now engaged in advocacy. One bilateral donor said, ‘There has certainly been success in developing the notion of advocacy and there are NGOs that have begun to understand what it means to advocate’ (25 April 2003). Another donor, an INGO representative, claimed responsibility for introducing the concept of advocacy in Armenia, adding, Our biggest success or achievement is getting Armenian NGOs to recognize the concept of advocacy. We introduced this concept to the Armenian NGO sector in April 2001 with the help of our partner organization. Before that, the concept was known by a very limited number of NGOs. In April 2001 our first volunteer [from the partner organization] gave a talk about what advocacy is and how it is different from being an attorney (advokat). This was a totally new concept to Armenia. We then provided grants to NGOs and helped to create an advocacy manual. We adapted the American advocacy plan based on Armenia’s unique circumstances. Now we have advocacy trainings and give advice to advocacy grantees. They have had opportunities to learn about and get trainings on advocacy. Now they will have the opportunity to apply for advocacy grants (17 April 2003). Advancing the advocacy model was of great concern to American donors and, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was heavy investment in advocacy training. In Chapter Four, I discussed one such advocacy training which was held in October 2002. In interviews I conducted with donor representatives in 2002 and 2003, I found that they believed that many Armenians were still not certain of what was meant by ‘advocacy’. Finally, one INGO representative argued that the success of the donors and NGOs was that they had ‘created a middle class in Armenia’ (18 April 2003). Creation of a middle class is not one of the stated aims of aid programmes, but it has certainly been one of the unintended consequences of civil society strengthening, in that quite a number of individuals have been able to sustain their livelihoods and families through employment in NGOs. While Armenian respondents saw this as one of the unequivocal benefits of the donors’ efforts at building democracy and strengthening civil society, this was not the case with many donor representatives. On the contrary,

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Armenians’ reliance on grants as a source of income was cited as one of the problems or challenges facing NGOs in Armenia. A number of donors complained that Armenian NGOs viewed their work as a business enterprise. One multilateral donor told me, The public perception is that this is all a grant getting exercise and that NGOs are only making money off grants. The only NGO that prints an annual report is the Yerevan Press Club. Others hide their grants and this leads to accusations. People say, ‘Why did so and so get a million dollars and what have they done with it’. The process is not taken seriously and this is not helping NGOs become more institutionalized and more legitimate in society (14 May 2003). Such NGOs were described as family businesses or one person shows. Another respondent, who worked at an international foundation, said, NGOs are not established. It isn’t that they don’t have a computer or fax machine in their office. The problem is that these are not sustainable programmes. Many issues have been turned into a business where the NGO will get a grant and live for one year on that grant. This is the problem that there is a lack of real work and a lack of real cooperation. We are trying to break the grant getting cycle and to show people that NGOs are not a business but I am not sure how successful we will be (13 May 2003). Some referred to such NGOs as ‘grant chasers’ or ‘grantrepreneurs’, citing how money had corrupted the NGOs. One INGO representative went so far as to label Armenian NGOs ‘prostitutes’. He said, Armenian NGOs are prostitutes and that is how they act toward donors. They need to have more respect for themselves. If they think of themselves as a community they will think and act differently than they do now. And when they do, they will then become more responsible to their communities than to the donors (11 June 2003). In addition to the reliance on grants, the lack of professionalism was also cited as a challenge or problem facing civil society by quite a number of donors. As one foundation donor said, There are 3,450 NGOs, some are professional, others are in name only. There is a lack of professionalism. They also don’t cooperate well with each other. We try to support projects that aid NGO development and we go to NGOs that have common aims so that they can share the work and collaborate. They don’t want to cooperate because they fear they will have to split the money. We tell them that the stronger they are

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collectively that this will make the government take them more seriously. They don’t listen to us and even when they do, they don’t cooperate very well (13 May 2003). NGOs’ lack of co-operation and co-ordination coupled with their lack of engagement with state actors was considered a problem by donors. Finally, some donors lamented that, even after a decade of aid, Armenian NGOs were not yet very well established and self-sustaining. Some donors were concerned about the fate of NGOs once aid priorities shifted to other countries and regions, and Armenian NGOs would have to ‘graduate’ from donor funding.14 Some, as I will discuss below, suggested that NGOs should start seeking local sources of funding, including from oligarchs and local businesses as well as membership fees. Others recommended developing and advancing models of social partnership and contracting. The first of these social partnership and contracting models were introduced in 2002. Such models, which rely on a government agency subcontracting its work to a NGO, are commonly found in the US where they are also known as public–private partnerships. Until 2005, however, the few social partnerships that were introduced in Armenia were still relying on foreign donor support, such that the donor would provide the local government with the funding, which the local government would then subcontract to Armenian NGOs. Donor Assessments and Evaluations In assessing the impact of their work, a number of donor respondents identified some of the challenges as being due to the legacy of the Soviet system. In particular, the lack of trust, absence of volunteerism and corruption were seen as having roots in the Soviet past. Others identified cultural factors, such as the importance of family versus community, which prevented the development of civil society and the strengthening of NGOs. One INGO representative said the problem of NGOs lay in the fact that many NGO leaders were former Soviet bureaucrats (apparatchiks) who had mastered the skill to reproduce the dominant discourses. He said, ‘In past years they repeated the discourses provided to them by Moscow, now they reproduce the rhetoric provided to them from Brussels or Washington, DC. I don’t believe what they say, because they themselves don’t believe what they say’ (15 May 2003). Arguments concerning the influence of the Soviet legacy or culture, as I demonstrated in Chapters Four and Five, appear in donor documents and policy papers, as well as in academic works. As such, I consider them public or mainstream arguments but, in my interviews, I also discovered a number of arguments that may appear in critical development studies (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998; Cooke and Kothari 2001; Crush 1995; Escobar 1991, 1994; Ferguson 1994; Fisher 1995; Harriss 2002; Kabeer 1994; Wedel

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2001), but most certainly not in donor documents or policy reports. These arguments are those that recognize and consider the influence of donor policies and practices on NGOs. As such, there is a divide between the public/mainstream arguments and the private/critical arguments. A number of donors I interviewed recognized how foreign funding had negatively affected the development of the sector, but they were also quick to point out that this was their own individual opinion and should not be taken as the official ‘party line’ or as the opinion of their organizations. One bilateral donor representative, for instance, argued that ‘Some NGOs are ruined because of donor money’ (24 June 2003), while another, an INGO representative, said, ‘There is no better way to kill an initiative than to give it a grant and to talk about creating an NGO. These things ruin good initiatives’ (7 May 2003). While recognizing the impact they were having, neither of these respondents discussed how the situation could be altered. A representative from an INGO, however, reflected on the power dynamics and on the roles of both donors and local NGOs in these processes. He said, With regards to how decisions regarding work areas and grants get made, well, it definitely is shaped by what we [Westerners] do. It’s all about how much time we give to our partners. Yes, we collect them and hold workshops and roundtables and we say, ‘We are interested in your perspectives and opinions’. But then we give them a yes or no question to answer. And all they can say is ‘yes’, because if they say no then they are left out of the game all together. So, of course they say ‘yes’. When I was in Tajikistan we were doing strategy planning and writing our two-year plan. Our local partners from Central Asia were brought together for three days. We had twenty people from four countries to meet for three days. All they could do was make little modifications, because if they were to raise larger questions then the entire program and plan would be destroyed and they would lose out on potential funding. We didn’t provide the forum for them even though we were saying that we were providing the forum for them. We just wanted them to agree with the plan we had designed. How we as donors structure things permits discussion of certain things and silences other discussion. There is also an issue of whom we consider local partners. In promoting or helping civil society, we tend to look for English speakers, those who know how to use a computer, and who can repeat, not understand, but repeat, certain concepts and discourses. Local civil society meanwhile is vastly different than what we are looking for. We don’t want to look at them or recognize them as a viable civil society because they raise such issues that don’t share our perspectives and values. They don’t talk about civil society, democracy, NGOs, market economies, etc. They tend to talk about the Islamic revival, nationalism, the destruction of

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traditional values by consumerism and globalization, etc. (15 May 2003, emphasis in original). This respondent raises important questions and concerns about participation and attempts at including local NGOs in decision making. He highlights how, in spite of the rhetoric, the structure of the aid system does not allow for fundamental changes to be made to policy design and implementation. Academics studying development interventions have pointed out the challenges of participatory development, arguing that the problems with participation are more political and conceptual than technical (Cooke 2004; Hickey and Mohan, 2004; Mohan, 2001; Mosse, 2001). They have demonstrated that it is not so much not including participants, but rather a tendency to look upon participation as a ‘tick the box’ exercise instead of an attempt to challenge and change policies and practices. Cooke and Kothari (2001), for instance, argue that participatory development facilitates an exercise of power, which leads to the re-assertion of control and power by dominant individuals, groups and bodies of knowledge over those who are less powerful (Kothari, 2001: 242). Kothari writes, . . . those people who have the greatest reason to challenge and confront power relations and structures are brought, or even bought, through the promise of development assistance, into the development process in ways that disempower them to challenge the prevailing hierarchies and inequalities in society, leading to inclusionary control and the inducement of conformity. (Kothari 2001: 243) While donors were willing to privately acknowledge the problems, mistakes and failures within the aid system and how it has affected the impact and success of programmes, such explanations do not appear in official publications or reports. Recognizing and admitting mistakes remains a taboo because most donors working in Armenia are also recipients of aid themselves. Whether they receive their funding from national governments, international headquarters or other sources, the admission of failure of policies and programmes is deemed too costly. Lack of effectiveness or impact is instead either completely sidestepped or the blame is shifted elsewhere. Common targets of blame include beneficiary communities, local or national governments and, less frequently, other aid agencies. For instance, among a number of non-US donors and INGOs in Armenia, there was criticism of the work of USAID and its partners. As one European bilateral donor said, Millions were spent in Armenia by USAID to promote civil society, but we can’t see the impact of that money. They give money to fund different civil activities but somehow many NGOs end up dealing with issues that are by and large seen as donor issues by society. Of course there

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Meanwhile, a different European bilateral donor said, ‘Some donors, such as USAID, had their own political goals and one of those goals was to create NGOs that think like and act like them. So they supported those organizations that demonstrated their ability to do that’ (30 March 2005). As I wrote earlier in this chapter, this view contradicts the emerging tendency among some donors agencies today to downplay or ‘avoid exaggerating’ (7 December 2007) their role and impact in democracy building efforts in the former Soviet states. Aid from the Oligarchs A number of foreign donors I interviewed expressed a concern about the sustainability of Armenian NGOs and how they would survive once foreign funding was reduced or cut entirely. Some of these respondents were hopeful that local funding sources would emerge whether from the government or from local philanthropists. I decided to test this assumption by interviewing several oligarchs in Yerevan about their views on philanthropic giving, civil society and NGOs. As I noted earlier, philanthropy has existed in Armenian diaspora communities since the nineteenth century, and many wealthy diaspora Armenians are patrons and sponsors of cultural, religious and community projects in diaspora communities and Armenia. Indigenous philanthropy in Armenia is not as developed as it is within diaspora communities but, as I discovered, a number of oligarchs were engaged in philanthropic activities which centred on improving their neighbourhoods and communities by sponsoring cultural, religious (i.e. church building), educational, health and poverty relief (i.e. distributing sacks of flour and potatoes, etc.) projects. This aid was considered a form of charity (parekortsutyun or okntyun) and intended to build and maintain positive relations with their local communities. None of the oligarchs I interviewed expressed any interest in or desire for taking over the funding of Armenian NGOs from foreign donors. In fact, of the oligarchs who had heard of NGOs (because not all had), none had anything positive to say about them. They were generally very sceptical about the probity of NGOs and felt that their own direct philanthropic activities were more effective because they could directly monitor and control the flow and use of funds. As one respondent told me, ‘We receive hundreds of petitions for

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assistance. I don’t want to be duped, so we check, in a semi-secret way of course, to confirm the accuracy of the application and that the petitioner is the intended recipient’ (17 June 2003). This may be considered a rather crude form of the monitoring and evaluation practised by international donor agencies but, nevertheless, it is driven by the same concern for accountability. With regard to NGOs, one of my respondents said, ‘The problem with NGOs is that they are too personalized and individualized. There is no NGO in Armenia that has respect or status in society. There is no NGO that you can trust. They are all pursuing their own aims; there is no sense that they are reliable’ (11 June 2003). Another complained about the types of demands NGOs placed on him, adding, ‘I receive hundreds of letters from NGOs and it is not even worth my time to answer them because they only demand and insist. These letters are similar to those people used to write to the Profsoyuz (trade unions) and Party to demand this or that’ (17 June 2003). A number of human rights and women’s rights NGO leaders whom I interviewed about the possibility of applying to and receiving funds from oligarchs either laughed at the suggestion or argued that receiving funding from such individuals who had grown wealthy through questionable schemes would compromise their integrity. Given the contentious nature of relations between NGOs and corporations in the US, the UKor elsewhere in the global North, it is hardly surprising to find such antagonistic relations between Armenian oligarchs and NGOs. Furthermore, as nearly all of the oligarchs I interviewed were pro-government, their views concerning NGOs were quite similar to the views of government officials I had interviewed. One oligarch told me that NGOs should strive to serve the state instead of always criticizing the authorities (26 June 2003), while another argued that educational reforms and a strong state were needed in Armenia and not more NGOs (17 June 2003). In response to my question as to whether they would consider creating or supporting local foundations modelled on the American Ford or Rockefeller Foundations, none expressed any interest in supporting such a model, and one pointed out the potential dangers of creating such foundations. He said: I don’t think that the American model of tax benefits will work because everyone will take advantage of it and say that they are contributing to their own organizations. Then the state budget will even have less income than it already does. Therefore I don’t think that this will assist in anything, on the contrary, it will provide another source of hiding income and avoiding paying taxes (16 June 2003).

Conclusion According to critical studies of aid, donors have had a significant impact on the outcome of development interventions (Adamson 2002; Akiner 2004;

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Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998; Bruno 1997; Crush 1995; Escobar 1991, 1994; Ferguson 1994; Fisher 1995; Ghodsee 2004; Hann 2004; Harriss 2002; Helms 2003; Hemment 2004; Henderson 2003; Howell and Pearce 2002; Ishkanian 2003, 2004; Kay 2004; McMahon 2002; Mandel 2002; Mendelson and Glenn 2002; Richter 2002; Rivkin-Fish 2004; Roy 2004; Sampson 2002; Wedel 2001). Without refuting this, in this chapter, I have attempted to deconstruct the category of donors and to demonstrate the differences between donors and the distinctions between public or official stances of donor organizations and the views of individuals working within those organizations. There was not one overriding narrative, but rather recognition that, while attempting ‘to do good’, they, as individuals and professionals within the aid industry, were constrained by the systems and structures of that same industry. Instead of resistance, I found a replication and reproduction of policies and discourses which were seen as being part and parcel of the job. In Chapters Two and Three, I examined two very different initiatives, highlighting the different views that Armenian civil society actors, including NGOs, had of donors in relation to each campaign. While donors were seen as supporters and even protectors of human rights NGOs in the case of organizing around elections, the opposite was true in the case of the anti-domestic violence campaign, where donors were seen as importing and enforcing particular discourses, models and technical solutions that were inappropriate given the social and economic context in Armenia. Such contradictory claims about the enabling and controlling actions of donors were common among NGOs. Apart from NGOs who had direct benefit from donor aid, I did not meet anyone who had a positive opinion about the impact of donors on Armenia’s democratization process. Either people did not know what donors did or they assumed that donors were simply in Armenia in order to carry out the commands of their own governments. Such assessments demonstrate the hollowness of the donor claims and protestations of neutrality and objectivity. While I have focused on civil society and democracy aid to Armenia, the problems are global in nature and scope and are part and parcel of the aid industry. These problems include the lack of co-ordination and co-operation among donors, the absence of genuine participatory development which includes the concerns of aid recipients, the imposition of particular models, frameworks, discourses and projects, as well as the funding of illdevised projects that are found in development contexts around the world. While development professionals are well aware of these problems, given that their careers and livelihoods depend on the aid industry, the question of whether they feel able or willing to challenge the status quo is another matter entirely. I found that, while there was a tendency to encourage Armenian NGOs through training and capacity building programmes to express their voice, to advocate and to become empowered, many respondents working at donor agencies were very reluctant to

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advocate changes in policy and implementation within their own organizations. This was because, as I wrote earlier, many respondents were loath to rock the boat by questioning their organizations’ policies and practices and thereby endanger their own career development. In the next chapter, I examine emerging global trends that will have implications for the development and democracy building programmes.

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Summary of Findings After nearly two decades of democracy promotion, the results of those efforts in Armenia have thus far been varied. In Armenia, democracy building did succeed in establishing the formal institutions and practices associated with democracy. Elections, however flawed, continue to occur at the appointed times, and the growth in the number of NGOs has been phenomenal. From a global perspective, meanwhile, democracy has also been (re)-established in many countries around the world. So, if we consider the spread of formal or procedural democracies, then democracy promotion programmes can be and are deemed a success.1 However, if we consider the development and spread of substantive democracies, then it is clear that donor-supported democracy building and civil society strengthening programmes have not met with great success in Armenia or globally because, although the mechanisms and institutions have been created, we are not witnessing greater civic participation, engagement, inclusion and debate. In many instances, donor civil society strengthening programmes, while leading to the exponential growth of NGOs, have also thwarted natural political processes and imposed a particular model of democracy and civil society. This tendency has led to an ‘abortion of local processes of change’ (Hann 2004: 46) and tamed social movements (Kaldor 2003). Some even suggest that donor civil society strengthening programmes risk ‘inhibiting and ultimately destroying the most important purposes of civil society . . . the freedom to imagine that the world could be different’ (Howell and Pearce 2002: 237). It is not uncommon to hear about ‘virtual’ and ‘managed’ democracies, particularly in the former Soviet countries as some of the top-down initiatives have engendered a backlash against civil society in recent years. In the wake of the global war on terror, questions have also been raised about the state of democracy in the West. Do Western governments practise at home the democracy they promote abroad? Today, international donors remain committed to civil society strengthening, but they are re-evaluating their earlier approaches and formulating new strategies. The optimism and euphoria of 1989 have dissipated and

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have been replaced with a sombre realism. As Benita Ferrerro-Waldner, the European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), stated in a recent speech, ‘Democracy is not instant coffee’ (2006). Her comment represents the pragmatism that has replaced the optimistic attitude of the early 1990s. In this period of reckoning, questions are being asked by donors, policy makers and of course academics of how and whether democracy should be promoted through externally funded programmes. Is continued civil society strengthening the way forward? What about support to state actors? Or political parties? In this book, I have examined the process of democracy building and the role of the civil society actors involved. I have analysed a range of arguments. Although I recognize that the legacies of the Soviet past and Armenian cultural narratives certainly shape perceptions, understandings and practices, I argue that the manner in which civil society and democracy were defined and operationalized have also significantly affected the outcomes of democracy building efforts. The cultural and historical arguments are certainly important because the links and continuities with the past did not disappear overnight; however, collective and individual identities are far more flexible and fluid than would appear in some of the essentialist and determinist explanations. Focusing on the interplay between structure and agency, I have shown how structures are strategically and selectively used, adapted and resisted by individuals and how micro processes affect and in turn are affected by macro policies and processes. The USAID report Lessons in Implementation: The NGO Story – Building Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe and the New Independent States describes the problems of dependent relations resulting from the high proportion of foreign funding in NGOs’ budgets; the problems related to ‘opportunistic grant seekers’; and the need for countering charges of political intent, elitism and concentration on a few winners (USAID 1999: 7). It states, An occasional criticism has alleged that, despite the rhetoric of empowerment, the approach has been directive and ‘top down’ and that grant programs have reflected Western perceptions of social issues and goals rather than locally determined priorities. (USAID 1999: 7) Following the colour revolutions in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004), these allegations have intensified as the authorities in many former Soviet states have come to describe the ‘directive’ and ‘top down approaches’ as signs of foreign meddling in what they consider to be internal political affairs. One of the questions that comes up time and again with relation to democracy building is, ‘Does foreign support provide a rationale for crackdowns on civil society?’ In the past couple of years, there has been a growing backlash against civil society and democracy building in many of the

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former Soviet states. In 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin went so far as to accuse the West of neo-colonialism, saying, If you look at newspapers of 100 years ago, you see how, at the time, colonialist states justified their policies in Africa or in Asia. They talked of their civilizing role, of the white man’s mission. If you change the word ‘civilizing’ to ‘democratization’, you find the same logic, you can read the same things in the press today. (BBC 2006c) So what lessons can be learned about democracy promotion from Armenia’s post-Soviet experience of democracy building? First, I would argue that change, whether it is social, economic, political or cultural, takes time and must develop organically; it cannot be successfully engineered from above. As the Armenian experience demonstrates, the external efforts at ‘building’ civil society and democracy in the former Soviet Union did lead to the formal institutions and high NGO numbers, but they also overwhelmed grassroots initiatives, turned democracy into a project and civil society into NGOs. For instance, according to an official at the Ministry of Justice in Armenia (17 April 2003), in 1992, there was only one registered NGO in the country. In 2007, the Armenian civic universe was populated by several thousand professionalized advocacy and service delivery NGOs. Certainly, NGOs have played a part in Armenia’s political, economic and social development over the past fifteen years; however, given their small size, continued dependence on foreign aid, limited access to the mass media, small membership and tendency to preach to the converted, their impact has been at the project or programme level. Indeed, NGOs have designed and implemented some very innovative and important projects, but the impact has not gone beyond the project level to affect the broader political, economic and social context. Moreover, NGOs have had limited impact on generating public debate and discussions or enhancing participation. Although donor policies have indeed been a key factor in the outcome of democracy building, it is important not to disregard the agency of individuals who, for various reasons, embraced the models, discourses, ideologies and projects related to democracy and civil society which were promoted by donors. While they may have complained in private, publicly they did not challenge the rules of the game. Yet, in recognizing the agency of the various actors, we cannot ignore how the power inequalities between the Western donors and Armenian actors engaged in democracy building encounters affected the definition of concepts, the production of knowledge, decision making and, consequently, the outcomes of projects and campaigns. With hindsight, it has become clear that rapid, multiple transitions are disastrous. The attempts to simultaneously establish liberalized market economies, democratic structures and institutions, as well as engaging in

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nation building programmes provided prospects for some who were able to capitalize on the new opportunities, but also involved the loss of jobs, livelihoods and the removal of social protection safety nets for millions of others. The impoverishment and social exclusion coupled with the selective remembrance and nostalgic longing for Soviet-era stability has led many in the post-Soviet countries to lose faith in democracy and seek the stability promised by more authoritarian rulers. We cannot turn back the clock, but we can ask, what does the future hold?

Emerging Trends in Armenia Frozen Conflict The frozen, unresolved conflict over Nagorno Karabakh is of perpetual concern as it generates a pervasive climate of fear. As the situation of ‘no war, no peace’ continues, there is a constant gnawing unease and fear that open warfare may erupt at any time. On the domestic front, the conflict has led to self-censorship or the silencing of critics of state policies through the process of labelling them unpatriotic or anti-national. As I discussed in Chapter Two, even criticisms of the flawed 2003 elections were interpreted as ‘anti-national’ (apazgayin) attacks on the security of the state and Armenia’s united front. Until the conflict is fully resolved, Armenia will continue to face serious concerns about its security, and the situation of ‘no war, no peace’ will continue to affect the process of democratization. Economic Growth: the Caucasian Tiger Much has been made of the double digit economic growth Armenia has experienced in recent years. Some World Bank economists have even referred to Armenia’s ‘stellar growth record’ as the emergence of the ‘Caucasian Tiger’ (Mitra et al. 2007). Clearly, such growth is important; however, it should not be forgotten that growth alone, without a focus on questions of social exclusion and inequality, will not lead to poverty reduction. Even the authors of the report admit that, in spite of such spectacular macroeconomic growth, one in five Armenians is unemployed, the brain drain that began immediately after independence has not been reversed, and every third Armenian still lives below the poverty line (Mitra et al. 2007: 3). The gap between rich and poor remains, and the middle class, while growing, remains quite small. While poverty has not been eliminated, the situation is not as severe as in the so-called ‘years of darkness and cold’ (mti tsrti tariner), which is how the years immediately following independence are described in Armenia. The high rates of macroeconomic growth provide increased optimism that there will be further social and economic improvements.

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Democracy versus Economic Development: Are they Mutually Incompatible? Serj Sarkissian, who became Prime Minister following the death of Andranik Markarian in March 2007, is quoted in an article in the Financial Times newspaper as arguing that ‘jobs are more important than rights’. Sarkissian is quoted as saying, It is hard to talk about democratic and human rights when you need to solve the social and economic needs of the population. We would not like to be a state stuck in our transition. (Bounds 2007) This argument, which seems to imply that democracy and development are incompatible, is reminiscent of the outdated and discredited ‘Asian’ or ‘traditional’ values arguments made by political leaders in Africa and Asia in the 1970s and 1990s respectively. It gives cause for concern and raises some serious questions. First, given the sustained ‘stellar economic growth’ reported by the World Bank, how much economic growth and development will be sufficient before Armenia will begin to focus on democracy? Second, how will questions of social justice, workers’ rights and, more generally, human rights be treated in the meantime? Third, is this opinion widely shared among other Armenian politicians and political leaders? If such thinking is spreading, what such a shift away from the rights based approach to development, which includes a focus on democracy, human rights and development, indicates is the growing questioning of the Western democracy and human rights models and frameworks throughout the former Soviet states.

Global Trends The ‘War on Terror’ and the Iraq Effect on Democracy Promotion Globally In recent years, the crisis of democracy in the West has made democracy promotion much more difficult as claims of undemocratic behaviour in others are met with charges of hypocrisy. The ex post facto justification for the Iraq war as a form of democracy promotion has meant that democracy promotion has been confused or conflated with regime change. At present, suspicion about and resistance to US democracy promotion activities in developing and post-socialist countries is at an all-time high (Carothers 2006a). Far from having won hearts and minds in the Middle East, it appears that the US justification for the war in Iraq has ‘given democracy promotion a bad name’ (Halperin 2006). The perceived presence of the US ‘shadowy guiding hand’ in the colour revolutions has also intensified the criticism and scepticism towards democracy promotion in the former Soviet states. Four years on from the first colour revolution (i.e. the Rose Revolution

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in Georgia), optimism has declined and democratic development remains under serious question in all the countries that experienced a colour revolution (Beissinger 2006). Following these revolutions, allegations of interventionism and imperialism have intensified as the authorities in many former Soviet states attribute the ‘directive’ and ‘top down approaches’ to foreign meddling in what they consider internal political affairs. Such criticisms are not limited to the former Soviet states. For instance, US support for the NGO SUMATE´ (Join Up) in Venezuela, which has received support from NED and USAID, is described by critics as having been created with the sole purpose of getting rid of President Hugo Chavez and replacing him with someone who is on friendlier terms with the US. William Robinson describes the objectives of US democracy promotion in Venezuela as undermining authentic democracy by: gaining control over popular movements for democratization, keeping a lid on popular democracy movements, and limiting any change that may be brought about by mass democratization movements so that the outcomes of democracy struggles do not threaten the elite order and integration into global capitalism. (Robinson and Gindin 2005) Although at times these critics tend to ignore some of Chavez’s authoritarian policies, they do articulate the growing questioning of the motives behind American democracy promotion. Increasingly, there are arguments that democracy promotion and civil society aid are beginning to be used in the way that human rights became a cynical tool in the Cold War, where violations in Brazil under military rule or Pinochet’s Chile were ignored because these regimes were antiCommunist and part of the ‘free world’ (Kaldor 2003: 52). During the 2003 Armenian presidential elections, several Armenian respondents made remarks about ‘my president’ George W. Bush’s electoral ‘victory’ in Florida in 2000 and asked me how a country whose own elections were not free and fair could pass judgement on others. Today, the double standards of supporting ‘friendly tyrants’ in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt, as well as claims about extraordinary rendition and the use of torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, are compromising democracy promotion efforts and feeding into the emerging backlash against civil society and democracy promotion. Globally, the backlash has been manifested in the growth of anti-NGO legislation as well as the rise of loyalist or government organized NGOs (GONGOs). Global Manifestations of the Backlash There is a growing backlash against democracy promotion and civil society strengthening in the way it was introduced by Western donors and NGOs in

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the 1990s in Russia and other former Soviet states (Carothers 2006b; Howell et al. 2007), and criticisms of Western democracy building are becoming more widespread globally as well. Since 2006, governments throughout the world have been adopting laws restricting NGO activity. Of the former Soviet states, Russia is the most notable example where, in direct response to the colour revolutions, the Russian Duma passed a bill in 2006 that has restricted NGO activity by providing the Russian authorities with greater powers to regulate and monitor the work, expenditures and financing of NGOs. The Russian authorities maintain that their actions are not radically different from those taken by Western countries, such as the US, and that they are simply attempting to safeguard Russia’s national security by monitoring organizations that might be used for money laundering or for fomenting political unrest (BBC News 2005; RFE/RL 2003). Russia is not alone; in Kazakhstan, for instance, President Nursultan Nazarabayev issued warnings to NGOs in September 2005 cautioning them against ‘interfering’ in domestic political affairs. The most extreme example of repression, however, comes from Uzbekistan where the authorities have smothered the independent, domestic NGO sector and driven nearly all independent organizations underground with the passage of amendments to the Code of Administrative Liability by the Uzbek Parliament on 3 December 2005. In China, the government has since late spring 2005 begun to investigate foreign NGOs in China and domestic NGOs receiving grants from external sources (Howell et al. 2007), whereas in Africa, a number of governments have engaged in the judicial persecution of human rights and pro-democracy organizations as well as individuals who have been accused of either sponsoring terror or fomenting treason. In Latin America, meanwhile, where civil society became a powerful mobilizing discourse in the 1980s, the growth of NGOs in recent years has led some political leaders, for instance in Guatemala and Peru, to attempt to rein in the activities of NGOs. In Peru, for example, the newly installed government under President Alan Garcia passed a new NGO law in November 2006, which would require both NGOs and international donors supporting them to register with a government agency in order to ensure greater accountability. Concerned NGO activists and political opponents, have accused the government of seeking to clamp down on human rights and NGO groups (Howell et al. 2007). Armenian NGOs have not witnessed the level of repression that exists in other former Soviet countries including Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan and, as of December 2007, there have not been any attempts to pass a law restricting NGO activity. One Armenian human rights NGO leader explained this by saying, ‘We are too small and insignificant. The authorities are not bothered about us’ (July 13 2007). Nevertheless, the growing repressive tendencies in the former Soviet states and repression of NGOs are a cause for concern for Armenian NGOs.

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In addition to the judicial and legislative clampdown on NGOs and other civil society actors, the backlash has also led to the rise of government organized NGOs (GONGOs). The best known example from the former Soviet states is that of Nashi (Ours), a pro-government, patriotic Russian youth movement that was created in March 2005. Since its inception, Nashi has grown rapidly throughout Russia and presently has over 200,000 members, of which 10,000 are regular activists or Nashi ‘commissars’ (Konovalova 2007). Given that youth groups played an instrumental role in organizing mass demonstrations in Serbia in 2000 (Otpor – Resistance), Georgia in 2003 (Kmara – Enough) and Ukraine in 2004 (Pora – High Time), the establishment of and support for Nashi is seen as a pre-emptive measure, especially in view of the 2008 presidential elections. Although Nashi has been described as a neoKomsomol (Communist Youth Movement) movement that, similar to its Soviet predecessor, trains and grooms its members for leadership positions, it is very important to recognize that it does so by using the forms (demonstrations, sit-ins), techniques (master classes, training) and language (of rights, participation) of civil society organizing, which were introduced under democracy building and civil society strengthening programmes. The Nashi manifesto criticizes the existing ‘liberal’ civil society as being the ‘worst advertisement for democracy’ and claims that Nashi will promote civil debates, work with multiple stakeholders (such as government, business, etc.) to promote Russia’s economic and social development, fight against fascism and intolerance towards ethnic minorities, campaign against violence in the army and restore people’s faith in Russia’s future (Nashi website a). Nashi’s manifesto is greatly influenced by the work of Kremlin ideologue, Vladislav Surkov, and his idea of sovereign democracy (suverennaya demokratsiya), which rejects the notion of a single type of democracy (i.e. American) and argues that each country should have the freedom and sovereignty to develop its own form. Indeed, the only ‘sources’ cited on the movement’s website are Surkov’s works (Nashi website b). The concept of sovereign democracy is a critique of Western democracy promotion efforts that were implemented following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The idea of sovereign democracy as espoused is currently spreading beyond Russia. In July 2006, the Nashi Rossiya-Uzbekistan movement was established in Uzbekistan (Saidazimova 2006). Meanwhile, Dariga Nazarbaeva, the daughter of the president of Kazakhstan, praised sovereign democracy as a sign of freedom. She said: For a long time, we trod a path to democracy guided by maps prepared in the West. But times are changing. We see more and more countries and peoples in the world refusing to live according to identical patterns set up for them by someone else. Even the failure of the European constitution was in defence of the national and the home-grown . . . in defence of sovereignty. (Kimmage 2006)

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Nashi is growing against the backdrop of criticism in Russia about how the country fared in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and what it perceived as its humiliation and loss of status globally. These attempts to relativize the concept of democracy are very dangerous and may have serious consequences in the future, raising questions about universal standards and notions of human rights and civil liberties.

Looking Towards the Future The manifestations of the backlash and growing repression are only part of the story. The reality is far more complex because, in spite of the taming, cooptation and backlash, there is still much emancipatory potential left in civil society in Armenia and globally. It is important not to deny the agency of civil society actors around the world for challenging hegemonic discourses and powerful actors, as well as contesting oppressive regimes. As the development of civil society and, indeed, democracy is no longer solely restricted to national boundaries, outside actors, be they foreign donors, diasporic networks or global civil society activists, cannot be excluded from the equation. Armenia is no exception. Armenia’s democratization is, has been and will continue to be influenced to varying degrees by foreign donors, Northern NGOs, global civil society activists and, of course, organizations, political parties and individuals from the Armenian diaspora communities in the US, Russia and Western Europe. If we consider civil society as a site for struggle, diversity and complexity instead of a space where we only find professionalized, tamed, technically savvy but apolitical organizations, then we can identify the emancipatory potential for civil society. Civil society can be a space for participation, political debate and the contestation (as well as the reproduction) of hegemonic discourses. As Armenia approaches twenty years of independence, many questions remain about its future economic and political developments. From very difficult beginnings, Armenia has rebuilt its economy and provided a level of stability and security for its citizens. How its future political, social and economic development will proceed is an open question. Much depends on Armenia’s leaders, as well as regional economic and political developments, the outcome of continuing negotiations concerning the future of Karabakh and whether the perspective that democracy and development are incompatible becomes more widespread. Civil society actors should have a role and can have a role in providing space for debates, encouraging greater participation and critical, rational discourse. Whether they will embrace this role, however, remains to be seen. But if one thing is clear, it is that there are no magic formulas by which these things can be summoned or engineered.

Epilogue

As this book goes to press (December 2007), Armenia is in the middle of the electoral campaign leading up to its fifth presidential elections since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.1 Instead of attempting to predict the outcome of the 19 February 2008 vote, in this Epilogue I have instead sought to focus on the unfolding processes in Armenia and to contextualize them against the backdrop of broader regional and global developments. Until September 2007, it appeared that these elections would be rather straightforward and that Prime Minister Serj Sarkissian would face little opposition in his bid to replace the incumbent Robert Kocharian. However, the course of events changed when the first president of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian, made a very dramatic return to public life following a near decade long period of internal exile and silence following his resignation from office in February 1998. On 21 September, Ter-Petrossian made his first public speech at a reception in honour of Armenia’s sixteenth anniversary of independence held at the Marriott Hotel in central Yerevan and, a month later, he announced his intention to run in the 2008 elections. Having observed and written about three previous Armenian presidential electoral campaigns (1996, 1998 and 2003), I can say that these elections appear qualitatively different from the previous ones. Although still boasting a large number of professional opposition candidates (e.g. Vazgen Manukian, Artashes Geghamyan) who feature in every election and make the same, tired speeches and promises, the current campaign also appears to have fostered increased and quite heated public debate about the future of the country, the past it has traversed since gaining independence in 1991, the nature of Armenia’s leadership and the political culture of the country. What will happen in these elections, however, remains to be seen. At the global level, the ‘backlash’ against democracy and civil society (Carothers 2006b; Howell et al. 2007) has raised questions about the probity and legitimacy of external democracy promotion. Such accusations have intensified following the Iraq war and the increased militarization of

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democracy promotion (Archibugi 2007; Kaldor 2007). These are on-going processes, and it is too soon to tell how they will develop, but one thing that is certain is that, nearly two decades following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, we are far from the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama 1992) and the unequivocal triumph of liberal democracy.

Notes

Introduction 1 The term ‘transition’ has been problematized by various scholars, including Michael Buroway, Katherine Verdery and Barbara Einhorn, who argue that ‘transition’ implies an evolutionary development that has a single, well-defined objective and trajectory. While I agree with this assessment, I have chosen to use the term ‘transition’ because it was the term used by my respondents to refer to the processes of post-Soviet period. 2 NGOs are a type of civil society organization. They tend to be formal organizations that have a leadership board, professional members of staff and legal status. They are only one type of civil society organizations; others include trade unions, grassroots or informal associations, self-help groups, faith based organizations, etc. 3 I have examined civil society participation in other issues including poverty reduction as well as labour migration and trafficking elsewhere (Ishkanian 2006). 4 I define and discuss the differences between formal/procedural and substantive democracies in greater detail in Chapter One. 5 There is very little information about daily life in Armenian towns and villages. One book, entitled Armenian Village Life Before 1914, attempts to capture and preserve the details of daily life by interviewing elderly Armenians who had survived the genocide. However, the authors, Susie Villa Hoogasian and Mary Kilbourne Matossian, lament the scarcity of literature on daily life (1982: 16). In 2006, this book ¨ ncesi Ermeni Ko¨y Hayati) by the Aras Publishing was translated into Turkish (1914 O House in Istanbul, which was established in 1993 to serve as ‘a bridge for the cultural legacy of Turkey’s Armenians’ (http://www.arasyayincilik.com/store/Getron_viewItem.asp?idProduct=47) (last accessed 30 November 2007). 6 Although some of these groups did eventually resort to the use of arms, particularly in the Ottoman Empire, in the early stages, the community level organizing that led to the creation of schools, guilds and other organizations was peaceful and civil. This discussion of violence, civility and civil society has become quite heated, particularly currently. 7 According to the 1996 UNDP Armenia Human Development Report, in 1995, nearly one in five registered residents of Armenia was living abroad temporarily or permanently, and every fifth family out of 1,000 families interviewed reported having received assistance from relatives and friends in the previous month. These remittances have helped tens of thousands of Armenian families survive the difficult economic conditions in Armenia. On average, during the 1990s, Armenians living abroad sent around US$350 million annually to family and friends in the homeland. In 1998, this figure represented almost 19 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) (US$1.85 billion) in Armenia. From the

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Armenpress report, 1 December 1997, ‘$350 Million Enters Armenia as Financial Aid to Some Armenian Residents’ (cited in Astourian 2001: 42). However, because the hundreds of millions of dollars were sent in US$100–500 increments by over 700,000 people a month, the impact of remittances on the Armenian economy has been negligible. Most recipients have used the remittances to survive from one month to the next; they have not been able to save the remittances in order to invest in business ventures that would provide longer term earnings. 1 Democracy, Civil Society and Power 1 Although I recognize and discuss the diversity of donor agencies and the differences between donors in Chapter Six, here I will simply refer to the various types, which include, bilateral and multilateral agencies, private foundations, international NGOs among others that are based in the West as ‘Western donors’. 2 For instance, while civil society aid was US$2,438.2 million from 1990 to 2003, governance and rule of law programmes received US$1,457.6 million and US $1,218.5 million respectively (Finkel et al. 2006: 33). 3 10,000 AMD is worth approximately £16. The exchange rate in July 2007 was 1 AMD=£650. 4 The Armenian Assembly of America is a non-profit organization established in 1972 and headquartered in Washington, DC. The Assembly promotes public awareness of Armenian issues, encourages greater Armenian–American participation in the American political process and assists in humanitarian and development programmes in Armenia. See http://www.aaainc.org/history.htm. 5 Other indicators include the increased managerial competence of local NGOs, the establishment of regional linkages, strengthened sectoral infrastructures, improved prospects for NGO financial sustainability, improved legal and regulatory frameworks governing NGO sector operations, learning by local NGOs of professional grant making systems and procedures and, finally, the benefit to women and minority groups as well as reflecting social concerns and public policy issues important to women and minorities through the establishment of NGOs (US Agency for International Development 1999: 5–6). 2 Civil Society Participation in Elections 1 Per anthropological conventions, I use pseudonyms to protect the identity of my respondents. 2 No relation to the author. 3 This is a nickname. Such monikers are common among oligarchs and their followers who are better known by these nicknames than by their given names. 4 As I was not present in Armenia at the time, my discussion of these events is based on news reports, NGO publications, Internet chat sites and interviews I conducted with human rights NGO leaders and other participants in the 2004 demonstrations during a research trip from March to April 2005. 5 Adopted on 27 January 2004. 3 The Anti-Domestic Violence Campaign and Democracy Building 1 Gender mainstreaming is a comprehensive strategy aimed at achieving greater gender equality. This is supposed to be attained by integrating a gender perspective into existing mainstream institutions and all programmatic areas or sectors (e.g. trade, health, education, environment, transportation, etc.). For more information on gender mainstreaming in East Central Europe and the CIS, see Ishkanian (2007a: 13–20).

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2 I was assisted in this research by post-graduate students from Yerevan State University from March to April 2005. 3 The Armenian Caritas NGO is part of Caritas Internationalis, which is a confederation of 154 Catholic relief, development and social service organizations ‘working to build a better world, especially for the poor and oppressed, in 198 countries and territories’, available from http://www.caritas.org/jumpnews.asp? idNews=6&idChannel=6. 4 Bribes are called kashark in Armenian, and corruption is known as ‘bribe consumption’ or ‘bribe eating’ (kasharakerutyun). Grantakerutyun is another form of corruption and can be seen as the continuation of the kasharakerutyun that began during Soviet times and continues unchecked today. 4 Culture and Democracy Building 1 Burawoy and Verdery use the term ‘transitologists’ (1999). I use the term ‘transitological’ to refer to those academic and policy works that unquestioningly accept the ascendancy of Western models and paradigms. 2 Some scholars argue that the idea of sacred motherhood has roots in Armenia’s pre-Christian past when the primary deity in the pantheon was Anahit, the goddess of fertility, morality and maternity (Zeitlian 1992). 3 Women were granted the right to vote in 1918 by the government of the first independent Republic of Armenia (1918–20). 4 KhTsB is the abbreviation of the words khnami (in-law), tsanot (acquaintance) and parekam (relative). It refers to the friendship and family networks or relationships that individuals may rely on for assistance pertaining to a vast variety of concerns from gaining entry to a university, finding a job, etc. 5 While conducting fieldwork in Armenia in 1996, I heard a story that a high ranking, elected public official announced on television that Armenians had to survive through the tough years and, to do so, they could ask their relatives abroad for assistance. One woman is said to have written to the official telling him, ‘I don’t have relatives abroad. So you can be my relative and I am waiting to hear from you’. 6 In the American context, this motto has a different meaning and challenges patriarchal notions of what is appropriate and legitimate for public discussion. 7 While Gal and Kligman are only writing about the countries in East and Central Europe, I use this example because Armenia shared similar experiences and oppression under the socialist regime to the states in East and Central Europe. 8 This resistance to politicizing the personal has also been noted by scholars of Third World feminism, who argue that the ‘personal is political’ slogan does not apply equally to all communities. 9 The terms ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ are used in development studies literature to refer to NGOs based in the global North and global South. 5 The Soviet Legacy and Democracy Building 1 The Karabakh Movement is discussed in greater detail in a later section in this chapter. 2 The ecological demonstrations eventually forced the shutting down of the huge Nayarit chemical plant in Yerevan, the Medzamor nuclear power plant and parts of several other chemical plants. Nayarit is a huge chemical plant that produced chloroprene, a synthetic rubber used in high tensile latexes. The plant once employed over 4,000 workers. 3 This perspective of the perestroika era movements as carnival like is also found in the work of Ukrainian political philosopher Vladimir Zviglianich.

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4 No relation to the author. 5 Demirchian was murdered along with six MPs as well as then Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkissian. 6 The Voices of the Donors 1 For the sake of simplicity I use the term ‘donor’ to refer to respondents from bilateral, multilateral, international NGOs, private foundations and diaspora organizations. However, I do recognize the diversity of donor organizations and, where appropriate, I highlight and discuss the impact of this diversity. 2 For more details on the methods employed, please see the Introductory chapter. 3 All of these multilateral agencies had offices in Armenia; however, I only interviewed the representatives of those agencies that had provided technical assistance, financial aid or capacity building to local civil society organizations for the purpose of strengthening civil society in Armenia. 4 The Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the UN (CONGO) is an independent, international, not-for-profit membership association of NGOs that facilitates the participation of NGOs in UN debates and decisions. 5 The UNDEF is a voluntary UN Trust Fund under the overall management of the UN Secretary General with an Advisory Board of seventeen members, including representatives from the largest member state contributors. 6 A co-operative agreement sets out a general scope of work, but it is up to the partner who came up with the idea to implement the project. Grant holders, meanwhile, have considerable independence to design and implement their projects. Contract holders must carry out the projects as designed by USAID and perform the tasks that are assigned to them. 7 However, it should be noted that these NGOs are also engaged in raising funds from individual donors as well as corporations. 8 The report did not indicate how the US$8 billion was broken down among programme areas. 9 There are Armenian diaspora communities in San Francisco, Fresno, New York/ New Jersey, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, but with over 800,000 Armenians, Los Angeles is now the largest community of Armenians in the US. 10 The largest community of ‘internal’ diaspora Armenians is in Russia. 11 In the early twentieth century, the Armenian Cause was the political goal of creating an independent homeland for Armenians. By the 1970s, the recognition of the genocide became a very important objective of the Armenian Cause, and diaspora political parties linked the recognition of the genocide and the dream of a greater Armenia because Turkey’s recognition of the genocide would constitute the legal basis for Armenian claims on Western Armenian (Libaridian 1999: 128). 12 Najarian describes the events that were organized on the East Coast of the US, and I draw on my personal observations regarding West Coast events. 13 The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is a document that was adopted at the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Paris from 28 February to 2 March 2005. 14 The term ‘graduation’ is most often used by USAID to refer to NGOs ‘graduating’ from donor funding and becoming more independent and self-sustainable. 7 Conclusion 1 For instance, a recent USAID commissioned study, Effects of US Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building: Results of a Cross-National Quantitative Study,

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used Freedom House and Polity IV measures to examine the impact of US democracy promotion programmes worldwide. As one of the authors of the study said, ‘We found that when the United States spends money to promote democracy in foreign countries, it works’ (Finkel et al. 2006). The authors of the report attribute the growth of democracy to US assistance and write, ‘USAID Democracy and Governance obligations have a significant positive impact on democracy, while all other US and non-US assistance variables are statistically insignificant’ (Finkel et al. 2006: 83, emphasis added). Epilogue 1 The other four elections were held in 1991, 1996, 1998 and 2003. The third elections should have been held in 2001; however, because of Levon Ter-Petrossian’s resignation on 4 February 1998, the third elections were moved up by three years.

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Index

abortion 77, 79 Academy for Educational Development 27, 135 advocacy 100–102, 111, 145; advocacy model 145; see also Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Africa 4, 12, 13, 14; and democratization 89; gender issues 58, 83 aid system 1–2, 132, 152; 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness 142, 168; aid co-ordination 141–43; structure 132–40; see also donors Americas (North and South): Armenian diaspora 136, 137 anti-domestic violence campaign 2002– 4 58, 63–76, 79–84, 93; adoptions and responses to criticism and civil resistance 79–82; campaign development 67; causes of domestic violence 72, 74; criticism and civil society resistance to the campaign 63, 70–76, 82, 83, 84, 93; and democracy building 59, 66, 80–82; differences between elections in Armenia 2003 and anti-domestic violence campaign 2002–4 82, 83–84, 152; Domestic Violence in the Republic of Armenia: A Sociological Survey 72; domestic violence training 98–99; evaluation from within 67–68; family planning campaign 77–79; feminist perspective on domestic violence 93–94; from taboo to public issue 64–67; government approach 73–74; hotlines 63, 72, 73, 98; law enforcement training 63, 68–69, 72; role of donors in defining the campaign 63, 64, 67, 71, 73, 75, 83, 84, 152; shelters 63, 68, 69–70, 72–73, 75–76, 80, 98; skills

training 68, 73; USAID, main donor for 66, 71–72, 134; women’s NGOs leadership of the campaign 64–65; see also family; violence against women (VAW); women’s NGOs Armenia: Armenian Apostolic Church 4, 5, 6, 112, 136; azg 90, 137; daily life in Armenian towns and villages 165; economic growth: Caucasian Tiger 157; Ermeni Millet (the Armenian Community) 5; Hai Tad 137; history 4–8; identity 5, 112, 137; independence 1, 5; modernization and industrialization 127; population 4; post-socialist transition/period 128; Soviet Armenia 7, 112, 113, 137, 138, 139; see also Armenian cultural narratives 90–96; civil society in Armenia; culture; democracy building in Armenia; democracy promotion in Armenia; diaspora, the Armenian; family; Karabakh Movement; Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Armenia Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) 26, 47, 140–41; definition 166 Armenian Caritas NGO 79, 167 Armenian Cause 137, 168 Armenian cultural narratives 90–96, 107, 155; family and nation 90–95; collective memory and being at the crossroads of East and West 95–96; see also culture, family Armenian National Movement (ANM) 117, 118, 120, 123 Armenian NGO Resource and Training Centre (NGOC) 140–41

192

Index

Armenian Republic (1918–20) 5, 6–7; Act of United Armenia 7; women’s right to vote 167; see also independence of Armenia Armenian Revolutionary Federation 6, 138 Armenian revolutionary movement 5– 6, 165 Asia, Asian states 114; and democratization 89; domestic violence 64; training 106 Azerbaijan 8, 21, 44, 114; government repression of NGOs 160; Nagorno Karabakh 115, 116, 117 Belarus 114, 160 blockade 39; by Azerbaijan 8; by Turkey 8 Bosnia 87 capacity building 96–98, 104, 106, 107–8, 153; capacity building training 97–98, 106; criticism 96–97; definition 96; and donors 96, 98; functions in Armenia 97; kinds of capacity building trainings 97; paternalism in 96–97, 104; see also donors; interventionism; training of trainers (TOTs) ceasefire (1994) 8 China 160; United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 61–62, 64, 83 church (Armenian Apostolic Church) 4, 5, 6, 112, 136 civil society 162; American model of civil society 23; associationalism 14, 15, 16; backlash against 24, 56–57, 155–56, 159–62, 164; best hope for democratization 3; conceptual framework 12; civil society participation 165; definition 12–13; and democracy 1, 14–18, 22, 84; evaluation 29–30, 166; factors influencing the development of civil society 2; in former socialist countries 14, 15, 17; genetically engineered civil societies 23; Gramsci, Antonio 16; nationalism as barrier to civil society development 118–19; neo-Tocquevillian model 14, 16, 21, 111, 143; and NGOs 18; NGOs instead of 22–25; a normative concept 14–18; operationalizing of, in post-socialist countries 21–25, 155;

role in democratization 1, 14–18, 22, 84; role and perception of donors in defining and operationalizing civil society 21–30, 58, 67, 107–8, 131; Western concept in non-Western contexts 18–19; and Western donors 13, 23–24; see also democracy, democracy building, democracy promotion; elections; Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); NGO Training and Resource Centre (NGOC); Soviet legacy and democracy building civil society actors 18, 31–33, 155, 162; agency and power 31–33; criticism 31; human rights NGOs 37–43, 46, 48, 51–55; independent media organizations 35, 37, 38, 42, 46, 47, 52,57; mistrust in 119–22; youth movement 52–53, 57; see also elections in Armenia 2003; Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Armenia civil society in Armenia 23–24, 112–14; adaptations and responses to government resistance 51–55; backlash against 24, 56–57; civil society action 52–55; and climate of fear 40–44; criticism 29; and democracy 84; emerging of a middle class as a consequence of civil society strengthening 145–46; evaluation 29– 30, 166; factors influencing the development of civil society 2; government resistance and Cold War interpretations 47–51; impact of donors on 130–53; mistrust in actors in public sphere 119–20; nationalism as barrier to civil society development 118–19; in the nineteenth century 6, 19; participation in 2003 election and aftermath 36–40; seeding civil society in Armenia 25–29; stoliks 113–14; see also elections in Armenia 2003; Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Armenia; NGO Training and Resource Centre (NGOC); Soviet legacy and democracy building civil society strengthening programmes 1, 10, 31, 154, 161; aims 13–14; Armenia civil society strengthening programmes 135; criticism 25; donor

Index civil society strengthening programmes 154; evaluation 154; multilateral agencies 132; and NGOs 144; US civil society strengthening programmes 10, 18; US, the largest donor of 13; and Western donors 21; see also civil society; democracy building, democracy promotion climate of fear/repression (vakhi mtnolort): 12–13 April 2004 50, 51– 53, 55; elections 2003 37, 39–43, 82; see also elections in Armenia 2003 Cold War 2, 14, 159; and democracy 109–10; dialectics 41; ideologies 109– 10, 114; legacy 127; prejudices related to 103; post-Cold War zeitgeist 15; see also totalitarianism colour revolutions 29, 56–57, 155, 160; and US 158–59 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): elections 2003 47–48, 89 Constantinople see Istanbul Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) 74 Council of Europe 54; Armenia accession to 55, 95; Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Report 54–55 culture: Armenian cultural narratives 90–96, 107, 155; concept: debate within anthropology 85–86; and democracy building 85–108; managing culture 96–106; misuses of the concept 86–89; as barrier to civil society development and democratization 87–88, 96, 107, 147; see also Armenia; family; interventionism; training of trainers (TOTs) Czechoslovakian group Charter 77 17 democracy: American model of democracy 22, 23, 161; cultural incompatibility with86–89, 96, 107, 147; definitions 20–21; definitions in Armenia25, 36;formal/procedural democracies 109, 154; formal/ procedural institutions andpractices 21;liberaldemocracy17,164;‘managed democracy’ (upravlyayemaya demokratiya) 21, 163; operationalizing of, inpost-socialist countries21–25, 155; sovereigndemocracy 161,163–64;

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see alsoelections; Soviet legacyand democracy building democracy building: actors 31–33, 130, 134–35, 156; an American enterprise 10, 129; backlash 130, 155–56, 160; criticism 129; and culture 85–108; disciplines of study 3; literature on 3; mistrust in actors in public sphere 119–20; nationalism as barrier to democratization 118–19; US, largest donor for democracy building 13, 22, 168–69; see also elections; Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); Soviet legacy and democracy building; United States; United States Agency for International Development (USAID) democracy building in Armenia 33–34, 154, 156, 162; an American enterprise 10, 129; and civil society 84; criticism 129; and culture 85–108; complexity 84; cultural incompatibility 87–88, 89, 96, 107, 147; and development 158; factors influencing the development of democracy 2; impact of donors on 130–53, 156; mistrust in actors in public sphere 119–20; nationalism as barrier to democratization 118–19; reforms and ‘trauma’ 128–29; US, largest donor for democracy building in Armenia 22, 25; see also antidomestic violence campaign 2002–4; civil society in Armenia; democracy promotion in Armenia; elections in Armenia; elections in Armenia 2003; Soviet legacy and democracy building democracy promotion: actors 31–33, 130, 134–35; aims 13–14; approach of European Union to 10; backlash against 14, 56–57, 109, 130, 159–62, 164; criticism 129; ‘democracy aid industry’ 15; democracy promoters’ views on Soviet legacy 118–23, 127; differences between EU and US approaches to democracy promotion 27–28; evaluation 29–30, 35, 166; lessons to learn about, from Armenian experience 156; militarization of 164; questioning of the benefits of democracy 110; the ‘war on terror’ and the Iraq effect on democracy promotion globally

194

Index

158–59; see also elections; Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); United States; United States Agency for International Development (USAID) democracy promotion in Armenia 25– 29, 33–34, 104–5, 162; agency and power 33; backlash against 1, 2, 56– 57; and civil society 84; criticism 129; definition of democracy in Armenia 25, 36; evaluation 29–30, 35,166; factors influencing the development of democracy 2; and human rights 47; nationalism as barrier to democratization 118–19; reforms and ‘trauma’ 128–29; see also civil society in Armenia; elections in Armenia 2003; Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Armenia Department for International Development United Kingdom (DFID) 27, 28, 133; Regional Assistance Plan for Central Asia, South Caucasus and Moldova 122 diaspora, the Armenian 136–41, 150, 162; diaspora communities 136–37; diaspora donors 136, 150; diaspora political parties 138–39, 168; diaspora sponsor organizations 139– 40; ‘diasporic’/ethnic 137, 139; Karabakh Movement 138, 139; logs of, in denouncing human rights violations 46–47; remittances from 2, 93, 165–66, 167; Russia, largest community of ‘internal’ Armenian diaspora 168; US, largest community of ‘external’ Armenian diaspora 137; see also genocide domestic violence see anti-domestic violence campaign donors 9, 162; 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness 142, 168; achievements and challenges 144–47; agencies 9, 131; assessments and evaluations 147–50; bilateral agencies 10, 27, 96, 133–34, 135, 168; definition 132, 168; diaspora donors 136; diversity 168; donor civil society strengthening programmes 154; Donor Exchange, Co-ordination and Information Mechanism (DECIM) 142; donors co-ordination 141–43, 152; donors’ support of independent media organizations 46, 83; donors’

views on Armenian civil society and democracy building 143–44, 146–47; donors’ views on Soviet legacy 118– 23, 127, 147; and elections in Armenia 2003 46, 83, 152; foundations, NGOs, PVOs and PSCs 134–36; gender issues 58–59, 60–61; and ideas of democracy and civil society 2, 14, 18, 23, 107; impact of, on democracy building and civil society development in Armenia 130–53, 156; interventionism 130, 131, 152; multilateral agencies 10, 27, 96, 132–33, 135, 168; NGOs drivers 131; NGOs, the ‘third sector’ 143–44, 146–47; non-state actors 135–36; oligarchs 150–51; role and perception of, in anti-domestic violence campaign 63, 64, 67, 71, 73, 75, 83, 84, 152; role and perception of, in defining and operationalizing civil society and NGOs 21–30, 58, 67, 107–8, 131; types and tiers 132–41, 166; see also capacity building; United States Agency for International Development (USAID); violence against women (VAW); Western donors Donor Exchange, Coordination and Information Mechanism (DECIM) 142 double standards of Western governments 2, 159, 164 earthquake 8, 139 Eastern Europe 6; civil society 12, 16; democracy building 14, 17, 21, 128; detotalitarianization and restoration of a constitutional state 17, 115; Donor Exchange, Co-ordination and Information Mechanism (DECIM) 142; gender issues 58, 59, 60; mistrust in actors in public sphere 119–20 ecological issues 8, 114–15; in Armenia 8, 115, 167 elections: as aim of democracy promotion and civil society strengthening programmes 13; a benchmark/litmus test in democratization 35; election monitoring 1, 22; as essential instrument of democracy 35–36; as formal/procedural practice of democracies 21, 25, 35–36

Index elections in Armenia 36–40, 154, 169; 1991 36; 1995 36; 1996 39, 40, 163; 1998 126, 163; 1999 127; 2003 36, 37–57, 82, 127, 157, 159, 163; 2007 36; 2008 163; see also elections in Armenia 2003 elections in Armenia 2003 36, 37–57, 82, 127, 157, 159, 163; 12–13 April 2004 44–47, 51–53, 55; civil society participation 37, 38–43, 44–57, 82; climate of fear/repression (vakhi mtnolort) 37, 39–44, 50, 51–53, 82; differences between elections in Armenia 2003 and anti-domestic violence campaign 2002–4 82, 83–84, 152; donors’ support of independent media organizations 46, 83; fraud 38, 39, 89; Grbanayin NGOs (GONGOs: government-organized NGOs) 49– 50, 51; governmental interpretations 47–48; governmental resistance to civil society participation 47–51, 84; human rights NGOs 37–43, 46, 48, 51–55, 83; human rights violations 37, 39–42, 44–47, 51–52; independent media organizations 35, 37, 38, 42, 46, 47, 52, 57; referendum 39, 44; youth movement 35, 52–53, 57, 83 Ermeni Millet (the Armenian Community) 5; see also Ottoman Empire Estonia 114, 115 Europe 6; Armenian diaspora in 136, 137; see also European Union European Commission 132, 155; Donor Exchange, Co-ordination and Information Mechanism (DECIM) 142 European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) 27 European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) 27, 155 European Union 95; approach of, towards democracy promotion 10, 27–28; democracy promotion efforts 27; differences between EU and US approaches to democracy promotion 27–28; strands of democracy promotion 27 family 76, 89; amoral familism 89–90; in Armenian culture and society 76, 90; Armenian devotion to family 90, 94; azg 90, 137; Commission for the

195

Improvement of the Way of Life of Women 92; destruction of family tradition 76; family planning campaign 77–79; immigration 8, 92– 93, 165; KhTsB 92, 167; as mode of social protection, identification and advancement 8, 91, 92, 94, 98, 167; and nation 90–95; a private sphere 65, 93–94, 98; role of women in 91, 92, 94, 167; Women’s Division of the Communist Party (Kinbazhin) 92; see also anti-domestic violence campaign 2002–4; remittances feminism 82, 94, 167; in Armenia 94– 95; feminist perspective on domestic violence 93–94; gender mainstream 59, 166; Third World feminism 167; see also family Friedrich Naumann Foundation 27, 37, 135 gender mainstreaming 59, 166 genocide 6, 136, 168; fiftieth commemoration 7 Georgia 29, 99, 114, 115; anti-domestic violence campaign 65; domestic violence 64; Rose Revolution 44, 155, 158–59 German international co-operation enterprise/Deutschen Gesellschaft fu¨r Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) 133 glasnost (openness) 110–11, 114, 115 Goris 9, 125 Gramsci, Antonio 16 Grbanayin NGOs (GONGOs: government-organized NGOs) 49– 50, 51, 159, 161 guilds 6, 165 gulags 127 Gyumri 8, 9, 125 Habermas, Ju¨rgen 16–17; public sphere model 16–17 Helsinki Association 55; human rights NGOs 37–43, 46, 48, 52–53 Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly (HCA) 40 Helsinki Committee of Armenia 107; elections 2003 48–49 Helsinki-86 115 hybrid regimes 109 human rights NGOs 37–43, 46, 48, 51– 55, 100; see also Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)

196

Index

human rights violations: elections 2003 37, 39–42; 12–13 April 2004 44–47, 51–53, 55 India 99; women’s movement in India 61, 82 immigration, Armenian 8, 92–93, 165; see also diaspora, the Armenian independence of Armenia 1, 5, 8, 137, 139, 162; Armenian Republic (1918– 20) 5, 6–7; zartonk (awakening) 6, 8; see also Karabakh Movement independent media organizations 57, 83; A1+ 46, 55, 75; elections 2003 35, 37, 38, 42, 46, 47, 52; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) 37; see also mass media Institute of Ethnography 9; institutional modelling 24, 129 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 132 International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO) 89, 97–98, 99– 100; donor co-ordination 141–42 International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) 65 interventionism 1, 96–100, 130, 155–56; ‘top down’ approaches 154, 155, 159; see also capacity building; donors; Non-governmental organizations (NGOs); training of trainers (TOTs) Iraq: the ‘war on terror’ and the Iraq effect on democracy promotion globally 158–59, 164; war of Iraq 129, 158, 164 Istanbul 5, 165; see also Turkey Junior Achievement of Armenia (JAA) 140–41 Karabakh Movement 113, 115–18; Armenian National Movement (ANM) 117, 118, 120, 123; diaspora political parties 138–39, 168; Karabakh Comittee 116, 117; Nagorno Karabakh 8, 44, 115–16, 119, 122, 162; origins 1, 8, 115–16 Kazakhstan 21, 160, 161 Kocharian, Robert 37, 44, 48, 49, 56, 126, 163 KGB (Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti/Committee for State Security) 7, 115

Kyrgyzstan 21 Latin America 4, 24, 136; civil society 12,16; gender issues 58, 61, 83, 103– 4; government repression of NGOs 160; women’s NGOs 61 Latvia 114, 115 Lithuania 114, 115 managing culture 96–106; see also capacity building; interventionism; training of trainers (TOTs) mass media: A1+ 46, 55, 75; and domestic violence 74–75; elections 2003 35, 37, 38, 42, 46, 47, 52; independent media organizations 57, 83; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) 37; state controlled media 37–38, 44, 46, 49, 55, 56 Member of Parliament (MP) 43, 74 mentalitet 47–48, 71, 89, 107–8; see also culture; family Middle East 6, 158; Armenian diaspora 136, 137; Donor Exchange, Coordination and Information Mechanism (DECIM) 142 Ministry of Justice 24, 26, 30, 156 Moldova 114; anti-domestic violence campaign 65 Nagorno Karabakh 8, 44, 115–16, 119, 122, 162; frozen conflict 157; see also Karabakh Movement National Endowment for Democracy (NED) 28, 29, 37, 109, 134 nationalism: new nationalism 5–6, 165; secular nationalism 6; under Soviet rule 7 Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 1, 3, 9, 111, 128, 134–36; and advocacy or service delivery 18, 23, 24; agency and power 31–33; and civil society 18, 22–23; criticism 22– 25, 56–57; description 33, 165; as donor driven 25, 131; governmental resistance to and repression of 51, 160; ‘graduation’ 147, 168; International NGO (INGO) 89; ‘Lessons in Implementation: the NGO Story’ 121; NGOs instead of civil society 22–25, 143–44; Northern and Southern NGOs 96, 167; quantity/quality 30; role of donors in defining and operationalizing civil

Index society and NGOs 21–30, 58, 67, 107–8, 131; USAID 22; see also advocacy; capacity building; donors Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Armenia 24, 34, 156; agency and power 31–33; Armenian Caritas NGO 79, 167; criticism 29, 30, 56–57, 83, 131, 146–47, 150, 151; disrepute 83, 167; as donor driven 131, 150; donors co-ordination 141– 43; effectiveness against climate of fear and repression 51–55; emerging of a middle class as a consequence of civil society strengthening 145–46; factors influencing the feminization of NGOs 59–60; government resistance to and repression of 49–51, 160; ‘graduation’ 147, 168; Grbanayin NGOs (GONGOs :governmentorganized NGOs) 49–50, 159; human rights NGOs 37–43, 46, 48, 51–55; impact of donors on 148–50; and NGOC 26; and oligarchs 151; and OSIAF-Armenia 28–29; professionalized/less professionalized NGOs 144–45, 146; the ‘third sector’ 143–44; training 96–102, 106, 107; women participation in NGOs leadership 59–60, 100; see also antidomestic violence campaign 2002–4; capacity building; elections in Armenia 2003; NGO Training and Resource Centre (NGOC); NGOs working on women’s rights; training of trainers (TOTs); women’s NGOs NGO Training and Resource Centre (NGOC) 59, 97, 140–41; mission 26 NGOs working on women’s rights 58– 59; see also anti-domestic violence campaign 2002–4; Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Armenia; violence against women (VAW); women’s NGOs North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 95 Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) 28, 36 oligarchs 9, 42–43, 55, 124–25, 166; aid from the oligarchs 150–51; bodyguards 43, 45–46, 125; democracy and rise of 110; emerging of 123; and NGOs 150–51; oligarchic

197

capitalism 124; role of, in Armenian political life 42–43, 45–46, 124–25 Open Society Institute (OSI) 27, 28, 135; criticism 29; and election 36; ‘Sorosizatsiya’ (Sorosization) 29 Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation Armenia (OSIAFArmenia) 28–29, 135 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 27, 36, 47, 132; elections 2003 47–48 Ottoman Empire 5, 6, 95, 165; Ermeni Millet (the Armenian Community) 5; see also Turkey Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) 54 perestroika (restructuring) 110–11, 112, 114; perestroika era movements 116, 167 policy makers: and ideas of democracy and civil society 14, 19; policy makers’ views on Soviet legacy 118– 23, 127 polozhenye (statutes) 5; see also Russian Empire post-socialist civil society: disciplines of study 3; literature on 3; operationalizing of 21–25; see also civil society; civil society in Armenia; Soviet legacy and democracy building post-socialist transition/period 95, 124, 125; anthropological approach and contribution in the study of 3–4; anthropology of development and critical development studies 4; in Armenia 128; backlash against democracy promotion 159–60; blockade 8; civil society 128; disciplines of study 3; gender issues 59, 60; literature on 3; reforms and ‘trauma’ 128; see also Soviet legacy and democracy building Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) 128 private service contractor (PSC) 134– 36, 141; see also donors private voluntary organization (PVO) 134–35, 141; see also donors Reckoning: persecution and resistance 39–40, 46 remittances: impact on Armenian Economy 166; individual remittances

198

Index

2, 93, 165–66, 167; see also diaspora, the Armenian Russia 99; anti-domestic violence campaign 64, 65; backlash against democracy promotion 159–60, 161; domestic violence 64; government repression of NGOs 160; largest community of ‘internal’ Armenian diaspora 168; ‘managed democracy’ 21, 163; Nashi 161–62; nostalgia and positive recollections of the Soviet era 126; NTV/Radio Liberty 37; sovereign democracy 161, 163–64; women’s NGOs 62; see also Russian Empire Russian Empire 5; polozhenye (statutes) 5; see also Russia Sakunts, Arthur 40–42, 44; see also elections; elections in Armenia 2003 Sarkissian, Serj 47–48, 89, 163 schools 5, 136, 165; training sessions 82 Soviet legacy and democracy building 109–29, 147, 155; Armenians’ views of the Soviet legacy 123–27; civil society in Armenia 112–13; Civil Society in the USSR 112; corruption and lack of good governance 122–23, 125, 147; glasnost (openness) 110–11, 114, 115; hybrid regimes 109; lack of trust and participation in politics 119–22; nationalism and lack of liberalism 118–19; nostalgia and positive recollections of the Soviet era 110, 125–27, 143; perceptions of the Soviet legacy in Western academic and policy literature 118–23; perestroika (restructuring) 110–11, 112, 114; perestroika era movements 116, 167; Soviet civil society 110, 111–12; Soviet ‘velvet’ revolutions 114–18; stoliks 113–14; see also Karabakh Movement Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia 7, 8 Spitak 8 Stalin, Joseph 7, 39, 111 Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (SIDA) 28, 134 Swiss Development Agency 27, 133 Tajikistan 25, 148 Ter-Petrossian, Levon 39, 118, 123, 126, 163, 169

Tocqueville, Alexis de 14, 16; neoTocquevillian model 14, 16, 21, 111, 143; see also civil society totalitarianism 110, 111, 114; totalitarian paradigm 111; totalitarian schools 110; see also Cold War; Soviet legacy and democracy building training of trainers (TOTs) 85, 93, 96– 107, 153; beneficial trainings 99; criticism 98–99, 102, 104–6; exercise examined 100–102; values of training 105–6; views of foreign trainers 103– 5; see also capacity building; donors; interventionism transition: causes for unsuccessfulness 85, 107; definition 165; evaluation 29–30, 35, 156–57, 166; multiple transitions 2; Nations in Transit 29; ‘transition to democracy’ 21–22; transitological/transitologists 85, 87, 88, 107, 167; as transfer of models or system-export 97; see also postsocialist transition/period trends: emerging trends in Armenia 157–58; global trends 158–59 Turkey 8, 117–18, 119, 142; Donor Exchange, Co-ordination and Information Mechanism (DECIM) 142; genocide 6, 7, 136, 168; Istanbul 5, 165; see also Ottoman Empire Turkmenistan 160 Ukraine 29, 114, 115; anti-domestic violence campaign 65; colour revolution 155; nostalgia and positive recollections of the Soviet era 126 United Nations 132–33 United Nations Fund for Democracy (UNDEF) 133, 168 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 133, 141, 165; gender issues 60; family 90–91; immigration 92–93, 165; substance abuse prevention programme 103 United States: American model of democracy 22, 23; Armenian diaspora in 137, 168; civil society in 19–20; criticism of US democracy promotion 159; democracy in 19; democracy promotion 22–23, 159; differences between US and EU approaches to democracy promotion 27–28; Effects of US Foreign

Index Assistance on Democracy Building: Results of a Cross-National Quantitative Study 168–69; largest donor for democracy building 13, 22, 168–69; largest donor for democracy building in Armenia 22, 25; Venezuela: US democracy promotion in 159; see also interventionism; United States Agency for International Development (USAID) United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 10, 22, 141; 2004 NGO Sustainability Index 121; Academy for Educational Development 27; anti-domestic violence campaign 2002–4 66, 71–72, 83; criticism 149–50; democracy assistance 22–23, 166; Democracy and Governance Assessment of Armenia report 120–21; Democracy Plan 25, 66, 81; and diaspora organizations 140; Effects of US Foreign Assistance on Democracy Building: Results of a Cross-National Quantitative Study 168–69; family planning campaign 77–79; gender issues 59, 60, 64, 66; largest donor for democracy building in Armenia 22, 25, 133, 134; Lessons in Implementation: The NGO Story – Building Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe and the New Independent States 121, 155; and NGO Training and Resource Centre (NGOC) 26; and non-state actors 136; and Soviet legacy 120–21, 122; training 99–100; ways of funding 134, 168; World Learning Programme 26–27; Youth and Community Action Programme 27; see also donors; interventionism US Information Agency 25 US Information Service 22 Uzbekistan 25, 160, 161; anti-domestic violence campaign 65; government repression of NGOs 160; Nashi Rossiya-Uzbekistan 161 Vanadzor 9, 40–41, 125 Venezuela: US democracy promotion in 159 violence against women (VAW) 58–59, 61–64, 82–83; feminist perspective on

199

domestic violence 93–94; a global issue 61–62, 64, 82; origins and development of the programme 58– 59, 61–62, 64; United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 61–62, 64, 83; see also antidomestic violence campaign 2002–4; family ‘war on terror’158–59; see also Iraq Western capitalist societies: and capitalism 21; and democracy 21–22 Western donors: and civil society 13, 19; and civil society strengthening programmes 21; definition 166; role of, in defining and operationalizing civil society and NGOs 21–30; see also donors Western Europe 2, 6, 105, 162 women’s rights and political involvement 91, 94, 100; Commission for the Improvement of the Way of Life of Women 92; right to vote 167; role of women in the family 91, 92, 167; Women’s Division of the Communist Party (Kinbazhin) 92; Women’s Issues and Democracy Building: The Support for Women’s Rights Organizations 58–64; see also anti-domestic violence campaign 2002–4; family; feminism; NGOs working on women’s rights; violence against women (VAW); women’s NGOs Women in Development (WID) 59 women’s NGOs 58–63, 64, 94–95; and democracy building 59, 66, 80–82; factors influencing the feminization of NGOs 59–60; and feminism 94–95; women’s NGOs’ criticism of antidomestic violence campaign 2002–4 75–76; women participation in NGOs leadership 59–60; see also anti-domestic violence campaign 2002–4; Non-governmental organizations (NGOs); Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Armenia; NGOs working on women’s rights; violence against women (VAW) World Learning Programme 26–27, 64, 71, 83 World Bank 132, 141; Donor Exchange, Co-ordination and

200

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Information Mechanism (DECIM) 142; and gender issues 59; Voices of the Poor 128, 131 Yerevan 7, 8, 9, 36, 37, 44, 113; and oligarchs 125, 150; NGOs 145

Youth and Community Action Programme 27 youth movements: Armenian elections 2003 35, 52–53, 57; Nashi 161–62 zartonk (awakening) 6, 8