Civil society in the Middle East; A means of governmental control of society or a mechanism for collective empowerment

Due to the changes in recent decades in the Middle East, especially the uprisings for democracy since the beginning of 2011 in many Arab countries and the overthrow of some authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, observers of political and social developments in the Middle East have apperceived a growing interest in discussing civil society and its relationship to government among researchers in Middle East studies. Recent expectations for the rise of civil society and democracy in the Middle East, which have risen since the Cold War, have been based on the assumption that governments in the Middle East are weak and societies are strong. The Islamic Revolution of Iran, the growth of Islamic movements in the 1980s, and the fall in oil prices confirmed the optimistic reasons for the growth of civil society in the region. Nevertheless, the discussion of civil society in the Middle East focuses more on changes in government practices than on fundamental changes in government-society relations. Despite optimistic reasons for the growth and realization of civil society in the Middle East, there are fundamental doubts about the evolution of civil society in the region. The main doubt is about the degree of independence of the groups and associations that claim to be civil society. Therefore, the present article tries to answer the question that civil society in the Middle East is a means to governmental control of society or a mechanism for collective empowerment, using a descriptive-analytical method as well as library and digital resources.