As the Arab world undergoes an unprecedented period of political transition, many are looking towards a new development model to spur economic growth and social advancement. The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law examined this question during its third annual conference on April 26-27, 2012 at Stanford University. The conference featured leading academics, practitioners, and activists, who looked beyond economics to present a more integrated framework for development.

According to ARD Program Manager Lina Khatib, "A goal of the conference is to present an integrated approach to development in the Arab world, particularly in places witnessing democratic transition, which links social, political, and economic factors."

The conference included a diverse array of speakers hailing from the political and social sectors, representing youth leaders, religious minorities, women's rights advocates, and civil society representatives, who joined economists to discuss new regional frameworks for development.

Conference speakers included: Mona Makram Ebeid, who has a long and distinguished career as a parliamentarian in Egypt, commenting on the challenges facing minority rights in democratic transition; Hedi Larbi, director of the Middle East department at the World Bank, who will address the issue of oil dependency and how it constrains economic development in the Gulf region; Libyan NGO leader Rihab Elhaj who co-founded The New Libya Foundation and who will speak about the important role civil society plays in the development equation; and Valentine Moghadam, professor of sociology at Northeastern University and a leading expert on gender issues, who will examine political development through a gender lens.

To view the complete program and download the presentation documents and conference report, please click here.

The Arab Spring has unleashed powerful social forces across the region ignited by young people seeking to reclaim their countries from the hands of long-standing dictators. In the aftermath of the revolutions, this younger generation has expressed a greater interest and responsibility towards improving their communities. Faced with crumbling economies and rising unemployment, young people in the region are combining their activism and entrepreneurial ingenuity to launch new businesses and non-profit organizations.

A new research study entitled, Social Entrepreneurship: Why is It Important Post Arab Spring? released by the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law finds that economic conditions coupled with social changes unleashed by the Arab Spring have created an environment ripe for social entrepreneurship.

Operating where the public and private sector have failed, social entrepreneurs introduce new ideas and approaches to solve intractable development challenges in their local communities. Applying business principles towards a social cause, social entrepreneurs create new programs, reforms, and goods that benefit disadvantaged and marginalized segments of society. Leading innovations in the non-profit and business sectors, they have generated new employment opportunities for youth, worked towards building more inclusive societies, and advanced sustainable environmental practices.

As more aid dollars flow towards social entrepreneurship programs, little research has been conducted to examine the sector post Arab Spring. Researchers with the Stanford Program on Arab Reform and Democracy launched this study to assess general economic conditions, attitudes towards entrepreneurship, and the challenges social entrepreneurs currently face.

The Stanford research team used data from an online survey issued in Arabic and English to more than 12,000 residents in 18 Arab countries by Bayt.com, the leading online jobsite in the Arab region, and YouGov, a research and consulting organization. The survey targeted respondents who are on average younger, better educated, and more technologically connected than the general Arab public—previous research issued by the Brookings Institution suggested that this target group is predisposed towards the entrepreneurial sector.

Citizen-led uprisings have inspired a new generation of youth who are increasingly invested in the future development of their societies across the larger region.

Youth-led social and economic development: One of the most revealing findings in the study uncovered the changing perceptions and attitudes of young people towards the long-term development of their societies after the revolutions. Citizen-led uprisings have inspired a new generation of youth who are increasingly invested in the future development of their societies across the larger region. In Arab Spring countries 71% of respondents in Egypt and 75% in Tunisia expressed interest in improving their communities, revealing this upward trend.

According to Jacqueline Kameel, managing director of Nahdet el Mahrousa, the first social enterprise incubator in Egypt, "Youth are more vocal than ever now, they have a sense of responsibility towards Egypt, believing that if we don't do enough now, we might never have a similar chance to take the lead and impact the future of Egypt." In addition, the survey found that volunteerism is on the rise with nearly one-third of Egyptian and Tunisian youth currently volunteering their time at local NGOs, religious establishments, and schools. These trends represent promising pathways towards social entrepreneurship for the region's youth.

Rising unemployment leads to increased interest in self-employment: The results revealed deteriorating economic conditions across the larger region, impacting all age groups and economic levels. However, the effect on countries that experienced protracted revolutions is particularly stark with 58% of respondents in Tunisia, 68% in Egypt, and 71% in Syria indicating that their employment situation now is either worse or much worse than before the revolutions. Those working in the private sector have been disproportionately impacted by the Arab Spring than their counterparts in the public sector, suffering higher levels of unemployment.

Despite this fact, respondents across the region expressed a strong desire to work in the private sector, reflecting a move away from the government as a primary employer. The survey also revealed widespread interest in business ownership as respondents in every country said that if given the choice they would opt for self-employment. While many cited the independence it would offer, others indicated they were drawn to entrepreneurship out of economic necessity, not opportunity. Current economic conditions and a move towards the private sector and business ownership point to the growth of the entrepreneurship sector across the region.

Growing awareness of entrepreneurial sector: With increasing interest in social entrepreneurship, the study evaluated the level of familiarity with entrepreneurship—in both the business and social sense—as the term is often perceived as an import from the West. Survey results concluded that overall there was a general level of familiarity with the term, but more respondents identified with the business side of entrepreneurship, indicating that there is more work to do to build awareness around the social sector. More encouraging was the number of respondents—63% in Tunisia and 56% in Egypt—who expressed an interest in starting their own business and a general openness towards working in the field of social entrepreneurship.

Challenges facing the sector: While survey results revealed several opportunities, there remains a high rate of failure for new businesses and NGOs, preventing them from reaching maturity. In Egypt 44% of business owners stated that their current businesses were not performing well, and in Syria the figures were higher at 50%. Those operating NGOs did not fare much better, as 56% of respondents in Egypt said that they had hoped to start an organization but were unable to do so. Government interference, the inability to obtain finance, bureaucratic hurdles, fear of failure, and corruption were the major obstacles to starting a new enterprise.Government interference, the inability to obtain finance, bureaucratic hurdles, fear of failure, and corruption were the major obstacles to starting a new enterprise. With transitions underway in Arab Spring countries, Stanford researchers called for a number of policy recommendations to create an ecosystem conducive for entrepreneurship to thrive. Some of their suggestions include: legal and regulatory reform in the banking sector; introducing entrepreneurial education in schools; and increasing the number of high-tech incubators.

While the Arab Spring has had an immediate negative impact on the economic landscape in the Arab world, the positive effect on citizens’ interest in social and economic development remains strong. As Arab Spring countries attempt to rebuild economically, social entrepreneurship represents a promising pathway for the post-revolutionary generation to engage in positive social change in the region and beyond. 

In an article for The New Republic's online symposium 'What Should the United States Do About Syria,' Larry Diamond argues that multilateral engagement is the best approach to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. With violence escalating in Syria, Diamond argues for a dual-pronged strategy of intensive diplomacy and targeted sanctions to induce a negotiated exit for Assad. Diamond cautions that a military style intervention that was successful in Libya would prove a moral and political disaster for Syria.  

One year after the Arab Spring, American public diplomacy is still facing the now-established conundrum of linking words and actions. The rise of Islamist political parties as the new leaders in the Arab world is the latest challenge for U.S. public diplomacy, but it is also an opportunity.

Since the attacks of September 11, the United States has been matching its military activity in the Middle East with outreach to Muslim and Arab communities. By and large, this outreach has not been successful. As several public diplomacy experts have been arguing for a number of years now, the limited impact of this outreach is due to the negative perception of U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East by citizens in the region. When actions and words do not match, words are perceived with a hefty dose of suspicion.

When the Egyptian revolution began on January 25, 2011, U.S. foreign policy took some time to catch up with sentiment on the Egyptian street. To make matters worse, the “Made in USA” tear gas canisters that protesters in Tahrir Square angrily displayed to the cameras of the international media were a further reminder of the United States’ cozy relationship with the Mubarak regime.

Since then, the U.S. has improved its words and actions by declaring both rhetorical and policy support for the Arab world’s revolutionaries (albeit in varying degrees), and as a result, public opinion about the U.S. in the region has improved. The 2011 Arab Public Opinion Pollshows a significant increase in favorability towards the U.S., compared with the 2010 poll, from 10% to 26%. The U.S. must continue to enhance this record.

Back in 2006, after much hype by the U.S. about the importance of free and fair elections in Palestine, the U.S. backtracked when Hamas swept the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in Gaza,withdrawing aid and boycotting the elected Gaza government. As Islamist parties sweep free and fair elections in one country after another in the region—starting with Tunisia, then Egypt—it is fairly safe to declare that in the immediate aftermath of the Arab Spring, the Arab world will be led by Islamists. So far, the U.S. has not repeated the mistake of 2006 with Hamas’ election in Gaza, accepting the results of the elections as democratic and as representing the will of the people.

But this is not enough. Of course, the United States currently has an easier task, since none of the groups that have been elected to-date in the Arab region are on the U.S.’s “terrorist” list. However, merely accepting election results will not cause a significant change in the perception of the U.S. on the Arab street.

The U.S. recognizes the current period as one of opportunity: it is the time to reinvigorate U.S. assistance with civil society, economic aid, and cultural outreach in the Arab world. But the most important “action” of all remains how foreign policy will play out. The Islamist groups that have assumed leadership positions in Tunisia and Egypt, namely Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood, have one very old dream: to be recognized as statesmen nationally and internationally. If U.S. foreign policy in this new era is going to be successful, it must be based on treating those leaders as such.

This is not just important on the traditional diplomatic level; it is also important for the success of U.S. public diplomacy. The Islamist leaders now assuming positions as Prime Ministers or House Speakers (and who knows, perhaps also presidents in the near future) reached power through having been elected by their constituents. The U.S. cannot reach out to those constituents while treating their leaders differently. In the past, U.S. public diplomacy towards Egypt appeared insincere because the U.S. attempted to engage the Egyptian people while taking a soft stance towards the Mubarak regime, which had been jailing, harassing, and—as in the case of Khaled Said—killing those same people.

For the first time in the Arab world’s history, there is a real opportunity for the U.S. to match its words and actions towards the region, and to have foreign policy become the basis upon which to formulate a truly engaging public diplomacy.