Civic activism as a novel component of Armenian civil society

Abstract

For the past two decades, Armenian civil society was largely equated with the NGO sector. International development organisations, public officials, scholars and the few informed members of the general public regarded NGOs as the core element of Armenian civil society. The NGO sector is now relatively developed and institutionalised, but it is detached from the broader Armenian society. In that sense it remains a post-communist civil society. However, a new actor has recently entered the civil society arena and made its presence visible. Civic initiatives have been on the rise since circa 2007 and have already registered a number of successes in affecting government decisions, despite the small numbers of people involved. Youth-driven, social-media-powered, issue-specific civic activism is a new form of protest and political participation. Armenian civil society is no longer simply a matter of NGOs, although NGOs unquestionably remain a crucial component of civil society. The landscape of Armenian civil society has changed. Focusing on NGOs when discussing civil society in a post-communist context is somewhat ironic, as the concept of civil society was popularised in the late 1980s by referring to mass mobilisation and social movements that challenged various countries’ communist regimes. As those movements lost momentum, NGOs came to replace them as the main ‘substance’ of civil society. Empowered mostly through foreign development aid, rather than grassroots involvement, NGOs perform a wide range of tasks, from humanitarian assistance to advocacy, but fail to attract most Armenians’ trust or interest in their cause. Armenian civil society is now unquestionably more complex than it was ten or even five years ago. Ten years ago, civil society in Armenia largely meant NGOs. This is no longer the case.