Region in need of ‘new social contracts’, lecture hears

AMMAN — Countries in the region urgently need to embrace new social contracts that shape the relationship between peoples and governments, based on the principles of the democratic civil state, a politician and researcher said on Monday.

Historically, social contracts have obliged governments to provide citizens with basic services, with the people in return accepting marginal and ineffective representation, said Marwan Muasher, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

But the development of “rentier states” in the region, characterised by bloated public sectors, has crippled the ability of governments  to uphold to their side of the contract, while insisting that citizens uphold theirs, he added. 

Speaking at a lecture titled “Arab fractures: citizens, states and social contracts”, Muasher noted that the civil state is one that is based on the peaceful transition of power and on respect for the freedoms and rights of all individuals and groups of diverse backgrounds.

It is also a state with “independent, yet balanced” executive, legislative and judicial institutions subject to the oversight of a free and professional press.

Muasher, who is also a former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, underlined that the civil state is the opposite of the authoritarian state, not the opposite of the religious state, as some people think or claim.

Yet, he noted that a civil state absolutely has to be democratic, otherwise it risks being authoritarian.

Achieving this shift will not happen over the next 10, 20 or even 30 years, he said, explaining that the development of a democratic civil state has to be the result of an “honest and effective dialogue” between the authorities and all groups in society which represent various political stances and ideologies.

It also needs “bigger and deeper” changes in the education system in order to instil critical thinking and an appreciation of diversity.

“Exclusion is ineffective and entrenchment will lead us nowhere,” Muasher said at the lecture, organised by the Arab Renaissance Forum and held at Amman’s NOFA Creative Space.

Nasser Tahboub, a professor of international relations at the University of Jordan, who introduced Muasher’s lecture, noted that Jordan has put significant effort into building key state institutions over the past 50 years.

Meanwhile, he said the preservation of what has been achieved should not come at the expense of advancing democracy, which is necessary to guarantee everyone equality under the law.