Public Action

Citizens In Want of Stamina

This is the age of hopeful citizens where in almost every part of the globe citizens are mobilizing, marching and, often successfully, pushing for change. But this is also the age of increasingly frustrated citizens. In some cases, the frustration is occasioned by the failure to achieve changes in regimes even after an astonishing sequence of heroic efforts and sacrifices by citizens. In other cases, the efforts originally appeared successful. Long-entrenched dictators fell and citizens were ecstatic, believing glorious days were imminent. Yet, in many of these cases, one disappointment is jumping on top of another. Change is proving far more difficult to achieve; it is even proving elusive.

Quote of the Week: Martin Luther King Jr.

"You may well ask: 'Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?' You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail, 1963

CommGAP Launches "Accountability Through Public Opinion"

CommGAP is delighted to announce the publication of its third edited volume, "Accountability Through Public Opinion: From Inertia to Public Action." The book is edited by CommGAP's Program Head Sina Odugbemi and Taeku Lee, Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Authors from development practice and academia discuss in 28 chapters how citizens can hold their governments accountable, and how genuine demand for accountability can be created.

The idea for the book was born at a CommGAP workshop in 2007 in Paris on "Generating Genuine Demand with Social Accountability Mechanisms." A few years later, we proudly present a compilation of essays that are relevant for current events in the Middle East and in North Africa as much as for any efforts to strengthen citizen's agency vis a vis their governments.

Coda on Propaganda by the Deed

You will have heard that the Government of Israel has agreed to ease its 3-year-old land blockade of the Gaza strip, clearly in response to the international outcry that ensued when a raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for Gaza turned deadly on May 31. On that day Israeli commandos had killed nine pro-Palestinian activists. In the ensuing dispute both sides claimed they acted only to protect their own lives.

Naturally, I am not getting into the rights and wrongs of one of the most contentious disputes in international affairs, and the interminable 'peace process'. I am interested only in adding a coda to an earlier post: The Power of Propaganda by the Deed. In that post, I drew attention to a technique available to the underdogs of the world when confronting the powerful. It works as follows:

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