Civic Activism as a Novel Component of Armenian Civil Society

had a negative impact on the overall diversity of the civil society ecosystem. “... Genetically
engineered civil society... began to colonize and squeeze out all indigenous competitors,
becoming the dominant type in its environment... Civil society was reduced to professionalised
service delivery or advocacy NGOs.”
Joining associations is one element of civic political culture (Almond and Verba 1963). If
that element has remained unchanged in Armenia, it is important to broaden the study by
exploring other elements of civic culture such as generalised social trust, conventional (voting)
and unconventional (demonstrations, petitions, boycotts) forms of participation. This would
provide a better understanding of the overall environment in which civil society functions in
Armenia and how that environment differs from that of 1997. This task is undertaken in Chapter
V of the manuscript.
Civil society is not just NGOs. In the Armenia of the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, civil
society was largely equated with NGOs, but this situation is changing. Since circa 2008, we seem
to be witnessing some restoration of balance in the civil society ecosystem. Other forms of
organisation, particularly spontaneous organisation, have emerged and gradually become more
visible, vocal, and prominent in recent years. The next section of this chapter presents the
“newcomers” in the civil society arena.
2.2. Civic Initiatives
While NGOs are an important component of civil society, they are by no means the only
‘players’ in the ‘arena’ outside the government, market and private sphere that is civil society
(Linz and Stepan 1997). An important new development in the realm of Armenian civil society is
the relatively recent rise of a new type of activities and organisational structures called civic
initiatives. This term is a self-description used by a variety of issue-oriented, loosely horizontally
structured groups of individual activists that unite around a common often very specific cause
(such as the prevention of construction in a public park, preservation of a architecturally valuable
building set to be demolished, or protests against a new mine under construction). These new
forms of civic participation have registered a number of victories since their emergence in 2008
(Ishkanian et al. 2013a) and are now an important and highly visible element of Armenian civil
society that must be taken seriously. Five such civic initiatives are discussed in greater detail in
this book: two of them being the most recent and impactful examples of social contention. They
addressed a pension reform and an increase in electricity prices. Both had a visible impact on the
political system and led to a partial revision of government decisions.
With the exception of these two most recent and dramatic campaigns, civic initiatives are
usually small in numbers and are often confined to Yerevan, or spearheaded from Yerevan if a
regional environmental issue is at stake. The core activists are young educated people; they use
social media to organise and spread information regarding their activities.
Activism through civic initiatives is distinct from the “NGO approach” in a number of
ways. The differences are discussed in greater detail in this manuscript, but it is worth
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