Civic Activism as a Novel Component of Armenian Civil Society

Introduction
There is an inherent irony in the scholarship on post-communist civil society. The concept of
civil society was popularised in the late 1980s, referring to social movements that challenged
Eastern European communist regimes (Bernhard 1996; Cohen and Arato 1994; Geremek 1996a).
After the collapse of communism, those social movements, which were initially depicted as THE
civil society, lost momentum; Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) came to replace them.
International donors rushed in to support the budding post-communist civil society (which they
equated with NGOs) because it was often believed to be one of the cornerstones of a young
democracy. Yet, this “NGO-ised” civil society did not meet these high expectations. A decade
into the post-communist period, it became a target of criticism: diagnosed as “weak” and
shunned by the broader public (Howard 2003). Now, two decades into the post-communist
period, spontaneous social organisation is re-emerging and reclaiming its place in the civil
society arena.
Armenia exemplifies these phases of the post-communist development of civil society. It
witnessed dramatic mass mobilisation in the late 1980s, an equally dramatic public withdrawal in
mid-1990s, paralleled by artificial growth in the NGO sector, and, recently, the rise of
spontaneous activism. Ten years ago, civil society in Armenia mainly meant NGOs; this is no
longer the case. Beginning in 2007, a new actor entered the stage: youth-driven, social mediapowered,
issue-specific civic activism is a new form of protest and participation. The emergence
of this novel component of civil society changes the internal dynamics in the field of civil
society, producing new patterns of operation, framing, networking and mobilising. NGOs and
civic initiatives have distinct modes of functioning, strengths and weaknesses. There is
cooperation but also tensions between the ‘old’ NGO sector and the ‘new’ civic activism. Civic
activism is an important but under-researched element of Armenian civil society; it has a
complex relationship with older, more institutionalised elements such as NGOs.
The research project discussed in this publication examines patterns of interaction among
and mutual perceptions of NGOs and civic activists, placing these two actors into a broader
perspective of Armenian political culture of participation and (mis)trust. The novelty of the study
is that it combines NGO- and social-movement-oriented approaches to civil society. The study
also contributes to the scholarly literature on social movements of the 21st century and their use
of social media. In our study, we also sought to be mindful of the gender aspect of the new
Armenian civic activism and the overall political culture of participation. We highlight the
gender dimension of our findings throughout the narrative.
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