This summer I traveled throughout the Middle East to explore research partnerships with scholars and experts in the region. My first stop was Amman, Jordan, where I had the opportunity to participate in a forum on “The Role of Think Tanks in Supporting Policy Dialogue and Consensus Building in the Arab World.” The forum featured a number of prominent policymakers, policy researchers and practitioners, representatives from civil organizations, and delegates from regional policy-research centers. This four-day event focused on the role of think tanks in the transitional Middle East, and on promoting gender equality. Policy research and analysis in the region has progressed by leaps and bounds in the past decade. However, there are many caveats worth further discussion in regard to the relationship between public policy and the support of political transitions in the region, as well as the future role of Arab think tanks in the region.
Generating and analyzing data for advocacy and policy reforms in the Arab world was one of the most promising areas discussed at the conference. Participants from private as well as governmental data-collection agencies acknowledged the critical need for fact-based knowledge (i.e., public opinion polls, media analysis, etc.) not only to inform wider policy debates among policymakers, but also to empower citizens by providing them with accurate information and to build accountability amid critical times of transitions and uncertainty. That being said, these organizations face numerous challenges as they seek to disseminate this critical knowledge; most stem from the fragility of transitional governments, political and social instability, and the overall ambiguity of the political scene in the region.
The role of think tanks in the region in advancing gender equality amid economic and socio-political transformations in the Middle East was one of the most heated topics at the forum. Efforts to promote gender equality in the region have increased in the last few decades. But participants acknowledged the formidable challenges facing policy practitioners and researchers to advance gender parity in the region due to a range of social, cultural and legal obstacles.
One of the most successful models for promoting women’s rights in region presented at the forum was an initiative undertaken by a Lebanese resource center for gender equality (ABAAD). This center has adopted a campaign based on a positive approach (i.e., an approach to inspire change and raise public awareness) to end violence against Arab women and girls in the Middle East. Recognizing the central role of religion in Middle Eastern societies, ABAAD has skillfully relied on the endorsement of religious leaders of all sects to end violence against women and girls while linking the issue with women’s human rights as a whole. This model has proved to be one of the most efficient ways to develop a bottom-up approach to influence policy and decision-makers, especially in regard to sensitive issues such as domestic violence.
Despite the valuable contributions and the promising areas of public policy research in the region, one of the main drawbacks that I observed throughout the conference was the lack of a shared understanding about the definition and the objectives of think tanks in the Arab world. There is considerable confusion regarding the scope of the work undertaken by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), research-oriented NGOs and think tanks in the Arab world. This conceptual chaos has obscured not only the ability of these organizations to identify the right target population for their work and initiatives, but it has also resulted in a considerable gap between policymakers, policy researchers and analysts in the region, with little or no consensus on how this valuable knowledge can be transmitted to policy- and decision-makers.
Finally, the overwhelming skepticism of Arab think tanks regarding external/foreign sources of funding poses another significant barrier for public policy research in the region. Arab think tanks are constrained by their widespread mistrust in the objectives and agendas of international organizations willing to fund regional policy research projects and by their own autocratic governments that limit funding to policy work that serves their own interests and political agendas. This dilemma adds to the complexity of the region’s transitional period and raises concerns about the nature and value of the work produced by Arab think tanks during this critical time in the Middle East.
Marwa Shalaby, Ph.D., is the director of the Women and Human Rights in the Middle East Program at the Baker Institute. Her work focuses on comparative politics and research methodology, with a concentration on Middle Eastern politics, democratization, and gender and politics.