ble for the development of civil society in the region. In fact, the most important obstacle to further development of civil society in the Middle East may have little to do with anything outstanding to the region (whether cultural, sociological, or economic), but rather may derive from the simple reluctance of powerful elites to relinquish privilege and prerogative and make space for civil society (Kipper, 2001).
             Indeed, the dynamics of civil society's development in the Middle East are likely to replicate those found in any region struggling with authoritarian legacies. The notion of civil society should not be renounced by students of the Middle East because it focuses the attention on despotism in all its incarnations (intolerance, passivity, incomplete citizenship rights, insecure civil liberties) and because it captures an ideal that Middle Easterners are actively struggling over themselves. This struggle will be governed by much the same logic that governs such transitions elsewhere (Kipper, 2001).
             When the US first informed the Middle East about the idea of reforming the country's form of governance, there have been lots of arguments about it. First, there is general distrust that Washington's democracy promotion policy has less than superior motives, especially as an effort to divert attention from policy failures, faulty intelligence, and questionable planning in Iraq. Many also raise past and present U.S. inconsistency. Example of which was when Bush was speaking of democracy, his own ambassador to Cairo, Francis J. Ricciardone, praised Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for elections that had been flawed at best (Peel, 2005). This prompted several European commentators to repeat charges of U.S. pundits about the Bush family's close ties to the dictatorial Saudi royal family.
             Second, there are many people, in and out of the US and the Middle East territory who were questioning the feasibility and sustainabilit...