Autocrats like Putin wildly overestimate the capacity of democracy groups to make a difference, perhaps because they refuse to acknowledge that the real threat to their rule comes not from outsiders, but from the frustrated aspirations of their own citizens. They have adapted (and over-adapted) to the training, organizing, and polling work which groups like NDI and IRI do in the way that football defenses respond to a new wrinkle in an opponent's passing game. Some do thus more subtly than others. The SCAF, through incompetence or inattention, managed to arouse the entire U.S. Congress and jeopardize the bilateral relation with the United States. By contrast, in 2009, Ethiopia, another autocratic U.S. ally, passed a law permitting domestic organizations to receive foreign funding, so long as 90 percent of their budget comes from domestic donors -- few of whom would be foolish enough to vex the regime with such gifts. Likewise, in an earlier incarnation of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak used to allow the groups to operate while making it almost impossible for them to work with local activists.
There are, it's true, all sorts of distinctive and peculiar aspects to the current melodrama in Cairo, which was provoked by a minister left over from the Mubarak government who appeared to be furious that some American aid was going directly to Egyptian NGOs rather than passing through her ministry. The SCAF did not premeditate the confrontation with the United States. But Egypt's military and civilian leaders have resorted to the classic backlash playbook by appealing to nationalist outrage over alleged violations of sovereignty by the foreign groups, who are said to have carried out a hidden "U.S.-Israeli agenda." And the appeal has worked, at least well enough to distract attention from the real goal, which is to discredit both the foreign groups and the local actors whom they fund. Leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood endorsed the decision to detain the American officials; they later defended the right of local NGOs to organize, but did not call for the release of the foreigners. The SCAF's reversal under U.S. pressure unleashed a fresh wave of nationalist anger, which even included moderate figures like presidential contender Mohamed ElBaradei, who used Twitter to criticize "intervention in judiciary work."
Is the crisis in Egypt an aberration, or a harbinger? Daniel Brumberg, a scholar of Arab politics, points out that NDI is currently working in Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, and elsewhere in the region. "In terms of the Arab world," he says, "Egypt is an outlier. Overall, the U.S. organizations promoting democracy have had a pretty positive experience." That's an important point. Groups like NDI and IRI work in a vast range of countries; in the democratic ones, their work is generally non-controversial, and even in some non-democratic ones they are permitted to operate openly. But Lincoln Mitchell argues that democracy promotion in autocratic states tends to be inoffensive, and thus ineffective, as he noticed in a program in Azerbaijan which he evaluated for the U.S. government. "If you're doing work in Baku and the Aliyevs [the ruling family] aren't really upset, you're not doing a good job."
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