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The list of existing initiatives stops somewhere around here.
8
 In view 
of this, in the search for best practices in Western policies of engagement 
we turn to other experiences in Europe, examining the cases of Spain, 
Ukraine and Georgia in the past. The rationale for this choice may not be 
apparent at first, given the evident geographical, historical and political 
differences separating Islamists in the Middle East from socialists in 
Franco’s Spain or liberals in Kuchma’s Ukraine or Shevardnadze’s Georgia. 
Yet given the limited track record of Western engagement with Islamists 
alongside the political reading of Islamist movements in the Middle East, 
the comparison may prove fruitful.  
Western engagement with Spanish socialists and affiliated civil 
society groups during Franco’s rule played an important role in inducing 
democratisation in Spain. More starkly, the Orange revolution in Ukraine 
and the Rose revolution in Georgia have been interpreted by some as being 
Western-exported or “manufactured” revolutions.
9
 These processes of 
democratic transition have featured critical foreign interventions in the 
political, economic and social realms, interacting with domestic actors and 
factors in these three countries. How can we assess the impact of 
international measures of engagement with opposition parties and civil 
society actors in these countries, and what lessons can be drawn from these 
assessments for Western policies of engagement with Islamist actors?  
The nature and format of Western–Islamist dialogue at the civil 
society level 
In the three cases under investigation, external engagement was carried out 
primarily by like-minded civil society actors. In the case of Spain, a critical 
role was played by European socialist parties and trade unions. Non-
governmental groups and transnational networks such as the Socialist 
International (SI) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions 
(ICFTU) played prominent parts in supporting Spanish socialists under 
                                                      
8
 For a preliminary assessment of Western engagement with Islamist actors, see 
Yacoubian (2007), op. cit. See also the contribution by Kristina Kausch in this 
volume.  
9
 G.P. Herd, The Orange Revolution: Implications for Stability in the CIS, Central and 
Eastern Europe Series, Conflict Studies Research Centre, Defence Academy of the 
UK, Shrivenham, January 2005, p. 2. 

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General Franco.
10
 Often these groups proved more influential than official 
European or member state efforts in assisting transition and engaging with 
their counterparts in Spain.
11
 Likewise, in Ukraine and Georgia, 
engagement with liberal and pro-Western opposition actors was carried out 
by American NGOs such as Freedom House, the NDI and the IRI, the 
National Endowment for Democracy, and the Open Society Institute (OSI) 
as well as by European foundations such as the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the 
Heinrich Böll Stiftung, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (in the case of 
Ukraine).
12
 
When applied to the case of Western engagement with political Islam, 
this observation reveals three important lessons. First and on the upside, 
the Spanish, Ukrainian and Georgian precedents highlight the considerable 
impact of non-state forms of external engagement. A critical mass of 
engagement is necessary to generate visible results, and the panorama of 
engagement initiatives with political Islam is still rather bleak. 
Nevertheless, meaningful external engagement need not and indeed must 
not be limited to official institutions, whose room for manoeuvre is rather 
limited in view of state-to-state relations with authoritarian regimes, many 
of which have problematic and tense relations with Islamist movements. 
Second and on the downside, engagement in these three countries 
was carried out between ‘peers’. Hence, European socialists engaged with 
their counterparts in Spain, whereas American or European liberal groups 
did likewise with their liberal and pro-Western peers in Ukraine and 
                                                      
10
 Other such organisations or networks included the European Confederation of 
Socialist Parties, the British Labour movement (comprising the Labour Party and 
the Trades Union Congress (TUC)), the French Socialist Party and the French 
Socialist Union, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with its Friedrich 
Ebert Stiftung and the German Trade Union Federation. See P. Anaya Ortuno, 
European Socialists and Spain: The Transition to Democracy, 1959-77, London: 
Palgrave, 2002, p. 9. 
11
 G. Pridham, “The politics of the European Community, transnational networks 
and democratic transition in Southern Europe”, in G. Pridham (ed.), Encouraging 
Democracy: The International Context of Regime Transition in Southern Europe, London: 
Leicester University Press, 1991, p. 239. 
12
 M. Pinto-Duschinsky, “Foreign political aid: The German political foundations 
and their US counterparts”, International Affairs, Vol. 67, No. 1, 1991, p. 35. 

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Georgia. The analogous situation does not apply to the Middle East. In 
some instances, such as for example the case of Turkey’s Justice and 
Development Party (AKP), parallels have been drawn between political 
Islam (or Muslim democrats) and Christian democratic parties, with calls 
for the AKP to eventually join the European Peoples Party. But these 
parallels have been made mainly to shed the strictly Orientalist 
understanding of political Islam in Turkey rather than to realistically expect 
or induce structural ties between Christian and Muslim democrats. 
Third, because Islamists do not have obvious peers in the West, there 
are no pre-existing natural fora for socialisation between Islamist and 
Western actors
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 – and hence much of the misunderstandings between the 
two. This suggests that a first necessary step of engagement – related to the 
objective of understanding Islamists and conversely being understood 
better by Islamists – would be to establish fora for dialogue with Islamist 
academics, politicians, parliamentarians, civil society activists and media 
operators. This is the form of engagement that has taken place most. Yet the 
terms of dialogue have been set by the West, significantly limiting the 
scope to understand these movements. Arguably, this dialogue could be 
more productive with a reversal of its terms of reference. To better 
understand political Islam and the Middle East, Islamists could be asked to 
set the agenda for dialogue in order to raise questions and topics viewed by 
them as important. This approach would allow Western actors to gain a 
deeper understanding of and different perspectives on where the Middle 
East is heading and what is the role of the West there. This discussion could 
also focus on the political programmes of Islamist movements, particularly 
on those social and economic issues where their views are most developed. 
Furthermore, this dialogue should not shy away from sensitive political 
subjects such as suicide bombings or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; 
skirting around these questions or attempting to force agreement on them 
is unlikely to yield influence on the views of Islamists, particularly those 
seen by the West as the most ‘radical’. 
                                                      
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 A potential peer group for Islamists in the West could be Muslim migrant 
communities and their own Islamist organisations. This potential is still to be 
realised, however, and Muslim communities and their Islamist associations remain 
largely marginalised in Europe and the US, and are yet to play an effective foreign 
policy role.  

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