Lessons for Consultants in the Middle East

The continuing unrest in North Africa and the Middle East threatens to overthrow more entrenched regimes that have long prohibited free and fair elections. These events open up new opportunities for political consultants to lend their skills. As always, though, opportunity favors the prepared.
 
According to Maram Abdelhamid, an Arab-American political consultant who regularly consults emerging political classes in Arabic-speaking countries, it is important to have one foot in the culture you’re consulting. “Doing a door-to-door campaign would look very different than it would in the U.S.,” she says. “There are cultural differences and many things to overcome.” Abdelhamid stresses that if you have a bicultural education or some familiarity with the region or the language, you are in a better position than the average consultant.
 
However, candidates in these areas want to wage an effective campaign, so understanding cultural nuances alone will not get you hired. “What is interesting is that these countries really prefer getting experts from the West,” says Abdelhamid “They feel like we are the experts in this field. They are not just interested in the impact of a piece of mail or an ad on a voter but, rather, what makes a successful mail program.” The aspiring Arab politicians Abdelhamid has contact with want to learn how to organize their own campaign, rather than be spoon-fed messaging by a hired consultant.
 
Abdelhamid says that when she was in Jordan last year consulting women who were interested in entering the political process, the candidates she spoke with did not feel that they needed a mass mailing or television campaign—rather, given that theirs is a tribal culture, they wanted to reach individual opinion leaders with specifically tailored messages. In such an environment, once tribal or family heads are persuaded, generating votes in a given area is much easier. “Assign group leaders to each family head and they would bring out their entire family,” says Abdelhamid. “That is incredibly effective.”
 
Cathy Allen, an international political consultant and president of the Seattle-based Democratic consulting firm Connections Group, says that in many parts of the Arab world, the power of tribalism is on the wane. “There is a reticence among young people to trust their elders,” says Allen. “Younger people living in urban centers are more willing to question the status quo because it is not affording them a future.” She says that the disproportionate number of young, educated and unemployed people who are driving the unrest in the Middle East are predisposed to political independence from the tribal order that has traditionally dominated the region’s politics.
 
Allen adds that while Middle Eastern cultural idiosyncrasies must be taken into account, they do not preclude American political consultants from working there. Allen, who has consulted in over thirty nations, says political consulting is essentially the same from Brazil to Kenya to Croatia. “We [Americans] are perceived as the experts at persuasion,” says Allen.
 
Allen says that everywhere she goes she finds that candidates are eager to learn American political methods. However, this doesn’t always translate into affection for Americans. “It is important to have a cultural entourage that gets you in and not to be an ugly American that tells them how we do it here,” says Allen. Like every client, foreign clients want to do persuasion campaigns “more often, easier and cheaper.” Abdelhamid says that it is best to start with the basics, beginning with keeping a track record of what works. “You have to teach, why build a voter list and why target,” she says. “Teach why something is effective and how to keep track of what is happening”
 
Abdelhamid and Allen both stress that local assistance is key to success as a political consultant in the Arab world. “The onramp of getting in is more difficult than you would think,” says Allen. “There are no RFPs that go out, no list of competent consulting firms that get evaluated equally. It is who you know and how well you are trusted.”
 
While the incipient democratizing trend in the Arab world presents great opportunities for consultants, it may be some time before such opportunities pay off monetarily. “There is a wholesale denial of fund-raising—it puts a damper on wanting to work in these places,” says Allen, who adds that remuneration often covers no more than expenses at first. “It is much more important to build a trust relationship, which starts years in advance,” she says. 
 Noah Rothman is the online editor at C&E. Email him at nrothman@campaignsandelections.com