Blake Hounshell of The Atlantic has tried to answer one of the most obvious questions surrounding the gulf region and the 2011 wave of Arab protest: why have Qatar and the UAE been largely bereft of popular anger at the government?
He does a fairly good job. He recognizes that these oil-rich sheikdoms have the unique ability to provide very generous benefits to all their citizens and that the equality this creates blunts what otherwise would be a more personal and visceral demand for democratic freedoms (which has been close to what’s happened in Yemen, Egypt and Libya).
However, he concedes that just because no dispossessed mob is ready to tear down all those hideous buildings in Dubai, there is still tension over freedom, particularly among “the politically aware.” Hounshell does well to recognize that when you create such prosperity and global awareness among many of your citizens, you run a great risk of demand for liberal reform. Allowing this to happen might allow Islamists into power, which is even worse than liberal reformists for a gulf dictator. It’s a very delicate balance the UAE and Qatar need to strike, and they seem to be doing it well.
Does Saudi Arabia as well? The Kingdom is another obvious example of an oil-rich gulf state which has been on the quiet side of the Arab Spring. Like those other countries, they fear liberal reform and its effect on the ruling family’s economic and political power, but fear Islamist movements and their potential influence even more. One thing I think Hounshell misses, which is vital in KSA, Qatar and especially UAE, is the political standing of the large South Asian guest worker populations. I’m not an expert on what kind of government benefits are afforded to guest workers in these countries, but surely they do not have the economic standing of citizens. In Saudi Arabia, the government has had to strike a balance between maintaining an ethnically Arab national identity and keeping this guest worker population, which has been there for generations in some cases, from becoming a politically viable force.
- Part of the stability club?
Surely there’s some explanation, besides the “concessions” offered at the time of the Bahrain uprising, for why Saudi Arabia has also escaped popular protest, but I don’t think it’s attributable to the same formula as the UAE and Qatar. Saudi Arabia is way too big to spread its massive GDP around through benefits and still have substantial power and wealth be in the hands of the ruling family. Thus, social and economic inequality among citizens is higher than in the sheikdoms. The sophisticated control through censorship of the media, particularly, is a way that public opinion is blunted in lieu of economic satisfaction, but “fear barriers” have been broken in other countries where they were similarly imposed.
Those of you in 260, remember when we were ranking the populations we thought were mostly likely to think democracy is generally the best form of government? We all ranked the Saudis last, and were right, but why? There’s some reason for the relative lack of democratic challenge to the regime, but it probably doesn’t fit with Hounshell’s economic-centric thesis about the UAE and Qatar.
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