Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (27 page)

Constraints on the State

What, then, are the constraints on the Qatari state? With its enormous capacity, and with seemingly endless financial resources at its disposal, does the state face any constraints in carrying out its projects of high modernism and social change? There are, in fact, two sets of constraints the state has to contend with—one structural and the other political—though neither appears to require an inordinate amount of energy to overcome. Structurally, by far the biggest set of constraints on the state arises from the consequences of rentierism. But these constraints are not of the political-economic kind generally associated with rentier systems. Elsewhere I have argued for a more nuanced conception of rentierism in the Persian Gulf, in which the relatively resource-rich, direct rentier polities of the GCC are distinguished for the much larger, and much poorer, political economies of Iran and Iraq.
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In those countries, the state’s rentier linkages with society tend to be indirect and are primarily in the form of state salaries and price subsidies. Fluctuations in oil revenues, and therefore in the state’s ability to buy off socially based opposition, is more constricted. In GCC countries, state-society rentier ties are far more direct, with a relationship of dependence having emerged between private capital and the state, with the former dependent on the latter for continued state-generated or state-supported contracts and commercial advantages. Even in times of downturn, in these rentier polities private capital is unlikely to break with the state and to form a contesting block against it. If anything, its dependence on the state grows even deeper, eager for more support and patronage to weather the storm.
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This has been especially the case in Qatar, in which private capital and the professional classes are intimately tied to the state through the latter’s establishment and sponsorship of publicly owned companies charged with implementing its projects of high modernism. As the scope and pace of these phenomenally ambitious development projects have picked up, there has been a commensurate deepening of the links between social actors and the state. Private capital now needs the state more than ever to continue to grow and prosper and, in lean times, to get protection from severe adversity. Far from breaking away from the state in times of downturn, private and state-dependent capital tries to seek shelter under the state’s protective wings.

High modernism appeals most to those who have the most to gain from it and its worldview—bureaucratic intelligentsia, technicians, planners, and engineers.
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According to Ayubi, “bonanza modernization” in the Persian Gulf has fostered the birth of what may be called a “new middle class” of professional administrators, army officers, and other technocrats. A product of the rentier political economy, bonanza development relies on rent revenues generated from hydrocarbon exports to develop other economic sectors, to create lucrative positions within the state bureaucracy, to foster extensive public works projects, and to provide generous welfare services. “Opportunities for upward mobility are opened to ambitious societal elements, especially members of the middle classes who are capable of mounting serious threats to the status quo if frustrated by a situation of blocked ascent. The ruling stratus does not therefore have to be ‘unpleasant’ either to the owning classes by taxing their profits or to the working classes by extracting part of their surplus labour.”
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The kind of constraint that rentierism does pose on the Qatari state is not so much economic as it is sociopolitical. More specifically, it has to do with a general sense among the national population that attaining wealth is both possible and feasible in return for comparatively little effort. A “rentier mentality” can set in when “individuals can live well without having to commit themselves to any strict ‘work ethic,’” and when no “distinction need to be made between income ‘received’ and income ‘earned.’ An ‘easy come, easy go’ attitude may inspire both individual and public spending—it is indeed a ‘bonanza time’ for all to enjoy.”
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Most Qataris have come to expect the state’s generous allowances, which in 2011–2012 could reach as high as $7,000 a month, along with interest-free loans, free land, and guaranteed civil service employment.
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As Ayubi put it, in rentier states, “a certain dependency may be promoted in the citizen whereby he will be disinclined to act economically or politically on his own behalf, let alone seriously to criticise or to challenge the state.”
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As one observer has commented,

Gulf states use their wealth to buy political loyalties through public spending, including a generous subsidy system. This noneconomic utilization of resources socializes youth to believe that work has no inherent value and production is irrelevant, because salaries are paid in the bureaucracy without regard to work. These citizens look at income as their right, their fair share in the oil revenues. Because of entitlements, individuals and families perceive no need to change the current position. Were they to try to bring pressure on the state, they might jeopardize these benefits. In a sense, they become “more royal than the king.”
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Difficult to empirically quantify, the deleterious effects of massive wealth is particularly observable among the country’s young male population, whose relatively easy wealth serves as a demotivating factor for hard work. Young Qatari males lag behind young females in most educational indicators. Guaranteed of a job in the public sector, fewer men are motivated to attend university as compared to women; for example, at Qatar University 75 percent of students are female. According to a 2007 report by the government’s Planning Council, Qatari female workers have 14.1 years of education compared to 10.7 years for male workers.
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According to the report, overall Qataris remain woefully unprepared for the management of the country’s ambitious development projects. “If the current employment trends continue,” the report states, “the future large investments [in education] will have little primary employment impact on Qataris. These investments are concentrated in sectors where Qataris do not work or are in jobs [for] which they cannot readily compete with expatriate workers.” The report cited “an inadequately educated population” as “the most problematic factor in doing business in Qatar.” Some 96 percent of all employed Qataris work for the public sector. “The combination of various benefits for Qataris and more generous working conditions in the broad public sector results in Qataris not working in the private sector.”
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Meanwhile, the state’s Qatarization schemes, through which private corporations operating in the country are encouraged, at times compelled, to hire and promote Qatari employees, have done little to help combat the phenomenon described here. The state has indeed undertaken major reforms to the country’s educational system, spending upwards of 5 to as much as 9 percent of the national budget on education.
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But these measures cannot produce results overnight. In the 2009 OECD Pisa rankings, the universally recognized measure of educational performance in 64 countries, which ranks countries by student performance in reading, mathematics, and science, Qatar scored fifth from bottom.
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As Kristian Ulrichsen argues, there continues to be “a substantive disconnect between the educational system and the labor market” across the GCC.
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Massive investments in infrastructure, and the erection of impressive buildings, are insufficient in addressing deep-seated issues, such as the emergence of a merit-based culture that directly links educational achievement to professional advancement. The pervasiveness of Western universities across the region, especially in Qatar, deepens the possibility that GCC societies become “consumers, rather than producers, of knowledge, which continues to be generated externally.”
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What the long-term effects of the rentier mentality will be is hard to tell. Clearly, despite persistent pressures for Qatarization, the private sector’s heavy dependence on foreign labor and expertise is unlikely to lessen anytime in the near future. Just as possible economic downturns are unlikely to negatively impact state-private capital relations, they are also unlikely to darken the state’s relations with the country’s middle classes, most of whom will continue to be employed in the state’s bloated and inefficient bureaucracy. Development projects may be slowed down, and the expatriate labor may be squeezed in terms of salaries and employment opportunities, but the Qataris’ life of relative comfort and affluence is unlikely to be seriously impacted. The state may cut back on its spending spree abroad, and it may even lose some face internationally, but that is far from confronting domestic challenges or crises.

A second set of constraints on the Qatari state may be broadly categorized as political. Qatari politics tends to be low-intensity and even dull by regional standards. This is due largely to a combination of the state’s effective patronage of social actors, on the one hand, and the powerful and popular personality of Emir Hamad, on the other. Whatever there is of “chatter” tends to be of a generally moderate and benign nature, revolving mostly around the appointment of unqualified officials, the pace and direction of the social changes underway in society, and Qatar’s hyperactive diplomacy. This chatter finds its most unfettered expression in cyberspace, which—given restrictions on press freedom and pervasive fears of talking in the open—has become a popular forum for expressing political grievances. Interestingly, despite the anonymity offered by the Internet, there are no posts that attack the emir or other members of the ruling family directly.

“Oppositional talk” in Qatari cyberspace is relatively tame compared to most other regional cyberspace chatter. One of the main topics of discussion is the appointment of apparently unqualified individuals to multiple and at times powerful positions. An example is Aisha Al Khater, who in 2011 was appointed as the director of the Museum of Islamic Art. Al Khater, who does not wear the traditional
abayya
, is often criticized as unqualified for the job and is said to have been appointed to this high profile position solely because of her friendship with Sheikha Mayassa, the emir’s daughter and chair of the Qatar Museums Authority. Minister of Health Abdullah Khaled Al Qahtani (b. 1970, appointed in 2009) is similarly criticized for not having the right credentials for the position. It is not uncommon to find the same individual simultaneously holding multiple paid positions, often in one of the sports federations or in other private or state-owned companies. Given that the country considers itself a major sporting hub, a high premium is attached to positions in the field of sports management, though many of the individuals with such positions are often criticized as unqualified and overpaid.
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The powerful minister of finance and economy, Yusof Hussain Kamal, was reported in a 2011 article by a local newspaper to hold no less than thirty-three other positions at the same time, including paid membership on corporate boards, committees, and councils.
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An even more lively topic of discussion in Qatari cyberspace is the pace and direction of the social and cultural changes promoted by the state. One such topic is the serving of alcohol outside of hotel bars and restaurants and the government’s decision in late 2011 to allow the sale of pork in the country’s only, officially sanctioned liquor store.
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The sale of pork soon gave rise to a flurry of unhappy chatter by Qataris in cyberspace.
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According to one posting on Twitter, “Ppl don’t get it. Its not about the pork—its about us feeling more and more like a minority—in our own country.”
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In December 2011, after the appearance of several critical blogs on the issue, the government abruptly declared a ban on the sale of alcohol at the Pearl. However, permission for the sale of pork was not reversed.

Qatar’s hyperactive diplomacy has not escaped criticism in cyberspace, and the country’s high-profile involvement in the Libyan civil war was the topic of several critical blogs. One blogger complained about Qatar’s violation of international law, while another wished for Qatar to have been more like the UAE, where the government is not nearly as involved in international relations and instead “remains close to its people.” “We are sick and tired of people mocking us,” he went on to say.
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Ultimately, these and other similar sentiments trace their origins to expressions of nationalism. In recent years, an “inward-facing nationalism” has emerged throughout the Arabian Peninsula that measures national identity against internal demographic “threats.”
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Nationalism did not emerge in the region through protracted national liberation struggles. Therefore, the oil monarchies’ intimate alliance with the United States is less unpalatable than it would have been otherwise. But it is a perception of domestic encirclement, of being a minority in one’s own country, and of having a still-emerging national identity eroded, that is often a source of animated discussions in private
majlis
es and in cyberspace. For example, language is a key definer of national identity, but in countries like Qatar and the UAE, Arabic has effectively been reduced to a second language. Ongoing, feverish processes of state-building invariably include the invention of the national community, often “without regard to the sometimes contradictory elements that underpin authority and the differing sub-communities who are not being equally ‘imagined.’”
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So far, these and other similar attempts appear to have enabled the Qatari state to stay well ahead of whatever alternative, nonstate nationalist discourse that might emerge. Barring unforeseen developments that may radically change existing circumstances, there is no reason to believe that the state’s abilities in this area will diminish precipitously.