Qatar: Small State, Big Politics (22 page)

In addition to the state’s institutional features and its comparatively successful cultivation and reliance on sources of legitimacy, several features in the societies of the Arabian Peninsula also help sustain monarchical states in power. Unlike most other parts of the Middle East, in arid regions and desert areas the relatively small size and weakness of nationalist-minded middle and working classes has helped keep monarchic legitimacy mostly intact. According to Raymond Hinnebusch, in these polities “the small size of the indigenous working class, overdeveloped atomized tertiary sectors, and traditional political technology—clientalism—relieves pressures for inclusion. The male citizenry, who, enjoying welfare entitlements while temporary workers without rights do most of the manual or skilled labor, is a privileged minority with a stake in regime survival.”
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Some observers have gone as far as to suggest that the state has deliberately avoided policies that may foster the birth of a vibrant working class for the very reason of not wanting to inadvertently undermine its own legitimacy, preferring instead to rely on imported labor with no chance of becoming naturalized citizens.
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Oil-dependent, personalist monarchies tend to encounter their most serious crises during two particular junctures—at times of precipitous decline in oil revenues and during disagreements over succession. Oil exporters are not necessarily prone to regime breakdown during periods of economic downturn. The critical variable is how leaders respond. State responses to economic crises can either hasten the state’s collapse or ensure its persistence. As Miriam Lowi states, “outcomes turn on leaders’ decisions relative to their particular context—the ‘structured’ environment composed of resources, institutions, social systems, and social forces—they find themselves in.”
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Much depends on how states respond to such downturns. In fact, if economic downturns lead to market reforms and privatization, new forms of rent are often generated through the privatization of state-owned enterprises, thus prolonging authoritarian persistence. Even under conditions of economic decline, privatization can provide a social base for autocracy and foster a “domestic social structure unfavorable to democratic outcomes.”
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Equally problematic are contested or unplanned successions, during which dissention and divisions within the ruling family tend to be at their highest and when the family’s corporate identity is at its nadir. Nevertheless, as Qatar’s political history has amply demonstrated, succession crises need not be fatal. In fact, because each succession has been followed by a slew of concessions by the ruler to family members in the form of appointments to state institutions, contested successions tend to result in a strengthening of the ruling family’s grip over the state. At the same time, there is a built-in incentive within the family to form internal coalitions that protect its power monopoly. In order to preserve their privileges and the ultimate longevity of the ruling family, those family members who are not in direct competition with the ruler tend to bandwagon rather than resort to balancing. “Able to regulate its own internal disputes, and indisputably in control of its state and national territory, such dynasties display a remarkable resilience.”
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Those family members who lose out on succession often receive lofty “compensation prizes” and are free to pursue “their moderate desires.”
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Reflecting on Qatar in the 1980s, Jill Crystal commented that “the regime is stable; its leaders are not.”
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Given Hamad’s deft handling of family politics since the mid-1990s, today the position of Qatar’s leader appears to be equally secure as that of his regime.

Pillars of Political Rule in Qatar

In his seminal study Michael Mann identified four primary sources of power: ideological power, economic power, military power, and the power of political organizations that constitute the state. According to Mann, these sources “generate overlapping, intersecting networks of power relations with different sociospatial boundaries and dynamics; and their interrelations produce unanticipated, emergent consequences for power actors.”
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Thus ensued a nonlinear and at times incongruent political process involving trial-and-error negotiations and renegotiations on the part of those in possession of political power—the state, and those subject to it—society. Mann’s focus is state formation in Europe and how the continent’s institutions of central power interacted with constituencies in civil societies. Broadly similar parallels may be found in the Arabian Peninsula, and particularly in Qatar, though with adjustments and adaptations resulting from economic resources, the predominance of tribal and clan affiliations and networks, and the role of agency. In specific relation to contemporary Qatar, four central pillar of political power may be identified. They include the power derived from control over state institutions, which is the overwhelming preserve of the ruling family; the power of patronage and clientelism, derived from control over economic resources; the power of balancing, a product of Sheikh Hamad’s careful maneuvering between countervailing tendencies and forces within Qatar and also internationally; and, when necessary, the power of surveillance and suppression.

By far the most central pillar of state power in Qatar is the power of patronage, with the country today being a rentier state par excellence thanks to revenues from hydrocarbon exports. The establishment of patron-client relations have deep roots in the political history of the Arabian Peninsula, with contemporary GCC states relying on their tribal impulse, and, through the establishment of extensive welfare systems, seeking to “re-enact the traditional tribal system of allegiance for economic support.”
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Sheikhly and patrimonial patterns of rule, under the auspices of the Al Thani ruling family, had been firmly established between the 1930s and 1950s. It was only after that that the flow of oil revenues into the coffers of the state—or more specifically to the ruling clique within the Al Thanis—kicked in, thus consolidating existing patterns of patrimonial rule. Rentierism did not create new patterns of rule from scratch; it reinforced existing ones.

Throughout the Arabian Peninsula, patronage is part of a broader state effort to foster a corporatism that is meant to bring into its ambit existing or potential corporate groups in society: tribes and the sheikh to which they have allegiance; the major commercial families; the religious establishment, whether of the dominant groups (the Sunnis) or the major sects (the Shias, the Ibadis, the Zaidis, etc.), and the middle classes. What ensues is a system of “political tribalism” closely modeled after the clannishness of a tribe (‘
ashariyya
).
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Although inclusionary in its communal and tribal makeup, this corporatism does not include “less authentic” citizens—in Qatar’s case, those who immigrated to the country after the 1930s—and foreigners.

Unlike most other rentier states, in which the state funnels rent revenues into society only indirectly and in the form of state employment or the granting of licenses, the Qatari state is one of the few in the world that engages in multiple forms of direct rent distribution.
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This of course is in addition to various indirect means of ensuring that there is an uninterrupted flow of money into the pockets of Qataris. Upon getting married, for example, each Qatari couple is eligible to receive a free plot of land that is at least 600 square meters and an interest-free loan of QR1,200,000 (approx. US$329,000 in 2012), payable in twenty-five years, in order to develop the land. This rule, which previously excluded Qatari women who were married to non-Qatari men, was amended in 2007 to extend to those Qatari women who were divorced or who were past the age of thirty-five. As if to deliberately reinforce patronage ties between the emir and his people, this land distribution is done directly by the Emiri Diwan. All Qataris are also guaranteed state employment with salaries starting—in 2012—at QR16,000 (US$4,400) a month if they have a high school diploma or QR22,400 (US$6,100) if they have a bachelors degree. Few Qataris rely on state salaries as their sole source of income and most have multiple business interests. Because non-Qataris are not allowed to have controlling shares in local businesses, most Qataris are silent partners in stores and shops of all sizes that are run by migrant workers from the Philippines or from South Asia.

The state also provides comprehensive, cradle-to-grave services for all Qatari citizens free of charge or for a nominal fee. Education and health services are free for all Qataris who wish to avail themselves of the expanding choices available in universities and hospitals. Qatari nationals also have the highest per capita GDP in the world, estimated at just under US$450,000 a year in 2008.
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Qataris do not pay for water and electricity usage; and the price of petrol is among the lowest in the world. Not surprisingly, Qataris have the highest per capita carbon footprint and water and electricity consumption rates in the world.
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According to a 2012 report by the World Wildlife Fund, Qatar has the world’s highest ecological footprint, measured as the number of global hectares demanded per person, while at the same time having one of the world’s lowest “biocapacities” in terms of the number of global hectares available per person.
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As the prime minister stated in a 2011 interview with a US television network, making Qataris wealthy is the state’s top domestic priority.
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The General Secretariat of Development Planning, one of the state agencies charged with the implementation of the National Development Strategy, boasts about the government’s “generous social protection system that is funded through abundant hydrocarbon resource revenues.”

There is no personal income tax or value added sales tax…. Pensions are given to retired government servants. The Ministry of Social Affairs provides a range of welfare benefits for disadvantaged groups…. Civil service employment is seen as part of Qatar’s social protection through the provision of social allowances over and above actual wages received. Hence government employment tends to be the first choice for Qataris.
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All this amounts to an absence of poor Qataris. According to a 2006–2007 survey by the General Secretariat of Development Planning, “less than 5 per cent of Qatari households have equivalized incomes or expenditures below 40 per cent of the median” and “just over 9 per cent of Qatari households receive income less than half the median.”
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Qatar has entered what Matthew Gray calls “late rentierism.” Gray attributes several features to late rentierism, some of the more prominent of which include a maturing of the state and its view toward rents; the state’s widespread engagement with the global economy; new economic and development imperatives; and population and employment pressures.
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According to Gray, state maturity is reflected in the careful management of state capitalism. Characteristics of state capitalism in late rentierism include the professional operation of state-owned industries, continued state control over strategic industries, and preferential treatment of certain actors.
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The late rentier state is “more entrepreneurial, supportive of development, and responsive than it was previously. However, the fundamental characteristics of rentierism remain.”
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Two of the more important consequences of advanced or late rentierism, which happen to be interrelated, include the weakening of traditional merchant families, and the emergence of new, state-dependent classes. The Qatari merchant classes have historically lacked the political influence of Kuwaiti merchants and have constituted a politically—or, for that matter, economically—relative marginal group in society. With structural transformation in the country’s macroeconomy resulting from globalization, such as the expansion of the stock market, the widespread introduction of large, one-stop retailers (e.g., Carrefour), and the entry of new, globally savvy local entrepreneurs into the market, “the merchant clans of the Gulf are facing unprecedented challenges.”
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It so happens that some of the most prominent merchant families in Qatar have been Shia, and, presumably for their own protection and self-preservation, traditionally they have often been among the most influential supporters of the country’s rulers.
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Historically, the Qatari Shia have enjoyed relative religious freedom and have even participated in government institutions.
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Therefore, the mutually reinforcing phenomena of globalization and late rentierism have further strained whatever power the traditional merchant families had managed to retain.

Distributive policies have also enabled the state to foster the creation of and to in turn forge ties with new social classes. Expanded and free educational opportunities have resulted in the upward mobility of a number of highly educated Qataris—especially women—who are the beneficiaries of the state’s labor nationalization campaign. Educated Qataris are in extremely high demand by the countless Western and local companies with operations in the country, eager to meet demands in the media and among influential Qataris for the Qatarization of their workforce.
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Graduates of imported Western universities with fluency in English are especially valuable. Cosmopolitan and upwardly mobile, these young professionals are aware that they owe their positions to state policies. They constitute a new base of support for the state that did not exist in the past, eclipsing potential rivals within and outside the ruling family.