Public Spending Priorities in Qatar

Together with previous survey findings, SESRI’s study of fiscal priorities among Qataris demonstrates the importance to citizens of healthcare and education, and to a lesser extent other sectors such as social security and infrastructure. Not only do citizens desire to see these sectors prioritized fiscally, but they also want the state to provide these services free of charge. Healthcare and education are essential and universally-utilized services that, absent state provision, leave hefty bills for citizens as they seek these services privately. The state’s prioritization of healthcare and education in its 2017 budget is therefore in line with citizens’ preferences. Yet, prioritization need not necessarily imply increased spending. The findings here suggest that a key driver of Qataris’ prioritization of health, education and other sectors is dissatisfaction with the quality of service. In other words, fiscal prioritization may be in large part a proxy for perceived quality, and an increase in perceived quality of a given service may obviate the need for increases in actual spending. In a time of fiscal tightening, the state can address citizens’ concerns through a focus on efficient and professional service provision, rather than additional monetary investment. توضح نتائج الدراسة التي أجراها معهد البحوث االجتماعية واالقتصادية المسحية حول ترتيب أولويات اإلنفاق لدى القطريين، إلى جانب نتائج الدراسة المسحية السابقة؛ أهمية خدمات الرعاية الصحية والتعليم بالنسبة للمواطنين، وترتيب القطاعات األخرى مثل الضمان االجتماعي والبنية التحتية في سلم األولويات. وال يرغب المواطنون في رؤية هذه القطاعات تتصدر األولوية المالية فحسب؛ بل يتطلعون أيضًا إلى أن توفر لهم الدولة هذه الخدمات بالمجان. ويعد قطاعا الرعاية الصحية والتعليم من الخدمات األساسية والمقدمة على الصعيد العالمي، وتكلف المواطن فواتير ضخمة في سعيه للحصول عليها عبر القطاع الخاص، وذلك إذا غفلت الدولة عن توفيرها. ولذلك تتماشى أولويات الدولة في الرعاية الصحية والتعليم في ميزانيتها لعام 2017 مع تفضيالت المواطنين. ومع ذلك، فإن تحديد األولويات ال يعني بالضرورة زيادة اإلنفاق. وتشير النتائج هنا إلى أن أحد العوامل الرئيسية في تحديد أولويات القطريين في قطاعات الصحة والتعليم وغيرها من القطاعات هو ً عدم الرضا عن جودة الخدمة. وبعبارة أخرى، قد يشكل ترتيب األولويات المالية في جانب كبير منه بديال عن الجودة المتوقعة، وقد تؤدي الزيادة في جودة الخدمة المقدمة إلى تجنب الحاجة إلى زيادة اإلنفاق الفعلي. وبإمكان الدولة في فترات الترشيد المالي التعاطي مع مخاوف المواطنين من خالل التركيز على ً توفير الخدمات بكفاءة ومهنية، بدال من االستثمار النقدي اإلضافي

Sectarianism from the Top Down or Bottom Up? Explaining the Middle East’s Unlikely De-sectarianization after the Arab Spring

Sectarian politics has retreated across the Middle East in the years after the Arab Spring, even as conflict between the region’s two main sectarian actors—Iran and Saudi Arabia—has intensified. This essay explores this incongruence as a way of better understanding the nature and drivers of sectarianism and de-sectarianization in MENA states, supported by public opinion and other data that substantiate the post-2011 decline in Arabs’ concern over sectarianism. It contends that the close correspondence between the rise and demise of the Arab Spring on the one hand, and that of sectarianism on the other, supports an instrumentalist interpretation of sectarian politics in the region

Society and State in Post-Blockade Qatar: Lessons for the Arab Gulf Region

This article examines key questions of citizen-state, citizen-citizen, and citizen-expatriate relations in the Arab Gulf states through the lens of the 2017 Qatar blockade. It utilizes original public opinion survey data that allow examination of the embargo’s short-term impacts on social and political relations in Qatar as well as broader trends observed over the period from 2010 to 2019. Results lend support to some existing qualitative accounts suggesting changes in important social and political dynamics in Qatar after the blockade. However, survey data also show that such post-blockade differences are mostly reflections of larger attitudinal shifts witnessed over the course of the past decade, rather than isolated effects of the GCC crisis. This suggests the possibility that other Gulf Arab states are experiencing similar transformations in popular sociopolitical orientations and behavior brought on by the same long-term drivers

Citizenship and Surveys: Group Conflict and Nationality-of-Interviewer Effects in Arab Public Opinion Data

More research than ever before uses public opinion data to investigate society and politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Ethnic identities are widely theorized to mediate many of the political attitudes and behaviors that MENA surveys commonly seek to measure, but, to date, no research has systematically investigated how the observable ethnic category(s) of the interviewer may influence participation and answers given in Middle East surveys. Here we measure the impact of one highly salient and outwardly observable ascriptive attribute of interviewers nationality using data from an original survey experiment conducted in the Arab Gulf state of Qatar. Applying the total survey error (TSE) framework and utilizing an innovative nonparametric matching technique, we estimate treatment effects on both nonresponse error and measurement error. We find that Qatari nationals are more likely to begin and finish a survey, and respond to questions, when interviewed by a fellow national. Qataris also edit their answers to sensitive questions relating to the unequal status of citizens and noncitizens, reporting views that are more exclusionary and less positive toward out-group members, when the interviewer is a conational. The findings have direct implications for consumers and producers of a growing number of surveys conducted inside and outside the Arab world, where migration and conflict have made respondent-interviewer mismatches along national and other ethnic dimensions more salient and more common.Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library. The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful feedback and suggestions that greatly contributed to improving the final version of this article. They would also like to thank the Editors for their generous support during the review process. Data collection for this study was supported by a Grant (NPRP 6-086-5-014) from the Qatar National Research Fund, a member of The Qatar Foundation.Scopu

Ethnic Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf.

This dissertation challenges the prevailing rentier state interpretation of political life in the countries of the Arab Gulf, a theoretical framework little changed for more than a quarter century. It does so by evaluating for the first time the fundamental claim of rentier theory to understand the individual-level drivers of political views and behavior among ordinary citizens of rent-based regimes, in particular its assumption that individuals are content to forfeit a role in political decision-making in exchange for a tax-free, natural resource-funded welfare state. By this conception, citizens’ degree of economic contentment is the key variable influencing the extent of their political interest and demands for participation; normative support for their governments; and, ultimately, the overall stability of their regimes, with other, non-material factors playing no important systematic role at the individual level. Yet this dissertation identifies and elaborates one important conditionality to the basic rentier premise that economically-satisfied Gulf Arabs make politically-satisfied Gulf Arabs: the existence of societal division along confessional (Sunni-Shi‘i) lines, a condition present in each of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Utilizing the results of over a dozen elite interviews and an original 500-household survey of political attitudes in Bahrain, along with parallel survey data from Iraq, I demonstrate that in societies in which confessional membership is politically salient, this shared identity offers a viable basis for mass political coordination in a type of state thought by its very nature to lack one. Under this condition, I show, the political opinions and actions of ordinary Gulf Arabs are not determined primarily by material considerations but by an individual’s confessionally-defined position as a member of the political in- or out-group. Moreover, I demonstrate, concerns about the national loyalty of the confessionally-defined political out-group—that is to say, about the perceived threat of Iranian-inspired Shi‘a emboldening—means that the latter community is disproportionately excluded from the rentier benefits of citizenship. In sum, in Bahrain and other Gulf societies divided along Sunni-Shi‘i lines, neither is the rentier state willing to offer its presumed material wealth-for-political silence bargain to all citizens, nor are all citizens willing to accept it.Ph.D.Political ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89701/1/jgengler_1.pd

'Why Do You Ask?' the Nature and Impacts of Attitudes towards Public Opinion Surveys in the Arab World

For the first time in an Arab country, this article examines attitudes toward public opinion surveys and their effects on survey-taking behavior. The study uses original survey data from Qatar, the diverse population of which permits comparisons across cultural-geographical groupings within a single, non-democratic polity. The authors find that Qatari and expatriate Arabs hold positive views of surveys, both in absolute terms and relative to individuals from non-Arab countries. Factor analysis reveals that the underlying dimensions of survey attitudes in Qatar mostly mirror those identified in Western settings, but a new dimension is discovered that captures the perceived intentions of surveys. Two embedded experiments assess the impact of survey attitudes. The results show that generalized attitudes toward surveys affect respondents' willingness to participate both alone and in combination with surveys' objective attributes. The study also finds that negative views about survey reliability and intentions increase motivated under-reporting among Arab respondents, whereas non-Arabs are sensitive only to perceived cognitive and time costs. These findings have direct implications for consumers and producers of Arab survey data. - 2019 Cambridge University Press.Scopu

Conducting Research on the World’s Changing Mediascape: Principles and Practices

As digital technology sweeps across the globe, bringing far-reaching changes to the media environment and beyond, international research on the nature and impact of these changes is essential. This commentary situates media research within the broader flow of knowledge and offers a critical perspective on the principles and practices that should guide that research to maximize its potential contribution to both knowledge and to the public

المسح السنوي الشامل : مسح عن الحياة في دولة قطر 2014

This Executive Summary presents the highlights of the 2014 Omnibus survey, the fourth in a series of Omnibus surveys since 2010. The surveys were carried out by the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) of Qatar University. Each Omnibus survey interviews a large and representative sample of Qatari citizens, resident expatriates and laborers. In these surveys, we asked a number of questions covering several topics of importance to Qatari society, including their attitudes and behaviors related to media; political values and attitudes; gender; charities and charitable donations; traffic; and laborers. The survey was designed and carried out in accordance with the highest scientific and ethical standards. Respondents were assured that their answers would be confidential and presented in an aggregate format. This project was fully funded by the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute (SESRI) at Qatar University. The findings made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.يقدم هذا التقرير الموجز أبرز ما في المسح الشامل لعام 2014 ،الرابع في سلسلة المسوح الشاملة منذ عام 2010 .تم تنفيذ البحوث من قبل معهد البحوث الاجتماعية والاقتصادية المسحية((SESRI بجامعة قطر. في كل مسح شامل تم استطلاع آراء عينة كبيرة تمثل المواطنين القطريين، والمقيمين والعمال. في هذه المسوح تم طرح عدد من الأسئلة تغطي العديد من المواضيع التي تهم المجتمع القطري، بما في ذلك المواقف والسلوكيات المتعلقة بوسائل الإعلام؛ والقيم والمواقف السياسية؛ دور الرجل والمرأة؛ المؤسسات والتبرعات الخيرية؛ وحركة المرور؛ والعمال الوافدين. صمم ونفذ هذا المسح وفقا لأعلى المعايير العلمية والأخلاقية. وتم التأكيد على المشاركين بأن إجابتهم سرية ومقدمة في شكل إجمالي. وقد تم تمويل هذا المشروع بالكامل من قِبل معهد البحوث الاجتماعية والاقتصادية المسحية بجامعة قطر. وإن الاستنتاجات الموجودة في هذا التقرير هي مسؤولية المؤلفين وحدهم

Authoritarian Regime Learning: Comparative Insights from the Arab Uprisings

This paper examines the learning of authoritarian regimes in the early phase of the Arab uprisings. Differentiating conceptually between learning and policy change, we analyze and compare the authoritarian regimes of Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, and Syria and their reactions to the challenge of "late riser" oppositional protests. We first show that the four regimes initiated very diverse measures in the domains of repression, material co-optation, and legal reforms. With regard to the sources of learning, we find that proximity is a determining factor, in terms of both geography and political similarity. Using the case of Bahrain, we then demonstrate that structural factors such as internal power structures, regional and international pressures, or state capacity can decisively constrain the implementation of learning-induced policy change. Overall, the paper aims to contribute to the emerging research on the international dimension of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and beyond