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

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

'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

Social identity and coethnic voting in the Middle East: Experimental evidence from Qatar

What explains widespread coethnic voting in the Middle East? The prevailing understanding revolves around clientelism: the view that MENA citizens support coethnic parties and candidates in order to most easily or effectively extract resources from the patrimonial state. Previous research has thus neglected non-economic explanations of ethnic-based preferences and outcomes in MENA elections, including social biases long identified in other settings. This study presents findings from a conjoint survey experiment in Qatar, where symbolic elections lack distributional implications. Consistent with expectations derived from social identity theory, results reveal strong favoritism of cosectarian candidates, whereas objective candidate qualifications do not affect voter preferences. Bias is especially strong in a policy domain – promoting religious values – that prompts respondents to consider the candidate's ethnic identity. Findings offer clear evidence that ethnic-based voting in Qatar and likely elsewhere is not merely epiphenomenal but can reflect actual preferences for members of social in-groups

A Hard Test of Individual Heterogeneity in Response Scale Usage: Evidence From Qatar

A common approach to correcting for interpersonal differences in response category thresholds in surveys is the use of anchoring vignettes. Here we present results from the first applications of anchoring vignettes in Qatar and, to our knowledge, the Arab world. We extend previous findings both geographically and substantively to show that a range of social and demographic variables account for important variation in response scale use in the domains of economic well-being and political efficacy, and that this variation leads to substantively misleading conclusions when not appropriately modeled. Qatar’s exceptionally homogeneous citizenry presents a uniquely hard test of response scale heterogeneity, and our results suggest that potentially obfuscating differences in individual reporting styles are even more ubiquitous than previously known. When using surveys to measure complex questions and concepts, the issue of interpersonal incomparability must be addressed. Individuals understand concepts and questions differently: A Yemeni’s moderate economy may appear as destitution to a Kuwaiti; the political openness of a typical Latvian may be illiberal to most Swedes. The question of how to account for such interpersonal heterogeneity in response scale usage, also called differential item functioning (DIF), continues to garner much scholarly investigation (e.g., Aldrich & McKelvey, 1977; Alvarez & Nagler, 2004; Brady, 1985; King, Murray, Salomon, & Tandon, 2004; King & Wand, 2007; Stegmueller, 2011). Since its introduction in political science more than a decade ago by King and colleagues (2004), the use of anchoring vignettes to correct for DIF in survey responses has spread to diverse areas of social, economic, and health research (e.g., Bratton, 2010; Chevalier & Fielding, 2011; Hopkins & King, 2010; Kapteyn, Smith, & van Soest, 2007; King & Wand, 2007; Kristensen & Johansson, 2008; Paccagnella, 2013; Rice, Robone, & Smith, 2011; Salomon, Tandon, & Murray, 2004; Wand, 2013). The approach measures and controls for individual differences in response scale by first asking general self-assessment questions. These self-assessments are then supplemented with follow-up vignettes that portray relevant aspects of the lives of hypothetical individuals, which respondents rate according to the same scale. Because the vignettes are anchored to concrete cases, variability in assessment can be attributed directly to differences in the subjective scales used by respondents, offering both an individual-level measure of, and method of correction for, DIF. Given obvious cross-country disparities in social, economic, and political experiences, much of the resulting research agenda has used anchoring vignettes as a way to adjust for differences in understanding concepts across distinct national populations. Such cross-group comparison is expected to introduce DIF on account of often unspecified underlying differences in ‘‘culture,’’ frequently operationalized as a simple dummy variable. A common outcome is that, after accounting for variability in response category thresholds, anomalous or curious findings—for instance, higher self-ratings of political efficacy among citizens of a nondemocratic state compared with those of a democracy (King et al., 2004)—are shown to be spurious. In practice, then, original theoretical concern over interpersonal incomparability bias in surveys has largely proceeded instead as investigation of intergroup incomparability, understating or ignoring the effects of response scale heterogeneity within culturally cohesive populations—that is, among individuals qua individuals. Yet, more recent anchoring vignette applications, most notably in the area of health, have demonstrated that even basic demographic factors such as sex, education, and work status can impact how people use survey response scales, and that this individual-level heterogeneity can lead to misleading conclusions if not modeled appropriately (Angelini, Cavapozzi, & Paccagnella, 2012; Grol-Prokopczyk, 2014; Grol-Prokopczyk, Freese, & Hauser, 2011). There is also evidence, again from the field of health, that scale use may vary over time among individuals (Angelini, Cavapozzi, & Paccagnella, 2011). However, it remains unclear the extent to which these findings apply to other, nonhealth domains of research, or outside the context of the United States and Western Europe where extant studies have been conducted. Here we extend the analysis of the individual sources of DIF through the first application of anchoring vignettes in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar (and, to our knowledge, the Arab Middle East), administered in three original and nationally representative surveys conducted during 2013–2015. Beyond geographical extension to a new world region, we also expand thematically on the list of topics studied with a view to understanding inter-individual differences in survey scale usage, examining for the first time the issue of selfassessed economic well-being in addition to feelings of political efficacy. We find that a range of social and demographic variables—age, sex, education, and social class—account for important variation in response scale use even within the cohesive cultural group represented by Qatari nationals. Qatar’s exceptionally high (citizen) homogeneity thus presents a uniquely hard test of individual heterogeneity in response behavior, and our positive findings demonstrate that demographically linked scale use differences are even more ubiquitous than previously known

What Money Can’t Buy: Wealth, Inequality, and Economic Satisfaction in the Rentier State

How do perceived inequalities in allocation impact citizen satisfaction with state-distributed benefits in rentier societies? Resource-rich rentier regimes are widely theorized to maintain the economic and political satisfaction of subjects through wealth distribution. Yet, while qualitative research in the rentier states of the Arabian Peninsula has identified unequal distribution as a source of discontent, the relative importance of objective versus subjective factors in shaping satisfaction at the individual level has never been systematically evaluated. Here we assess the impacts of inequality on the nexus between wealth and satisfaction among citizens of the richest rentier regime in the world: the state of Qatar. Using original, nationally representative survey data, we test the effects of two separate mechanisms of unequal distribution previously identified in the literature: group-based discrimination, and variation in individual access owing to informal influence. Results show that perceptions of both group- and individual-based inequality dampen satisfaction with state-distributed benefits, irrespective of objective socioeconomic well-being. The findings demonstrate that even in the most affluent of rentier states, economic satisfaction derives not only from absolute quantities of benefits but also from subjective impressions of fairness in the distribution process

Refinancing the Rentier State: Welfare, Inequality, and Citizen Preferences toward Fiscal Reform in the Gulf Oil Monarchies

Against the backdrop of fiscal reform efforts in Middle East oil producers, this article proposes a general framework for understanding how citizens relate to welfare benefits in the rentier state and then tests some observable implications using original survey data from the quintessential rentier state of Qatar. Using two novel choice experiments, we ask Qataris to choose between competing forms of economic subsidies and state spending, producing a clear and reliable ordering of welfare priorities. Expectations derived from the experiments about the individual-level determinants of rentier reform preferences are then tested using data from a follow-up survey. Findings demonstrate the importance of non-excludable public goods, rather than private patronage, for upholding the rentier bargain

Mitchell_Replication_Data – Supplemental material for What Money Can’t Buy: Wealth, Inequality, and Economic Satisfaction in the Rentier State

<p>Supplemental material, Mitchell_Replication_Data for What Money Can’t Buy: Wealth, Inequality, and Economic Satisfaction in the Rentier State by Jocelyn Sage Mitchell and Justin J. Gengler in Political Research Quarterly</p

Mitchell_Gengler_PRQ_Online_Appendix_online_supp_revised – Supplemental material for What Money Can’t Buy: Wealth, Inequality, and Economic Satisfaction in the Rentier State

<p>Supplemental material, Mitchell_Gengler_PRQ_Online_Appendix_online_supp_revised for What Money Can’t Buy: Wealth, Inequality, and Economic Satisfaction in the Rentier State by Jocelyn Sage Mitchell and Justin J. Gengler in Political Research Quarterly</p