Qatar: Small State, Big Politics Read Free

traffic, tired eyes peer through half-open windows of old American school buses or grungy ones made by Tata as the workers are driven from future high-rises to their distant labor camps. 11
    Why Qatar?
    The study of Qatar is important in four significant respects. First, Qatar allows us to re-examine some of the basic premises of “rentier” theory, looking, specifically, at the mutually dependent nature of the relationships that develop between the state (i.e., the ruling family) and influential social actors as a result of rent-based political and economic arrangements. The nature of state capacity in Qatar has enabled the ruling family to abandon its repeated mentions of political liberalization and to instead push forward with ambitious agendas of economic and social change. Significantly, an expansion in the state’s capacity has occurred at the same time as its deepening financial and institutional ties with social actors, thereby involving private capital more intimately in the country’s march toward economic growth and modernization. The genesis of such ties trace back to rent-based clientelism, but today these ties have become so robust and multidimensional that even economic downturns are unlikely to turn social actors against the state and its expansive patronage network.
    Historical patterns of state development across the Arabian Peninsula have long featured close alliances and interconnections between ruling families and other influential allies made-up of powerful clans, merchants, and foreign resident agents. With the introduction of oil economies and the growth of rentier arrangements, in recent decades these previously informal political alliances have assumed multilayered economic, commercial, and even political dimensions, therefore cementing the mutual links between ruling families, on the one side, and strategically located allies, on the other. Rentier theory has long seen merchants and the rentier classes as dependent on the state. In looking at Qatar, I maintain that the dependent relationship is a mutually reinforcing one, with the state often in need of support from dependent groups as much as is the case the other way.
    A second feature of Qatar that makes it an interesting case study is the country’s hyperactive diplomacy. Small states have traditionally assumed certain specific roles and profiles in the international arena, many of which—as a prototypical small state—also characterize Qatar’s position in the international community. But Qatar has not been content with remaining in the shadows of regional superpowers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt or, for that matter, even global superpowers such as the United States. It has not shied away from irritating allies and foes alike through Al Jazeera; it has engaged in a number of successful mediation efforts across the Middle East and parts of Africa; it has taken on several high-profile showcase projects, most notably the 2022 FIFA World Cup, a world-class museum, and a global advertising campaign; and it has maintained close relations with such eclectic friends and allies as Iran, the United States, different Palestinian factions, and until 2008 even Israel.
    There are several underlying causes for the nature of Qatar’s hyperactive, seemingly maverick foreign policy. First is an aggressive pursuit of “hedging” as a foreign policy tool, meant to maintain friendly relations and open lines of communication with allies and potential adversaries alike. Second, Qatar has embarked on an equally aggressive “branding” campaign, meant to give international recognition to the small country as an international educational, sporting, and cultural hub and a good global citizen committed to mediation and conflict resolution. Third, Qatar has been able to employ its comparative advantage in relation to other GCC states with great effectiveness. As starkly evident by the events of February and March 2011, Qatar is one of the few GCC states that