Suchergebnisse

In the past decade, Qatar has emerged as one of the world's most proactive mediators in the international arena. It has also experienced a number of domestic changes to its economic infrastructure, welfare system and political system, along with material improvement in its citizens' standard of living. Nonetheless, despite such radical and rapid advances, political reform in Qatar has proved to be relatively tentative. This book examines political reforms in Qatar from an analytical, normative, ideological and empirical perspective. It applies the main concepts and theories found in the literature on democratic transition. The book also presents different aspects of political reform in Qatar, including those prior to the formation of the state. Five elements are discussed as the reason of why the political reform process in Qatar has stagnated in the political "Grey Zone": Absolute power of the ruler over the political institutions; tribal social structure in Qatar; rentier style social contract; lack of public demand for reforms and politically apathetic society; new regional and international atmosphere, emerging after Arab Spring

"A long-standing economic policy goal of the oil-dependent states of the Gulf Cooperation Council is to increase economic diversification. Over the last decades, GCC governments fostered the development of non-oil economies through large-scale public investments in the stocks of human and physical capital. This book takes a new look at economic diversification efforts by examining the impact of different public expenditure categories (capital, education, health) on non-oil GDP and labour productivity developments in the three GCC countries Bahrain, Oman and Qatar since the 1970s. Building both on an econometric analysis and detailed country studies, this book analyses not only whether public expenditure has been an important driver of overall non-oil economic growth but also how public expenditure impacted different potential sources of non-oil economic growth such as economy-wide investment or productivity levels. By elaborating the channels through which public expenditure tends to impact non-oil economic growth in Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, this book contributes to the academic and public debate about the effectiveness of ongoing diversification strategies in the GCC countries." (Publisher's description)