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

Abstract

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.