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Includes all relevant information on representative political institutions and elections held in Qatar. It summarizes Qatari political history and development and outlines the evolution of electoral provisions for a Shura and Municipal Councils (suffrage, elected institutions, nomination of candidates, electoral system).

This chapter talks about a case that related to how sovereignty over Janan lied with Bahrain, and therefore the chapter favours in the negative regarding paragraph 3 of the dispositif. But as the International Court of Justice found that sovereignty over Janan lied with Qatar, and as the author of this chapter agrees generally with the delimitation line drawn in the judgment, she voted in favour of paragraph 6. She further believes that, had it so chosen, the Court could also have grounded the title of Bahraini in the Hawars regarding the law of territorial acquisition. Among acts occurring in the Hawars were some that did have relevance in relation to a legal title. These effectivités were no sparser than those on which a title has been founded in other cases. Even if Qatar had, by the time of these early effectivités, extended its own sovereignty to the coast of the peninsula facing the Hawars, it performed no comparable effectivités in the Hawars on its own. These elements are sufficient to displace any presumption of title by the coastal state.

The Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the Persian Gulf Emirate, has chosen Paris as the primary sporting destination for its oil-generated wealth, purchasing the Paris Saint-Germain football club and Paris Handball through Qatar Sports Investment (QSI). QSI’s general director is also in charge of Al-Jazeera Sport, which, through the subscription channel beIN SPORT, presently holds broadcasting rights to the French football league. In this fashion, Qatari investors make use of their association with the Paris ‘brand’ – the city’s international reputation as the ‘city of light’ and its related cultural capital – to project a positive image of Qatar globally. This wielding of ‘soft power’ ultimately serves to legitimise Qatari investment in non-sporting domains and appropriates elements of France’s sporting landscape to further its geopolitical aims.

This chapter deals with the history of state making without war making, looking at the small oil states of the Gulf region and including a detailed study of the United Arab Emirates. Oil discoveries after World War II first put the UAE and its oil-producing neighbors on the international map and served as a bridge for contacts with the rest of the world. Territorial control of the tribal hinterland, the establishment of a state administration, and the fixing of land and sea boundaries became important issues. Since then, oil wealth has enabled the creation of infrastructure and ongoing development, as well as the creation of an extensive state apparatus. Oil revenues thereby consolidated state structures in the absence of war making, which was never employed as a strategy of state making. Welfare provision in the UAE has today become sustainable enough that even during periods of declining natural resources (as in the case of Dubai) or during fiscal crisis (as in the 1980s or 2007), the state is able to fulfill its welfare commitments. In creating a sustainable rentier structure, the UAE managed to break the linkage between declining resources and rising demand for political participation.

This chapter examines Qatar’s responses to climate change and environmental sustainability through case studies of major alternative energy and sustainability initiatives, including those under the umbrella of the Qatar Foundation, and the Qatar National Food Security Programme. It also includes a detailed examination of Qatar’s climate change-related resource scarcities and vulnerabilities. Together with Chapter 6, this chapter explores how the multiple natural resource-related pressures have affected Qatar, and how the government is responding to them. The chapter examines the drivers and motives of change and divergence in Qatar’s responses to the challenges of energy insecurity, climate change and environmental unsustainability.

This chapter discusses philanthropy in Qatar. Qatar's charitable activities include both traditional and creative modes of channeling philanthropy. Since these philanthropic initiatives are relatively recent, perhaps the main recommendation that could be made is that they focus on continued growth and diversification. Like-minded initiatives should establish productive avenues of communication among themselves to ensure the effectiveness of their giving and to avoid duplication. The momentum corporate philanthropy has gained over the past few years needs to be maintained, with greater emphasis placed on institutionalization. Currently, most corporate social responsibility initiatives take the form of financial donations or in-kind contributions to worthy causes, but companies are expected increasingly to seek to align their core business activities with goals and programs that engage the entire work force and supply chain in addressing sustainable development and attacking poverty at its roots.

This chapter talks about how Weill Cornell renewed its commitment to caring for patients throughout the city after the 9/11 tragedy. The first years of the new millennium were characterized by an entirely new level of global engagement at the medical school, with the launch of a branch campus in the Middle East (Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar), an affiliation with a hospital in Houston (Houston Methodist Hospital), and a proliferation of research exchange programs around the world. Weill Cornell's increased involvement in global health also reflected a larger trend throughout the country, which was to become “the land grant university to the world.” As a result, several universities in the United States began setting up international branch campuses and experimenting with foreign partnerships of various kinds.

This Chapter was originally the entry in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics (2014). on Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian-born Islamic scholar who took up residence in Qatar. It sets out to present a fair and balanced portrait of this contentious figure, regularly voted among the world’s foremost public intellectuals and (when the article was written) the most influential religious authority in the Sunni Muslim world, not least because of the formidable network of institutions that he helped to create, including charities; but also because of his forceful oratory, media skills, and many publications. A prefatory note provides up-to-date information on controversies involving Qaradawi, as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, that have erupted since the article was first published.

The World Summit on Sustainable Development brought together an estimated 45,000 participants in Johannesburg, South Africa. The United Nations objectives for the Summit were to review the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development and reinvigorate global commitment to sustainable development. The United Nations Adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (2000), which included commitments to human rights, economic development, and environmental sustainability, provided an important milestone and a series of concrete targets as reference points. The World Trade Organization Doha, Qatar meeting of World Trade Ministers (2001) had launched a new round of trade and economic liberalization negotiations, the “Development Agenda”, and many countries were still seeking to understand the potential impacts and opportunities of these plans for greater economic interdependence. Finally, the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey (2002) had led to concrete commitments for new and additional developed country resources, earmarked for development spending.

This chapter examines the question of how the ruling family proactively continues to consolidate its own position within Qatari society. The state adopts three primary means to reproduce and stimulate the existing inclusion and exclusion schemes in Qatari society. First, it promotes the dominant Arab social values, culture, traditions, and customs that perpetuate a scheme of inclusion and exclusion and secure the position of the ruling family and Arab tribal social actors at the apex of the social hierarchy of the state. Second, it narrows down the definition of national identity in order to limit vertical social mobility in society only to certain tribal families. Third, through articles of the Constitution, the legal system and implicit family policies related to marriage and nationality, the state has been influencing individuals, insofar as marriage choices are concerned, as a further means of preventing social mobility to wider strata of society.

The forces and factors driving regional migration have become more complex over time, and traditional explanations for the motivations, attraction, and selection of migrants are no longer sufficient in the study of migration to the Persian Gulf. Qatar, which in the last decade has emerged as one of the Middle East’s fastest-growing economies, provides a sound case study for discussing some of the emerging dynamics of regional labor migration. This chapter examines Arab-origin migration to Qatar, reviewing how the state has negotiated the entry and control of “alien” Arabs. The chapter examines the evolution and transformation of migration patterns to the Gulf Cooperation Council, and assesses policies adopted by the states to better manage their regional labor markets and control the flow of foreigners. Particular attention is given to scrutinizing how and why Qatar has become more selective and politicized in negotiating labor migration, and how this has impacted the Arab expatriate population.

Globally, studies on migrant teachers have tended to focus on Africa and Asia, while the topic of teacher migration in the Middle East in general, and in the Gulf in particular, has not been examined before. This study examines the status of Arab migrant teachers through both an educational and institutional lens. The research employs a mixed-methods comparative approach to investigate contractual agreements, employment experiences, and social integration of Arab teachers in Qatar and the UAE. The results of the study are consistent with literature on the economic motivation behind migration. Arab migrant teachers come to the Gulf largely in order to make money and, in turn, to be able to provide for their families. In addition to examining the motivations for migration, the study also found that the majority of Arab migrant teachers come to the Gulf with the intention of living and working for significant periods of time. Examining issues such as how the uncertain employment conditions for expatriate Arab teachers manifest in their commitment to teaching, the chapter concludes by providing policy recommendations for improving the conditions and output of Arab migrant teachers in the UAE and Qatar.

The Doha Centre for Media Freedom has introduced numerous capacity building initiatives to improve the ability of media consumers in Qatar and in the region to process the vast array of information with which they are bombarded on a daily basis, while also focusing on developing the abilities of those behind producing this information. DCMF’s Media and Information Literacy (MIL) programme is one of the centre’s flagship initiatives, which since its launch in 2011 has grown into one of the world’s most successful programmes, with the centre working alongside partners such as UNESCO to promote MIL education in Qatar, the wider region, and around the world. While DCMF has hosted training sessions for local journalists, the centre also conducted training workshops across the wider Arab region, with a particular focus on Syrian journalists covering the ongoing conflict. In a region where the right to information and free expression is too often denied, educating a young generation of media consumers who are aware of the importance of defending these rights is an essential aspect of DCMF’s mission.

This chapter examines how Singapore and Doha display the nation and the world through museums. New museums are on the drawing board in Doha as part of a strategic master plan to use cultural institutions, along with various other tools, to reposition Qatar as a regional, if not global, player. Singapore is also using cultural policies and institutions to solidify its place as a regional, if not global, economic power. Singapore is making museums part of a strategy to attract businesses and create national citizens with an Asian global outlook. This chapter considers how Singapore and Qatar express their respective approaches to cosmopolitanism through cultural heritage and museums such as the Asian Civilizations Museum and the Museum of Islamic Art, respectively.

This chapter analyses Qatar’s dramatic nutrition transition, which has led to an increase in the prevalence of obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) among the different sectors of society. With Qatar’s economic boom, food imports increased and now account for more than 90 per cent of national food consumption. This dependence on imported food can be attributed both to the rising population due to immigration, and to the move from traditional diets to more Westernised meals. Unhealthy, high caloric fast-food is increasingly eaten, as urbanisation from a typically rural or nomadic lifestyle takes place. In order to address this public health crisis through focused policy efforts, ‘Qatar Vision 2030’ was developed as a national strategy for increasing public exercise and modifying diets.

This chapter concludes the book with a short reflection on the determinants and successes and failures of the government responses to “natural unsustainability” to date, and argues that, despite a promising start in some of the Gulf monarchies, in the absence of profound changes in the existing political economies and state-society configurations they stand a meagre chance of survival in the ongoing century of climate change.

This chapter provides a broad analysis of the so-called “natural sustainability complex”, or Qatar’s general context of political economy of natural resources, top decision-makers, and structures and dynamics of environmental and climate change-related governance. Together with Chapter 7, this chapter explores how the multiple natural resource-related pressures have affected Qatar, and how the government is responding to them. The chapter examines the drivers and motives of change and divergence in Qatar’s responses to the challenges of energy insecurity, climate change and environmental unsustainability.

This Chapter examines the Gulf Cooperation Council states in the international climate regime (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC), with a special emphasis on the evolution of the United Arab Emirates’ and Qatar’s perceptions, policies and positions. The chapter tracks the two states’ policy positions from the mid-1990s to demonstrate how they have changed (in the case of Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates since 2009) or remained stable (in the case of Qatar until 2012), and in which ways the shifting domestic agendas and priorities have impacted on these external agendas.

This chapter examines the foreign policies of six key actors in the Persian Gulf in light of middle power rivalries and sectarian tensions. The actors include Iran and Saudi Arabia, which the chapter argues are today perhaps the Middle East’s most significant middle powers, in addition to Turkey of course. There are two other states in the area with aspirations of being middle powers, namely Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, despite their small geographic size and equally small populations.