Generational Change and Political Direction in the GCC Countries

F. Gregory Gause, III
Associate Professor of Political Science
The University of Vermont

The key fact to keep in mind when assessing the issue of generational change and political direction in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council is that we have precious little evidence upon which to draw valid conclusions. The few public opinion surveys that have been published in the scholarly literature pre-date the Gulf War and do not probe the specific political beliefs of their respondents (Farah and Kuroda 1987). Jill Crystal is one of the few academics who have recognized age as an important social and political distinction in the Gulf, but in her recent review of civil society in the Gulf monarchies, she devotes only two paragraphs to its discussion, noting how little attention it has received in the literature (Crystal 1996: 271-72). We do not have an accurate assessment based upon polling data of the political beliefs of younger citizens of the Gulf states. For example, while we can assume that the experience of the 1990-91 Gulf War will be a formative political experience of Gulf citizens who were teenagers at that time, we have no idea how their experiences have been translated into political beliefs. The best we can do is to draw inferences about the beliefs and political dispositions of younger Gulf citizens based upon demographic and educational statistics and sound theoretical assumptions.

The starting point for such an exercise should be a critical examination of generalizations that are made, or could be made, about the "next generation" in Gulf politics. Are younger Gulf citizens more likely to oppose their governments than other citizens? Are they more likely to adopt Islamist political orientations? Are they more likely to engage in violent protest? While we do not know the answers to these questions definitely, we can examine them based on circumstantial evidence and theoretical supposition. The first section of the paper takes up that task.

The second part of the paper examines economic growth and the increase in formal education for Gulf citizens in the past twenty years, and speculates upon the political consequences of an increasingly wealthy, formally educated population. The assumptions of early modernization theory (Lerner 1964, Halpern 1963) that formal education would produce graduates with "modern" political orientations (even if they are not liberal and democratic) have been disproved by events. Educated Gulf Arabs hold political positions across the spectrum. However, it might be possible to draw some conclusions about the way these graduates, with their different political beliefs, approach politics.

The third section of the paper speculates on the problems of generational change in the ruling families of the Gulf states. Some of the states have worked out the process of inter-generational power change; others have tended to pass power within generations and face the daunting task (eventually) of establishing rules for the transfer of power between generations. Succession fights open up the possibility of more serious political challenges to the stability of the regimes.

Something that jumps off the page when reading accounts of political unrest in the Gulf monarchies -- particularly when looking at lists of people arrested for or injured in political activities -- is how young those involved are. The "Voice of Bahrain," the monthly newsletter of the Bahrain Freedom Movement, reported on Bahraini citizens killed or injured in clashes with security forces. Issues published between January 1995 and March 1996 give the ages of 25 Bahrainis killed or injured in such incidents: 21 of them were under 35 years of age. The same issues give the ages of 38 people sentenced by Bahraini courts for politically-inspired crimes: 36 were under the age of 35. Omani opposition sources give ages for 83 of the Omanis detained in the spring of 1994, accused of planning a coup against the government: 56 were under the age of 35 (Abdullah 1995: 25-32). The four Saudis who were arrested in April 1996 for the November 1995 bombing in Riyad of an American military training mission building were all under thirty years of age (al-Hayat, April 23, 1996: 4).

Since the beginning of 1995 one Saudi and one Bahraini have been executed for politically-motivated attacks on state security personnel. The Bahraini, Isa Ahmad Qambar, was 29 years old. ("Bahrain executes opposition activist," UPI on-line, March 25, 1996). The Saudi, Abdallah al-Hudhayf, was 33 years old (al-Hayat, August 13, 1995, pp. 1, 6; press release of the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, London, August 13, 1995). The 1995-96 renewal of unrest in Bahrain was characterized by numerous reports of demonstrations and student strikes in the university and secondary schools. The vast majority of Bahrainis arrested since the renewal of opposition activities are under 35, according to lists compiled by the opposition Bahrain Freedom Movement (obtained via e-mail from Bahrain Freedom Movement).

It would be easy to assume that opposition to Gulf regimes is more prevalent among younger citizens than among other age groups, but that would be a mistake. By no stretch of the imagination have a majority of Gulf citizens between the ages of 20 and 35 participated in public protests against their governments. Judged by the numbers of those arrested (even the higher estimates given by opposition groups), only a small percentage of any age group has taken to the streets to express political grievances. We also know that signers of the various petitions seeking political reform in the Gulf monarchies that have circulated since Desert Storm range across the age spectrum (though we unfortunately lack the biographical data to know the ages of all the signers). One-third of the Islamic activists arrested in Oman in 1994 (whose ages were reported) were 35 years or older. We can neither claim that young Gulf citizens as a whole oppose their governments, nor that they tend to be more oppositional than older age groups.

It should not be surprising that those arrested for "political" crimes and those injured or killed in violent demonstrations fall disproportionately in the younger age groups. Cross-national and time-series research has shown that young males make up a highly disproportionate number of those convicted of violent crime in any society. Biological factors undoubtedly play a large role in explaining this disproportion (Wilson and Herrnstein 1985: especially Chapter 5). Such research confirms common-sense truisms about young males being "hot-headed" and "impetuous". In the Gulf context, we can safely assume that at least some of the young people arrested for violent crimes which we regard as political (such as the destruction of property that has plagued Bahrain) would be doing the same kinds of things even if everyone were satisfied with the political order. It is the context that makes their crimes "political". We can also assume that younger (again, male) opposition activists are more likely than elder opposition activists to participate in physical confrontations with government forces, not because they oppose the government "more" than their elders, but simply because they are young. Again, the association of some younger Gulf citizens with political violence offers very few clues about the political beliefs of an entire generation.

This analysis is not to discount the political importance of events in Bahrain, or arrests in Saudi Arabia and Oman over the past years. Clearly these events are signals that important elements in these societies are willing to take great risks to oppose their governments. Nor is it to deny that many young people are involved in these events and would like to change their political circumstances. It is simply to say that we cannot generalize from them about the political beliefs of an entire age cohort.

But can we generalize from other sources about that age cohort's political beliefs? While theories of age cohort political inclinations have largely been rejected in the study of voting behavior in the United States and Western Europe, there is an important strand of public opinion research that purports to find significant generational differences on political questions. In 1971 Ronald Inglehart found that younger Western Europeans were more concerned about issues related to personal freedoms, self-expression and the quality of life, while their elders were more concerned with material issues of physical and economic security. He hypothesized that the greater attention to what he called "Postmaterialist" values among the young was the result of their socialization experience -- being born and raised in a time of relative economic plenty and physical security (Inglehart 1971). In a 40-country cross-regional study of generational attitudes, Inglehart and his collaborators find that "intergenerational value differences tend to be largest in those countries that have experienced the highest rates of economic growth during the preceding four decades" (Abramson and Inglehart 1995: 133).

While none of the Gulf monarchies were included in the study mentioned above, they certainly fit the category of states in which high rates of economic growth have recently occurred. Following the pattern found in that study, we should expect younger Gulf citizens, raised in an atmosphere of economic security, to value "Postmaterialist" goals like self-expression and political participation more than their elders. These conclusions are consistent with one strain of the rentier state literature which argues that, as economic security becomes guaranteed for citizens, their political concerns turn to what in American politics would be called "values" issues (Delacroix 1980). Some have argued that the rise of Islamic movements in rentier states are evidence that "values" issues have replaced economic issues as the driving force in those countries' politics, though the work generating this conclusion has been focused on Iran's Islamic revolution, not on the Arab side of the Gulf (Najmabadi 1987; Shambayati 1994). The link between rentier status and the rise of Islamic movements remains controversial, given the evident strength of Islamic opposition movements in semi-rentier (Jordan, Egypt) and non-rentier (Turkey) Middle Eastern states.

If the Inglehart thesis is correct in the Gulf monarchies, we can expect younger Gulf citizens to be more likely than their elders to make demands for participation in the political system. However, we cannot know what direction they would take their states if they could participate more effectively in politics. The general point that the demand for participation does not give evidence of the political preferences of those making the demand is borne out by the immediate post-Gulf War experience in the region. In Kuwait, various Islamist groups, the Chamber of Commerce, prominent independent notables and "liberals" all united to demand a restoration of the 1962 constitution, despite their differences on policy issues. In Saudi Arabia, both "Islamist" and "liberal" petitions called for the establishment of a majlis al-shura. In Bahrain Sunni and Shi'i Islamic activists joined with liberals and nationalists in petitions calling for the restoration of an elected parliament (Gause 1994: Chapter 4).

One could examine the potential political effects of generational change in the Gulf from an opposing theoretical starting point, and come to many of the same conclusions that the Inglehart thesis generates. While the younger generation has certainly been raised in an atmosphere of economic security, they are entering the job market at a time when the Gulf monarchies are being forced, by a flat oil market and demographic pressures, to scale back the welfare states built in the 1970's. No longer can the public sector automatically absorb all the citizen job seekers in these states. The private sector continues to rely primarily on foreign labor, which is both less expensive and more malleable than citizen labor. Subsidies on goods and services are being cut back. The Gulf states are not poor, but it is becoming more difficult for younger citizens to enjoy the "good life" of the previous two decades in them.

If we assume that the younger generation has come to regard the economic benefits supplied by the state over the last 25 years, including most importantly guaranteed employment, as "rights" of citizens rather than as "gifts" from the rulers, it follows that any reduction in those "rights" would lead to demands for political redress. The most notable theoretical basis for such an assumption is Gurr's "relative deprivation" thesis in Why Men Rebel, an ominous and probably overstated title in terms of the Gulf monarchies (Gurr 1970). The now common linking of unemployment in Bahrain with the sustained political unrest there reflects this kind of argument.

The problem with this line of thought is that its starting point -- the belief among younger Gulf citizens that economic well-being is a right of citizenship, not the reward for hard work -- is an assumption, not an established fact. The petitions circulated in the Gulf monarchies during and after the Gulf War did not express this view. They concentrated primarily upon legal, political and cultural issues. Economic issues tended to be mentioned in terms of corruption (though not usually phrased as such), fairness in distribution of state revenues and, in Islamist group petitions, in condemnation of banking systems based upon interest. The assertion of a "right" to a job or a certain standard of living was not mentioned.

It is certainly true that younger Gulf citizens see state employment as preferable to private sector employment. Almost all of them who are in the workforce work for the state, as do their fathers and older brothers. A survey of UAE university graduates conducted by a local English-language newspaper in 1996 found an overwhelming majority preferred a state job to one in the private sector, because the salaries and benefits are higher and the work is easier (Gulf News, May 1, 1996, quoted in UAE Ministry of Information's daily news digest, on-line). However, a preference for state employment is different than belief that a government job is a "right". It is possible, and would be logical, that such a belief is widespread among younger Gulf citizens, but there is no direct empirical evidence that it is.

As in the Inglehart argument, this "relative economic deprivation" thesis, if true, would lead us to believe that younger Gulf citizens will demand a greater say in their countries' politics than previous generations, if only to safeguard for themselves the economic benefits those generations have enjoyed. But it gives us no guidance as to the content of that participation. Any ideological platform can promise better economic days ahead; none can claim an exclusive ability to produce the economic goods. We can make no assumption based upon this thesis about which ideological appeal will be most effective at gaining the support of younger Gulf citizens concerned about their economic welfare.

From two very different theoretical perspectives, we have reasoned to the proposition that the younger generation of Gulf citizens will be more likely to demand a greater role in politics than previous generations have, but we cannot say what political beliefs they are likely to bring with them into the political arena. But we might be able to say something about how they will formulate their demands, based upon the rapid growth of formal education in all the Gulf monarchies.

It is an incontestable fact that a greater percentage of the younger generation of Gulf citizens has received formal education than in any previous generation in the history of Arabia. Saudi Arabia and Oman offer the most dramatic evidence of changes in educational levels over the past few decades. In 1960 only 7% of Saudi children of primary or secondary school age were enrolled in schools; in 1988 the figure was 63%. In 1970 the same figure for Oman was 3%, in 1988 it was 75%. In the smaller Gulf states, higher percentages of school-age children had been enrolled in schools earlier in their history, but they too showed increases in the 1970's and 1980's (UNESCO 1975, 1991: Table 3.2). Literacy rates in the UAE have risen from 24% for males in 1970 to 90% in the 1990's (Abdallah et al. 1995: 70). In 1969/70, 808 Saudi students graduated from universities, all abroad. In 1985/86, 15,301 Saudi students graduated from universities with a bachelor's degree or a higher degree (Al-Farsy 1990: 257). The number of students at the UAE University at al-'Ain has grown from 502 in 1977-78 to 12,000 in 1994-95 (Abdallah et al. 1995: 70). Similarly large increases in the number of college graduates and college students per year have been recorded in the other states (UNESCO 1991: Table 3.10).

It is important to emphasize once again that the fact of higher education cannot be used as an indicator of political beliefs. Everyone who has had any experience in the Gulf has met university graduates, products of both local and foreign institutions, whose beliefs fall across a broad political spectrum, from Western-style liberal through salafi-Wahhabi and everywhere in between. But we can make a few common-sense assumptions about what formal education might mean for how the new generation will conduct its political activity.

High-school and college graduates can read and write, and so have the capacity to be better informed about political issues in the country at large and to express themselves on those issues. They have developed personal networks that cut across family and tribal lines, and can draw on those contacts for mobilizing people on political issues. They have at least been exposed to critical approaches for analyzing political issues, if not in the classroom then outside it, among their peers. They have certainly been taught in the state curricula to take a country-wide, as opposed to a tribal or clan, view of their political allegiance and responsibilities, even if these curricula have not encouraged thoughts of direct political participation. Islamist groups, frequently identified as "traditional" by Westerners, have been as affected by these changes as more liberal and secular political groupings, in terms of how they are organized, how they pose their issues, and how they address the general public.

The impact of the educational changes in these countries is evident in the prominent role petitions have played as a means of expressing demands for a greater role in decision-making since the Gulf crisis. Petitions require literate writers who think in terms of general issues and general responses to them. In framing their requests in general policy terms, as opposed to personal patronage terms, they assume the existence of a literate audience, both in the ruling elite and among the public, that is responsive to that kind of appeal, that sees policy in a more rational-bureaucratic than "traditional" light. Finally, the signatures on the petitions indicate that these activists have built networks that gather people together on functional and ideological, as opposed to family and tribal, lines. At least some of that networking was done in schools.

There is some anecdotal evidence that the education process is having the political effects hypothesized above. Elections to the National Union of Kuwaiti students became very politicized in the 1970's, with nationalist and Islamist slates contending. The Graduates Society in Kuwait, founded in 1964 by a number of recent university graduates, has developed into a center of political activity. In the post-occupation period the Society actively pushed for the restoration of parliamentary life, though it is difficult to draw conclusions about generational political inclinations from the activities of the Graduates Society, since its membership is open to all Kuwaiti university graduates (Ghabra 1991: 210; Ghabra 1995: Chapter 3; Gause 1994: 92-93). A recent study of civil society in the UAE calls the National Union of Emirates Students, founded in 1981, "one of the most active and most present organizations, not simply on the university level but on the level of society as a whole." National issues are discussed at its general conferences. On a recent national day, the Union issued a communique calling for the establishment of a permanent Federal constitution and reaffirming the importance of popular participation in politics. (Abdallah et al.: 75, 77). One area where more research might shed new light on generational political beliefs in the Gulf is student politics.

We cannot assume that the younger generation, product of the immense investment made in education by the Gulf monarchies over the past 25 years, will as a result of that education have uniform political beliefs. We can, however, surmise that in general their experience with formal education will lead them to be more likely than their elders to: a) present their political beliefs in written form to the general public; b) phrase their demands in terms of country-wide policy issues, not personal or group patronage demands; and c) form political coalitions that cut across tribal, clan, sectarian and regional lines. They will appropriate the rhetoric of the rulers regarding the centrality of the state in the political loyalties of citizens and the devotion of the government to the welfare of the citizens (much of which they learned in school), to hold the leaders accountable for their performances. But they will not be united on where they want the leaders to lead.

What was true of the younger generation of Gulf citizens as a whole is true in particular of the younger members of the ruling families: we have no sound basis upon which to draw conclusions about their political beliefs. In Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, where the ruling families are numerically larger than in the other states, we can assume that the younger princes' beliefs fall across the political spectrum, with one potential difference. Anecdotal evidence (personal contacts with ruling family members; conversations with others who have such contacts) yields the impression that the younger generation of Gulf ruling family members have no doubts about their right to rule. They are no so imbued with "modern" political notions that hereditary rule seems anachronistic to them. Rather, on the whole they give the impression of seeing rulership as "the family business" in which they have proprietary rights, and of looking forward to taking leading roles in the "firm."

We have one example of a member of the younger generation of Gulf rulers coming to power recently -- Amir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar, who took power from his father in a palace coup in June 1995. The new amir is 45 years old, older than the definition we have been using for the younger generation in this paper, but the youngest of the GCC heads of state. (Sultan Qabus is only 54, but has been a head of state for 26 years.) He has certainly presented himself as a different kind of leader. He talks about his support for democracy, and is organizing municipal elections for the fall of 1997, the first contested elections in Qatari history (see his interview with Robin Wright, "Sheik Hamad ibn Kalifa al Thani: Taking the Lead -- and the Heat -- for Political Reform in Qatar," Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1997). However, he has not committed himself to converting Qatar's appointed consultative council into an elected body, or to giving it real legislative powers. His economic policies, aimed at attracting more foreign investment into Qatar's oil and gas industry and at promoting a greater role for the Qatari private sector in the local economy, are no different from those of the other GCC states.

While Qatar has been the focus of Gulf attention on the issue of generational change in the leadership ranks recently, it has had no problem with the process of generational change at the top. Along with Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, Qatar has seen the institutionalization of father-son succession to the amirship. Generational change is thus built into the system. It is in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, where succession moves laterally within a generation (among cousins in Kuwait; among brothers in Saudi Arabia), that generational change could raise the most troubling issues. The 1992 Saudi Basic Law decrees that rulership (al-hukm) belongs to the sons of King Abd al-Aziz and to their sons, recognizing that generational change at the top will come sooner or later. In neither case, however, has the mechanism for moving the succession to the next generation been established. With so many potential leaders in the next generation, the competition for establishing that mechanism could lead to serious disputes within the Al Sabah and Al Sa'ud families.

The move to the next generation is some time off in both cases, by which point the contenders for power will no longer be "young," by any definition. The process of generational change at the top, however, bears watching, for open splits within the ruling families could be the precursor to large-scale political changes in general. Intra-family competitions could lead the various factions to look out to their larger societies for support, thus widening the arena of political competition and legitimating more organized political activity in society as a whole. The results of such a process are impossible to predict. They could lead to institutionalizing participatory institutions, or blow up in political turmoil. But the process of generational change at the top could, if accompanied by serious competition among family members, profoundly affect the course of politics in those countries.

The point I emphasized at the outset of this paper bears repeating: We have very little evidence upon which to draw conclusions about the political beliefs and inclinations of the younger generation of Gulf citizens. The best we can do is draw upon some fragmentary and anecdotal evidence, and extrapolate from that based on sound theories and common sense. The two most important conclusions I take from that process of extrapolation are: 1) Avoid simplistic generational generalizations. Since we do not have the data, we cannot say that younger Gulf citizens are more attracted to Islamic ideologies than their elders, or that they are more likely to oppose their governments, or that because they are better educated they will have different political beliefs. We must be very cautious, given our limited knowledge, about concluding anything about the political inclinations of an entire generation; and 2) Appreciate that, whatever their political platform, younger Gulf citizens are likely to more demanding of the political system than their elders. Raised in a period of plenty, they will likely expect their governments to maintain a certain standard of living for citizens (though again, we have no definitive survey data to support this supposition). Better educated (in a formal sense) and more aware of the world, they will likely demand a greater role in political decision-making.

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