Changed Political Attitudes in the Middle East

Abstract

The groundswell of interest in Middle Eastern public opinion that arose from debates over the 'third wave' of democracy and the 'clash of civilizations' as well as from September 11 spawned numerous surveys from 2000 on. However, surveys from the Middle East, particularly longitudinal ones, are largely absent from earlier decades and limit ability to contextualize current findings. Drawing on three surveys from the 1990s, this article examines changes in Kuwaiti citizens' attitudes toward democracy and related issues in the years following the Gulf War of 1991. This serves as a baseline for current research not only in Kuwait but also in other nations, taking account of differences. Findings show that from 1994 to 1998, Kuwaitis increased their preference for democracy, but not for women's rights or western media. They developed more affinity for the Arab world, particularly the Gulf Coast countries. Regarding religious beliefs and practices, there was an increasing desire to separate religion from the public sphere while remaining religious privately. These trends were directional rather than cyclical or fluctuating, and they held across population subgroups.The 1990s was a decade of dramatic social change in Kuwait, a small but strategically important nation in the Middle East. It began with the 1990-1 invasion, occupation and then liberation from Iraqi military forces; it ended in 1999 with an Amiri decree granting women full political rights.

Understanding Symbolic Boundaries and Improving Quantitative Analysis of Social Exclusion by Improving the Operationalization of Boundary Work

“…Another article that contributes to the measurement of boundary strength is that of Meyer et al (), which measures public and private boundaries on a national level in Kuwait as they relate to the effect of religious exclusion on democratization. Using a repeated cross‐sectional data set for 1994, 1996 and 1998 (304), Meyer and her collaborators attempt to measure boundary change across these three periods by focusing on the change in mean responses between each period that was statistically significant (306).…”

Arabs Want Democracy, but What Kind?

“…Cross-time analyses in Arab countries are rare (for exceptions see e.g. Meyer, Rizzo, & Ali, 2007;Moaddel, 2010;Moaddel & Abdul-Latif, 2007). It would nevertheless be interesting to examine support for democracy across time.…”

Religion and Comparative Political Sociology

“…While these data, combined with macro‐level analysis, seem to have lain to rest any controversy surrounding the compatibility of Islam with democracy, they have also allowed for the initiation of fresh debates; many are now claiming that Muslims hold fundamentally inegalitarian attitudes about gender and sexuality (Inglehart and Norris 2003; Meyer, Rizzo, & Ali 2007; Norris and Inglehart 2002, 2004). Fish (2002) contends that the democracy gap in Islamic countries is because of the unequal treatment of women.…”