The practice of youth empowerment in Qatar: design, implementation and outcomes for state capacity building

Abstract

Following the tremulous events of the Arab Spring, Gulf states became unnerved by the prospects of instability triggered by disenfranchised youthful populations. This triggered the need to further develop and implement youth empowerment programmes and policies to engage the youth and to prevent a similar challenge to the political status quo in the Gulf. In Qatar, the state has invested substantially in a variety of youth empowerment programmes and policies which were intended to align the interests of the youth with those of the state. This dissertation aimed at studying and evaluating the outcomes of youth empowerment policies and programmes in Qatar through the lens of Lukes’ concept of power and by applying Discourse Analysis. The research focused on three contextual constraints to build the theoretical framework, namely social, economic and political constraints. The field research involved conducting 69 semi-structured interviews with Qatari youth, senior officials and activists. Thereafter, it undertook a thematic analysis of those semi-structured interviews. A central conclusion of the research is that while youth empowerment is promoted as an instrument of change and transformation for the youth, it often fails to transform generational power relations because youth empowerment is often deployed as a tool of state power that serve and reinforce power relations. However, this does not preclude the possibility of developing youth empowerment programmes that are inclusive for the youth and which provide them with opportunities to express their voice, but which are not necessarily incompatible with the goals of the state. Such inclusive programmes can be developed by focusing on capacity building, encouraging youth engagement in civic life as well as in political dialogue and public affairs. The thesis contributes to the youth empowerment literature by building on the specialist field of inquiry related to youth challenges in cases of extreme economic rentierism and affluence, especially apathy, disenfranchisement, and marginalisation. The study also evaluates the role of youth empowerment programmes as tools of normalizing standards and expectations of good citizenship and analyses their underlying power relations in an attempt to assist in the future potential design of a more inclusive and youth-centric empowerment policies.