Kuwait after May 2024: End of (semi-)democratic exceptionalism in the Gulf?
- The authoritarian turn in Kuwait following the dissolution of the National Assembly in May 2024 has not led to hastened economic diversification, national rebranding, social liberalisation or other initiatives typical of Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the UAE.
- Kuwaiti exceptionalism thrives in the form of slower diversification, more inward-looking planning, keeping the older generations in power and strong populist-nativist rhetoric.
- Part of the ongoing process of power consolidation in Kuwait is a massive citizenship revocation campaign that disproportionately affects women who formerly had foreign citizenship
- An EU policy towards Kuwait that combines clear support for elements of its development agenda, such as raising the quality of education, along with a critique of its human rights violations, especially the citizenship revocation campaign, can help revive a dormant diplomatic relationship.
Kuwait has long featured a more representative governance structure than its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members. However, in his “re-imagining” of the country’s political system, the country’s emir took an authoritarian turn in May 2024 by suspending the National Assembly and parts of the constitution. The paper argues that this largely put an end to Kuwait’s exceptionalism as a semi-democratic system, bringing it more in line with the rest of the GCC. However, Kuwait remains unique in many perspectives and has so far not copied wholesale the Saudi, Emirati and Qatari authoritarian development models. Besides maintaining the purest form of rentierism and the prominence of older generations of the political elite, Kuwait’s particular path of development relies on a harsh nativist-populist rhetoric that has led to a wide citizenship revocation campaign, mostly targeting women and other vulnerable segments of society. Kuwait’s authoritarian turn represents a particular challenge to the European Union’s rush to build relations with the GCC states and offers a litmus test of the EU’s ability to pursue its own political interests while staying true to its values.
