Bedouins into Bourgeois: Remaking Citizens for Globalization 1107175720, 9781107175723

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globalization? What outcomes are they achieving, and why? Bedouins into Bourgeois investigates an ambitious state-led social engineering campaign entrepreneurial, market-friendly, patriotic, and civic-minded citizens, who were still loyal to the regime. Extensive ethnography – including interviews with a ruling monarch – reveals the rulers’ reasoning and goals for social engineering. Through surveys and experiments, social engineering outcomes are examined, as well as the reasons for these outcomes. While the campaign successfully increased patriotism and civic spirit, it also led to heightened entitlement – greater support for the right to a government job and lessened interest in the private sector – and a rise in “entitled patriots.” This fascinating study illustrates how social engineering strategies that use nationalism to motivate citizens can have paradoxical effects, increasing patriotism but unexpectedly discouraging or “crowding out” development-friendly mind-sets. Calvert W. Jones focuses on new approaches to citizen-building in the context of globalization, with emphasis on the Middle East. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University and holds Masters’ degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Cambridge (where she won a Gates scholarship). Earlier published research focuses on international security, non-state networks, and the social and organizational drivers of innovation. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Perspectives on Politics, International Security, and International Studies Quarterly, and has been cited in Science and The New Yorker.

Cover image: Dubai skyline from the desert; franckreporter/Getty Images

Bedouins into Bourgeois

in the United Arab Emirates, where leaders aimed to encourage more

Jones

How are state leaders adapting their citizen-building strategies for

Bedouins into Bourgeois Remaking Citizens for Globalization Calvert W. Jones

Bedouins into Bourgeois

How are state leaders adapting their citizen-building strategies for globalization? What outcomes are they achieving, and why? Bedouins into Bourgeois investigates an ambitious state-led social engineering campaign in the United Arab Emirates, where leaders aimed to encourage more entrepreneurial, market-friendly, patriotic, and civicminded citizens. Extensive ethnography – including interviews with a ruling monarch – reveals the rulers’ reasoning and goals for social engineering. Through surveys and experiments, social engineering outcomes are examined, as well as the reasons for these outcomes, with surprising results. This fascinating study illustrates how social engineering strategies that use nationalism to motivate citizens can have paradoxical effects, increasing patriotism but unexpectedly discouraging or “crowding out” development-friendly mind-sets. Calvert W. Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. She focuses on new approaches to citizen-building within a context of globalization and the nature of citizens’ economic, social, and political engagement, with emphasis on the Middle East. She earned her Ph.D. in political science from Yale University and holds masters’ degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in information management and the University of Cambridge in international relations.

Bedouins into Bourgeois Remaking Citizens for Globalization

CALVERT W. JONES University of Maryland, College Park

University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 4843/24, 2nd Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, Delhi – 110002, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107175723 doi: 10.1017/9781316800010 © Calvert W. Jones 2017 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2017 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. isbn 978-1-107-17572-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration

page vi ix

Introduction

1

1

Rethinking the Making of Citizens

12

2 3

Seeing Like a Sheikh Enlightenment under Autocracy

37 68

4

Symbolism, Spectacle, and the Shaping of the Post-Petroleum Citizen From Enlightenment to Entitlement: Intended and Unintended Outcomes of Social Engineering

128

Nationalism as Self-Esteem Boosting: Explaining the Paradox of the Entitled Patriot Conclusion

164 192

5 6 7

98

Appendix A Ethnography, Interviews, and Focus Groups

223

Appendix B Survey Evidence References

225 235

Index

260

v

Acknowledgments

This book had its origins in a trip to Dubai in the summer of 2009, where I was conducting preliminary research for my dissertation at Yale University on the making of citizens in the contemporary era, focusing on shifting goals, strategies, and outcomes. Over that summer, I also visited and made good friends in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, but at that time it was chiefly the UAE that fascinated me, with its trailblazing efforts in education, citizen-building, and other areas. I knew we could learn a lot from this under-researched country’s efforts at proglobalization social engineering, both pros and cons, and I couldn’t wait to get started on this book. As ever, I am grateful for the help and support of a great many people. The first thanks must go to my outstanding and engaged Yale dissertation committee – Ellen Lust, James Scott, and Thad Dunning. They provided terrific, multifaceted guidance, and continuously pushed me to make this work as strong as possible. I am also extraordinarily grateful to Rogers Smith, Michael Herb, and Marc Lynch for patiently reading and commenting on the manuscript in its early stages at a 2013 book development workshop organized by the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), a terrific scholarly network and resource. They provided superb advice on how to expand the dissertation into a book manuscript. I thank Jillian Schwedler, Frances Rosenbluth, Adria Lawrence, Keith Darden, and Emily Beaulieu as well for their valuable suggestions. In the UAE, I am extremely grateful to the Al Qasimi Foundation in Ras Al Khaimah, the UAE’s northernmost emirate. In 2010, I won one of the Foundation’s doctoral research grants, providing financial and logistical vi

Acknowledgments

vii

support for doctoral students for up to twelve months of in-country fieldwork. I lived in Ras Al Khaimah for the 2010–2011 academic year, while conducting research there and elsewhere in the UAE, and I would return several times for follow-up fieldwork between 2011 and 2014. Natasha Ridge, the Foundation’s executive director, is that rare scholar who combines theoretical boldness of vision with a practitioner’s sharp sense of what works and what doesn’t. We spent countless hours discussing Arab education reform, inter- and intra-emirate politics, and larger issues of citizen-building, as well as brainstorming new research ideas. She provided excellent suggestions and insights for this book, and I will be forever grateful to her as a friend, advisor, and colleague. Samar Farah and Rania Turk also contributed excellent insights. Ghadah Al Kadri translated my survey and accompanied me to many schools, as did Hanadi Mohammed. For their support, I thank a number of other Foundation staff members, including Mish Ebrahim, Susan Kippels, Jessica Andrews, Soha Shami, Caitrin Mullan, Sahar ElAsad, Charlotte Lamptey, Suqrat bin Bisher, Elena Raymunda Laspoña, Shaju Maelepuram, Saji George, and Mohammed Haneefa. Friendly people at a variety of additional institutions provided invaluable support for this research. In the UAE, I would like to thank staff at the Institute for Applied Technology, Abu Dhabi Education Council, Dubai Knowledge and Human Development Authority, Emirates Foundation, Takatof, Masdar City, NYU-Abu Dhabi, Zayed University, UAE University, the American University of Sharjah, the former Dubai School of Government, RAK English Speaking School, RAK Academy, and the federal Ministry of Education and associated Education Zones, among other institutions. In Jordan, I thank administrators and staff at the Queen Rania Foundation, especially Nafez Haddak and Farah Jadallah, who provided logistical support for additional fieldwork there. In the United States, I thank the Yale University MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies for financial support. While working on this book, I had the opportunity to present parts of the research at conferences, workshops, and other events. For their advice and support, I am grateful to colleagues at the University of MarylandCollege Park and CUNY-City College. Thanks also go to conference and workshop participants who provided key insights for this book at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), the Gulf Comparative Education Society (GCES),

viii

Acknowledgments

and the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). I am especially grateful to anonymous reviewers at Cambridge University Press. Most of all, I thank my parents and my husband for their outstanding support, and both the feline (Lili, Marlene) and canine (Kita, Keiko) members of our extended family. Lili deserves special thanks for her indefatigable support, as she sat near the computer for hours on end overseeing each chapter.

Note on Transliteration

In transliterating Arabic into English, I generally followed the system used by the International Journal of Middle East Studies, which can be found on the journal’s website. Exceptions included Arabic place names and personal names that are well known to English-speaking audiences by a certain transliteration (e.g., Egypt’s Nasser and Faisal I of Iraq). In addition, where Arabic words have common English transliterations in the UAE, as written in public newspapers, building names, and street signs, I typically used those better-known transliterations (e.g., “sheikh” instead of “shaykh”). Finally, for personal names and titles, I used the transliteration that the individual appeared to favor (as written on a business card, for example).

ix

Introduction

The making of citizens is an evolving challenge. Compared to times past, we live in a more mature international system, one in which national identities are largely given, war is less common, and the global economy is significantly more competitive. It is less likely that citizens will have to fight for their countries en masse on the battlefield, and more likely that they will have to do so in market economies. Yet much of our knowledge about the making of citizens does not address the challenge of cultivating citizens for globalized market eras – what I call the making of citizens, 2.0. This is so despite rapidly growing real-world interest in these issues. That gap in our knowledge provides the primary rationale for this book. In it, I offer a detailed empirical study of how state leaders are adapting their citizen-building strategies to fit contemporary global realities. But the book isn’t just about the why and the how of contemporary citizen-building; it’s also about the outcomes that leaders are achieving in their efforts to reshape citizens, and the reasons for those outcomes. What kinds of citizens do state leaders want to cultivate, and what kinds of citizens are they actually getting as they experiment with differing strategies? And why? What explains the success and failure of such efforts at “pro-globalization,” and often simultaneously “pro-market,” social engineering efforts? The book draws from experiences from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but it addresses questions and lends insights into challenges that are increasingly universal. Why the UAE? As I will discuss in Chapter 1, although the UAE is in some ways unusual, it has much to offer comparative social scientists. It is a valuable microcosm for the making of citizens, 2.0, where the issues at stake are cast into sharp relief. Having moved through 1

2

Introduction

the early stages of state-building after its founding in 1971 – during which time its leaders understandably focused on “first-order” needs such as instilling a national identity and providing for citizens’ basic welfare – it now confronts widely shared “second-order” citizen-building challenges. Indeed, like many state leaders, those in the UAE are worried about their country’s economic competitiveness and the size of its welfare state. These pressures are felt keenly as oil reserves run down, the prospect of a postpetroleum age grows ever more real, and public-sector employment is harder to sustain. In response, UAE leaders have undertaken a number of ambitious social engineering initiatives to adapt citizens to these new realities. What are they achieving? And what can we learn from their efforts to re-engineer and better motivate citizens for a globalized market era?

findings This book tells the story of an ambitious state-led social engineering project. Like the nineteenth-century Parisian elites in Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen, who sought to create French citizens out of peasants with a limited sense of national identity, the UAE’s leaders hope to convert their citizens – many of whom are of Bedouin descent – into a new kind of citizen, one who is more modern in the eyes of rulers, more globalization-ready, and better prepared for a post-petroleum era. It is a vision of the citizen as loyal entrepreneurial bourgeois – innovative, achievement-oriented, conscientious, civil, tolerant, hard-working, risktaking, business-starting, community-serving, and patriotic, one who embodies the classic “bourgeois virtues,” within authoritarian constraints. Put another way, ruling elites aim to fashion the young into more self-reliant, achievement-oriented adults who will demand less from the state in terms of social welfare, while showing greater willingness to volunteer in their communities and contribute to market-driven economies. In short, they want more entrepreneurial citizens, broadly conceived.1 Not surprisingly, they also hope to maintain the authoritarian status quo, preserving citizens’ loyalty. From the perspective of leaders, it is a major challenge – their very own “king’s dilemma” (Huntington 1968) – and it is made even trickier by the 1

Citizenship theorists have also used terms such as “neoliberal” and “pro-market” to capture similar, if somewhat narrower, visions of the citizen (Kymlicka and Norman 1994).

Findings

3

rentier character of the UAE, as I will show in Chapter 2. To what extent can leaders fashion more entrepreneurial citizens? The neoliberal structural changes often suggested to “incentivize” the growth of such citizens – like cutting public-sector jobs and salaries, and taking away benefits – are viewed as politically risky, as they are everywhere, and even more so in the wake of the Arab uprisings. Such reforms would also cause significant social strain, as they already have in places forced to undertake them, notably Russia in the 1990s and contemporary Greece. Under these constraints, UAE leaders have opted for a “softer” social engineering approach. Influenced by their own experiences living and studying in the West, this strategy focuses on shaping hearts and minds from a young age, encouraging and teaching citizens to be more entrepreneurial rather than forcing them into these roles through structural changes. Thus, rather than play with fire at the structural level, ruling elites prefer to focus on reshaping the person, the actor, the agent operating within that structure – the citizen. As a result, the social engineering campaign is, at its core, an intrinsically political effort to reshape citizens and their perceptions of the social contract in ways that are ultimately familiar to scholars of nationalism and identity formation. To mold citizens along these new and futuristic lines, leaders have turned to education reform, public symbolism, spectacle, and other timehonored mechanisms of state-led social engineering. In some provocative ways, these recall efforts to mold the New Soviet Man in the former Soviet Union, yet in different ideological directions. On the one hand, state initiatives seek to engineer a “revolution from above,” a particular vision of enlightenment embraced by UAE leaders. Such social engineering initiatives aim to expand knowledge, promote individuality, and foster creativity and critical thinking, precisely in the pro-globalization, outward-oriented ways that many critics both inside and outside of the region have long recommended. Indeed, these goals embody important liberal ideals of character (Macedo 1990). As I show in Chapter 3, although these initiatives have their limits in an authoritarian context, ruling elites are nevertheless paying more than mere lip service to the idea of nurturing a “creative Arab renaissance” (UNDP 2003, IV), thus challenging stereotypes about authoritarian social engineering. Moreover, to help bring about these changes, UAE leaders have enlisted top global talent, displaying a determination to learn from others in the quest for globalizationready citizens rivaling that of Japan’s Meiji-era reformers, who famously sought to modernize Japan in the late nineteenth century.

4

Introduction

Yet, at the same time, leaders hope to maintain control over their enlightenment by influencing not only “minds” but also “hearts” – instilling not just knowledge and skills but attitudes and values in line with a future that is at once globalized, liberal, and authoritarian. As I show in Chapter 4, official symbolism and propaganda, glittering state-sponsored spectacles, and new civics curricula promote not only liberal but also neoliberal ideals of character. These cast work as personally fulfilling, celebrate business initiative, promote a civic spirit through volunteering and tolerance, and valorize self-reliance, while avoiding any mention of civil liberties. Citizens must have the right frames of mind to thrive and compete, leaders believe, a willingness to contribute to economic and social development as well the capability – the software, not just the hardware. In the international community, these kinds of efforts to build a “new Arab citizen,” one who is better educated and equipped to compete in the global economy – and, so the thinking goes, less susceptible to radicalism – have been heralded as a way forward for the troubled region (UNDP 2003; World Bank 2007; Nasr 2009; Faour and Muasher 2011).2 And perhaps they are. However political systems evolve, there is very little doubt that the Middle East needs opportunities, inclusiveness, and jobs, especially for its dramatically growing youth population, more than a quarter of whom are unemployed. In addition to top-level political and economic reform, the region may well need a stronger “knowledge society” (UNDP 2003) marked by greater achievement motivation, productive risk-taking, and civic responsibility, supported by education systems emphasizing creativity and problem-solving over rote memorization. This is not to “blame” or “essentialize” culture or society; it is to recognize significant obstacles to human flourishing that have a variety of causes, and seek to address them despite the persistence of authoritarianism, oil rents, and other contributing factors. In the final chapter, I take up the deeper question of citizen-building in “imperfect” contexts. The bottom line is that social engineering aimed at positive human flourishing is anywhere – and even in authoritarian conditions – a dream worth investigating. As E.H. Carr (1939, 4) wrote about the role of utopianism, 2

For more critical perspectives, see Mazawi and Sultana (2010) and Abi-Mershed (2010) on education in the Middle East as a “battleground” for conflicting geopolitical projects. As Fida Adely (2012, 87) has noted, in much of the contemporary Middle East, “proper education is considered critical to preventing religious extremism among young people over religious public spaces, religious teaching, and preaching in mosques and in Islamic centers.” Alterman (2009) also provides a useful review of Nasr (2009).

Findings

5

“The wish is father to the thought.” In this book, I move from the wish to the thought, investigating both the opportunities and the risks presented by such “pro-globalization” social engineering in the largely authoritarian Middle East. No state can completely control society. But neither can society completely escape the attention and control of the state. The outcomes of state-led social engineering are thus inherently uncertain. They may be, and probably are often, mixed, falling somewhere between “success” and “failure” from the state’s perspective. Understanding them requires an approach that can accommodate nuance and complexity. In Chapter 1, I develop an updated conceptual framework for the study of state-led social engineering and the making of citizens, which disaggregates national, civil, political, and economic dimensions of the state–citizen relationship. That framework structures the investigation of both social engineering goals and outcomes, allowing in-depth treatments of the type of citizen leaders wish to cultivate and the type of citizen they are actually cultivating. And what kind of citizen are they actually cultivating? What I find in the UAE case is that shaping citizens for a globalized market era is a complex business. On the one hand, and as shown in Chapter 5, I find evidence that such social engineering has increased patriotism, the willingness to volunteer, and tolerance, and is thus succeeding in some measures of the national and civil dimensions. Moreover, there is no evidence of greater demands for civil liberties. These outcomes are therefore well aligned with ruling elites’ goals for the making of citizens, 2.0. Indeed, increasing tolerance via social engineering is likely to be seen as especially impressive. On the other hand, I find evidence that social engineering is failing and even backfiring in the political and economic dimensions, heightening a counter-productive culture of entitlement by intensifying young citizens’ belief in their right to a government job, dampening their entrepreneurial spirit, and triggering interest in political participation for self but not others. Overall, the results point to the formation of citizens who are highly nationalistic, yet also highly entitled – what I call entitled patriots. In other words, the “products” of such pro-market, pro-globalization social engineering love their country more, but paradoxically, they are also less willing to make sacrifices for the sake of its development. Love of country is more complicated than it appears. Why did this happen, and what can we learn from these results? Making citizens more “entrepreneurial” is obviously a delicate matter, having attracted only limited

6

Introduction

research that might tell us more about possible unintended consequences. In Chapter 6, I show that standard explanations for success and failure in state-led social engineering do not adequately explain the paradox of the entitled patriot. The main reason is that they are too broad-brushed. For example, it is now a truism to observe that elite planners are unlikely to succeed in their efforts to mold society by design because of a certain inherent hubris and lack of local knowledge, an argument put forth most famously in political science by James Scott (1998). Yet this perspective does not explain why UAE social engineers should succeed in some aspects of social engineering, yet fail – and also trigger unintended consequences – in others. It does not explain the paradox of the entitled patriot. Likewise, theory surrounding the “king’s dilemma” is also unsatisfactory, since it does not predict the rise of entitled patriots, instead emphasizing the emergence of liberal, democratic citizens as an accidental by-product of authoritarian modernization. I offer an alternative explanation, rooted in the complex role of nationalism as a citizen motivator and its potential to trigger “crowding out” effects. Nationalism is typically believed to be a strong motivator for citizens in times of war and peace alike. Yet my evidence suggests an important twist on the motivational power of nationalism, depending on the way nationalism is understood and put to use. Like many citizenbuilders, those in the UAE have sought to use nationalism to motivate citizens to take up new and more challenging roles. Displaying what I call a new paternalism, they believe that citizens – if they are going to look beyond easy government jobs, compete successfully in the country’s private sector, start new businesses, solve social problems, volunteer in their communities, and otherwise take up new and more challenging citizenship roles – need to believe more in themselves, as well as their nation. As a result, the social engineering campaign is full of a form of nationalism that is essentially self-esteem boosting, reminding citizens to love and be proud of their country, its rulers, and ultimately themselves. As I show in Chapter 6, although leaders believe such “feel good” nationalism will excite youth and motivate them to contribute, the results for citizen-formation are complex. The strategy does excite citizens, I find, but it does not truly motivate them in the way rulers envisioned. It is thus the strategy used to motivate citizens – not a blanket lack of local knowledge, the inevitable effects of the rentier state, or the unavoidable consequences of authoritarian modernization – that appears responsible for social engineering outcomes. By flooding their campaign with this type of

Contributions

7

“nationalism-lite,” social engineers are succeeding in making citizens more proud and more nationalistic, yet in ways that are ultimately insubstantial and even counterproductive. Indeed, I find that boosting pride in citizens and their nation is unintentionally intensifying entitlement attitudes, “crowding out” development-friendly mindsets. Such “crowding out” effects on achievement motivation, productive risk-taking, and other development-friendly attitudes are aligned with decades of social science research on the “hidden costs” of praise and other external incentives but have not been linked to broader state efforts to shape and motivate the citizen. Can nationalism be used to motivate citizens more effectively within conditions of globalization, or is nationalism itself fundamentally at odds with those conditions? Is it fair or appropriate to speak of “citizenbuilding” under authoritarian, rentier, or otherwise problematic political conditions? And what are the broader implications for the making of citizens, 2.0 – the question of how to build engaged citizens in an era in which national identities are largely given, war is less frequent, and the global economy is more competitive than ever? These are deeper questions that I take up in the final chapter. In it, I use experiments to test alternative social engineering strategies, which use nationalism to motivate citizens in different ways and draw from the work of contemporary theorists of nationalism and citizenship such as Rogers Smith, Liah Greenfeld, and Ian MacMullen.

contributions The book makes several contributions. First, many studies of citizenbuilding and nationalism focus on elite efforts to instill a sense of national identity and related questions of inclusion, particularly in association with gender, class, race, and ethnicity. This book focuses more on state efforts to encourage social and economic orientations aligned with national needs in a global market era – key elements in the making of citizens, 2.0. In so doing, it offers an updated conceptual framework for the empirical study of citizen-building, which broadens the notion of the citizen to encompass economic and social attitudes as well as attitudes surrounding national identity. The framework also incorporates not only rights but also responsibilities on the part of citizens, enriching existing schema that have been criticized for ignoring the “responsibilities” side of the citizenship equation. Thus, the book contributes by focusing attention

8

Introduction

on important, but under-studied, dimensions of citizenship and state-led political socialization. Second, the book moves beyond the classic question of how states seek to shape citizens toward identifying the outcomes of such efforts and the reasons for those outcomes in methodologically innovative and rigorous ways. How do citizens react to top-down efforts to “shape” them? The literature on state-led social engineering has produced conflicting predictions: although numerous scholars view it as a complex and messy process, doomed to fail, examples of apparent success in attempts to shape citizens’ attitudes through social engineering are easily found, as I show in Chapter 1. To move this literature forward, Charles Tilly (1999) called for a shift away from broad-brush judgments of success and failure and toward more targeted investigations of how and why specific outcomes, intended or otherwise, arise as a result of such interventions. This book takes up Tilly’s invitation, building knowledge about what can actually happen when societies attempt to reinvent themselves along proglobalization, pro-market lines. In this vein, the book also makes a theoretical contribution by highlighting a novel and counter-intuitive way in which state-led social engineering can backfire, which probes deeper than the conventional wisdom hoisting the blame on a lack of local knowledge on the part of social engineers. I emphasize not the lack of knowledge so much as the presence of knowledge at the top that is intuitive and theoretically plausible, but ultimately flawed. Specifically, nationalism is often viewed as a powerful means of motivating citizens to take risks and achieve, so strong that it can even motivate them to fight and die for their country on the battlefield. Yet, in the context of cultivating citizens for a globalized market era – the making of citizens, 2.0 – I show that certain types of nationalism can affect citizens in the same way that certain forms of praise can affect individuals, reducing rather than enhancing the motivation to achieve at high levels and instilling an inflated sense of status. Although we know that nationalism is a powerful force, one that can be difficult for leaders to control when unleashed, we know little about how it might interact with and potentially crowd out development-friendly mindsets. Finally, the book contributes to our knowledge of Middle East politics, and Gulf politics in particular. Citizen-building in this region, and particularly the cultivation of citizens and societies better equipped for globalization, receives relatively limited scholarly attention, despite widespread policy interest in these topics from local governments and the

Contributions

9

international community.3 On the Gulf, there is rich, valuable research addressing important issues like natural-resource wealth, rentierism, and the social, political, and economic implications that follow;4 prospects for democracy and authoritarian resilience;5 foreign policy;6 and questions of gender, identity, and citizenship within traditional yet globalizing societies.7 Yet there is only limited research on state-led social engineering and its implications. And strangely, given its popular image as a rare island of progress in the Middle East,8 the UAE remains among the least studied countries in the Gulf.9 In this light, the UAE effort is intrinsically important. Its rulers are doing a good part of what critics have long demanded is necessary for the revitalization of the region as a whole. For example, the UN’s 2003 Arab Human Development Report, written by Arab scholars and heralded by many Western observers, argues that the region needs a “creative Arab renaissance,” fueled by “an enlightened Arab knowledge model that encourages cognitive learning, critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity” (UNDP 2003, IV). As violence continues to wrack the Middle East, the book should interest those who support recommendations like these as steps to an alternative future for the Arab world, and wish to see how they are being interpreted by rulers and citizens alike in a country that has the wealth, political will, and stability – rare in the region – to carry them out.

3

4

5

6

7 8

9

For examples of policy interest, see the Arab Knowledge Reports (2009, 2010, 2014) from the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). See, for instance, Crystal (1990), Gause (1994), Chaudhry (1997), Okruhlik (1999), Foley (2010), and Hertog (2010). See, for example, Herb (1999), Tétreault (2000), Ehteshami (2003), Lawson (2005), Davidson (2012b), and Matthiesen (2013). See, for example, Kamrava (2013) on Qatar, Aarts and Nonneman (2005) on Saudi Arabia, and Ulrichsen (2011) on the GCC. See Longva (2005), Al-Rasheed (2013), and Vora (2013). Vali Nasr, for instance, described the UAE as a rare example of “good news” in the Middle East during the Pew Forum’s biannual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics, and public life (December 8, 2008, transcript accessed on February 13, 2013, at www .pewforum.org/2008/12/08/america-and-islam-after-bush/). Davidson (2005) is the most thorough, political science–oriented treatment focused only on the UAE in recent years. See, also, Abdulla (1984), Rugh (2007), Almezaini (2012), and Young (2014) for more specialized studies; Herb (2014) compares the UAE to Kuwait. Dubai attracts more attention (Ali 2010; Kanna 2011). Histories are also more widely available. See, for example, Heard-Bey (1982), Taryam (1987), and Van Der Muelen (1997).

10

Introduction

methods This is a multi-method study. It combines palace ethnography, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and experiments to make its key arguments, drawing from over fifteen months of combined fieldwork in the UAE between 2010 and 2014. To explore the generalizability of these arguments, I also collected data in Jordan, as discussed in Chapters 6 and 7. Such a multimethod approach is not common in the existing literature on citizenbuilding and nationalism, which tends to be more qualitative and historical, and so it is worth elaborating on how the methodological pieces fit together. To investigate the “view from the top,” for example, I collected ethnographic evidence in palace settings and conducted dozens of interviews with ruling elites in Arabic and English, including several with one of the country’s ruling monarchs. Such rare data provide deeper insights into ruling elites’ ways of thinking than can be gleaned from one-shot interviews, scripted speeches, and carefully crafted websites. Indeed, in this sense, the book offers a valuable look into the “black box” of autocratic reasoning when it comes to state-led social engineering. I also interviewed education reformers, foreign experts, and others involved in the campaign, observed state-sponsored spectacles, and studied public symbolism to build knowledge about the key mechanisms of social engineering. In addition, I collected photographs of installations, artistic exhibits, posters, slogans, and other forms of visual evidence, which are described in the text and vividly illustrate these mechanisms. To investigate social engineering outcomes and the reasons for those outcomes, I collected additional data through surveys and experiments. To identify outcomes, for instance, I surveyed several thousand UAE youth across the country, and conducted follow-up interviews and focus groups to better understand their perspective. I used a difference-indifferences statistical strategy across treatment and control school types, aiming to test hypotheses about the intended and unintended effects of social engineering more precisely than is typical in the existing literature. Finally, to explore causal mechanisms, I combined qualitative fieldwork with a series of randomized experiments exploring social engineering alternatives.

plan of the book The book adopts a “top to bottom” structure. Chapter 1 presents my concept of the making of citizens, 2.0, and situates it in the broader literature

Plan of the Book

11

on citizen-building and nationalism. Chapter 2 turns to the UAE, focusing on the goals of the UAE social engineering campaign and its origins. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the “how” of social engineering: Chapter 3 focuses on state efforts to influence “minds,” to foster what leaders see as an enlightenment and knowledge renaissance through education reform and other means, while Chapter 4 examines efforts to “direct” this enlightenment, to influence “hearts” – to ensure that citizens adopt market-friendly, pro-globalization mindsets, yet remain loyal and accepting of the authoritarian status quo. Chapter 5 explores the outcomes of the campaign, focusing on a comparison of youth in treatment and control school types, and Chapter 6 examines the reasons for these outcomes. Chapter 7 considers the generalizability of these findings about how to motivate citizens in the context of a global market era, exploring social engineering alternatives that put nationalism to use in different ways, as well the deeper question of citizen-building in “imperfect” political contexts.

1 Rethinking the Making of Citizens

How do states shape citizens? This is a classic question that animates a rich body of research across history, philosophy, and the social sciences. Yet important gaps remain in our knowledge, not only of why and how states shape citizens, but also about the outcomes they achieve and the reasons for those outcomes. These gaps are particularly apparent in our knowledge of citizen-building in the contemporary era. In this chapter, I highlight these limitations and illustrate how this book helps to address them in the case of a current effort at citizen-building. I begin by discussing important ways in which the challenge of citizenbuilding is evolving, stressing shifting goals in the context of a global market era that have so far received limited research attention. Next, I turn to the means of citizen-building – social engineering. I show that knowledge is also limited when it comes to the outcomes of state-led social engineering campaigns, as well as the reasons for those outcomes. Finally, I discuss the book’s distinctive approach to addressing these challenges, particularly through the use of a more disaggregated conceptual framework for goals and outcomes that allows for more nuance and complexity in understanding state efforts to “make” citizens.

an evolving challenge: shifting goals of citizen-building For state leaders, the making of citizens is an ever-present challenge; it may wax and wane in terms of its priority level, but it never truly goes away. As Charles Merriam put it in The Making of Citizens, “The state must make its case not once and for all but continuously for each new 12

An Evolving Challenge: Shifting Goals of Citizen-Building

13

generation and each new period” (1931, 10). Indeed, the state must always make its case, but what case is that? Beyond convincing citizens that the state is the sole legitimate public authority over them, what kind of citizen do leaders want, societies need, and citizens themselves aspire to become? What are the goals of citizen-building? In this section, I argue that these goals are shifting in some fundamental ways because of the changing nature of the international system, and I suggest that research on the making of citizens ought to catch up. In short, much of our knowledge about the challenge of citizenbuilding is based on a world that has been fading away for some time. In that world, the “making of citizens” typically meant the effort by state leaders to instill a national identity in “masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic idea,” to use the words of the Hashemite prince Faisal, installed as the first king of Iraq after World War I.1 This was the era of nationalism, roughly spanning the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when European rulers engaged in ambitious efforts to shape and homogenize their populations, through the twentieth century, as newly empowered postcolonial elites did the same.2 It was a time when leaders struggled to build citizens in a very basic sense, possessing some semblance of national identity, recognition of the state as a legitimate political authority, and willingness to obey its rules. It was also a time when interstate war was frequently on the horizon and anarchy seemed to reign supreme. To survive and compete, state leaders sought to fashion citizens loyal enough to the state that they would go so far as to fight for its sake on the battlefield.3 Ordinary citizens’ “war-readiness” was thus a key goal of citizen-building. To give a powerful example, after the decisive French defeat by Prussia in 1870, France embarked on radical public education reforms for the purposes of nation-building, aiming to better prepare and motivate the population to fight for their nation on the battlefield. New elementary school programs, now compulsory, emphasized dictations in the French 1 2

3

Quoted in Batatu (1978, 25). On the era of nationalism, see Bendix (1964), Gellner (1983), and Hobsbawm (1990). For more recent treatments, see Darden and Grzymala-Busse (2006) and Alesina and Reich (2015). See, for example, Posen (1993) and Aghion et al. (2012). Aghion et al. (2012) show with 150 years of historical panel data since the nineteenth century that nation-building has been closely linked with military rivalry and war risk. The argument that nations are built in part as a response to war and risk is linked with the broader literature on the ways in which war has been conducive to state-building (Hintze 1975; Tilly 1975; Besley and Persson 2011).

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language that “were a sort of catechism designed to teach the child that it was his duty to defend the fatherland, to shed his blood or die for the commonwealth, to obey the government, to perform military service,” and so on (Lindert 2004, 333). Today we live in a rather different era. Although these goals for citizenbuilding – instilling a basic sense of national identity, preparing citizens to fight in wars – are not gone, they are receding in importance. To begin with, it is no longer the norm for state leaders to contend with “masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic idea.” That is because state leaders are operating in a more mature international system, one in which states are taken for granted and national identities are largely “given.” Indeed, it would be most unusual in this day and age for state elites to find themselves in the awkward position of the French school inspector in Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen (1976, 110), appalled that children in the French department of Lozére in 1864 could not answer basic questions such as “Are you English or Russian?” and “What country is the department of Lozére in?” Of course, some contest their “given” national identity, while others have more than one, and still others, such as the stateless bidūn of the Arabian peninsula, continue to live without one. There are also those who live beyond the reach of the state (Scott 2010).4 But these are exceptions to the rule: Billions of people today have a national identity and they know it. When it comes to the making of citizens, then, instilling a national identity is no longer so urgent. Importantly, however, the fact that national identities are largely given does not imply that their deeper meaning is similarly “given,” nor that the broader set of attitudes and behaviors implied by them is a straightforward matter. This is an issue to which we will return later in this book, and it is consistent with a growing body of literature arguing that nationalism and patriotism are essentially “empty” ideologies.5 In addition, just as state leaders today need focus less on instilling national identities, they need worry less about readying their citizens for war. First, interstate war is far less common in the present era. Scholars 4

5

The bidūn are “stateless” individuals without citizenship, many of whose families are said to have lived in the Gulf region for tens and even hundreds of years. Often they did not produce the right paperwork or follow other required bureaucratic procedures needed in the early years to secure citizenship rights. They represent anywhere from 1 to 10 percent of the population within GCC countries (Partrick 2012). On patriotism, see Callan (2006) and Keller (2008). In the nationalism literature, see Lawrence (2013).

An Evolving Challenge: Shifting Goals of Citizen-Building

15

have highlighted a variety of reasons for its decline, including the spread of democracy, power of international institutions, consolidation of market capitalism, intensification of globalization, mounting aversion for war, and unipolarity.6 Of course, major interstate war could always come roaring back, and intrastate (or civil) war is still a major problem. Even so, it is unlikely that masses of ordinary citizens will have to fight on the battlefield as they did in times past. That is because the nature of war itself has shifted away from the use of mass armies and the levée en masse associated with the era of nationalism, and toward smaller, more specialized forces and technology to replace manpower, often in the context of irregular war.7 Although war itself remains a broad concern, preparing masses of ordinary citizens to fight on the battlefield, in terms of their physical, cognitive, or emotional “war-readiness,” is less and less of one. At the same time, the global economy is more fast-moving and competitive than ever, placing a premium on innovation – this is a third aspect of the current international system relevant to questions of citizen-building. Indeed, in the context of today’s global market era, potentially more important to state leaders than citizens’ “war-readiness” may be their “market-readiness” – the ability and willingness of citizens “to fight,” not on battlefields, but in market economies.8 Ong (2006) shows how states in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore and China, have focused on cultivating “valuable citizens,” both more able and more willing to compete in the global economy. Citizens are being encouraged to embrace what she calls “neoliberal norms,” such as self-management, entrepreneurialism, creative thinking, and risk-taking, ultimately changing what it means to be a good citizen. Thus, in Singapore, citizens have been urged to abandon “their conventional ambition of working for multinational corporations and instead become knowledgeable, risk-taking entrepreneurs” (Ong 2006, 183). In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sought to build a more fleet-footed, innovative economy, declaring that “Islam wants its followers to be self-sufficient, independent, and progressive.”9 Additional evidence for such broad shifts in emphasis when it comes to the making of citizens is easily found. In his 2014 State of the Union Address, for instance, President Barack Obama connected the American 6

7 8

9

For a useful overview, see Gleditsch et al. (2013). For examples of specific arguments, see Mueller (1989), Wohlforth (1999), Gat (2006), Goldstein (2011), and Pinker (2011). See Knox and Murray (2001), Biddle (2004), and Van Creveld (2006). The two can be related; many scholars conceive of economic power as a form of latent military power, as in Mearsheimer (2001). Quoted in Ong (2006, 81).

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Rethinking the Making of Citizens

“spirit of citizenship” with similarly “neoliberal” or pro-market themes, emphasizing hard work, individualism, and responsibility.10 Even in France, a bastion of the postwar European welfare state, recent efforts have been made to foster more “market-ready” citizens. Waters (2012, 73) shows how President Nicolas Sarkozy aimed to “reconcile the French people to the joys of the market and to a vision of France grounded in hard work, enterprise, and honest competition.” Indeed, as Sarkozy himself put it, he wanted the French to better “play the game of globalization,” to “work more and earn more,” and thus revitalize France’s entrepreneurial spirit.11 However one feels about these shifts – and they have not gone unchallenged – they are well under way. Although not directly concerned with the question of citizen-building, a large literature now explores how the welfare state models that arose in Europe in the wake of World War II, and subsequently spread to much of the colonial world, can best adapt to the evolving pressures of globalization.12 In some places, the social benefits to which citizens have become accustomed may not be sustainable, with citizens’ expectations needing to be scaled back and social contracts renegotiated. Although the question of how states cultivate citizens (and how citizens react) would seem to play an important role in this regard, there is only limited work on varieties of what we might think of as “pro-market” or “pro-globalization” citizen-building. These include efforts to build greater entrepreneurialism, productive risk-taking, industriousness, adaptability, and other market-friendly attitudes, as well as lessened dependence on the state, into the fabric of citizenship.13 In short, the real-world “makers” of citizens may be adapting to changes in the international system faster than the literature on the subject. State leaders are essentially dealing with what I call the making of citizens, 2.0. This I define broadly as the challenge of building citizens in the context of a global market era, one in which national identities are 10 12

13

11 See Obama (2014). Quoted in Waters (2012, 73). See, for example, Rosanvallan (2000), Pierson (2001), Thelen (2014), and Aghion and Roulet (2014); Fukuyama (2014) also touches on the issue. In Europe, the Greek crisis has put these concerns at the top of the agenda. In the Middle East, “étatist” development models have long been seen as partly to blame for weak private sectors, bloated public bureaucracies, and citizens’ high demand for government jobs. See Richards and Waterbury (1996) and Yousef (2004). The empirical literature on welfare state reform tends to focus on institutional change, rather than varieties of citizen-building, though the latter is often acknowledged as another significant issue in the broader debate. See, for example, chapter 2 (“Remaking a Nation”) in Rosanvallon (2000).

An Evolving Challenge: Shifting Goals of Citizen-Building

17

largely given, war is less frequent, and the global economy is more competitive than ever. It can also be understood as the challenge of building citizens in a more mature and well-ordered international system, in which many states have already achieved first-order citizen-building goals such as instilling a basic sense of national identity. Now the challenge is to build citizens “after” the era of nationalism, when states already have populations that know “who” they are, need focus less on preparing them to fight on the battlefield, and find themselves having to compete in increasingly competitive global markets. It is about what comes next. At the same time, it is important to note that such broad shifts in the international system in no way imply that existing theory surrounding the “making of citizens” is obsolete. The central point is not that citizenbuilding “today” is completely different from citizen-building “back then,” but rather that citizen-building is itself a dynamic process that may shift in response to differing international conditions and incentives. Nationalism, for instance, is not disappearing, but what it means may be shifting in an era in which most “nations” already have some form of recognition, such as statehood.14 Moreover, the desire for innovative, industrious, more self-reliant citizens that are able and willing to contribute to economic growth, is hardly new, a point to which I return in Chapter 2. This discussion does not imply that earlier periods have not witnessed some of these trends, particularly related to economic globalization, nor that such trends are irreversible. My goal is simply to draw out important shifts in emphasis when it comes to the making of citizens, which are linked to larger changes in the international system, and call for new and more systematic work on the evolving nature of the challenge. Finally, the making of citizens, 2.0 is a challenge that is broad in scope, and rendering citizens more “market-ready” in one way or another is not the only goal linked to it. (This has, however, received rather less attention than other goals linked to contemporary citizen-building, such as the need to reconcile nationalism with cosmopolitanism.) The question of how to build engaged citizens in a global market era is multifaceted and likely to be interpreted in varying ways. We will see that, in the UAE, leaders are concerned not only with the economic but also the social and ethical character of the citizenry. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy sought

14

I thus depart from others who see nationalism, and indeed the state itself, as being on the decline due to intensifying globalization and other shifts in the international system. See, for example, Horsman and Marshall (1994), Van Creveld (1999), and Hammarlund (2005).

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Rethinking the Making of Citizens

to render French citizens more “market-ready,” but he also sought to make capitalism more virtuous (Sarkozy 2007). Thus, as Aristotle famously argued, the challenge of citizen-building may involve different goals and strategies, depending on the nature of the state in question. That spirit guides this book, which begins with the premise that theory about the making of citizens can be updated and enriched to better reflect the empirical realities of today’s more mature, stable, and globalized state system.

the means: social engineering and its critics In this book, I ask state leaders themselves how they are re-interpreting the challenge of citizen-building within these changing circumstances – in other words, how are they tackling the making of citizens, 2.0? Before we turn to that, however, it is necessary to discuss the means of citizenbuilding. A central challenge in any study of citizen-building is how to conceptualize and measure this core phenomenon. The making of citizens is essentially a form of state-led social engineering. States use the tools of social engineering in their efforts to shape citizens, including education, media, rituals, and spectacles. Yet social engineering, despite a rich literature, is a fraught and highly contested concept, and for good reason. The history of state-led social engineering includes rather more extreme and coercive methods than “mere” efforts to shape hearts and minds, which themselves can involve a kind of violence on the autonomy of the individual. The expulsion of ethnic minorities, persecution of religious groups, banning of local languages, and whitewashing of cultural diversity have all been linked to state-led social engineering and its often homogenizing intent.15 State efforts to shape hearts and minds through public schooling and other means can also be more or less coercive. Because it is intrinsically political, it should not be surprising that “social engineering” is rarely defined explicitly or discussed neutrally. One person’s appropriate level of civic education is another person’s oppressive indoctrination or propaganda. As Peter Kenez (1985, 1) observed in The Birth of the Propaganda State, “we all think we know perfectly well what propaganda is,” yet the term is often used imprecisely, 15

See Mylonas (2013) for a fascinating discussion of the conditions under which states elites may select more or less coercive strategies in dealing with what are perceived as “noncore” groups.

The Means: Social Engineering and its Critics

19

and not in a way that is “value free and valid regardless of time or political culture.”16 We see and frown upon the use of propaganda everywhere in the societies of our enemies, but not in our own backyards. Terms like “propaganda” and “social engineering” are often used to describe how masses of people could have been manipulated by a perceived enemy, be it Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the “Islamic State,” or bourgeois capitalists. Popular writer and journalist Paul Johnson (2001, 130) has even gone so far as to call social engineering the twentieth century’s “most radical vice.” At the same time, however, there is widespread recognition that all political regimes engage in some form of social engineering, whatever its contested normative valence, and shared intuitions about what that involves. A broad review of the literature reveals a wide variety in terminology used to describe rather similar activities, such as “people-building” (Smith 2001); the “making of citizens” (Merriam 1931); “nationbuilding” (Bendix 1964); “political socialization” (Almond and Verba 1963); “indoctrination” (Mosse 1975); “education for citizenship” or “civic education” (Heater 2004b); political “character formation” (MacMullen 2015); “social control” (Cohen and Scull 1983); “social management” (Garon 1997); and “mass persuasion” (Cull, Culbert, and Welch 2003). These terms naturally differ in substantive emphasis, but all touch on similar empirical phenomena having to do with molding citizens, society, and culture. In this book, I use the term “social engineering” to refer primarily to conscious efforts by state leaders to influence the hearts and minds, and consequently also the behaviors, of citizens.17 Understood as such, it is clear that social engineering is not a “twentieth-century” phenomenon, even if the ambitions of planners have grown and technologies of implementation have improved. Social engineering has been theorized and put to practical use by elites throughout history whenever some type of hierarchical political organization has been present. It was, for example, a central concern of Plato in The Republic, and implemented in a famously extreme manner in the ancient city-state of Sparta (Heater 2004b). 16

17

Kenez (1985) also notes, interestingly, that it is only in recent times that the notion of “propaganda” gained its negative connotations; the Catholic Church, for example, used to speak quite openly about the need to “propagate” certain viewpoints. At times, I will also use the term to describe efforts to shape the perceptions of noncitizens, such as resident expatriates and the international community, as well as related efforts that have a more expressive and symbolic rather than narrowly instrumental character.

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Rethinking the Making of Citizens

Empires have also engaged in social engineering, seeking to influence the hearts and minds of subject peoples in various ways.18 Finally, tribes have their own approaches to social engineering, with rites of passage and rituals of initiation aiming to mold youth into fully fledged members of the community with particular attitudes, values, and behaviors.19 In the modern era, social engineering grew more visible due to the rise of the state and the growth of nationalism. A large and well-known literature traces the origins of nationalism, highlighting the birth of new ideas (Kedourie 1960), the needs of industrial societies (Gellner 1983), the role of elites (Hroch 1985), mass schooling and the transmission of centrally controlled curricula (Darden and Grzymala-Busse 2006), and other factors. Interestingly, the growth of democracy may also have played a significant role in spurring states to socially engineer their citizens (Alesina and Reich 2015). This is intriguing because social engineering is often linked to authoritarian regimes (Mosse 1975; Lott 1998; Scott 1998; Wedeen 1999). Indeed, it is even sometimes suggested that democracies are inherently uninterested in social engineering; either they hold themselves above it or they simply have no need for it due to their laws, constitutions, and other aspects of good institutional design. As Kant famously put it, in republics, “the problem of organizing a nation is solvable even for a people composed of devils . . . it does not require the moral improvement of man.”20 Yet, as MacMullen (2015) shows, almost no contemporary political theorist takes this view. There is a general consensus that liberal democracies do engage in some degree of social engineering, and indeed ought to, for the purposes of liberal character formation.21 The historian Eric Hobsbawm summarizes much current thinking on state-led social engineering and its modern incarnations. He also saw democracy as a key impetus; as he puts it, in the modern era, the state increasingly “found itself having to take notice of the opinions of its subjects or citizens” (1990, 82–83). In addition to this, however, he

18

19 21

For example, the Arab Muslim conquerors from the Arabian peninsula encouraged subject peoples to convert to Islam and adopt Arabic, suggesting an effort to foster common norms of identity and practice within new political boundaries (Kennedy 2007). 20 See Weber (1929) on tribal “citizen-building.” Quoted in MacMullen (2015, 5). In political theory, liberal ideals of character may include, but are not limited to, individualism, personal autonomy, critical thinking, secularism, and tolerance or openmindedness. For example, Stephen Macedo (1990, 251–252) describes the liberal “ideal of character” as “actively reflective, self-critical, tolerant, reason-giving and reasondemanding, open to change, and respectful of the autonomy of others.”

The Means: Social Engineering and its Critics

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believed that “State interests now depended on the participation of the ordinary citizen to an extent not previously envisaged.” On a basic level, this meant inculcating a common national identity and sense of loyalty to the state, placing “the question of the ‘nation,’ and the citizen’s feelings toward whatever he regarded as his ‘nation,’ ‘nationality,’ or other centre of loyalty at the top of the political agenda.” Moreover, the “willingness of men to serve” – to fight bravely on the battlefield – was “now an essential variable in government calculations,” along with their “mental and physical capacity to do so.” Thus arose the “modern, administrative, citizen-mobilizing and citizen-influencing state,” with social engineering aiming primarily at the making of citizens, 1.0, to use my shorthand. Even when armed with a more neutral and historically grounded conceptualization of state-led social engineering, further difficulties arise for any empirical investigation of the phenomenon. One key issue is what constitutes success and failure, and from whose perspective. This is a central theme in this book. The success or failure of social engineering has usually been presented as self-evident, and often in ways that seem to mirror the normative contestation over the concept itself. Yet the question is a deceptively simple one, and the answer is rarely obvious. For example, the Soviet Union is frequently given as an example of the failures of social engineering. Yet some scholars have argued that pockets of success can be found in state efforts to create the “New Soviet Man” (Siegelbaum 1988), suggesting Soviet social engineering may have succeeded in important ways, even if the Soviet regime did not. Likewise, Alesina and FuchsSchuendeln (2007) find that communist social engineering in East Germany was so effective that the citizen attitudes it forged have continued to persist long after German unification. Other important questions also arise. What if some social engineering goals are achieved, but not others? What if state elites disagree about social engineering goals? Has social engineering succeeded if citizens’ behaviors are effectively controlled, but not their underlying attitudes and values? Wedeen (1999), for example, argues that the Syrian regime of Hafiz al-Asad used social engineering effectively to shape citizens’ behaviors, but not their underlying beliefs and attitudes. How long must the attitudes, values, and behaviors fostered by social engineering persist for a campaign to be deemed a success? How long need we wait to identify the effects of social engineering? Miguel (2004) finds that social engineering efforts in Tanzania to inculcate a common national identity through the school system and other means in the 1960s and 1970s were largely successful. Yet he also notes that earlier research on their effectiveness did

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Rethinking the Making of Citizens

not reach the same conclusion; he suggests this is because of the time it may take for social engineering to work. Finally, how sensitive is social engineering to larger issues of timing and context? Keith Darden and Anna Grzymala-Busse (2006) suggest that it is primarily social engineering when mass schooling is first introduced—when societies typically achieve mass literacy—that is likely to be successful in shaping mass attitudes, values, and identities in a durable way. This implies that stateled social engineering (or re-engineering by the state or a third-party occupier) may not be successful after this critical period has passed.22 A final example of these difficulties in assessing state-led social engineering can be found in the literature on the “king’s dilemma.” Huntington (1968) famously argued that traditional monarchs’ efforts at modernization often backfire through a kind of unintended spillover effect. Thus, when kings try to create what they see as more “modern” citizens through education reforms and other means, the citizens who emerge tend to make new demands for political participation. Since the kings do not want these results, social engineering is said to have failed. Yet, a closer examination suggests a more nuanced interpretation. Social engineering by monarchs to create a “modern” citizenry has obviously been concerned with far more than preventing the emergence of democratic citizens. Indeed, it may “succeed” in some respects, such as by creating citizens with enhanced economic drive or civic responsibility, even if it “fails” in others, namely by preventing the emergence of aspirations for democratic citizenship. Huntington (1968, 177) suggests as much when he asks, “Must [the monarch] be the victim of his own achievements?” Something has been achieved, in other words, even if it was not entirely what the monarch wanted.

social engineering outcomes: a mixed empirical record Given these ambiguities and the fact that dependent variables and levels of analysis often vary, it is perhaps not surprising that mixed results emerge from a review of the literature on the outcomes of state-led social engineering. On the one hand, in the opinion of a wide range of scholars, social engineering is a complex and messy process, prone to failure. “Numerous failures,” according to an edited volume on the subject, “have marked twentieth century social engineering” (Alexander and Schmidt 1996, 1). 22

See, also, Darden and Mylonas (2012) and Darden (forthcoming).

Social Engineering Outcomes: A Mixed Empirical Record

23

When the aim is to forge a common national identity – the most common social engineering goal that is studied – scholars highlight a number of difficulties, including ethnic and linguistic differences, arbitrary borders, external interference, and popular resistance. A landmark example of this point of view is Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen (1976). In fascinating historical detail, Weber illustrates how very difficult and uneven the process of social engineering was for the Parisian elites who sought to instill a stronger French national identity in the diverse populations living outside of the capital but within the borders of the state. Social engineering within colonial and postcolonial contexts is often thought to be especially perilous, and for similar reasons. Indeed, Weber describes nineteenth-century Parisian social engineering as a kind of colonization, except that the social engineers were focused on domestic, if equally “foreign,” populations. To see the immense difficulties involved in these efforts, we can usefully return to Faisal, crowned as the first king of Iraq after World War I. In a revealing 1922 memorandum, he lamented that: There is still – and I say this with a heart full of sorrow – no Iraqi people but unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic idea, imbued with religious traditions and absurdities, connected by no common tie . . . prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatever. Out of these masses we want to fashion a people which we could train, educate, and refine . . . The circumstances being what they are, the immenseness needed for this [can scarcely be imagined].23

Faisal and his minister of education urgently sought to build an Iraqi people (Tibi 1997), thus recalling the famous remark attributed to Italian nationalist Massimo d’Azeglio (“Italy has been made; now it only remains to make Italians”). The alleged failures of such efforts in Iraq are now the stuff of legend, and rarely questioned. Herbst (2000) also stresses the difficulties in state-led social engineering in the colonial and postcolonial world, arguing that it has been made even more difficult in the case of Africa due to the lessened frequency of interstate war. Smith (1986, 258) emphasizes the “lack of any shared historical mythology and memory.” On top of these difficulties, a number of scholars see authoritarian social engineering as especially prone to failure. Among the best-known arguments is the idea of the “king’s dilemma,” drawn from modernization

23

Quoted in Batatu (1978, 25).

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Rethinking the Making of Citizens

theory and discussed above, which implies that traditional monarchs are doomed to failure in their efforts to modernize without giving up power. A canonical example is the modernization campaign of Mohammad Reza Shah, whose own citizens famously took to the streets in 1979 to overthrow the Iranian monarchy. In Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott also links failure in social engineering to authoritarian regimes. He views the phenomenon as part of a broader class of cases of top-down interventionism and statist excess in the twentieth century. Failure is likely, he argues, because social engineers in authoritarian contexts tend to lack in-depth knowledge of the local culture; thus their “schematic, authoritarian solutions . . . inevitably fail” (1998, 6). The idea that social engineering is inherently prone to failure, for similar reasons, can also be found in Mitchell (2002) and Easterly (2014), as well as in the classic essay by Hayek (1945). All have drawn attention to social engineers’ lack of local knowledge and failure to fully grasp the on-the-ground contexts they wish to transform. Hayek made the point in criticizing Soviet-style central planning. In Mitchell’s Rule of Experts, social engineers are portrayed as fundamentally misguided, routinely overlooking how the forces that shape the local problems they set out to solve are, in fact, complex and interrelated. Easterly makes the point in the context of contemporary development efforts, criticizing the “utopian social engineering” of the World Bank and other institutions. Such international social engineers are taken to task for failing to appreciate local variety and the bottom-up development of markets. At the same time, the literature contains numerous examples of apparent success in state-led social engineering. Indeed, the empirical fact that the state is now the primary organizing feature of the international system, with billions of people now identifying with states and the “national” cultures they claim to represent, provides the first hint. Interestingly, in the literature on nationalism – the very literature where so many of the difficulties in state-led social engineering have been so well articulated – a growing number of scholars emphasize the critical role played by state and proto-state elites in consciously shaping national loyalties, often in contrast to more impersonal forces of modernization and diffusion.24 For example, Chaligha et al. (2002, 11)

24

Smith (1998) relates this to the “instrumentalist” school. See, for example, Posen (1993) and Smith (2001). Darden and Grzymala-Busse (2006, 90) emphasize the “deliberate and systematic inculcation of a set of values” core to a constructed national identity via the infrastructure of mass schooling.

Social Engineering Outcomes: A Mixed Empirical Record

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conclude that “President Nyerere’s efforts to mould a national identity . . . have borne fruit . . . If Tanzania was once an artificial construct of colonial mapmakers, it is no more.” Rarely, of course, do scholars argue that social engineering has been singularly responsible for something as complex as the formation of national identities, but many suggest it has been very significant. Some also suggest that social engineering has been successful not only in shaping citizens’ basic national identities but in cultivating a much broader set of skills, attitudes, values, and behaviors. Consider Atatürk’s social engineering efforts after World War I: not only did he seek to cultivate and strengthen a specifically Turkish sense of national identity after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, but he also sought to orient that identity toward the West through a wide range of initiatives, including education reform, changes in national dress code, and the elimination of the caliphate. According to Hanioğlu (2011, 204), these famously extreme, rapidly implemented, and thoroughly top-down authoritarian efforts at social engineering “met with surprising success domestically.” Social engineering thus “accomplished [its] most important objective: to persuade the educated classes of the new society to embrace a new identity, rejecting any ties with the Orient and wholeheartedly espousing the Occident.” Even when scholars emphasize the potentially negotiated, interactive, contested, and uneven character of change in these respects, the reader is often left with the impression that state-initiated social engineering succeeded in some very fundamental ways. In Weber’s account, for example, “peasants” did, within a generation, become “Frenchmen.” In this, Weber attributes significant causal weight to deliberate state efforts at social engineering, even if he also draws attention to modernization as an important background condition. Another example can be found in the literature on the American occupation of post-1945 Japan. In Embracing Defeat, John Dower traces the social engineering campaign of General MacArthur and his fellow occupiers, aiming for an end to Japanese militarism and a “democratic revolution from above” (1999, 69). Despite its flaws and the arrogance of the social engineers themselves, “the ideals of peace and democracy took root in Japan” (1999, 23) in large part because of the campaign, even if bottom-up negotiation over its nature also played an important role. In the case of Meiji-era social engineering, “Some historians have quarreled with what they see as an overemphasis on the leading role of the state . . . But in the wide-ranging introduction of new organizational forms based on Western models that

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Rethinking the Making of Citizens

dominated Meiji organizational development, the government undeniably played a leading role” (Westney 2000, 16). To find further evidence that state-led social engineering may well “work,” one need only consult the diverse scholarly work on propaganda, indoctrination, symbolism, and spectacle.25 Challenging the notion that authoritarian social engineering is especially prone to failure, Makiya (1998, 61) argues that a “profound metamorphosis of attitude was carried through in a handful of years” due to Baathist social engineering in Iraq, mainly through radical education reforms and pervasive propaganda. Similarly, Goldhagen (1997) finds that the Nazis, during their “but brief suzerainty in Germany,” were astonishingly successful in “transforming the mental and moral substance of the German people.”26 So much, then, for the idea that social engineering needs a generation or more to bear fruit. Finally, the classic view that social engineering is prone to failure is at odds with a recent spate of sophisticated empirical work. In Spain, ClotsFigueras and Masella (2013) find that a 1983 policy shift to allow teaching in Catalan successfully inculcated a stronger Catalan regional identity. Treated citizens were more likely to say they felt more Catalan than Spanish, favor a party with a Catalan regionalist platform, and claim Spanish regions should have the right to be independent states. In China, Cantoni et al. (2014) find that a 2004 curriculum reform succeeded in fostering greater trust in government officials and a more skeptical view of free markets. Qualified successes can also be found in research on civic education in developing democracies (Finkel 2002); antiviolence campaigns (Collier and Vicente 2014; Paluck and Green 2009); and voter education and political awareness-raising programs (Banerjee et al. 2009; Wantchekon and Fujiwara 2013). 25

26

See, for example, Mosse (1975), Kenez (1985), Makiya (1998), Wedeen (1999), and Myers (2010). It is important to note that specific arguments about authoritarian social engineering differ in important ways. Some, like Makiya, and other thinkers as diverse as Ayn Rand and Hannah Arendt, argue that “totalitarian” forms of social engineering cultivate slavishly obedient citizens, stamping out the ability to think and act independently. Others suggest that authoritarian social engineering can be more subtle, deliberately encouraging particular regime-appropriate attitudes, values, and behaviors, while persuading citizens that these have resulted from their own freely made choices. In this vein, forced indoctrination – structuring one’s reasoning, telling one “what to think” without giving alternatives, eliminating free will – is generally viewed as different from “mere” persuasion, that is, supplying potential reasons as input into one’s reasoning, telling one “how to think” while accepting the possibility of different endpoints of reasoning, thus preserving free will.

Disaggregating Goals, Processes, and Outcomes

27

Nevertheless, it would be premature to conclude that state-led social engineering is easier than theorists have imagined, particularly due to the tendency for null results not to be published.27 In addition, there is also evidence of failure. In a landmark work, Jason Wittenberg (2006) highlights key failures in communist social engineering in Hungary, due to Church resistance from below. Fouka (2014) finds that American efforts to integrate the children of German immigrants after World War I by restricting teaching in German failed miserably, resulting in a surprisingly intensified sense of German identity. Children affected by the language restrictions, who also had two German parents, were later more likely to marry within their ethnic group and choose decidedly German names for their offspring. They were also less likely to volunteer in World War II. Fouka offers an intriguing explanation for why the campaign backfired, suggesting that parents viewed it as an onslaught on their culture and “overcompensated” by working harder outside of school to preserve it in their children. Alesina and Reich (2015, 13) suggest that the “possible perverse effects of indoctrination [are] an excellent topic for future research.” As these mixed results suggest, the outcomes of social engineering can be difficult to uncover, and so can the causal mechanisms that account for them. In his penetrating review, Tilly (1999) also found significant gaps in our understanding of state-led social engineering. He emphasized the need for research that focuses on why and how specific outcomes have arisen, extending beyond what are often broad-brush judgments of success and failure in the theoretical literature. In this sense, he called for greater attention to nuance and complexity. Doing that, however, requires a more granular conceptual framework with which to analyze social engineering goals, processes, and outcomes, an issue to which I now turn.

disaggregating goals, processes, and outcomes In part, this book is a response to Tilly’s call. To address the challenges at hand, I suggest that a more systematic investigation is needed of what state leaders in different contexts intend as well as what they achieve in their efforts to shape citizens. To that end, I offer an updated conceptual framework in which to study goals, processes, and outcomes, aiming to facilitate the comparative study of citizen-building in the contemporary era. In this section, I first discuss the key research questions at hand. Next,

27

See Gerber and Malhotra (2008) and Fanelli (2010).

28

Rethinking the Making of Citizens

I describe my updated conceptual framework, emphasizing how it builds on citizenship theory, responds to various critiques, and allows for greater nuance and complexity. Finally, I offer more detail about why the UAE is a useful site for the study of contemporary state-led social engineering. Research Questions I follow in the footsteps of a range of recent work that exploits withincountry sources of variation to build knowledge about a broader phenomenon – in this case, the making of citizens, 2.0. Drawing from the discussion above, the key research questions should be relatively straightforward: • What are leaders’ goals for the making of citizens? • What social engineering methods are being used to pursue those goals? • What outcomes have been achieved thus far? • What are the causal mechanisms that best account for those outcomes? These questions roughly follow Eugen Weber in Peasants into Frenchmen, a classic study of these processes in nineteenth-century France. Some differences, however, are worth noting. First, like many studies of citizenbuilding, Peasants into Frenchmen focuses on the state’s quest to instill a sense of national identity in the diverse populations living within its borders. This book, by contrast, focuses on a broader set of goals, particularly stemming from the challenge of building citizens in a global market era, as discussed above. Rather than lump an assortment of attitudes, values, and behaviors under the category of “national identity,” I disaggregate these into universally applicable dimensions of the statecitizen relationship, while recognizing that they may be contested. In addition, Weber’s approach was that of an historian, whereas this book is a work of political science. As such, it is more methodologically self-conscious and attuned to issues of generalizability and the comparative perspective. It combines palace ethnography, interviews, surveys, and experiments to make its key arguments. Finally, this book was designed to offer more practical relevance, in that it explores potential social engineering solutions. At the same time, it recognizes that state-led social engineering is by no means the only approach to complex challenges that societies face; indeed, institutional reform is another important lever of change, but also one that receives rather more research attention, perhaps because of

Disaggregating Goals, Processes, and Outcomes

29

understandable discomfort surrounding the idea of “directly” shaping human beings. And yet new work clearly underscores the importance of building character skills, as well as cognitive ones, for later-life success in earnings and other areas, so social engineering, at least of a gentle sort, may become more politically palatable.28 It should also be clear from the research questions above that this book, like Peasants into Frenchmen, views change as possible and takes the role of leaders in instigating it seriously. Thus, it does not make deterministic assumptions about culture or economic structures, and treats the question of what persists or does not persist as an open empirical question.29 Some might see the approach as too state-centered, or seemingly apolitical, with the state viewed as a benign social planner rather than the embodiment of an elite with vested interests. However, the making of citizens is inherently political and, as Chapter 2 makes clear, the state is not viewed as a benign social planner in this book, unaffected by vested interests. Indeed, departing from the tendency to impute preferences to elites, this book investigates their goals for the making of citizens empirically. Moreover, the framework laid out below allows for the possibility of multiple, complex, and even conflicting goals at the top. Unbundling the Citizen A central theme in this book is the need to disaggregate goals, processes, and outcomes, particularly in theoretically grounded ways that enrich and open up new avenues for comparative research. The question then arises: how can the goals of social engineering be conceptualized most fruitfully and the outcomes then measured to help extend and enrich theory in these areas? Put another way, how can we categorize, more precisely, the kinds of citizens that state leaders across regime types may wish to produce? To accomplish this task, I offer a conceptual framework that draws insights from theories of citizenship and nationalism. Before introducing the framework, however, it is important to note that the concept of “the modern citizen” has often been viewed in a holistic manner, which does not facilitate disaggregation in the ways 28

29

See Kautz et al. (2014), who conclude that a number of early interventions lead to better later-life outcomes, not because they foster sustained improvements in IQ or higher achievement on test scores, but because they enhance character skills relevant for success, such as conscientiousness, self-control, persistence, and resilience to adversity. On persistence, politics, and the scope for action, see Wittenberg (2006), Banerjee and Duflo (2014), Acemoglu and Robinson (2013), and Aghion and Roulet (2014).

30

Rethinking the Making of Citizens

I suggest (Mann 1987). This perspective is rooted, in part, in modernization theory, which presents dichotomies such as “subjects” and “citizens,” or “traditional man” with his fixed ways and suspicion of change and “modern man” with his eagerness for progress and “mobile personality.”30 Even when aspects of variation within the concept of the modern citizen are recognized, they are often seen as bundled together, arising and evolving as one package. Inkeles and Smith (1974), for instance, propose a definition of the modern citizen that involves a range of attitudes, values, and behaviors, such as openness to new experience, a preference for long-term planning, a tendency to form and hold opinions, an eagerness to participate in politics, and individual achievement motivation. These are linked together into a composite index of “individual modernity.” In citizenship theory, the most widely recognized framework for understanding and disaggregating modern citizenship has been developed by T.H. Marshall (1950), and I adapt his original framework here, with several important modifications. Focusing on the British case, Marshall saw the evolution of modern citizenship largely as a result of growing demands for rights on the part of the middle and lower classes. First, he argued, came demands for civil rights in the eighteenth century, followed by demands for political rights in the nineteenth century, and finally demands for social or economic rights in the twentieth century. Marshall contended that citizens were only “full” modern citizens when all three of these elements were satisfied. Thus, he disaggregated the concept of modern citizenship into three key elements: possession of civil rights, political rights, and social or economic rights. Marshall’s conceptualization, however, and theories of the emergence and evolution of modern citizenship more broadly, are criticized for a number of reasons that the framework used in this book seeks to address. First, these theories traditionally focus on the Western historical experience, tracing ideas of citizenship from Greek and Roman thought through the medieval period, the Renaissance, the age of revolutions, and the modern age.31 Although a rich base of knowledge about the evolution of citizenship in the West has emerged, the resulting conceptual frameworks are not always well suited to the analysis of citizenship and statesociety relations elsewhere.

30 31

The classic example is Lerner (1958). For examples, see Bendix (1964), Riesenberg (1992), Heater (2004a), and Held (2006).

Disaggregating Goals, Processes, and Outcomes

31

To give an example, the concept of citizenship itself is often tied rather rigidly to Western-style democracy, so that without “democracy,” there can be no “citizenship”; rather, there is only “subjecthood.”32 Yet this dichotomous interpretation overlooks the wide variety of ways in which the relationship between “the rulers” and “the ruled” may emerge and evolve, especially in non-democratic settings where “subjects” may hold some degree of power over rulers (just not of the typical democratic kind). As Butenschøn (2000, 11) points out in an excellent overview of these dilemmas in the Middle East, “the phenomenon of citizenship does not presuppose equality, democracy, or a vibrant society of citizens (civil society).” Defining notions of modern citizenship narrowly in terms of one region’s historical experience limits the comparative utility of the concept. In this book, I use “citizenship” not to signal the primarily Western-derived, liberal-democratic notion of “citizen” (in opposition to “subject,” to use the well-known dichotomy in the literature), but rather to capture the broader phenomenon of interest – the nature of the relationship between rulers and ruled. This way of viewing citizenship, in terms of the state–citizen relationship, is better suited to accommodating global diversity in contemporary state–society relations. Second, as Mann (1987) and Smith (2001) argue, the potential role of elites in deliberately seeking to influence ideas of citizenship and the social contracts they imply – in other words, the role of social engineering – is often overlooked in citizenship theory. Mann, for example, critiques Marshall’s approach not only for being Anglo-centric and teleological, but also for focusing on the demands and strategies of the rising middle and working classes, as opposed to the ruling classes. Mann saw Marshall’s account as a relatively accurate portrayal of the British experience, but not adequate as the basis for a theory with comparative scope. He therefore suggested a new approach that viewed citizenship as the potential outcome of “ruling class strategies,” in which it is recognized that elites deliberately seek to craft ideas of citizenship as a way of coping with the rise of new social classes.

32

For example, Bendix (1964) considers those populations living within “traditional” authority relationships before the development of the modern state as “subjects” because they did not participate “fully” in public life. Thus, in kingdoms, only the monarch, in this view, was a true “citizen.” By contrast, “citizens” emerged with the rise of liberal democracy and modern understandings of political authority. Over time, more and more members of the political community became “citizens,” defined as those with the right to full political participation.

32

Rethinking the Making of Citizens

Finally, it is now widely recognized that citizenship theorists have tended to focus on the rights side of modern citizenship, rather than the responsibilities side (Kymlicka and Norman 1994). Marshall’s framework is largely a rights-based account, in which “citizenship” is understood to signify the gradual awareness, demand, and realization of rights on the part of individuals. This is seen as an organic process that undergoes various natural stages toward an endpoint marked by the “full” possession of rights. Kymlicka and Norman (1994) describe the rights-based approach as the predominant way of understanding the evolution of citizenship in the postwar years, though one that has increasingly come under attack by critics of the welfare state, proponents of civic republicanism, and liberal theorists seeking to revive the ideas of civic virtue and obligation. This book adapts Marshall’s influential framework, focusing on (1) civil demands, (2) political demands, and (3) social or economic demands, but adjusts it in several ways. First, I incorporate not just demands for rights but also conceptions of responsibility. Second, I add a fourth component to Marshall’s framework, which captures patriotic and nationalistic attitudes – feelings of love for, identification with, and special concern for one’s country and nation, respectively (Nathanson 1993; Smith 1998).33 Third, I re-orient the framework so that it accommodates the perspective of the “ruling class,” as Mann suggests, and as the current study of top-down social engineering naturally requires. In this modified framework (Figure 1.1), the national dimension refers to patriotic and nationalistic attitudes linking citizens to their nation and state. The civil dimension refers to attitudes toward civil liberties and the degree of freedom citizens ought to possess within the political community, as well as issues of civic responsibility, such as willingness to volunteer in community service and treat others with a certain degree of civility or “fellow feeling,” as John Stuart Mill put it.34 The political dimension refers to attitudes toward the rights as well as the potential obligations of citizens to participate in political decision-making. The economic dimension refers to citizens’ attitudes about what the state ought to provide in terms of economic and social

33

34

Although such attitudes may involve a sense of superiority over other nations and countries (Kosterman and Feshbach 1989), I do not make a priori assumptions in this regard. Mill is cited in Heater (2004b, 198).

Disaggregating Goals, Processes, and Outcomes

Dimension

33

Examples of empirical referents

National

Feelings of attachment to state, patriotism, national pride

Civil

Demands for civil rights; civic-mindedness, tolerance, obligation to volunteer

Political

Demands for political rights; obligation to participate (e.g., vote)

Economic

Demands for social/economic rights; economic self-reliance, contribution to national development

figure 1.1 An illustration of an updated conceptual framework for the study of contemporary citizen-building.

welfare to citizens, as well as what citizens ought to be responsible for contributing and providing for themselves. In the chapters that follow, I use this framework to capture ruling elites’ goals for social engineering – that is, the kinds of attitudes, values, and behaviors they wish to instill in citizens within the various dimensions, and ultimately the kind of citizenship they wish to engineer – as well as the outcomes they achieve. As a caveat, it is worth mentioning that this framework does not address all the ways in which state elites may seek to influence citizens’ hearts and minds. But it does allow for a wider and more nuanced, yet systematic and theoretically oriented, analysis of a large number of goals that state leaders across space and time may have for the making of citizens. Moreover, it allows for the possibility of multiple, complex, and conflicting goals at the top as well as at the bottom in terms of citizen-formation outcomes. Why the UAE? This book explores a classic question – the making of citizen – and it does so in the contemporary context of the United Arab Emirates. But why the UAE? Although the UAE is unusual in some respects, it is a valuable site for the study of contemporary social engineering. The first and most obvious reason for this is the fact that state-led social engineering is widely in evidence. As will be documented in Chapters 3 and 4, social engineering

34

Rethinking the Making of Citizens

is being carried out in a variety of ways that facilitate the in-depth study of goals, processes, and outcomes that this book seeks to provide. In short, the UAE is a data-rich case, allowing various opportunities for experiments, ethnography, and other types of data collection. Moreover, its leaders generally operate in an environment that lacks the common constraints on elite action arising from a tight budget or a powerful parliament. As a result, top-down social engineering can flourish more readily, allowing us to perceive how it works (or does not work) with unusual clarity. In addition, the UAE can be usefully seen as a microcosm for the making of citizens, 2.0, although it naturally faces its own version of this challenge against a backdrop of hydrocarbon reliance and a massive population of diverse expatriate residents. As discussed in more depth in Chapter 2, state leaders have largely succeeded in achieving “first-order” citizen-building goals, such as fostering a basic sense of national identity. They now confront additional challenges that are broadly similar to those facing a range of other state leaders, in the Middle East and beyond, in the context of a global market era. In particular, they wish to foster more creative, innovative, civic-minded, and entrepreneurial citizens, less dependent on government employment and more oriented toward their nation’s economic and social development. These are core issues in the making of citizens, 2.0, and the UAE’s experiences in tackling them can provide important insights. Third, the UAE is a valuable and intrinsically important case in the context of the broader Middle East. Wracked by sectarianism, violence, rentierism, and low growth, the Middle East is a region where new approaches to citizen-building may be especially worth experimenting with, while recognizing that shared problems are complex in origin. Indeed, although resource wealth provides a temporary cushion, the UAE faces several of the same structural problems that others in the region face (Davidson, 2012a). Arab governments are typically the largest employers of citizens, public sectors are reaching saturation points, and unemployment among growing youth populations is extraordinarily high. With its broad-based efforts at social engineering – improving education; fostering creativity; encouraging tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and social responsibility; building an entrepreneurial spirit; taking on rentierism – the UAE, despite its continued authoritarianism, is doing internally what many observers have long recommended for the Middle East as a whole for the purposes of adapting to globalization. Thus, the UAE offers a valuable opportunity to build knowledge, shedding light on both

What This Book Is Not

35

opportunities as well as pitfalls involved in such efforts at what many view as “pro-globalization” social engineering.

what this book is not As a final matter, it is important to clarify what this book does and does not do. First, the book does not provide a comprehensive investigation into UAE politics. Likewise, the book does not exhaustively examine all inputs into the socialization process. Its findings certainly bear on these topics, but the main aim of the book is to contribute to the comparative study of citizen-building and state-led social engineering. The hope is that the book will interest a broad audience within the fields of citizenship, nationalism, and Middle East politics, and potentially beyond. Many of the issues the book addresses – such as the nature of citizenship and nationalism, social engineering, political and economic socialization, the knowledge economy, comparative international education, and entrepreneurial or market cultures – cross disciplinary boundaries. In addition, readers should be forewarned that this book examines citizen-building from a somewhat different vantage point than is presently common. Many recent studies examine citizenship from the perspective of who is included and who is excluded, either formally or informally.35 Excellent recent work on Arab Gulf politics also takes this approach, particularly examining the relationship between “citizens” and large populations of stateless bidūn, well-to-do expatriates, and poor migrant workers.36 This book, although it engages with questions of inclusion, does not concentrate on who is included under the citizenship umbrella so much as what inclusion entails – i.e., what citizens expect the state to provide for them and what they expect to provide for themselves – and how the state is attempting to modify these ideas. This is its distinctive contribution. Thus, the book focuses less on what Kymlicka and Norman (1994, 353) call “citizenship-as-legal status” and more on “citizenship-asdesirable-activity.” Although the two notions are necessarily intertwined and in practice often conflated, I agree with Kymlicka and Norman (1994, 353) that “we should expect a theory of the good citizen to be relatively independent of the legal question of what it is to be a citizen, just as

35 36

See, for example, Brubaker (1992), Maas (2007), and Smith (2013). Longva (2005) and Vora (2013) offer fascinating studies in this vein. See, also, Dresch (2005); Al Sharekh, Springborg, and Stewart (2008); Partrick (2012); Babar (2014), and Khalaf, AlShehabi, and Hanieh (2015).

36

Rethinking the Making of Citizens

a theory of the good person is distinct from the metaphysical (or legal) question of what it is to be a person.” In this sense, the book may be more closely aligned with older traditions in the comparative study of citizenbuilding, such as those linked to Charles Merriam and his colleagues. Finally, the book is not primarily concerned with questions of democracy and authoritarian resilience in the UAE or the Middle East more broadly, though these do enter into the analysis at times in important ways. In this sense, the book is in line with the broader effort to move beyond the “transition paradigm” and examine authoritarian politics on its own terms.37 Yet, at the same time, its findings may be relevant to realworld political actors in a variety of settings, regardless of regime type, since the challenge of building citizens for a global market era is a universal one.

conclusion This chapter has examined the “making of citizens” as an evolving challenge. I have argued that the goals of citizen-building are shifting in the context of a changing international system. Today, “building” citizens is less a matter of instilling national identities and more a matter of filling those identities in. It is also less about preparing citizens to fight in wars and more about preparing them to “fight” in market economies and contribute to economic and social development. The chapter also situated the making of citizens, 2.0 in the broader literature on state-led social engineering, drawing attention to conceptual limitations in the literature and a mixed empirical record. Finally, and to help address these limitations, I presented the book’s overarching research design, including a modified conceptual framework that allows for greater complexity and nuance in the study of citizen-building. I now use that framework to investigate the (re-)making of citizens in the UAE.

37

See Carothers (2002), and on the Middle East in particular, see Lust-Okar and Zerhouni (2008).

2 Seeing Like a Sheikh

Why are the sheikhs of the United Arab Emirates calling for their citizens to become creative and critical thinkers, educated to the highest international standards, and trained to be innovators, knowledge workers, and social entrepreneurs? At first glance, such interests seem a bit peculiar. After all, the Gulf monarchies are some of the most staunchly authoritarian countries in the world, having remained largely intact despite the 2011 Arab uprisings and earlier waves of demand for reform (Herb 1999). Moreover, autocrats are not known for wanting a better-educated, more socially engaged, and critically minded citizenry. In fact, Arab autocrats are far more often suspected of preferring blind obedience and mass conformism from their citizens. At the same time, the UAE and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are resource-rich. Although many wish to diversify their economies away from resource reliance, it is not immediately clear why achieving that goal would require their own subjects to display greater creativity, civic-mindedness, and independence of spirit. An investigation of the view from the top – the sheikhs’ perspective on the challenge of citizen-building – helps to answer these questions. In this chapter, I investigate what kind of a citizen the sheikhs want to create. What are their goals for social engineering? What is their vision of the ideal citizen? And what trade-offs might they face in seeking to cultivate such new citizens? The chapter begins with a historical overview of the UAE, focusing on the approach initially adopted to the making of citizens – that is, the making of citizens, 1.0 – in the early post-independence period. Next, it presents evidence from rare palace ethnography, including regular 37

38

Seeing Like a Sheikh

interviews with one of the country’s ruling monarchs. I focus on how elites talk about the citizenry, its problems, and the possibilities for its evolution, highlighting the profound influence of exposure to the West and the resulting adoption of stylized ideas about how modern, productive peoples “ought” to behave. The chapter then places this evidence in the broader context of the country’s development and traces out specific goals for the contemporary making of citizens. As I show below, the new vision of citizenship embraces the idea of citizen as loyal bourgeois. As such, it has much in common with contemporary liberal and neoliberal ideals, but in leaving politics largely out, it also recalls ideals of citizenship associated with the absolutist monarchs of early modern Europe.

setting the scene When the United Arab Emirates was established in 1971, the country’s founders were tasked with the nuts and bolts of state-building in the difficult context of a hasty British withdrawal from the Gulf and a patchwork of conflicting tribal allegiances.1 The making of citizens was an important task, but so was the making of roads, government ministries, and other more tangible components of the new state. The British had put relatively few resources into developing these seemingly low-value desert sheikhdoms. As a result, at the time of independence, much needed to be done. The British had maintained a presence in this region since the seventeenth century, when they displaced the Portuguese and later the Dutch in their efforts to control trade in the Indian Ocean area. By the late eighteenth century, British commercial interests were threatened by a seafaring tribal confederacy occupying the northern areas of what is now the UAE, led by the Al Qasimi family. After a series of clashes at sea, the British laid siege to Ras Al Khaimah, the center of Al Qasimi power, destroying most of its 900-vessel fleet. In the aftermath, the British imposed treaty relations with the weakened Al Qasimi and other local rulers, promising not to interfere with local affairs in exchange for an end to attacks at sea. Over the course of the nineteenth century, these treaties were renewed and other “truces” established, ultimately facilitating control over much of the region by the British and their favored sheikhs. The result was the birth 1

There is a wealth of excellent work on the history of the UAE and the broader Gulf region. This section draws particularly from Al Baharna (1975), Abdullah (1978), Heard-Bey (1982), Peck (1986), and Zahlan (1989).

Setting the Scene

39

of what the British came to call the Trucial States, or the Trucial Coast – the precursor to the United Arab Emirates. Although treated in many ways like colonies – not permitted, for example, to deal directly with foreign countries – the Trucial States never had any formal legal status from the British perspective; they were never defined as colonies, protectorates, or mandates, which might have paved the way for colonial development assistance. Partly as a result, these desert sheikhdoms remained extraordinarily under-developed well into the twentieth century, particularly in comparison to nearby India, where the British lavished attention. Some sheikhdoms, of course, were better off. Dubai, for example, pursued a more vigorous developmental path, attracting merchants from Iran and the Indian subcontinent in a bid to become a successful port city and trade entrepôt.2 Still, as a whole, these lands were quite poor in the first half of the twentieth century, making their subsequent rise to “first world” development status after the discovery of oil all the more startling. In the lower Arabian Peninsula, oil was first discovered in commercial quantities in Bahrain in 1932. British oil companies, in due course, began exploring the Trucial States and negotiating concession agreements with their preferred sheikhs, who naturally profited from these rent-like arrangements. Indeed, because of such external sources of income, the sheikhs found themselves less and less dependent on their own people. In Dubai, such changes led in the late thirties, and again in the fifties, to open rebellion and demands for democratic-style reform. These movements received support from dissident ruling family members as well as the merchant communities, whose traditional bargaining power and influence had all but evaporated with the Depression and the collapse of the pearl trade. They were short-lived, however; the British quickly moved to help rulers clamp down on unrest, establishing the Trucial Oman Scouts in 1951 to provide security for oil exploration teams. The Trucial States Council was also created in 1952, the first forum in which the rulers of the seven sheikhdoms could meet regularly as a political governing unit, and a largely authoritarian one. Still, development was extremely slow. Abu Dhabi, the largest and southernmost of the sheikhdoms, remained among the least developed. According to Mohammed Al-Fahim (1995), who published a memoir of growing up in 1950s-era Abu Dhabi, people were “resigned to the fact that we seemed stuck in the nineteenth century,” a situation that only 2

See, for example, Hvidt (2007).

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Seeing Like a Sheikh

changed with the discovery of oil there in the late fifties. Indeed, as the British dryly observed in an early report prepared for Sheikh Shakhbut of Abu Dhabi (1962, 1), “The recent discovery of oil in commercial amounts in Abu Dhabi means development may happen very rapidly.” According to the report, “nearly all buildings” on Abu Dhabi Island, the most developed area of the emirate with a population then of about four thousand, “are of semi-permanent barasti construction. There is no public service for the provision of water, drainage, or sanitation. A certain amount of brackish water is drawn from local wells.”3 In due course, a Development Office of the Trucial States Council was established in 1965, with mostly British staff and a base in Dubai. Yet, just three years later, the British announced their intention to withdraw from the Persian Gulf. The decision came as a shock to many ruling elites, who had long relied on British support. Thus the most enduring implications of British involvement in the Trucial States were arguably political. By acknowledging certain sheikhs over others, maintaining relations and signing treaties with them and their successors over many decades, the British helped empower and legitimize today’s ruling families. Even Sheikh Zayed, the “father of the country,” did not favor immediate independence; he suggested that Abu Dhabi support the continued British presence using its new oil revenues (Peck 1986, 48). But the British were determined.4 Between 1968 and 1971, the nine rulers of Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, Ajman, Umm Al Qawain, and Fujairah – the British protected states of the Gulf – met to negotiate the creation of an Arab Gulf federation. Predictably, however, negotiations were strained, stymied by disagreements over borders, the nature of the federation, and control over oil wealth. Although Bahrain and Qatar were initially among the most enthusiastic, they had both opted out by 1971. As a result, when the United Arab Emirates was formally declared in 1971, the founders faced a number of key state-building challenges, only one of which was securing the loyalty of the newly federated territory’s inhabitants. First, the federation itself was a tenuous entity, with many at the time doubting its ability to sustain itself. The recent collapse of the 3

4

“Barasti” construction in this document refers to the huts made of dried palm fronds and other local materials, which were popular on the Gulf coast and can still be seen in “heritage villages” where some have been preserved. Interestingly, although earlier work supported the official British explanation for withdrawal – pointing to British economic woes and a lack of funds – more recent work attributes it to domestic political battles. See, for example, Onley (2009).

The Making of Citizens, Take One

41

British-engineered Federation of South Arabia and the rise of a radical Marxist government in Aden did not offer a happy precedent. Moreover, many of the issues that troubled the individual rulers during the period of negotiations leading up to independence remained largely unresolved. One of the sheikhdoms, Ras Al Khaimah, did not join the UAE until 1972, and tribal tensions continued to fester across emirates. In addition, the new federation was challenged by threats to its external borders, with Iran continuing to claim three islands in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia the Buraimi oasis area. Finally, because prior development of the area was limited, much work lay ahead to build a functioning state. As late as 1971, there was still no paved road across the hundred miles of desert stretching between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, now only a 1- to 2-hour drive apart by car.

the making of citizens, take one What kind of citizen did the sheikhs who were the founders of the United Arab Emirates hope to cultivate? What was their vision of citizenship? A key goal of this chapter is to illustrate how the content of the citizenship UAE ruling elites wish to promote has grown increasingly complex, articulated, and rationalized, shifting from a relatively passive model to a far more active one. This is not to say that citizens themselves were or are “passive.” Rather, ruling elites’ vision of them has shifted from ideals of authoritarian passivity toward more active conceptions of citizenship that align with global neoliberal norms, yet retain elements of authoritarianism. The making of citizens in this young federation was no easy task. To start, tribal identities were intensely felt, and independence was not the result of an indigenous anti-colonial struggle that might have patched over these differences. Historically, the Al Qasimi dominated most of the northern tribes from bases of power in Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah, while the Bani Yas, a tribal confederation led by the Al Nahyan family in Abu Dhabi, dominated the south.5 Dubai was formed in 1833 after a dispute with the Al Nahyan led several hundred members of the Bani Yas to move north and establish their own emirate, led by the Al Maktoum family that still rules Dubai today. Abu Dhabi and Dubai were at war as late as 1947. Meanwhile, the Al Qasimi–led tribes had their own reasons for hostility: with so little oil in the north, they found themselves increasingly subordinate to their “nouveau-riche” southern rivals. Abdullah Omran Taryam (1987), who played a key role in 5

For an excellent overview of tribal structures in the UAE, see Van der Meulen (1997).

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negotiating the UAE’s federal structure, recalls that the tribal order was so strong it was virtually built into the constitution. The founding sheikhs confronted additional obstacles to the formation of a cohesive UAE national identity. One was the old divide between the bedu, the nomadic (Bedouin) peoples of the interior concentrated in Abu Dhabi, and the hadhar, the more “settled” town dwellers on the coast. Another was ethnic diversity. The Gulf had long been home to Persian and Indian communities, typically merchant families who intermingled with Arabs in the coastal towns and especially in Dubai.6 As Miriam Cooke (2014, 6) notes in a discussion of the region’s longstanding multiculturalism, the oil era was to trigger “only the latest phase in Gulf cosmopolitanism.” As oil wealth grew and opportunities flourished, more people would come from the Indian Ocean region and beyond (AlShehabi 2015). The question of lineage and who was “really” indigenous – and thus considered to be deserving of UAE citizenship – would grow increasingly fraught. How could rulers, themselves often at odds, build a common national identity and sense of loyalty in these diverse lands? The immediate answer was oil. The ability to distribute oil wealth and provide for citizens in previously unimaginable ways was a powerful means of building loyalty. By all accounts, Sheikh Zayed, the country’s much-revered, charismatic first president and the key architect of independence and unification, was willing and eager to share the wealth of his native Abu Dhabi with the other emirates for this purpose. In his memoirs, Al-Fahim recalls how Sheikh Zayed, when he replaced his less development-savvy brother, Sheikh Shakhbut, as ruler of Abu Dhabi in 1966, “announced that anyone in need could come to Abu Dhabi from anywhere in the Trucial States to receive money,” leading to “long queues in front of the palace as people waited to get a share of the promised windfall” (1995, 135). After the establishment of the UAE, he continued these generous practices, visiting villages in the various emirates regularly to find out what people needed or wanted and arranging for the new central government to help.7 Material benefits encouraged members of the various tribes to acknowledge the central authority that was making those benefits

6 7

See Anscombe (2005) and Onley (2005). In Abu Dhabi, for example, every citizen was given several pieces of land, including one for a home and another for a farm. Similar support was given in the other emirates, though, as is often the case, it was often less in the periphery than what could be obtained in the capital.

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possible. “We used to think he was too generous, that he was wasting money,” Fatima Al Sayegh, an Emirati historian, has said about Sheikh Zayed. “But he knew the money wasn’t lost because it bought loyalty for the union.”8 Tribal allegiances did not disappear, but people were aware of and increasingly loyal to this wealthy and generous state as well, which was providing them with land, water, houses, clothing, shoes, food, hospitals, schools, vehicles, and other forms of support. It is not difficult to see why people should have been so grateful. In these formerly impoverished lands, sickness was common and often deadly. Modern medicine and treatment were hard to come by; even those with means had to travel by boat to India for these luxuries. In such harsh desert conditions, starvation, dehydration, and skin cancer occurred regularly, while pearl diving left a generation of men suffering from decompression sickness, blindness, and other ailments. This strategy of “making” citizens was further strengthened by the fact that it was consistent with earlier tribal customs, and thus an unsurprising way in which rulers would try to build loyalty and a legitimate right to rule. As Madawi Al-Rasheed put it, “The perception of the ruler as a provider was not novel in the Arabian context. Oil only consolidated what had already been the foundation of rule, namely ‘generosity’” (2002, 126). The British explorer Wilfred Thesiger put it a bit more bluntly: “These sheikhs competed for the support of the tribesmen by the lavishness of their hospitality and the scale of their gifts” (2010, 246). And the state was generous. Both the federal and emirate-level governments were busy during the seventies and eighties building houses for their citizens with electricity, running water, sewage disposal, and other modern amenities. By 1976, there were five thousand new houses built for Abu Dhabi families in the main town, Al Ain, and the remote western region. In the other, less-populated emirates, some three thousand were built by 1977 (Heard-Bey 1982, 386). Tellingly, early government documents explicitly refer to such services as “rights”: it is the new state’s duty, one proclaims, to “provide the acquired rights, i.e. social services, to the citizens of the UAE” (UAE Ministry of Planning 1982, 10). “The ultimate objective of planning,” it continues, “is to ensure the welfare of the community and to provide compensation for past hardship” (1982, 6). In these records, citizens are largely portrayed as the passive recipients of state beneficence.

8

Quoted in Krane (2009, 88).

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Yet as oil wealth was making it possible for rulers to foster loyal citizens through the creation of a cradle-to-grave welfare state, it was also creating challenges for their citizen-building strategy. Since the discovery of oil, foreigners came pouring into the Gulf. In some cases, they were invited. Abu Dhabi, for example, was short of people in the seventies, so Sheikh Zayed recruited tribes from Yemen and elsewhere to help populate the emirate (Dresch 2005). Dubai attracted foreigners from even farther afield, so many, in fact, that tensions soon arose between Dubai and Abu Dhabi because of the rapid influx of Persians, Indians, Pakistanis, and others. By the late seventies, thousands of Emiratis were protesting Dubai’s liberal immigration policies, seen as endangering cultural cohesion even as they fueled Dubai’s economic development. A 1979 memorandum prepared by the Federal National Assembly and the cabinet demanded less regionalism and greater centralization of power behind Sheikh Zayed in Abu Dhabi, and was effectively an attempt to rein in Dubai (Heard-Bey 1982; Herb 2009). Who was a “real” Emirati? And who should be granted citizenship? These were intensely political questions, in part because citizenship was becoming so lucrative. And because rulers had based their citizen-building strategy on the distribution of wealth, it grew increasingly important to contain the social base from which citizens could emerge, so that the wealth would not be spread too thinly. Khalaf (2015) argues that migration policies reflected these political concerns, with Gulf rulers coming to prefer Asian over Arab migrants due to the belief that the former would be less likely to bring their families and claim citizenship. Elaborate nationality laws were put in place, setting up criteria for citizenship, including proof of lineage and long-term residence in the country that excluded tens of thousands, not only recent immigrants but also the stateless bidūn. Among citizens, gradations of citizenship were introduced, with those who could demonstrate tribal purity in their Gulf-based lineage obtaining the highest status (Cooke 2014; Lori 2013). Under such circumstances, citizens became a privileged minority, and rulers, partly for political reasons, sought to encourage this sense of distinctiveness. They promoted the idea of an ethnically “pure” nation of Emiratis and themselves as its natural protectors, keeping the citizen base small and increasing its sense of gratitude to the state.9 For example, although none had existed before, 9

See Kanna (2011) for a valuable investigation of Dubai that touches on such top-down identity politics, and Longva (2005) for a more general treatment of the concept of “ethnocracy,” with a focus on Kuwait.

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a “national dress” emerged that differentiated citizens from the growing population of non-citizens (Khalaf 2005).10 At the same time, compared to today, there was far less of a concerted state effort directed toward defining what being a UAE citizen “really” meant in the deeper sense of attitudes and behaviors, beyond the basics of being taken care of and giving one’s loyalty in exchange. Even the notion of loyalty was arguably rather thin. Mishaal Al Gergawi, a well-known Emirati writer and social commentator, has suggested that loyalty meant little more than “cheering for the national team at the Gulf Cup,” or arranging to “decorate your car for National Day.”11 In the early years, there was little rush to design a nationalist ideology and inculcate it into youth, as has been common in other new states; a civics class, for example, would not be introduced into the UAE national curriculum until the late eighties. UAE rulers were also skeptical of the prevailing nationalist ideologies of the time, linking them to Nasser and the threat of left-wing radicalism. They were not eager to promote such ideas. By the late eighties, they were also concerned about the spread of Islamist ideologies, particularly in the school system, and began a campaign to reduce Islamist influence that continues today.12 It may be that the distribution of oil wealth was so effective at building loyalty that deeper, more psychologically complex methods of social engineering were not seen as particularly urgent. Indeed, Beblawi and Luciani (1987, 75) claimed that authoritarian rentier states need not bother with national myth-making. Van der Muelen (1997) also argues as much, suggesting that UAE rulers, awash in oil wealth, did not need to avail themselves of any of the more complex and challenging methods that 10

11

12

This sartorial means of differentiation remains a sensitive point for many; during my own fieldwork in Ras Al Khaimah, a tourist came to RAK Mall dressed in the local or “national dress,” and plain-clothes policemen detained him (but the ruler ultimately pardoned him). Interview with Mishaal Al Gergawi, Dubai, May 2012. Lori (2013) also offers a valuable study of the politics of citizenship in the UAE. These concerns are frequently voiced by ruling elites and education professionals, evident in the re-assignment or deportation of Islamist-leaning teachers, and can also be found expressed in no uncertain terms in leaked US embassy cables from Abu Dhabi. One, for example, dated from November 10, 2004 (“UAE Minimizing the Influence of Islamic Extremists”) and addressed to the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Council, and the secretary of state, among other recipients, discusses Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed’s perceptions of the Islamist presence in the country. “We are having a (culture) war with the ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ in this country,” he is reported to have said, expressing particular concern about extremists “hijacking” the education curriculum. See www .wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/04ABUDHABI4061_a.html, accessed December 15, 2016.

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other rulers have been compelled to use in order to overcome tribalism, such as the development of an overarching nationalist ideology. Vandewalle (1998, 171) draws a similar conclusion in the case of Libya, noting that distributive states need not “elicit more than perfunctory loyalty” to survive and prosper. An instructive comparison to the UAE case can be found in Iraq after World War I. Like the UAE, Iraq was also a state imposed over multiple tribal allegiances, where a monarchical regime was established with British assistance and stewardship. To secure the loyalty of the new Iraqi citizens, ruling elites did not have the extent of oil wealth that UAE leaders would later use to build allegiance; they lacked the basic ingredients for such “insta-loyalty.” Instead, headed by King Faisal and his influential head of education, they embarked on mass education reforms, aiming to inculcate a nationalist ideology in youth that would ensure their allegiance as adults (Tibi 1997; Tripp 2000). By contrast, when the UAE’s school system in its early years is examined, there is little evidence for such an elaborate and urgent state effort at social engineering. Rather, these plans reflect a natural concern with establishing the basics of an education system and do not tackle the more delicate questions of citizen socialization in a sustained way. A report from the Abu Dhabi Planning Department in 1976 illustrates the point. After commenting on literacy, school attendance, and other such basic issues, the planners note that “It is essential to take interest in club matters, and to train the maximum number of youth and to facilitate their joining the sports clubs” (1976, 60). To this end, the government should immediately set about the “Construction of a closed hall at each club for tennis, Swedish games, gymnastics and squash.” Why? “The committee draws attention to the fact that the Gulf Cup games shall be held in the Emirate in 1978, and this requires the Sports Clubs to appear in suitable outfit before the world.” As we will see, government plans for citizen-building have become significantly more elaborate, concerned not only with the country’s image “before the world,” but also with the deeper character of the citizenry. As a whole, then, the early approach to the challenge of building a loyal citizen base relied less on the mass inculcation of an elaborate, wellarticulated nationalist ideology reaching down into the inner psychology of citizens and more on the promise of social and economic benefits. As such, it signaled what Rogers Smith (2003) calls an “economic story of peoplehood,” with rulers gaining the support of constituents by making socio-economic promises and, importantly, tending to deliver on

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them.13 It was also, as I will discuss shortly, a rentier social contract, one that the sheikhs and citizens alike have become increasingly ambivalent about. As Emirati scholar Ibtisam Al Kitbi (2010, 70) has put it, “The relationship between the state and its citizens is still based on the fact that they are subjects, not partners,” yet there is contestation over what “partnership” ought to mean.

sheikhs, citizens, and the ambiguities of the good life In the 1990s, a profound malaise began to enter discussions of the citizenry. There was a sense then, as there continues to be today, that something had gone very wrong in the formation of the new citizens. The youth had grown idle and unmotivated. Rather than making a contribution to their country, the boys were focused on fast cars and high salaries, the girls on going to the mall and buying luxury goods. Now that so much was provided for them, it was thought, many younger citizens had developed an attitude of entitlement that was distasteful to their parents and grandparents for whom the hardships of the past were still very much alive. Thus, an Emirati grandmother quoted in Bristol-Rhys’ ethnographic research complains, “All Emiratis have someone else doing the work for them! How can you all have become so lazy? You are spoiled, spoiled people who cannot even wash your own clothes . . . I look at the way [younger Emiratis] live and I worry all the time . . . They have become soft and lazy and that means weak; we were never weak in the old days” (Bristol-Rhys 2010, 62). Among ruling elites, there was a feeling that, after all the state’s enthusiastic planning and hard work in providing the good life for citizens, and in record time at that, the young were not displaying enough of a sense of gratitude, feeling of civic obligation, concern for the public good, and willingness to work hard and share the burden of developing the country. Sheikh Zayed, the ultimate parental figure as “father of the nation,” gave voice to this malaise when some young UAE nationals came to him in the early 1990s with complaints about too few job opportunities at sufficiently high salary levels. According to the official tribute to Sheikh

13

Onn Winckler (2010, 245) has also put this well: education in the Gulf rentier monarchies was largely used to “convince their populations that personal economic and social prosperity rested upon the existing regimes and that the continuation of the current high standard of living depended upon the regimes’ survival.”

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Zayed after his death in 2004, he offered them employment as agricultural laborers, “so that they might learn the dignity of work.”14 The tribute quotes him obliquely criticizing the youth’s attitude of entitlement: Work is of great importance, and of great value in building both individuals and societies. The size of a salary is not a measure of the worth of an individual. What is important is an individual’s sense of dignity and self-respect. It is my duty as the leader of the young people of this country to encourage them to work and to exert themselves in order to raise their own standards and to be of service to the country. The individual who is healthy and of a sound mind and body but who does not work commits a crime against himself and against society.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, ruler of Dubai, put these complaints about the citizenry even more bluntly, saying in a 1999 speech about UAE government workers, “They have no sense of progress or creativity and do not try to do anything new. Their Minister is even lazier than they are” (Al Nahyan 2014). Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, ruler of Abu Dhabi and UAE president, has also found it necessary to connect working hard with good citizenship: “Work is a true criterion of citizenship. It is evidence of sincerity and loyalty” (UAE Cabinet 2010b). The quotation introduces Vision 2021, a much-publicized national strategy document. Gulf scholars and theorists of the rentier state will be quick to find irony in such frustrations at the top, pointing out that ruling elites complain about the citizenry but they are largely the ones who have made it the way it is.15 It is their wealth distribution policies, their creation of government jobs guaranteed for citizens, their provision of benefits and status in exchange for loyalty – their very approach to the making of citizens, 1.0 – that have done so much to foster the “rentier mentality” they decry.16 And politically, they also benefit: the rentier social contract is a cornerstone of their legitimacy, contributing to the authoritarian status quo as citizens trade political rights for economic security. Yet none of this implies that ruling elites are satisfied with such status quo arrangements, even as they provide significant political benefits. Nor are citizens, who also benefit enormously from rentier arrangements on a social and economic level, necessarily very pleased. Whereas rentier theory can give the impression of a happy 14

15 16

The tribute, “Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan: A Special Tribute,” can be accessed at www.uaeinteract.com/uaeint_misc/pdf_2008/zayed_tribute/zayed.pdf, accessed December 15, 2016. See, for example, Crystal (1990), Gause (1994), Karl (1997), and Herb (1999). For a classic statement of the “rentier mentality,” see Beblawi and Luciani (1987), who define it as a family of attitudes and behaviors stemming from a deterioration of the “work-reward” link.

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equilibrium, with all parties mutually benefiting, the situation is actually far more ambiguous, as scholars have recently shown.17 Rentier social contracts do provide all-around benefits, but they can also be deeply unfulfilling for rulers and citizens alike. In the rest of this section, we go “inside the minds” of ruling elites.18 To do so, I present evidence from rare palace ethnography, including regular conversations with a ruling monarch. Why have ruling elites begun to doubt their initially effective strategy of citizen-building, especially when it fuels their own legitimacy and right to rule? What are their new ideals for citizenship, and where have these ideas come from? What trade-offs might they face in seeking to modify their approach to the challenge of citizen-building, and consequentially their own basis for legitimacy? Ethnography, of course, is not mind-reading, and it is not possible to know with certainty how others think. There are also hundreds of ruling elites in the UAE – members of the country’s seven ruling families – who do not always think the same way. But, where other studies must infer leaders’ thinking from official actions or scripted speeches, or else impute them, I take advantage of more direct ethnographic opportunities arising from an unusual degree of access to ruling circles. As Wedeen (2008) observes in the context of her ethnographic work in Yemen, the stories and jokes that actors tell among themselves can be especially revealing. What is immediately apparent from the ethnographic evidence on how ruling elites think about the citizenry is a very real “love affair” with the West – or, more precisely, their idea of the West. In this way, the most powerful ruling elites in the UAE, who came to power in the 1990s and early 2000s, are different from their predecessors – less well-traveled rulers such as Sheikh Zayed of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Rashid of Dubai, and Sheikh Saqr of Ras Al Khaimah, who never studied for a significant period of time in the West. When asked about how they imagine the ideal UAE citizen, we find many of today’s ruling elites shifting the conversation nostalgically to their own, often deeply personal, experiences living and studying in the West as impressionable young men and women. Such experiences appear to have supplied them with powerful ideas about how modern, productive peoples “ought” to behave and how their own

17

18

For excellent investigations into such ambiguities, see Okruhlik (1999) and Kanna (2011). This section draws from Jones (2015a). More information on the ethnographic approach can be found in Appendix A.

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cultures underperform. While modernizing elites are often profoundly affected by experiences abroad, the question of what they bring back with them is less straightforward.19 In this case, the evidence suggests they came to view liberal social engineering, stripped of its political core, as a key part of the way forward. Consider, for example, the story that the ruling monarch of Ras Al Khaimah, the UAE’s northernmost emirate, chose to tell when asked about the contemporary challenges of citizen-building. It was a typical dinner in early February 2011 at the Ruler’s Palace, unfolding in the airy outdoor tent that served a majlis function in cooler months.20 His Highness Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi sat on a cushioned seat lining the inside perimeter of the tent. Sitting to his left and right were various local individuals of note, including tribal elders like Ahmed Al Khatri and well-known businesspeople like Abdulla Yousef and his son Khaled Abdulla. On some nights, one or more of the ruler’s teenage children might join the group. Ruling elites from the other emirates were also frequent guests. It was said that the majlis-tent had an open-door policy, so to speak, and that anyone was welcome. Throughout the meal and conversation, some would come and go with little ceremony, while everyone would stand for the arrival and departure of certain high-ranking individuals, such as the ruler. First, Sheikh Saud set the scene, describing the bustling university culture he experienced and the heady chaos of the “shopping period” where he could choose almost any courses he wanted from what seemed to be an infinite list. It was his first year as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, where he would go on to study political science and economics. He paused to dwell on the many choices, frowning as he noted the absence of such a range of possibilities for UAE youth, whom ruling elites sometimes refer to as a “lost generation.” He recalled the lively events that were common, the book fairs, movie screenings, academic conferences, activist rallies, and student-run plays. There were also career fairs, internship support offices, and entrepreneurial meet-ups. He had never seen anything like this in the UAE. At first, he admitted, he was very nervous, even intimidated. “They were in the library all night,” he told the group. “I never saw anyone work so hard.”

19

20

See, for example, Vogel (2011) on Deng Xiaoping and his support for government officials going on “study trips.” In a palace context, the majlis is typically an official room where meetings are held.

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But one day, with the extreme cold sharpening his clarity, he decided not to be intimidated any more. It was a simple act of willpower. He decided that he would be the first person in the library every morning, proving to himself and to the others that he could do it. Winning some laughs from the crowd in the tent, he explained in meticulous detail the complicated array of winter outerwear he needed to research and then purchase to bring this plan to fruition, given the bracing early-morning temperatures and his being more accustomed to a desert climate. But, despite these obstacles, he said with a grin, he succeeded. The story ended there on a note of personal triumph – but not before a short, humorous tangent about how several female undergraduates screamed when they saw him enter the library the first time, as he was wearing a black ski mask to keep warm that made him look like a thief. Although Sheikh Saud’s tale may seem a bit roundabout, this kind of elliptical storytelling, a staple of the local culture, is a common way in which Western-educated ruling elites react when asked about their perceptions of the citizenry and its problems. The stories often function like fables, where the “moral” of the story points to something in the West that ruling elites saw as lacking in UAE society, suggesting that personal experiences abroad helped shape their sense of a “problem” at home. That problem, as they describe it, is a rentier-style sense of entitlement and listlessness among UAE youth – the “rentier mentality” noted above – marked by a lack of personal drive, individual sense of purpose, and motivation to achieve, which contrasts sharply with their idealized image of how people are in the West.21 For example, when pressed on whether the UAE really needs a new kind of citizen, Sheikha Fatima, a member of the Al Qasimi ruling family and high-end jewelry designer, pointed to one of her brothers as a classic example of the problem. She also emphasized the need for Western-style social engineering to address it: You would not believe how lazy he was – just sitting around all the time. I would call my father every day and say “Please, please make him go to America or Britain, so that he will get better!” So after a while my father made him go Britain, he went to some schools – some time at Cambridge, then in London. And when he came back, he was 100% different. He was motivated, focused, more engaged, more positive. It was amazing.22

21 22

Not all people, however; Sheikh Saud was quick to criticize, for example, “your hippies.” Conversation with Sheikha Fatima Al Qasimi, Ras Al Khaimah, April 2014.

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Likewise, at the federal Ministry of Education in Dubai, responsible for public education across the country, I asked Abdulla Al Ameri, the special advisor to the minister, why rulers were putting so much faith in Westernstyle education, given its uneven performance. Ignoring the critical remark, he said wistfully, “When you look at people in the West, they rely on themselves to develop a career and to develop themselves. If you can’t do these things, it is difficult for you to develop your character and to mature . . . You will never be independent if you rely on others to do the job for you.”23 This, he said, is what he learned from his own experiences in the United States, where he earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. For elites, these common socialization experiences in the West seem not only to have brought their recognition of a “problem” into sharp relief, giving them concrete ways to describe it, but also pointed a way forward. The ethnographic evidence suggests a roadmap of causal and normative ideas about what “enlightened” progress looks like and how to get there. Back at the tent at the Ruler’s Palace in Ras Al Khaimah, for example, a young Emirati businessman was applauding the idea of new approaches to citizen socialization as a solution to the rentier mentality. He had been criticizing the tendency for young Emirati job-seekers to expect too much too soon. Over the years, he said, he had interviewed many Emirati graduates for positions working for him. Sighing, he said, “Their first question is always ‘What is the salary?’ And the second question is, ‘How many vacation days per week?’ followed by ‘How many vacation days in a year?’ Emiratis think only about the salary.” He reminisced nostalgically about his own time as an undergraduate at the University of Arkansas, where he said he finally felt like a “complete” person with choices and responsibilities. “In the UAE,” he said, “the locals never have to worry about what they will eat for dinner, someone always makes it for you, and your father pays your utility bills, and everything is taken care of.” Although many would presumably find such a life quite pleasant, he meant the comparison negatively. “At college in the US,” he continued, “it was the first time I had to cook for myself and figure out how to plan my day, pay bills, and take responsibility for things.” This, he said, is what the UAE needs. It is clear that the sorts of things that stood out to these young elites abroad were liberal and neoliberal in the broad sense of character 23

Interview with Abdulla Al Ameri, special advisor to the minister, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011.

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formation, rather than politically liberal (let alone democratic). Being immersed in a culture of individual self-actualization, autonomy, and entrepreneurialism, even a strong work ethic in the service of welldefined personal goals combined with a sense of responsibility, is what struck their fancy, not the presence of political rights. In Abu Dhabi, when I asked Khalid Al Ameri, a younger member of the same prominent family as the special advisor quoted above, about the reasons for UAE efforts at liberal and neoliberal social engineering, he focused on the absence of personal drive in the UAE, an “internal compass” as he later clarified: When you look at kids in the US and the Western world, they know; they have a hero, they have someone they want to be like. If a little Emirati boy comes to me and says, “I want to be Mark Zuckerberg.” You know, good for you, if somebody wants to laugh, fine, laugh, but the kid knows. He has something. Has some focus. Even if he never goes into tech, at least he thought about it at that age.24

There is an air of embarrassment in the way these ruling elites talk about the rentier culture, as if it is a source of anxiety over national status and they find it awkward to live off oil wealth. As the special advisor to the minister of education explained, he came to the conclusion after his own time abroad that you cannot “develop your character” and “mature” without a career. This is hardly a universal view, and not one that a certain “old guard” of ruling elites share, who are quite at ease with UAE society as it is. For instance, during another palace event in Ras Al Khaimah, Sheikh Saud was explaining the need for liberal education reform to a skeptical older guest. Sighing, he said, “Imagine an oil field that is not tapped,” referring to the pool of human talent that might go to waste if not “tapped” through the correct social engineering tools. Later on, after the man had left, Sheikh Saud complained to the group that this – the language of oil – is the only language that “they” understand. “They” see nothing wrong with resource wealth and a society resting contentedly upon it. Yet those, like Sheikh Saud, who spend significant time abroad come to realize that much of the world does not truly respect this kind of development. What they absorb is the idea that it is development that is “earned” with advanced technology, ideas, and human capital – the “knowledge economy” – that is not only the “real” key to progress, but is also respected as such.25 And it is social engineering of a Western-accented style – of the kind 24 25

Interview with Khalid Al Ameri, Abu Dhabi, May 2011. Several remarks from Sheikh Mohammed bin Isa al-Khalifa, a high-ranking member of Bahrain’s ruling family who studied at American University in Washington, D.C. and the London School of Economics, in the foreword for Seznec and Kirk 2011 are also telling in

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many of them experienced personally at universities in the West – that is seen as an important part of the solution, a way to cultivate that kind of appropriate, productive culture in their own societies. Indeed, these ruling elites talk enthusiastically of the need to foster attitudes and values associated in political theory with liberal character formation, including individualism, self-reliance, personal autonomy, critical thinking, secularism, and tolerance or open-mindedness.26 Their notion of the good citizen bears a close resemblance to such liberal and neoliberal ideals of citizenship, except that it leaves politics completely out. But what about the political risks, for the sheikhs, of such “liberal” social engineering? Strangely, considering that the literature on authoritarian modernization emphasizes such risks, rarely could I find evidence that ruling elites felt any conflict of interest.27 In fact, they appear convinced that the liberal culture they saw and admired abroad can be recreated domestically to good effect, without its political ramifications. A joke is revealing. At the suggestion that promoting new kinds of more active citizens might trigger demands for political change in this hot desert state, Sheikh Saud quipped, “For that, the people would have to get out of their [air-conditioned] cars.”28 Whether ruling elites are right to joke, or if their lack of concern simply illustrates how sheltered they are from reality, remains to be seen.

the sheikh’s dilemma What to do? Such angst about the character of the citizenry is not just about the insecurities of monarchs, nor is it limited to rarefied palace settings. It has arisen in a broader context of perceived dependency and national vulnerability.29 At least since the oil bust period of the 1980s,

26

27

28

29

this regard. Interestingly, he proclaims that “true wealth is not, and should never have been considered to be, oil and gas . . . ” Thus, the challenge for GCC countries is to “forge a future that is not hampered with the outdated, outmoded systems of the developing world” (xviii, italics added). For more on liberal character formation in political theory, see Macedo (1990) and MacMullen (2013). On liberal social engineering under autocracy, see Jones (2015a). This is perhaps best embodied by the concept of the “king’s dilemma” (Huntington 1968). Among elites, there is a similar (albeit offensive) joke about Qatari citizens, suggesting that the rentier culture is so ingrained that their South Asian servants would need to do the protesting for them. Such mounting pressures, in the context of the UAE and GCC more broadly, are well documented in the work of Christopher Davidson (2005, 2008, 2009, 2012b).

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there has been widespread concern about over-reliance on hydrocarbon exports and the ability of the government to provide a public sector job for every citizen. Even though the depletion of Abu Dhabi’s considerable oil reserves – about 10% of the world’s known oil reserves – is not predicted to occur for some time, the recognition that hydrocarbons are a finite resource has grown, along with concerns about the volatility of international oil markets and rising inflation. At the same time, the country is heavily dependent on foreign labor, ranging from low-skilled workers who help build new skyscrapers and maintain critical infrastructures to highly skilled professional workers involved in key government entities. According to official statistics, the proportion of UAE citizens within the larger population has fallen to less than 12 percent compared to about 60 percent in the early years of the federation (Salama 2011). Although petro-states often employ large numbers of foreign workers (Karl 1997), the rapid demographic shifts in the UAE have been especially striking and politically fraught, provoking a sense of citizens under threat (Al Kitbi 2010; Herb 2014). Only about 0.04 percent of the UAE private sector workforce, according to official government statistics, consists of Emirati citizens, the vast majority of whom prefer government jobs (Forstenlechner and Rutledge 2010). Yet early state efforts to address these challenges only ended up heightening the perception of a “problem” with the citizenry. For example, federally guided attempts to diversify in the nineties into energy- and capital-intensive industries did not create significant numbers of jobs for Emirati nationals or, at least, jobs that Emirati nationals were willing to take (Gonzalez et al. 2008). The labor nationalization schemes associated with “Emiratization,” especially quotas for the number of Emirati nationals hired within various sectors, quickly became unpopular. Quotas were interpreted as a burden and a tax, not only by foreign employers, but also, interestingly, by Emirati ones. In fact, researchers found that even when UAE nationals were themselves hired as human resource managers, they preferred not to hire fellow Emiratis because they were seen as having a low work ethic (Waqfi and Forstenlechner 2010). The Sharjah government’s efforts at Emiratization are telling in this regard. In the early 2000s, it tried to hire more Emirati citizens as taxi drivers, going so far as to promise salaries that would be higher than those offered to expatriate taxi drivers. But the effort was a “complete failure,” according to Mohammed Al Shamsi, the chairman of the board of the Sharjah Public Transportation Corporation (Kakande 2009). After five years, he said, only one UAE citizen had expressed any interest in such

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a job. “[The citizen] called in the evening,” he said, “saying that he wanted a job as a driver, and in the morning, we called him back – he said he didn’t want the job anymore.” He continued, “We asked him why and if he had got another job,” but “he said he was a national and was content to remain unemployed if he didn’t get a decent job as a national.” In addition, a 2010 survey of unemployed Emirati youth found that 35 percent were unemployed “by choice.”30 Such “voluntary” unemployment is a relatively common phenomenon in the Arab world as a whole, with young people queuing for years in anticipation of government jobs seen as more secure and prestigious (Dhillon and Yousef 2009; Chaaban 2010). The reasons are complex, a combination of political, economic, and cultural factors. A recent survey in Jordan is striking (World Bank 2008). Unemployed Jordanians were given a list of commonly available jobs at prevailing wages, including “waiter,” “fuel station worker,” and “cleaner.” For each job, between 59% and 86% of respondents said they would be unwilling to accept it, if offered to them, despite being unemployed. Likewise, a 2003 survey in Syria showed that over 80% of young people (aged 15–29) were interested in public sector jobs, and almost 60% said they were interested in jobs exclusively in the public sector (Kabbani and Kamel 2009). The UAE is thus not alone in the orientation of citizens toward government employment. This is not to say that citizens in the Middle East do not have good reasons for wanting government jobs, particularly in terms of a broad social and political rationale.31 Rather, it is to emphasize the elite perception of a problem in the “making of citizens,” especially when it comes to the implementation of larger developmental agendas. In the UAE, consider the perspective of governing elite Mona Al Za’abi, who as of 2013 was head of the “Work is Life” program at the Ministry of Social Affairs. “I have young women coming to me,” she said, “and saying, ‘Give me a desk and computer and I will call this a job. I need prestige in a job otherwise I cannot accept it’” (Issa 2013). Although the program had trained hundreds of Emiratis for work, most were still unemployed and receiving unemployment benefits, with many rejecting multiple offers of work. As a result, she said, “Much more needs to be done to shift these people from being dependent to active players in society.” She suggested

30 31

See International Council on Security and Development (2010). See, especially, Herb (2014, 23).

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suspending unemployment benefits for those who turn down three or more job offers. By the 2000s, the widespread view among elites was that UAE citizens lacked not only the right kinds of attitudes and outlooks, but also the right sort of education. Their English was poor; they preferred arts, humanities, and Islamic Studies to science, technology, and business; and they focused more on credentials and certificates than mastering the skills needed by employers. In 1998, the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECCSR), a state-sponsored think tank established in Abu Dhabi in 1994, held a conference in which these problems were articulated. “There is no doubt,” Abdullah Mograby (1999, 302) asserted, “that the current education system is unable to sustain future development, cope with change, and realize desired national goals.” UAE youth, he argued, were not being adequately prepared to participate fully in the development of the country, not only in the labor market but also in the broader national community. This situation, he concluded, had come to “pose a serious threat to the future of UAE society and economy.” As in many other resource-rich countries, UAE state institutions grew up around the need to distribute wealth to, rather than extract it from, the local population. Benefits have included not only government jobs with high salaries, short working hours, long vacations, and generous retirement packages, but also no direct taxation, free or subsidized housing and utilities, free healthcare and education, no-interest loans, and marriage grants. The UAE boasts one of the most generous welfare systems in the world, yet it has come with costs. As Mishaal Al Gergawi, the well-known social commentator quoted earlier, put it, “I don’t think a lot of [citizens] would be employable if there weren’t such a large welfare state.”32 Moreover, recent labor nationalization policies, he argued in an op-ed (Al Gergawi 2008), have only “given many young Emiratis a false sense of entitlement to a job.” “At first glance,” he continued, “that is not such a bad thing. In fact, one could argue that it is a measure of the locals taking ownership of their country and their sense of belonging. But the reality is rather different; it is closer to an attitude of privilege that the young graduates believe they are bestowing upon the organisation they are joining.” For some, the solution to such problems is straightforward, at least on the question of motivating citizens to work harder. It boils down to a need to reconfigure the country’s rentier structures, aligning material incentives 32

Interview with Mishaal Al Gergawi, Dubai, May 2012.

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with goals for labor nationalization, diversification, and productivity. As countless consultants and experts linked to international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have explained, in the public sector, stricter pay-for-performance salary systems need to be implemented, and conditions brought into greater alignment with the private sector in terms of working hours and job responsibilities.33 More broadly, government sector wages, many of which are seen as massively inflated, need to be lowered, so that the private sector will be more attractive to UAE citizens. For political leaders, however, things aren’t so clear-cut. Reforms such as those outlined above are especially risky in the UAE, due not only to the likely outcome of citizen backlash but also the possibility of palace coups by other family members, should existing rulers do anything seriously unpopular with the people. As discussed, these sheikhs are the leaders of a tribal society that, since the onset of oil wealth, has evolved into a typical rentier state in which state–society relations are governed by a seemingly rigid social contract. The state is expected to provide a host of economic and social benefits to citizens in exchange for their political cooperation and acceptance of the political status quo. For rulers to scale back those benefits could spell their own demise. Indeed, at the palace dinner described above, I posed the question of lowering public sector salaries to find out how ruling elites view the standard incentives-based answer to this dilemma. Around the tent, eyes widened in a combination of amusement and astonishment. There was a chorus of La, la, la (“No, no, no”) and clicks of disapproval. When asked why public sector salaries were recently raised to even more inflated levels in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and then at the federal level, the ruler of Ras Al Khaimah replied, “[Abu Dhabi] is taking the easy way, not the hard way. It’s like your gas tax.” In response, I said, “But, you’re kings – you don’t have to win elections.” “Yes,” he replied gravely, “But we still need to be popular.”

the making of citizens, take two It is thus safe to say that the sheikhs wish to avoid being seen as breaking the social contract between themselves and their citizens. At the same time, they also wish to tweak it, for a host of reasons. Economically speaking, strategies that might be seen as coercive, such as reducing public 33

See, for example, IMF (2005).

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sector salaries or taking away benefits, are largely rejected. It is not surprising, then, that many ruling elites have searched for an alternative logic of change. And fortunately for them, the neoliberal structural adjustments so often advised are not the only approach. As I illustrate more fully in Chapters 3 and 4, rather than play with fire at the structural level, ruling elites have turned instead to a social engineering campaign that aims to modify the person, the actor, the individual agent operating within that structure, thus attacking the culture of rentierism rather than its material underpinnings. And to do so, they have set their sights on an area of leverage over society viewed as more malleable and less likely to provoke a legitimacy crisis – the making of citizens.34 Ruling elites hope to cultivate a new kind of citizen. But what is the nature of this new citizen? We have already heard from ruling elites themselves about how they view the problems with the citizenry and what new ideals for citizenship have emerged. I now show how these ideals have crystallized in the official rhetoric. In terms of how citizens are portrayed, recent government strategy documents illustrate marked differences from those of the past. Where citizens in the early postindependence period were largely portrayed as the passive recipients of state beneficence, they are now presented as active players in the economic, social, cultural – yet not political – development of the country. After Sheikh Khalifa, the eldest son of Sheikh Zayed, assumed the presidency in 2004, he put building a new citizen at the center of the agenda. “The UAE,” he said, “is on the verge of a new phase: the empowerment phase” in which the “most important goal” is to “form a more participative and more contributive citizen.”35 To see the evolution of this ideal, we must return now to the late nineties and examine Education Vision 2020 (1999), a landmark strategy for education reform. It called for “drastic change” to cultivate a new generation of citizens who would be both able and willing to lead the nation into a post-petroleum era of progress. The new citizens should be “creative and innovative nationals” who can “make knowledge, adapt with change and make progress” (1999, 20). To accomplish this, there must be “education for the future 34

35

In this sense, the UAE campaign has something in common with what Abdel-Moneim (2015) sees as a broader trend of “reinventing the autocratic bargain” in the region, in which some regimes are reforming areas of “soft policy” such as education and health without democratizing. They thus gain legitimacy by better providing the services they were supposed to provide in exchange for a renewed commitment to the authoritarian status quo. See Al Nahyan (2005).

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and adaptability, education for producing a creative character that is able to make and enrich knowledge, education for citizenship and affiliation despite globalization, education for responsibility and social accountability, education for competition in the world of global economy and free trade” (1999, 24). Ten years later, these ideas about the right kind of citizen had become even more reified. UAE Vision 2021 (2010b) is almost lyrical in its portrayals of citizens. “Emiratis,” it declares, “will be confident citizens, steadfast in carving out their future in a spirit of entrepreneurship and responsibility, engaged in the course of their nation and embracing moral values for richer fulfillment” (2010b, 23). It envisions a “diversified and flexible knowledge-based economy” emerging, “powered” by UAE citizens (2010b, 14). “Each new generation,” it continues, “will emerge ready to play an active and positive role in society as self-directed and responsible citizens” (2010b, 23). The document is so romantic and expressive that it is worth quoting at some length (2010b, 4): We want Emiratis to take charge of their path through life with the confidence to map out a productive and fulfilling future for themselves and their nation. In their professional lives they will prove that the route to success lies through personal commitment, dedication and a strong work ethic. Satisfaction and motivation will reward their self-reliance and initiative; their appetite for risk-taking will be fuelled by a vigorous entrepreneurial spirit . . . Their proactive and persistent nature will inspire them to shape our nation’s future as active members of society, rising to the challenges that tomorrow holds.

It should be immediately clear that such an active, full-blooded vision of the citizen departs significantly from the more passive role described in earlier government strategy documents. Before, as shown, the emphasis was on providing for citizens and ensuring their basic welfare, not shaping their identities and encouraging their activism. Certainly, there was no such passionate talk of the need for an active and “creative character,” for citizens to “make knowledge” for the nation, “adapt with change,” and compete “in the world of global economy and free trade.” This shift bears some similarity to what Riesenberg (1992, 206) has called a “new emphasis in thinking about the human being” in Europe during the Renaissance. In comparison to the medieval period, the Renaissance invited a deeper interest in the citizen’s “entire personality, or total career.” “The civis,” as Riesenberg (1992, 206) explains it, “became more than a holder of a collection of statuses and rights; he became a complex psychological being making complex choices in a complex environment.” Accordingly, the absolutist monarchs of early

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modern Europe were drawn not to the idea that political authority is derived from the people but to the “state-service side to citizenship, the active-life-in-the-service-of-the-community aspect of the tradition” (1992, 204). These monarchs, like the UAE’s rulers today, also wanted “successful, creative merchants, scientists, engineers, and inventors” for their own kind of proto-knowledge economy. It was therefore important to motivate such a spirit of hard work, loyalty, and contribution through education and other means, yet to cultivate one that would remain apolitical – to mold an identity that would elevate the bearer above passive subjecthood, but would fall short of inspiring a demand for democratic citizenship. This was citizenship as economic, social, and cultural activism, not political activism. Out of this, Riesenberg (1992, 207) argues, emerged the concept of the citizen as “the modern rational, polytechnical being needed by a changing world for his scientific and administrative skills,” a citizen who would work passionately toward the development and progress of the state, as envisioned by its rulers. It is this idea of the citizen as “polytechnic being” for the twenty-first century – what I call the citizen as loyal bourgeois – that has come to captivate the minds of UAE ruling elites. Below I discuss articulated goals for citizen-building in each of the four dimensions of citizenship discussed in Chapter 1, drawing both from the ethnographic evidence as well as official government rhetoric. The National Dimension How do rulers wish to affect the national dimension? In palace settings, ruling elites can often be heard lamenting an erosion of national identity in youth. On one occasion, a tribal leader visiting the Ras Al Khaimah palace told the group a story that nicely illustrates this concern. “You would not believe what she does,” he said, speaking gravely about one of his wives. He complained that she is never at home to take care of the kids, since she is always out shopping. He began listing things, “Gucci this, Gucci that,” to a chorus of “Ah, yes” and knowing nods.36 This story has multiple layers of meaning, but one in particular is worth drawing out. Because of the wife’s absence from the home, the palace guest noted, his children are essentially being raised by their Filipina nanny, and thus growing up with only a limited knowledge of Arabic and appreciation for their Emirati national identity. This is a complaint 36

Author’s field notes, Ras Al Khaimah, March 2011.

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widely heard in the UAE, and perhaps now something of an “urban legend” (Kanna 2011). It reveals an important perception that national cultural identity is fading away, in part because of globalization and migration. Although some citizens blame rulers for causing this erosion of national identity with their liberal immigration policies, rulers are not exactly complacent about it. They too, and for their own reasons, would like to see a stronger sense of Emirati national and cultural identity in the citizenry. For them, such an identity involves not merely the preservation of old traditions and rituals but also an embrace of their new ideals for citizenship. The expatriate presence is thus closely connected with the drive to reinforce and refashion UAE citizens; as Cooke (2014, 23) suggests, non-citizen residents “become the ‘Other’ . . . in whose mirror Gulf Arabs see their own identity reflected.” Indeed, the notion of national identity as being formed in relation to an “other” – for example, as Telhami and Barnett (2002, 8) argue, “national and state identities are formed in relation to other nations and states” – grows more intimate and immediate in a context in which citizens constitute a minority amid a diverse and cosmopolitan resident population. Beyond the ethnographic evidence, such interests in boosting patriotic and nationalistic attitudes are widely in evidence in the official rhetoric. The UAE Government Strategy 2008–2010, for instance, highlights the need to “strengthen the national identity,” including by “upholding allegiance to the country and its culture, specifically between the younger generations, through preserving the cultural and intellectual heritage of the UAE” (2007, 17). Selected initiatives including forging “partnerships with the media to disseminate national values” and encouraging “local associations, private sector and individuals to organize cultural campaigns” (2007, 17). In the follow-up UAE Government Strategy 2011–2013 (2010a, 9), these goals were made even more clear-cut. The government will focus on “spreading the core pillars of National Identity, preserving and propagating the use of the Arabic language, promoting the UAE’s culture, heritage, and tradition, embedding values of religious moderation, and encouraging and promoting authentic UAE principals [sic].” The Civil Dimension The civil dimension of the state–citizen relationship is commonly associated in the literature with growing demands by citizens for civil liberties and other restrictions on the power of the state, especially the right to free

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expression and voluntary association. As would be expected in an authoritarian context, however, leaders do not wish to promote such demands. But they would like to foster a certain concept of civil society and “fellow feeling,” whose primary features are volunteering, contributing to the community, and displaying tolerance and respect for others. Authoritarian efforts to control and co-opt civil society in an effort to prevent it from playing its “watchdog” role and triggering demands for democratic accountability are well known (e.g., Wiktorowicz 2000). Here, however, the sheikhs have come to the issue from a somewhat different perspective. They appear less concerned with preventing democracy per se than with taking steps to deal with their perception of the youth as unmotivated, insufficiently focused on the country’s development, and lacking in positive civic energy. This perception is not uncommon in the Gulf, among rulers as well as citizens; for example, Farah Al-Nakib (2016, 14) highlights similar worries in Kuwait about “growing intolerance toward outsiders, the volatile tensions between social groups, the inertia of the average citizen, the lack of concern for the public good,” which she links to the unintended effects of earlier state-led modernization projects in urban planning. UAE ruling elites are keen to address what they see as low civic spirit. As Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, has said, “We each owe the UAE a great deal, and I call on all our young people to make their own commitment. Our country deserves the best that we can give it – giving back to society is something that brings out the best in every one of us.”37 Tolerance enters the picture in the form of acceptance of the multinational character of the resident population, the expatriate portion of which forms the backbone of the private sector. As Sheikh Saud of Ras Al Khaimah once said, he envisions a “social environment where you can live and work and drink and go dancing, where one person can go to the mosque and another can go to the bar, and both are happy.”38 These themes of self-reliance, social responsibility, and tolerance are pervasive in the official rhetoric as well. The UAE Government Strategy for 2008–2010 celebrates “the concept of community shouldering” and “social partnerships,” urging citizens not to rely on government social services but instead to provide for themselves. In the UAE Government Strategy for 2011–2013, Emiratis are called upon to “contribute to the 37

38

Quoted on the home page for Takatof, a state effort to promote a culture of volunteering, discussed in Chapter 4. See www.takatof.ae/en, accessed March 7, 2015. Author’s field notes, Ras Al Khaimah, March 2011.

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vigorous social scene” through “grass-roots initiatives, charitable work, and volunteering,” which will “nurture a common spirit of social awareness and responsibility” (2010a, 6). These strategies also call upon citizens to conserve resources and avoid waste, which can also be read as efforts to get citizens to take less from the state, since the state currently provides utilities for free or at highly subsidized rates for citizens. For example, the UAE Government Strategy for 2011–2013 encourages “promoting ecofriendly mindsets and practices” (2010a, 15). The 2008–2010 strategy urges “nationwide awareness campaign to promote the rational consumption of water and electricity” (2007, 28). Finally, tolerance is heavily promoted. In a piece for Gulf News, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, ruler of Dubai and vice president of the UAE, wrote (Al Maktoum 2016) that We need to study, teach, and practice tolerance and to instill it in our children, both through education and our own example . . . Tolerance is no catchphrase, but a quality we must cherish and practice. It must be woven into the fabric of our society to safeguard our future and maintain the progress we have made. There can be no bright future for the Middle East without an intellectual reconstruction that re-establishes the values of ideological openness, diversity, and acceptance of others’ viewpoints, whether intellectual, cultural, or religious.

Indeed, in 2016, UAE leaders created, in typical bold fashion, a provocative new cabinet post – a minister of state for tolerance. The Political Dimension The political dimension is the area of the state–citizen relationship that is most closely associated with the Western tradition of democratic citizenship, in which political authority is vested in the people. In theory, it refers to citizens’ attitudes and beliefs about the right of citizens to participate in political decision-making. As such, it is also the area that UAE ruling elites wish to leave largely unchanged. Not surprisingly, there is no discernible interest in or effort to promote political participation on the part of citizens. At the same time, ruling elites do display a strong interest in increasing “discipline” among citizens, particularly in the sense of respect for state authority. Sheikh Saud has said that the boys today “lack commitment and discipline.”39 “They are wearing their hair long,” he elaborated, “like

39

Author’s field notes, Ras Al Khaimah, February 2011.

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hippies.” UAE youth are often described as naughtier, more recalcitrant, and more lackadaisical than their predecessors. Ruling elites bewail the difficulties they face in getting government workers to take their jobs seriously. In this way, they are acutely aware of their own weaknesses as rulers whose authority is legitimized by a rentier social contract. It seems they would like to stop being, in Terry Karl’s memorable words, “weak giants that could be rendered ineffective by hundreds of rent-seeking Lilliputians” (Karl 1997, 60). Efforts to inculcate greater discipline range from introducing more rules and codes of conduct in the public sector and education system to shifts in the character of civic training. As we will see in Chapter 3, ruling elites like the idea of a strong military component embedded into civics curricula, apparently not because of its ability to prepare citizens to fight so much as its presumed role in instilling discipline and respect for authority as virtues in and of themselves (and not “in return” for government largesse). Thus, although there is naturally a continued desire for political “passivity,” there is also the sense that the youth, if left unattended in such a spirit of passive subjecthood, may become unruly and restive. As Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid once cryptically said, “Idleness leads to despair.”40 No doubt such a sentiment has only increased in the wake of the Arab uprisings and ruling elites’ concerns about their own swelling youth population. Some social engineers suggest that occupying the youth through sports, community service, and education will help deter political unrest by filling unstructured time and promoting self-discipline, as we will see in Chapter 4. The Economic Dimension For ruling elites, it is arguably the economic dimension of citizenship that is considered the most problematic and thus in need of modification. As noted, this area concerns citizens’ attitudes about what the state ought to provide in terms of economic and social welfare, as well as what citizens feel they ought to provide for themselves. Interestingly, many citizenship theorists would view the sheikhs’ perspective itself as rather backward; T.H. Marshall (1950) famously felt that citizens were only “full” citizens once they had achieved social and economic rights in the form of state guarantees for citizens’ welfare. The perspective of the 40

The quote is available on Sheikh Mohammed’s website (www.sheikhmohammed.co.ae, accessed February 15, 2016), in English under the heading “Thoughts” followed by “Quotes,” though no date is given.

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sheikhs, however, is much closer to conservative critiques of citizenship theory (e.g., Mead 2001), which suggest that social rights in excess can undermine work ethic and entrepreneurial drive. Overall, ruling elites want to transform their young subjects, whom they see as not yet having been corrupted by a larger culture of rentierstyle entitlement, into citizens with a greater willingness to work hard and contribute to the economic development of the country. By the same token, they want citizens to stop expecting government jobs when they graduate and instead take the private sector and especially the concept of entrepreneurship more seriously. The official government rhetoric echoes their celebration of self-reliance. In the UAE government strategy for 2011–2013, for example, entitled “Putting Citizens First,” it is stated that “The Government will lead the transformation from the current social welfare system to a social development system” (2010a, 9). Public education will be reformed to “instill learning and work values” (2010a, 10), and shift to “promoting a culture of self-education” (2010a, 10). The focus will be on “developing and promoting entrepreneurial mindsets” (2010a, 13) fit for the knowledge economy of the future. As the UAE government strategy for 2008–2010 puts it, the overarching goal is “empowering nationals to take the lead in developing the economy and the labor market” (2007, 19). As such rhetoric makes clear, state elites would like the young to be better educated and prepared to compete in the labor market, not merely by acquiring skills and knowledge in demand, but also by absorbing a range of attitudes and values that they associate with the desired “culture of innovation which is a societal ambition,” as it is described in Education Vision 2020 (1999, 87). Citizenship theorists may also associate these qualities with pro-market or neoliberal concepts of citizenship.

conclusion This chapter has shown how the image of the ideal citizen has evolved from the early post-independence period to the present day. Drawing from palace ethnography, government strategy documents, and rulers’ speeches, I have traced the evolution of the citizenship ideal from passive recipient of the state’s beneficence to active player in its historical trajectory. The new ideal is at once neoliberal and authoritarian, combining elements of Western-style liberal culture with authoritarian passivity or subjecthood. It is neoliberal because UAE ruling elites would like to influence the economic and social dimensions of citizenship in

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a neoliberal, pro-market direction, reflecting emerging norms in the international system and their desire to move beyond rentierism. It is authoritarian because ruling elites wish to maintain authoritarian state–society relations at the same time, creating citizens who are more entrepreneurial, self-reliant, and market-oriented but who remain relatively uninterested in political and civil rights. Thus, for ruling elites, citizens of the future are more able and willing to contribute to, rather than simply benefit from, the country’s development. They are loyal bourgeois, and in many ways, they embody the “bourgeois virtues,” yet within authoritarian constraints.41 Of course, it is important not to overstate the degree of homogeneity among these historically competitive ruling families and their close tribal allies, and to recognize that “intentions,” to the extent that they are graspable, can be difficult to uncover. Yet evidence from a variety of sources reveals roughly similar understandings of the “problem” with the citizenry. Such evidence also reveals similar ideas about one important way to address the problem through the re-making of citizens. The next two chapters illustrate, moreover, that social engineering toward the creation of a new citizen is well under way and cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric at the top.

41

See Mueller (1999) and McCloskey (2010).

3 Enlightenment under Autocracy

How are UAE ruling elites seeking to build the new citizen? They are engaged in an ambitious social engineering effort that involves influencing both hearts and minds. This chapter focuses roughly on the “minds” element (knowledge, skills), while the next chapter turns to “hearts” (attitudes, values), but the two are closely interrelated.1 In both respects, UAE leaders see themselves as cultivating a kind of enlightenment. As Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the ruler of Dubai, has said, progress will occur only “if we are enlightened and prepared to embrace globalization” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 22). Moreover: “This is not just an important quest, but a sacred mission entrusted to me, to civil servants, and to every official in the Arab world” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 100). In their commitment to a vision of enlightenment, UAE leaders are recent additions to a long list of authoritarian modernizers. As with Atatürk and Japan’s Meiji-era reformers as well as Frederick the Great and the other “enlightened despots” of the eighteenth century, UAE ruling elites are doing a great many things that people around the world find impressive and praiseworthy.2 Unlike several of the twentieth century’s more extreme cases 1

2

Indeed, as Kenez (1985, 8, 16) has shown, Soviet social engineers in the 1920s “thought of propaganda as part of education.” For them, as guided by Lenin, “teaching people the fundamentals of knowledge and spreading the Bolshevik message were inseparable,” since there was “no distinction between propagating enlightenment and spreading their own political ideology.” Darden and Grzymala-Busse (2006, 99) also emphasize how knowledge/curricular content and (nationalist) ideology can mingle and coalesce in mass schooling. Nevertheless, the two can be usefully distinguished for analytic purposes; hence, this chapter focuses on “minds” (knowledge, skills) and the next on “hearts” (attitudes, values). On authoritarian modernizers, see Mango (2002); also see Hanioğlu (2011) on Atatürk; Beasley (1972) on the Meiji era reformers in Japan; and Gagliardo (1967) and Wines (1967) on the “enlightened despots” of the eighteenth century.

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of authoritarian social engineering, their efforts do not seek to indoctrinate the population into a narrowly defined political ideology, cutting citizens off from the outside world and squelching the ability to think independently. On the contrary, they aim rather remarkably to expand knowledge, foster cosmopolitanism, and promote creativity, precisely in the liberal, proglobalization, outward-oriented ways that many critics both inside and outside of the region have long recommended. This is not to say that ideology is not involved, or that these autocrats are becoming less autocratic; we will turn to the question of ideology in Chapter 4. Rather, it is to emphasize that UAE leaders are paying more than mere lip service to the idea of nurturing a “creative Arab renaissance,” in the well-known words of the 2003 UN Arab Human Development report (UNDP 2003, IV). In so doing, they challenge stereotypes about authoritarian social engineering and invite theoretical revisiting of the phenomenon. Indeed, consider the strangeness of an authoritarian social engineering campaign that aims, in part, to foster individuality, creativity, and critical thinking. In liberal democracies, these are familiar aspects of liberal character formation; in autocracies, they are something else. In the UAE, they are certainly not there for the purposes of democratic citizen-building; yet they are also not there merely for the purposes of economic development. As with the liberalization of institutions under autocracy, the liberalization of social engineering under autocracy raises important questions of why, how, and to what effect.3 The chapter proceeds as follows. First, I document the variety of costly and ambitious initiatives in higher education and related areas to nurture what ruling elites see as a broad-based knowledge renaissance. These have ranged from major investments in research and science-based innovation to the building of a new cultural and educational district featuring branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim. As such, they span science, technology, history, and the arts. Next, I present ethnographic and interview evidence documenting how ruling elites are seeking to prepare and mold young citizens to engage in this new knowledge-rich environment – within authoritarian constraints. I focus on reforms from kindergarten through secondary school, which aim to cultivate a more creative generation through student-centered pedagogy and other liberal educational initiatives. Third, I narrow my analysis to changes in civics curricula, including new textbooks and course materials, which further support

3

For more on the puzzle of liberal social engineering in an illiberal state, see Jones (2015a).

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rulers’ understanding of an enlightened citizenry as embodying liberal and neoliberal character skills, absent political content.

fostering the knowledge renaissance In typically bold and provocative fashion, Atatürk once declared, “We will acquire knowledge and science wherever they are to be found and we will stuff them into the head of every individual in the country. No limits, no conditions can be attached to knowledge and science.”4 There were limits, then and now, but not to the extent that one might expect. In the UAE, leaders are similarly brazen and even reckless in their promotion of a contemporary knowledge renaissance, which extends well beyond technology, science, and other areas seen as relatively “safe” for autocrats. For example, Sheikh Khalifa, the UAE’s president, declared 2016 the “Year of Reading,” and announced a new and intriguing law to make reading a daily habit (Salama and Zaatari 2016). The new law involves, among other interesting elements, the public provision of “knowledge briefcases” to the families of newborns, a requirement that coffee shops provide reading material for customers, a national fund to support reading initiatives including a month every year devoted to promoting literature, exempting reading material from taxes and fees, and time at work for employees to read. A press release from the UAE Cabinet quoted Sheikh Khalifa explaining that “We directed to declare 2016 as the Reading Year because reading is the basic skill for a new generation of scientists, intellectuals and innovators,” and emphasizing that “The first verse in Quran is ‘Read.’”5 Like other authoritarian modernizers, those in the UAE have generally started with ambitious, eye-catching initiatives in higher education, research, science, architecture, and the arts, aided by international partnerships and often Western experts.6 Masdar City is an excellent example. Established in Abu Dhabi in 2006, Masdar City is a new city where an entire ecosystem of education, research, innovation, and product 4 5

6

Quoted in Mango (2002, 369). See the UAE Cabinet’s 2016 press release at https://uaecabinet.ae/en/details/news/moham med-bin-rashid-on-presidents-directives-2016-is-uae-reading-year, accessed December 15, 2016. The role of foreign experts in authoritarian efforts at modernization is well documented. See, for instance, Westney (2000) and Spence (1980) on Western experts in Japan and China, respectively. In the Arab Gulf, education has long drawn from foreign expertise, particularly in the use of Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Palestinian teachers (Suliman 2000; Davidson and Smith 2008; Ridge 2014). See Al-Nakib (2016) and Jones (2010) for additional insights on the role of foreign experts in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, respectively.

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development has been established. Its designers aim to marry human capital with resources to spur the growth of alternative energy technologies in areas like solar power and carbon capture and storage. In close collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the city contains a research-driven graduate institute that plans to enroll 600–800 master’s and Ph.D. students, with Emiratis given special incentives to apply.7 If all goes according to plan, they will be working closely with hundreds of companies that will set up headquarters in the new city. Under the leadership of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, the emirate has already invested $15 to 20 billion in the project.8 Many of these initiatives have been designed with an eye toward economic diversification. According to Abu Dhabi’s strategic plan for higher education, the first ever in the emirate, $1.3 billion will be invested by 2018 to “lay the foundation for an innovation-based, knowledgeproducing society” (Abu Dhabi Education Council 2010). As a result, significant funding has gone toward research, training, scholarships, facilities, and top faculty in the areas identified with what Christopher Davidson (2012a) calls the “new economy,” including alternative energy, semiconductors, aerospace technology, health, luxury tourism, and business and entrepreneurship. For example, in 2010, the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania partnered with the CERT Group, the commercial arm of the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), the biggest of the country’s three public institutions for higher education. Over twenty joint research projects have been funded by its research center for entrepreneurship and family business in the UAE, renamed Wharton @ CERT (Naidoo 2011). For rulers, however, such initiatives are about more than economic diversification in the UAE. In Sheikh Mohammed’s words, “Arabs were pioneers once and we will become so once again,” so long as “we regain the core element we have lost – the pioneering spirit” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 21). Masdar City, as a city built from scratch, is a typical manifestation of high modernism (Scott 1998). As such – and like the spectacles discussed in Chapter 4 – it serves both expressive and consequentialist ends, aiming to project an image of modernity as well as educate and

7 8

See www.masdar.ae/en/home/index.aspx, accessed February 15, 2011. Sources report slightly different amounts, especially given the context of the global financial crisis, but all fall within this range; Masdar City’s own FAQ, for instance, reports that the project will cost $18–19 billion. See, for example, Tweedie (2013).

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inspire individuals. From an architectural and design perspective, Masdar City has been explicitly built as a “city of the future” and a model of green, carbon-neutral urban development.9 Electricity, for instance, comes from photovoltaic, wind, and geothermal power, “traditional” cars are banned, and residents are encouraged to travel in futuristic Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) vehicles. Powered by electricity, the latter do not run on tracks and are driven by computers that navigate the city, pausing when other vehicles are sensed and chauffeuring passengers to their chosen destination. Beyond promoting science and technology, Abu Dhabi has also invested at least $27 billion to transform the manmade Saadiyat Island into a vibrant cosmopolitan cultural and educational district, boasting a multitude of museums, a performing arts center, and more.10 Branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim are under development. The Guggenheim will be housed in a 450,000 square foot building designed by the architect Frank Gehry, with an acquisition budget vastly exceeding that of its New York branch. Joining these famous Western museums – and not to be outdone by them – will be a new national museum, whose design has been “inspired by the dynamic of flight and the feathers of a falcon,” according to its website. “Each steel feather,” it notes, “the tallest of which rises 125 meters, will contain a gallery space where visitors can explore the history and culture of the UAE.”11 As explained by Mubarak Al Muhairi, the managing director of the Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC), the Abu Dhabi–led company developing the island, these new museums aim to excite the young generations about the possibilities for knowledge. “The reason behind it is not really the economic benefits [from tourism],” he said. “It was always how the thinking, the creativity will evolve. I think those are the real returns on investment.”12 In the pursuit of knowledge renaissance, changes in UAE higher education, both public and private, have also played a significant role. A controversial move, for example, has been the establishment of New York University-Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), which opened in 2010. 9

10

11 12

Interview with Ken Volk, Head of Outreach Programs at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, March 2011. For more critical perspectives on Gulf efforts at sustainability, see Ouis (2002) and Koch (2014). See www.saadiyat.ae/en/cultural.html, accessed March 7, 2015, as well as reports in The National such as Bundhun (2010) and Khaishgi (2014). See www.zayednationalmuseum.ae/architecture.html, accessed March 7, 2015. Quoted in Bundhun (2010).

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Funded by Abu Dhabi, the campus, like the museums, is located on Saadiyat Island, and has been described as the “first world-class liberal arts university in the Middle East,” though the claim has now been significantly qualified.13 It joins Paris-Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, which specializes in the arts and humanities, and a great many other Western-style universities. Students, faculty, and staff at NYUAD generally praise the resources provided, unrestricted Internet access, diverse student body, and relatively uncensored classroom discussions.14 At the same time, they note monitoring of Internet use, reports of mistreatment of workers, and a sense of isolation from the broader UAE society. Internationally, the academic institutions as well as the museums have drawn controversy, particularly regarding the treatment of workers.15 In 2011, moreover, an Emirati academic and lecturer affiliated with Abu Dhabi’s Sorbonne campus was arrested for insulting rulers in the context of a broader crackdown on dissent.16 As always, authoritarian pursuit of “enlightenment” can involve striking internal contradictions.17 In Chapter 5, I examine Emirati reactions to these initiatives in more depth. Here, and without denigrating human rights concerns that are extremely important, I note that rulers and their Western partners are not the only ones who support these educational and research efforts. Many in the UAE are also enthusiastic about them, and frustrated by what they see as one-sided and hypocritical condemnation from the international community, particularly in the form of “parachute journalism” (by those who visit the UAE for a very short time).18

13

14 15

16

17

18

Although NYUAD’s website originally described the institution as “the first world-class liberal arts university in the Middle East,” it is now typically described in a more qualified fashion as “the first comprehensive liberal arts and science campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university.” See, for example, http:// nyuad.nyu.edu/en/about.html for the current and more qualified language, accessed March 7, 2015. Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014. See, for example, Krieger (2008b), Kaminer and O’Driscoll (2014), and Mauk (2014), as well as recent Human Rights Watch reports (2009, 2012). See Davidson (2011) and Wheeler (2011). For an alternative perspective, see Forstenlechner, Rutledge, and Alnuami (2012). See Wines (1967) and Gagliardo (1967) on such contradictions in the context of the “original” enlightened despots of the eighteenth century. Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014. The frustration with those who visit the UAE for a short time and pass judgment on it can also be found in an article in The Pan-Arabia Enquirer, a satirical newspaper in the Middle East similar to The Onion. The (facetious) piece is entitled “Former expat who left Dubai seven years ago can’t stop making endless comments about Dubai” (2014).

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To illustrate this, consider the reaction to a 2014 blog post by a recent NYU-New York graduate, who came to work at NYU–Abu Dhabi for the 2011–2012 academic year. The post was entitled “The Uncomfortable Nature of NYU Abu Dhabi,” and voiced a number of criticisms commonly found in the international press.19 In response, one commenter wrote, “Here is what I think, I have lived all my life in UAE and Abu Dhabi. I watched it grow out of a dust bowl . . . It is great for western educated journalists to come over and do useless smear pieces but does it allow the Middle East to progress?” On the subject of exploited migrant workers, the commenter drew attention to hypocrisy: “Are you from New York? Can you sit in a cafe and eat while a bum on the street eats out of a garbage can?” Another criticized the blogger for dwelling on the negative, ignoring the fact that the UAE is “reaching out to the globe in an attempt to bridge divides at one of the worst times in recent Middle East history.” Yet another wrote, “Unfortunately, you are unaware of the efforts that NYUAD students are putting into promoting rights for laborers. We have studentorganizations that volunteer at labor camps, and many of us wrote/will write our senior theses on this issue.” Another wrote, in response to complaints about a lack of “real” culture, that the UAE must not have “lived up to your Orientalist fantasy of how exotic you thought it should be,” and suggested learning Urdu or Arabic so as to “actually talk to people.”20 These comments echo what Jane Bristol-Rhys has found in her ethnographic research in the UAE. As one of her interviewees puts it, “It isn’t easy being Emirati . . . No matter what we do, how we dress, how we behave, where we go, who we talk to or don’t talk to, what kind of car we drive – there are negative comments, we aren’t doing it ‘right’ by someone else’s standards” (Bristol-Rhys 2010, 113). Narratives and counter-narratives aside, NYU–Abu Dhabi is part of a much larger – and mostly top-down – phenomenon of change in Arab 19

20

See Eisenhood (2014) on Eisenhood.Blog; see www.eisenhood.wordpress.com/2014/01/ 02/the-uncomfortable-nature-of-nyu-abu-dhabi/, accessed December 15, 2016. On these issues, Mauk (2014) makes the following important point: “At the very least . . . criticism of those Western organizations that have chosen to expand into the affluent, monarchical Emirates invites a public discussion over the problems of indentured labor and the responsibility of cultural institutions to address them. We are challenged to defend the fantasy we often tell ourselves about such institutions [in the Middle East but also in the West]: that their storehouses of human achievement belong to, and represent, all of us. The sentiment is a hard one to shake. It has survived intact from its Enlightenment-era origins all the way to the home page of the Web site for the future Louvre Abu Dhabi, touted as ‘the first universal museum in the Arab world.’”

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higher education. In recent years, Western-style universities have blossomed in the Arab Gulf, competing with the older state university systems in the context of a global academic boom that has seen the internationalization and privatization of higher education.21 Since 2003, at least forty branches of Western universities have been established in the UAE and Qatar. In Saudi Arabia, which had eight universities in 2003, more than 100 new ones have been created (Romani 2009). Additional partnerships have been made in the UAE with, among other foreign universities, INSEAD for business education, Munich Technical University and the University of Bonn for medicine and science, and the Fletcher School at Tufts University for law and diplomacy studies (Abu Dhabi Executive Council 2008). The oddity of Western-style liberal universities flourishing in the context of religiously conservative and authoritarian political systems has not gone unnoticed. As Mary Ann Tétreault (2010, 145) notes in the case of Kuwait, they “promote curiosity, questioning, engagement, and activism – a nearly perfect antithesis of what authoritarian governments and social groups would like to see in their universities.” In a survey of Americanstyle universities in the Arab world, Ghabra and Arnold (2007, 2) highlight their “liberal nature.” “Whereas state-owned Arab universities,” they elaborate, “are based on a system of lectures and examinations where students learn to memorize facts, American-style higher education uses a method and model of learning based on thinking critically and articulating opinions, honing oral and written communication skills, emphasizing lifelong learning, and using a variety of tools and resources.” Although they draw attention to varying levels of censorship and related issues, they suggest that many Western-style universities in the Arab world are indeed providing a “liberal education” within authoritarian milieus. In the UAE, autocratic rulers’ surprising enthusiasm for Western-style university education is everywhere apparent. In 1997, Sharjah established University City with the co-ed American University of Sharjah. In 2003, Dubai established Knowledge Village, an academic “free zone” where hundreds of private foreign universities and other institutions offer training and degree programs. These have included the University of Wollongong (Australia), Middlesex University (UK), and S P Jain School of Global Management (India). With so many institutions, several have moved over to new locations, such as Dubai Academic City, launched in 21

On these higher education trends in the Middle East and worldwide, see Davidson and Smith (2008), Willoughby (2008), and Wildavsky (2010).

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2006, and Dubai International Academic City, launched in 2007. The latter hosts academic institutions from at least eleven different countries and enrolls over 20,000 students from over 100 different nationalities. Similar developments are under way in the other emirates in the competitive fashion that is typical of the lower Gulf. In all of this, some have detected a blindly imitative, Westernizing “copy-and-paste” mentality on the part of rulers, a critique that recalls the contestation over the image of modernizing Meiji-era Japan. Was Japan in the late nineteenth century a “rational shopper,” exercising significant agency in the selection of foreign approaches that would fit local tastes and needs? Or, more patronizingly, was it a “clever little copier,” slavishly adopting them wholesale? Westney (2000) concludes that such distinctions ultimately rest on false dichotomies, since all development involves some combination of imitation and innovation. Clearly, Western countries themselves were and are not “wholly” innovative, freely borrowing from one another and from other regions. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the “copying” in Britain and America of German approaches to higher education, among other institutional innovations, is well known. Thus, although “copy-and-paste” initiatives no doubt play a role in UAE efforts to spur knowledge renaissance, this perspective overlooks important nuance and complexity. UAE ruling elites certainly do not see themselves as mindlessly copying others. Romani (2009, 4) describes their perspective well: “by founding world-class, top-ranking universities, Gulf political leaders seek not just to close the ‘development gap’ in their countries; they explicitly intend to reverse the balance of knowledge between the West and the Middle East. Their aim is to change the Arab academe from a site of knowledge reception to one of knowledge production,” and on their own terms, of course. In so doing, they are quite like the Meiji-era reformers who “denied that to [adopt Western approaches] was unpatriotic or un-Japanese” (Beasley 1972, 311). In this sense, UAE ruling elites are confronting what Dore calls the “dilemma of pride and pupillage,” which is particularly acute for late modernizers. Such modernization “involves a psychic cost, precisely because it is a process set in the framework of an international pecking order” (Dore 1975, 194). Thus, it often involves some “acceptance of the demeaning status of pupil” to others who are higher in perceived status, which can lead to wounded pride. Dore notes several ways to address the dilemma. These include compartmentalization (e.g. “Western techniques but an Eastern morality”); the claim that modernization is not slavish

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imitation of others but an application of universal ideas and principles; and the promise that via adoption one’s own nation can get ahead of even the most “advanced” nations in the region and beyond. Evidence for all three can be found in the UAE case. On the third, for instance, it has been suggested that Gulf rulers, via their adoption of Western models, may successfully shift “the intellectual heart of the Middle East” away from the Levant and toward the Gulf (Krieger 2008a). Although new Western-style universities receive more attention in the international press, UAE leaders have also been engaged in ambitious efforts to reform the country’s public infrastructure for higher education, where the majority of Emirati citizens study. Zayed University has expanded significantly in recent years, having added sixteen master’s programs and a new state-of-the-art campus in which $1 billion has been invested (Naidoo 2012). Again showing that these initiatives are not limited to areas such as science and technology, the new campus will emphasize programs in the arts, literature, and humanities. For instance, there is a new College of Arts and Creative Enterprises, offering classes in performance art, theater, music, painting, and graphic design. The university is also building a new television production studio, the first of its kind in a UAE university. In addition, UAE University has undergone significant change, particularly toward a greater emphasis on high-quality research and knowledge production, though not without significant stumbles.22 With respect to public universities, the most sweeping and provocative change has arguably been the introduction in 2006 of a nationwide standardized test – the Common Educational Proficiency Assessment (CEPA) – to determine eligibility for acceptance into higher education. As noted, most Emiratis study at public universities. Whereas in the past, the country’s three public institutions – the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), UAE University, and Zayed University – maintained open admission policies for all Emiratis, they now require a minimum score on the CEPA. In contrast to the Ministry of Education’s older end-of-term tests, which emphasize memorization and information recall, the CEPA emphasizes problem-solving and critical thinking.23 Emirati high school seniors

22

23

See, for example, Mills (2010a), on financial problems related to these higher education reforms. See, also, Swan (2012b). Interview with CEPA head, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Abu Dhabi, July 2012; CEPA website, http://ws2.mohesr.ae/NAPO/Details_EN.aspx?str=C EPA, accessed December 15, 2016.

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applying for government funding to study at universities abroad must also typically score above a cut-off point on the CEPA. And therein lies the rub. To what extent are Emirati youth both able and willing to take on these more demanding roles in the new, postpetroleum, knowledge-rich society? Because of the new requirements, hundreds of Emirati high school seniors have been rejected by the country’s public universities, signaling “an end to guaranteed university places” (Swan 2012a). Moreover, the vast majority of students accepted by these institutions cannot enter university directly and must spend one or more years in remedial classes.24 One minister after another has been ashamed to admit that over a third of the budget for the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research is “wasted” on such “foundation” courses.25 It has also been a source of embarrassment for ruling elites that only limited numbers of UAE citizens are studying in many of the prestigious foreign university programs, often entirely funded by the state. For example, in the case of Masdar City, the “city of the future,” officials are having trouble interesting Emirati youth in the world-class programs on offer, let alone finding qualified applicants.26 In the 2010 inaugural class of NYU–Abu Dhabi, only a handful of students were UAE citizens (Redden 2010); admissions staff say this is due to high standards at what ruling elites themselves have insisted must be the “world’s honors college.”27 Given such deficits, it is tempting to conclude that UAE ruling elites are more interested in international prestige and respect than in really educating their own people. As always, however, the reality is more complex. Rulers do seek international prestige and respect. But, as I have shown in Chapter 2, they are also strongly drawn to their image of a more enlightened Emirati (and even broader Arab) citizenry that will, in a sense, “earn” such respect. Indeed, what skeptics do not fully appreciate is this: if the state-led social engineering campaign does not involve the Arab and especially local Emirati population in a central way, then it does not gain the kinds of respect for the UAE, and for themselves, that ruling elites truly want. The quest for status may help explain why certain famous institutions are involved, but ruling elites also want more of their 24

25 26

27

Interview with Lynn Pierson, director of P-12, Abu Dhabi Education Council, Abu Dhabi, August 2011. Interview with Abdullatif Al Shamsi, education reformer, Abu Dhabi, June 2011. Interview with Ken Volk, head of outreach programs at Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, March 2011. Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014.

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own people accepted by these institutions, flourishing within them, and recognized as leaders and high achievers. Only then will the investments in higher education and related efforts at knowledge renaissance be genuinely successful. Otherwise they devolve into just another version of the oil economy, ultimately unsustainable and insufficiently respected.

cultivating a creative generation As a result, it is now widely agreed that state-led social engineering must focus far more on the country’s pre-university youth, thus contributing to the emergence of “youth” as an increasingly politicized category in the region, seen as both the source of and the solution to key problems (Diwan 2014). These young UAE citizens must be properly prepared to engage in this new world of knowledge and innovation. Historically, authoritarian modernizers have often begun with ambitious higher-level initiatives relating to their visions of “enlightenment,” only to find that their populations are less enthusiastic about these initiatives than they are. In eighteenth-century Russia, for example, Peter the Great “placed the autocracy in charge of enlightening the nation” (Alston 1969, 8). Mikhail Lomonosov, a major Russian talent in science, history, language, and the arts, was sent to study in Germany, and returned in 1741 “anxious for Russia to produce ‘her own Platos and quick-witted Newtons’” via a modern system of higher learning (Alston 1969, 9). Yet he soon realized that higher learning without preparatory institutions was like a “plowed field without seed” (Alston 1969, 9). Only toward the end of his reign did Peter the Great begin making broad plans for lower and secondary schools to assist with “state enlightenment.” Similar notions are afoot in the UAE. Indeed, ruling elites have suggested that Arab youth, more broadly, are on the verge of becoming a “lost generation” if they do not receive a better education and upbringing.28 Moreover, that concern is not limited to ruling elites; in her ethnographic research on Emirati women and everyday life in the UAE, Bristol-Rhys (2010, 81) interviews an Emirati woman who laments, “We are a wasted generation really.” Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai, who sometimes calls UAE youth his “young lions,” has been especially vocal in these respects. In My Vision, he criticizes other Arab leaders for “producing a totally demoralized citizen who cannot achieve any of his goals” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 106). The correct approach to raising and educating 28

Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014.

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young Arab citizens, in the sheikh’s view, is decidedly liberal. As he explains, “When we free the potential of individuals, we simultaneously free the potential of the whole community they are part of, and when we let the creativity of individuals blossom, the creativity of the community as a whole blossoms” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 94). To cultivate a better-educated, more creative generation, UAE federal and local governments have recently invested an enormous amount of time, money, and effort in education reform at the pre-university level – and again with the support of an army of foreign experts from places such as the United States, Britain, Finland, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, New Zealand, Australia, India, Argentina, and Brazil, mirroring the Meiji approach. Indeed, Westney (2000, 19) notes that Meiji-era Japan employed over 2,400 foreigners drawn from twenty-three different nations in Western Europe and North America. Although these changes do not always capture as much attention in the international press, they are arguably far more comprehensive and penetrating than the flashier university initiatives discussed above. Moreover, they reflect recommendations that have long been made for the purposes of improving Arab education systems more generally.29 Although widely endorsed, such recommendations have been criticized for ignoring politics and reinforcing an image of Middle Eastern exceptionalism.30 However, there is no doubt that public education in the region is relatively weak, and lower than expected given income levels. For instance, a 2014 study of thirteen Arab countries estimates that, despite significant gains in enrollment, on average half of children in primary and lower secondary schools are “not learning,” despite being in school (Steer, Ghanem, and Jalbout 2014). Such children are not meeting minimum requirements on international literacy and numeracy tests; in other words, they are found to have no meaningful knowledge of whole numbers, decimals, essential grammar, and the like, despite having been “educated.” Given these facts, it is not surprising that almost 40 percent of employers in the region’s formal private sector point to inadequate skills as a major constraint to business operation and growth (World Bank 2013a). 29

30

See, for example, UNDP (2003), World Bank (2007), and Faour and Muasher (2011). See, also, the reports jointly produced by the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation (MBRF) and the UNDP (2009, 2010, 2014). For critical perspectives on Arab education reform efforts, particularly in favor of building “knowledge societies,” see Bayat (2005), Mazawi and Sultana (2010), and AbiMershed (2010).

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K-12 public education is especially maligned in the Arab world because of its reliance on rote memorization and an uninspiring, heavy-handed, dictatorial style. Ironically, UAE ruling elites, themselves autocrats, have spoken passionately about the poor outcomes produced by such an “autocratic” approach. As their report Education Vision 2020 (1999, 3) notes, “Until lately, the Arab Gulf countries were not fully aware of the role of education in social and economic advancement, which was a fruit of direct oil revenues rather than the outcome of productive work or development.” They “concentrated on quantity rather than quality,” and the “curriculum was autocratic . . . dominated by the experiences of the past” (1999, 92). Such an approach has only promoted “memorization and recitation skills of learners,” who have thus “become passive in that they take and do not give, memorize and don’t think” (1999, 34). “Their creative potentials,” it continues, “are stifled” (1999, 93). Thus: Radical change in teaching/learning concepts, practices, means and styles will be effected . . . The focus will shift from teaching to learning, from the teacher to the learner, from memorization to creativity, reflection, imagination and innovation: To attain this objective, continuous training for teachers and supervisors will be provided to change the traditional roles they play into more effective roles to promote, develop, and instill the culture of innovation, which is a societal ambition. (1999 , 97)

In short: out with the passive learner of the past and in with the active learner of the future. These ideas are not new, and can be traced at least as far back as the progressive era of educational reform in America as well as the 1920s-era Soviet excitement surrounding a similar style of experiential, student-centered pedagogy (Tyack and Cuban 1995). In the UAE, higher education administrators describe the costs of the old “autocratic” approach as very high. Zayed University provost Larry Wilson, for example, says the higher education sector is tasked with undoing the damage done by twelve years of pre-university education: One of our major challenges is to help the students understand: this is not how it worked in your school. [K-12 schooling] is teacher-dominated, the students are totally subservient and subordinated. The model of education is basically what is often referred to as the Egyptian model, and based on memorization. The better I can reproduce what you say in class as the teacher, or what’s in the book, or what I can find on the Internet, shamelessly, the better my grade. Think of the students now. Twelve years where it’s very rigid; you have to remember everything you can that somebody else has said or written – and that gets you the good grade. Now they come to the university, and we’re saying, that’s not the way it works here.

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We want to know what you think and to be able to support what you think. This is an enormous transition.31

As a result, the state has recently implemented a number of increasingly ambitious reforms at the pre-university level. Reforms have emerged both from the federal Ministry of Education, such as the 2007 “Schools of the Future” initiative, as well as the individual emirate governments.32 The ruling families have also established many of their own parallel institutions, operating outside of the Ministry umbrella and often able to make changes with larger budgets and greater flexibility. The most influential of such institutions has naturally been that belonging to Abu Dhabi, the country’s resource-rich capital. Established in 2005 by the powerful crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) has carried out a wide variety of reforms, including the Public Private Partnership (PPP), the intriguing “Finnish School” approach, and the New School Model (NSM). To illustrate growth, ADEC’s staff increased from about 100 in 2005 to 15,000 in 2012.33 In Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, ruler of Dubai, established the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) in 2006 to fast-track K-12 education reform through a better school assessment and inspections framework. Similar institutions have emerged in the other emirates. Despite the range of actors involved and their often competitive nature, these reforms share several key features. First, reformers share a commitment to changing the nature of the K-12 national curriculum by introducing a “standards-based” philosophy. This requires some elaboration. In the past, each year of study has involved a set of Ministry of Education textbooks defined as “the curriculum” for that year. At the end of each year, as in many Arab countries, students have been assessed with notoriously high-stakes Ministry exams, criticized for their emphasis on memorization over skill mastery, problem-solving, and critical thinking. As a result, education has often been reduced to a march through the textbook with little regard for whether students, or even teachers, sufficiently understand the material. As one assistant principal recalled, the typical teacher’s thinking went as follows: “This is May 29. I have to be on 31 32

33

Interview with Zayed University provost, Dubai, May 2012. For examples of K-12 reform strategies, see UAE Ministry of Education (2010) and Abu Dhabi Education Council (2009). Interview with Lynn Pierson, director of P-12, Abu Dhabi Education Council, Abu Dhabi, August 2011.

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page 89 in the textbook. When the supervisor comes around, if I’m not on that page on that day, I get reprimanded.”34 The mad rush through the curriculum and the absence of standards, according to reformers, promotes cramming of information and mechanical memorization on the part of students, rather than genuine learning. As an Emirati reformer at the Ministry of Education explained, “Let me tell you a story. I am what you would call an ‘A’ student. In Grade 12, I was failing a science class. My teacher asked me about it, and I said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to memorize the book [for the exam].”35 The teacher, apparently, was relieved, but the student, by his own account, learned very little, although he crammed a great deal into his short-term memory. Indeed, the Zayed University provost describes Emirati youth as “incredible memorizers”: When we first discovered this back in 2003, we said “OK: in our English classes we’ll have them write their essays in class.” Great idea. Well, we told them what the essay would be about. So they come in, write two pages that they’ve memorized before, perfectly. [In] half an hour, I’ve seen students memorize two pages . . . I could never do that. If Americans students had 10 percent of that ability, 90 percent of the rest, we’d be in great shape.36

The problem of a curriculum based on rote memorization is so severe that, during the last month of every term, students stop coming to school in order to memorize their textbooks.37 Schools at this time of year look like they belong to eerie ghost towns, largely abandoned by both students and teachers and visited only by lone cleaning staff. Yet communities themselves are alive with activity, for cheating on Ministry exams is a widespread and celebrated practice sustained by dense social networks spanning schools, families, the private sector, and the Ministry of Education itself. Importantly, if a student fails any one exam in any one subject, he fails the entire year and must repeat it.38 Moreover, as a head reformer explained, the old curriculum was a “mile wide and an inch deep,” with nothing studied in any depth.39 As a result, when exams come

34 35 36 37 38

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Interview with teacher, Ras Al Khaimah, March 2011. Interview with education reformer, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011. Interview with Zayed University provost, Dubai, May 2012. Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014. At the time of fieldwork, this was an issue that reformers had not yet decided how to address. For a rare empirical study of cheating in the UAE, focused on measuring the correlates of cheating behavior in two Ras al Khaimah high schools, see Jones (2015b). Interview with Lynn Pierson, director of P-12, Abu Dhabi Education Council, Abu Dhabi, August 2011.

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around, parents are motivated to call friends at the Ministry to obtain advance copies. The same applies to teachers; students report how some teachers have offered to sell them copies. Bookshops also tend to seek out copies, then photocopy and sell them. Sometimes, during the administration of the test itself, teachers announce the correct answers to multiplechoice questions, in part to avoid being blamed for students’ poor performance. An Emirati reformer at the Ministry told a vivid story revealing how both families and the private sector support these practices, not merely for the purposes of cheating on exams but more generally for homework and research projects: The other day, I went to a bookshop, and I didn’t introduce myself. A staff member came up to me and said [in English], “We can do research for you.” And I said, “Oh, what kind?” And he said, “Oh, any kind. We search on the Internet and we copy it for you.” He pointed at the computer. Then another man came in and I heard him ask for the “final research project” for his son. The teachers will tell them, “It has to look very professional,” which is like a clue: they should go to the bookshop for that. So then the guy said, “Do you want me to do any more research for you?” And the older man, the customer, he said, “This is good. But where is my son’s name? Put my son’s name on it – here, at the top.” Then he spelled it for him.40

Ironically, although observers bemoan the lack of creativity and problemsolving among youth, there is plenty of both to be found in the ways that many students game the system. At one school, an elaborate operation was uncovered in which students were using watches to conceal thumb drives where PDF copies of their textbooks were stored.41 In fact, there is a downright civic quality to the ways in which the community rallies together to pursue these goals, not unlike Diane Singerman’s account of how informal networks of citizens in Cairo cooperate to achieve community objectives that arguably amount to corruption, while remaining beneath the radar of formal politics (Singerman 1995). A twist on the old Soviet adage, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us,” may illustrate the point most succinctly: “We pretend to learn, and they pretend to educate us.” However understandable these practices may be from a social or political perspective, limited actual learning combined with rampant cheating 40 41

Interview with education reformer, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011. Conversations with teachers, Ras Al Khaimah, 2010–2011. See Buckner and Hodges (2016) for an interesting investigation of how elaborate cheating practices can involve significant creativity and collaboration, the very skills that official curricula are intended to teach.

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has led to some astonishingly low skill levels in areas that most would consider quite basic, ranging from mathematics and science to reading and writing. Consider the results for the approximately 18,000 Emirati high school graduates who take the CEPA, the new SAT-like test now required to apply for admission into higher education. As noted above, unlike the Ministry’s older exams, this test focuses on problem-solving and critical thinking, and to prevent cheating, one of several different versions is randomly assigned to students at computers. The results are striking. According to Ryan Gjovig, the head of CEPA at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, citing recent statistics on exam results, over half of test-takers finishing Grade 12 answer one of its most basic questions incorrectly, which reads as follows:42 Fahad started exercising at 4:35 pm, and finished at 7:20pm. How long did he exercise? A 2 hours and 45 minutes B 2 hours and 35 minutes C 3 hours and 15 minutes D 3 hours and 25 minutes An even more telling illustration of the failures of the system can be found in how students answer the following question: What is 7/9 minus 1/9? A 1/3 B 6/0 C 6/81 D 2/3 Only 34 percent of test-takers correctly select D. Strikingly, over half of students not only answer incorrectly, but also select B, suggesting a deepseated lack of understanding of the material. The shift to a standards-based curriculum is intended to help change the system responsible for these disappointing results. Where none existed before, reformers have introduced standards or “learning outcomes” to guide the curriculum in each year. Rather than dictating what page in the textbook teachers must reach by certain dates in the school year, the standards establish what general knowledge and skills students are expected to have mastered by the end of the year. New and up-to-date 42

Interview with Ryan Gjovig, head of CEPA, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Abu Dhabi, July 2012.

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textbooks have been introduced for many subjects, not to function as “the” curriculum for any one subject, but rather to serve as one resource among many intended to help achieve broader learning outcomes in a more flexible and individually tailored way. In Abu Dhabi, for instance, an important new element in the curriculum has been the addition of independent research projects (ECART), which involve investigating a topic, debating and discussing it in class, and presenting findings and recommendations. Such projects aim not only to facilitate greater flexibility and differentiation in the ways that students learn content, but also to promote creativity and critical thinking. Following the same student-centered logic, significant changes have taken place in how students are assessed. The main change has been a shift to “continuous assessment,” in which class participation, homework, and projects, such as the independent research projects mentioned above, play a greater role in the final grade every year for each subject. In the past, the crucial final grade has been based almost entirely on how students perform on the Ministry’s end-of-year exams. In primary school, reformers have done away in many cases with the long-standing point averages, getting rid of the end-of-year exams and instead requiring teachers to write narrative assessments that emphasize individual strengths and weaknesses. Such reforms are intended to foster a greater appreciation for individuality and diversity, not only among teachers and staff but also among the students themselves. As Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid has said, sounding very much like John Dewey and other liberal philosophers of education, “When we allow individuals to be themselves and practice their individuality, we free their potential and motivate their creativity” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 93).43 Teacher training, too, has received substantial attention, as reformers have sought to “transform the way students are taught to focus less on memorization and to develop problem-solving and critical thinking.”44 Although it is widely agreed that flexible standards-based curricula, new and more diverse learning materials, and continuous assessment are important changes for the re-making of citizens – or, as Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid (2012b, 93) calls it, “minding the minds” – many feel that higher teacher quality is a necessary precondition.45 For 43

44

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On liberal philosophers of education, and their very similar recommendations, see Callan and White (2002) and Darling and Nordenbro (2002). Abu Dhabi Education Council, Public Private Partnership, Frequently Asked Questions, obtained by author. On teacher quality in general, see Hanushek and Rivkin (2006), and in the UAE, Ridge (2010).

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reformers, “teacher quality” encompasses both knowledge of content as well as pedagogy or teaching style and a sense of professional responsibility. In 2008, the Ministry announced that all public school teachers and principals would be required to undergo new training for certification, which would focus on student-centered teaching methods applied to the new curriculum (Lewis 2008). By contrast, in the past, teachers were hired with no university degrees, subject matter certifications, or training in pedagogy. According to a 2008 study by the Ministry of Education, less than half of UAE teachers reported having university degrees (Oxford Business Group 2008). Reformers have also carried out more intensive and focused approaches to training in the new student-centered methods. In 2006, for example, Abu Dhabi’s costly Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative was launched to fast-track reform. After a competitive selection process, a range of high-profile international education companies, including Nord Anglia, Cognition, Beaconhouse, Sabis, TaaleemEdisonLearning, and Mosaica, were awarded contracts to manage over 176 public schools. Accordingly, hundreds of foreign teachers and advisors moved to the UAE to work daily in the schools alongside existing teachers, who themselves are mostly expatriate Arab males in boys’ schools (though mostly Emirati females in girls’ schools), as Natasha Ridge (2014) has shown. Much of their work involved holding in-school workshops on student-centered teaching, modeling best practices for teachers, introducing different materials to help achieve new learning outcomes, and assisting as mentors to specific teachers. As mentors, for example, they encouraged teachers to ask students more questions, set aside class time for discussions, and acknowledge different ways to solve problems.46 Principals too were often hired with limited experience or qualifications. According to a running joke, the principal’s main role in the school has been to order sweets or manāqīsh, a kind of Arab-style pizza. In schools, principals are often mysteriously missing in action, invoked by name but rarely seen. (If one asks, “Where is the principal?” the answer can be very revealing: “He is not here,” “I do not know,” or, perhaps most tellingly, “Why?”) The same is true of many higher-level administrators. At the Ministry of Education, for instance, many employees can be seen arriving at work at 10 a.m. and leaving at 1 p.m., even though official government working hours are 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. A reformer at the 46

Conversations with CfBT, Nord Anglia, Cognition, and Sabis staff, Abu Dhabi, 2010–2011.

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Ministry noted that his boss was rarely present and that other Ministry officials can be very hard to locate: “Many of these people will be out – if there is any kind of function at all going on in the country, everyone will go. It’s an excuse to leave work.”47 As in other Arab rentier economies, top positions in academia and the education system may be granted for political reasons, so that performance and qualifications take a back seat (Mazawi 2005). In the schools, a lack of strong leadership has made it unclear who is responsible for the quality of education. As a result, reformers have introduced special training programs for principals, in addition to teachers. The Ministry, for instance, launched a principal development program headed by Vincent Ferrandino, a former executive director of the US-based National Association of Elementary School Principals. Ferrandino explained that the program “focused on school leadership – the quality of school leaders, moving principals to instructional responsibility rather than managing buildings, which is how they saw their position before.”48 Schools were provided with “principal advisors” providing one-on-one mentorship. Similar efforts to increase the professionalism of teachers have taken place. In the past, teachers have only been required to work twenty-four periods per week, though in practice, according to reformers, it has been closer to nineteen periods per week, amounting to only three 45-minute periods in a day.49 Now in Abu Dhabi, teachers are required to work more periods, and to enforce the change, fingerprint sensor systems are under discussion as a means of keeping a record of working hours. Major changes also have taken place to improve the environment of the schools in ways that are aligned with the broader liberal educational philosophy. For example, in Abu Dhabi, kindergarten has been completely transformed. In the past, kindergarten and lower grades followed a rigid structure with children required to sit at desks in neat and orderly rows, similar to the disciplined approach taken in the upper grades. In a curious reversal of the state’s traditional effort to create order out of disorder, illustrated in James Scott’s Seeing Like a State where an image of a disorderly natural forest is contrasted with a centrally planned and orderly one arranged by the Prussian state, we find here that the state has insisted on a kind of creative disorder. Kindergarten classrooms have been redesigned to be “messier.” To facilitate greater interaction, story-telling, 47 48 49

Interview with education reformer, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011. Interview with Vincent Ferrandino, Dubai, May 2012. Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014.

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play as learning, and the building of imagination, they now have round tables, reading corners, and cushions to break up routine. Previously empty walls are now populated with colorful drawings, word puzzles, and other media-rich material, all in keeping with the latest trends in child psychology for the development of creativity. In the upper grades, there have been some similar shifts in the learning environment, though reform has proceeded more slowly; most high schools in the country have not seen significant change as of 2014.50 For example, it has been common practice for high school students to be sequestered within a single classroom for much of the school day, to the dismay of reformers who view the practice as a form of imprisonment, tied in some cases to physical punishment (banned in 1998). According to a psychology professor in Dubai, the idea in the schools was that “a child needs to be absolutely terrified of his teachers in order to respect them, and that fear was usually instilled through physical abuse” (Ahmed 2011b). Again consistent with their more liberal educational philosophy, reformers have sought to mitigate the atmosphere of imprisonment by allowing students to move about more freely. Thus, instead of remaining in one classroom as teachers for different subjects shuttle in and out, students are expected to move to different classrooms during the day, and it is teachers who have been given their own dedicated classrooms. The hope has been that teachers might develop a greater sense of ownership over the teaching process and responsibility for the students’ learning, since they might now organize their classrooms as they wish. Many teachers have, for example, decorated the walls with vocabulary words, math problems, or biographies of major scientists and re-arranged the furniture to facilitate group discussions and debate. In perhaps their most radical move, reformers have changed the language of instruction in many schools from Arabic to English in math, science, and English language classes, mirroring related efforts in Singapore, India, and elsewhere. Primary schools in Abu Dhabi teach math, science, and English in English through Grade 4, and reformers expect the change to take place in all government schools in the near future; as of 2015, the switch to English-language teaching of math and science had progressed through middle school, with plans to add another grade each year (Pennington 2015). To facilitate it, hundreds of native English speakers have been hired from abroad, not to serve as mentors, but rather as regular teachers in the English-medium classes. By exposing 50

See Abu Dhabi Education Council (2012), its Cycle 3 (or high school) reform plan.

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Emirati students to more hours of English every week, reformers hope that their ability in the language will rapidly improve, better preparing them for higher education in the country where most courses of study have since independence been taught in English. They also expect the change will help Emiratis compete more effectively in the workplace, where English is widely spoken in both the public and private sectors. Finally, conspicuous by its limited role in the educational reform agenda is not just Arabic but also Islam. This is consistent with the secular character of liberal education, but also part of a broader strategic effort to reduce the influence of Muslim Brotherhood–type forces, which previously played a much greater role in education.51 Indeed, the shutting out of Islamic Studies is dramatically visible in schools themselves. In one hallway, one observes foreign experts buzzing around helping with the teaching of math, science, English, history, art, physical education, civics, and other classes, promoting student-centered pedagogy, and publicizing students’ work on bulletin boards. In the very next hallway, where Arabic and Islamic Studies are taught, the experts are nowhere to be found, resources are limited, and the atmosphere is resentful. In response, and recognizing that students’ formal Arabic skills are sometimes as limited as their English skills, reformers have recently sought to improve the teaching of Arabic. Cooke (2014, 141) refers to this difficult situation of limited skills in both Arabic and English, well known to Gulf educators, as a “linguistic crisis,” and attributes it in part to short-form communication required by technologies such as Twitter and texting: “Skipping over the Gutenberg Revolution, [Gulf Arab youth] have jumped directly from orality to IT literacy, from the tribal to the modern.” To improve Arabic language education, reformers are drawing from the broader liberal educational philosophy, implementing the same student-centered methods as those being put to use for the improvement of English language learning.

putting civic education to work I now turn to changes in civic education at the pre-university level, which link the broader efforts at authoritarian enlightenment directly to citizenbuilding in the official and explicit sense and reveal their pro-market, neoliberal flavor, treated more fully in Chapter 4. In 1999, Education Vision 2020 called for a major overhaul of the public school civics curriculum in a section called “Developing a New Civic Educational 51

Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014.

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Curriculum: ‘The Emirates is My Home.’” As discussed in Chapter 1, a civics course came rather late to the game in the development of a national curriculum, and earlier versions emphasized supra-national loci of identity like pan-Arabism, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and Islam. By the late 1990s, reformers saw many things wrong with the old civics curriculum, and not merely its insufficient emphasis on UAE national identity. As Education Vision 2020 (1999, 34) put it: Cognitive preparation is not enough to produce citizens aware of their rights and duties. The present curricula do not prepare learners for tomorrow and the future. They do not develop innovative creative and imaginative skills. They deprive learners of their right for self-learning, individualization and creativity.

Overall, according to reformers, civic education should teach not just knowledge but “civic skills.” What are “civic skills,” one might ask, in the context of an authoritarian regime? The strategy document provides important hints, defining them to include “work,” “participation,” and “voluntary work in all its forms to fulfill social integration and consolidation.” Shaikha Khulood Al Qassimi, the Ministry of Education’s director of curriculum development, provided further insights into how and why civic education is being reimagined.52 As she explained, the nationwide civics curriculum was revised in the early 2000s to focus more on “UAE nationality,” as opposed to Arab and GCC issues, with activities and field trips designed to “make students proud of the UAE.” In keeping with Education Vision 2020, it was also revised to emphasize not just knowledge about the country, but “civic skills,” which she defined as “twentyfirst century skills” such as “problem-solving” and “critical thinking,” which ruling elites believe will be essential for citizens to succeed in addressing challenges of the future. These may seem like odd notions from the director of curriculum development in a conservative authoritarian state, who also happens to be a member of the Sharjah ruling family. But her matter-of-fact response is typical of UAE ruling elites and their foreign advisors, who tend to blend notions of civic education and liberal character formation, on the one hand, with neoliberal ideals of state–society relations and the development of labor market skills, on the other. Good citizens, increasingly, are not merely loyal subjects, but also bastions of self-reliance and responsibility, active thinkers and doers, both able and willing to solve the

52

Interview with Shaikha Khulood Al Qassimi, director of Curriculum Department, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011.

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country’s economic and social problems. Ironically, John Dewey also felt creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving were essential ingredients in civic education, but for different reasons (Dewey 1916, 1938).53 Whereas he thought civic educators should promote such qualities so that children might become good democratic citizens, UAE ruling elites want these qualities encouraged in children so that they might blossom into good liberal and neoliberal citizens, within authoritarian constraints. The Al Bayariq Student Citizenship Program provides a valuable lens into the processes through which the concept of citizenship is being redefined to promote these new ideals. The program is a civic training initiative, implemented by a semi-private company with support from Abu Dhabi and running parallel to the Ministry of Education’s official civics class.54 It began in six schools in 2008, but rapidly expanded, and was operating in ninety-eight schools in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, and Fujairah by 2012, reaching 28,000 students across the country. Its overarching goal is to transform Emirati youth into “loyal, responsible and productive citizens of the UAE” through the teaching of life skills as well as police and military skills.55 It was conceived by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, as “a single, integrated program” for citizenship education.56 Although schools had been offering lessons in “military skills”57 for many years, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, according to Al Bayariq curriculum developers, wanted to develop a more wide-ranging concept of civics training in which military skills would be only one component alongside broader “life skills.” According to one instructor, the sheikhs originally wanted to recreate aspects of Sandhurst, Britain’s famous military academy where Arab ruling elites have sent their sons to study. Indeed, many of the program’s curriculum developers and on-site 53

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On progressivism, liberalism, and philosophies of education, see Callan and White (2002) and Darling and Nordenbro (2002) The program was developed by a UAE-based company, Al Shaheen, and used to be called the Al Shaheen Student Citizenship Program. Its stakeholders are the Abu Dhabi Education Council, the Abu Dhabi Police, and the UAE Armed Forces. See https://noufandtufool.wordpress.com/al-bayariq-vision/, accessed March 8, 2015. See, also, https://www.adec.ac.ae/en/Education/PP/Pages/Albayariq.aspx, accessed March 8, 2015. Meeting notes recording the comments of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed on the development of the curriculum for the Al Bayariq Student Citizenship Program, obtained by the author in 2011. At the pre-university level, lessons in military and police skills have typically involved drills, marching, information about the (positive) role of the police and military in society, and everyday safety tips.

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instructors are British and American, and do not hail from the UAE military or police force. They are typically men and women who have worked previously in their own country’s militaries and police forces, or privatized military firms; I met one ex-Blackwater instructor. Others have come from summer camp providers and organizations like Outward Bound, which specializes in outdoor leadership and wilderness survival. As a result, and rather curiously, these new lessons in UAE citizenship are often taught in English, with an Arabic-speaking translator on hand. To the traditional military and police skill training has been added a new and important “life skills” component. At least since the Trucial Oman Scouts, British military-style training has been available and widely respected, if not formally linked to civic education. But, according to Al Bayariq curriculum developers, the consensus at the top was that something more was needed to get UAE youth on the right track. As one put it, the idea was to “get them young and to change attitudes that way.”58 A head reformer also reported that the impetus for this shift came from Sheikh Mohammed himself, who “wanted to add life skills to the curriculum, which he saw as a very important thing that had been left out” of civics in the UAE.59 He added that Sheikh Mohammed had been very impressed by the Duke of Edinburgh’s (DoE) Award programs in the UK, which mobilize youth to work toward bronze, silver, and gold levels by completing different activities by the age of twenty-five. To understand the rationale behind these shifts in civic education, it is worth taking a closer look at the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programs. Participants as young as fourteen, to achieve the awards, set themselves goals in categories such as volunteering, physical activity, practical and social skills development, and expeditions. The expeditions are defined on the website for the program as “planning, training for, and completing of an adventurous journey in the UK or abroad.”60 At the gold level, an additional category is called “residential,” which involves “staying and working away from home doing a shared activity.” The program “gives all young people the chance to develop skills for work and life, fulfill their potential and have a brighter future.” Why get involved? “Achieving an Award will give you skills, confidence and a view on life that everyone is looking for, from employers to colleges and universities.” Prospective

58 59

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Interview with Al Bayariq program developer, Abu Dhabi, August 2011. Interview with Rob Thompson, Abu Dhabi Education Council’s head of special projects, August 2011. See http://www.dofe.org, accessed March 8, 2015.

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participants are reassured that “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. You just need to be aged between 14 and 24 and realize there’s more to life than sitting on a sofa watching life pass you by.” It is not hard to see why UAE ruling elites would be drawn to such ideas of active (yet apolitical) citizenship. One can easily imagine them associating the image of “sitting on a sofa watching life pass you by” with the UAE’s culture of rentierism. The Al Bayariq Student Citizenship Program, along with the company’s related adventure training programs, shares many of the same themes of personal development, readiness for the workplace, social consciousness, and physical exercise, transplanted and repurposed. Even the bronze, silver, and gold levels of achievement have been introduced; UAE students can win “internationally accredited Bronze, Silver, and Gold Citizenship awards that integrate military, police and life skills” via the civics training program.61 Indeed, in the eyes of ruling elites, physical exercise and sport are important mechanisms of civic socialization in their own right. In a study by the Ministry of Education, half of a sample of 600 physical education instructors in government schools in Dubai and the northern emirates were declared to be overweight, based on body mass index; of those considered overweight, a third of men and a fifth of women were considered obese (Ahmed 2012a). According to the Ministry’s coordinator for physical education, quoted in The National, the results can be attributed to “bad habits and an inactive lifestyle,” and set a poor example for UAE youth. The instructors have three years to get in shape, when they will be assessed again and potentially replaced, the coordinator warned. In some schools, posters are displayed showing how to calculate one’s body mass index. The life skills area of the Al Bayariq civics program focuses on seven key values: leadership, loyalty, teamwork, discipline, tolerance, perseverance, and responsibility. To teach them, lessons involve short lectures and discussion, but stress “experiential learning” through creativity challenges, puzzles, physical games, and problem-solving tasks. For example, an “egg drop” activity calls for students to use straws, tape, rubber bands, and other ordinary items to build a contraption in which an egg can be placed and dropped without breaking. Another challenge called “Copycat” involves one team arranging building blocks into a particular pattern, while another team observes. The second team is required to 61

Powerpoint presentation on Al Bayariq Student Citizenship Program, October 2011, obtained by author.

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describe the pattern of blocks to a third team in sufficient spatial detail so that the third team can then recreate the original formation of blocks on the basis of the verbal description alone. The challenge is intended to build creativity, teamwork, and determination. Interestingly, even the new national service law announced in 2014 melds physical, cognitive, and moral ideals of citizenship along these same lines. The law introduces mandatory military service in the UAE for the first time. It requires all Emirati men to enlist between the ages of eighteen and thirty, set at nine months for high school graduates (and two years for those without high school degrees). For women, the training is nine months regardless of qualifications, and voluntary. Like the Al Bayariq Student Citizenship Program, the training involves an important physical component. But it also includes a “wide range of significant training courses aimed at helping these young recruits develop their creative skills and capabilities to take part in meaningful and effective community engagements,” in the words of Major General Sheikh Ahman bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan, chairman of the National and Reserve Service Authority.62 He added that the armed forces “have a moral duty towards this young generation,” and aim to “empower them with the necessary skills that would enable them to give back to their country and create a positive social impact.” In the Al Bayariq civics program, the seven “civic virtues” noted above are likewise folded into a broader emphasis on personal development, selfmotivation, and empowerment. In these respects, the new life skills curriculum recalls the themes of self-actualization and personal discovery prominent in the 1960s and subsequent “me” decade (Twenge 2006). For example, a unit on motivation calls for students to be able to “Identify different levels of motivation” and “Use motivation to direct personal and team efforts.”63 An “empowerment” unit calls for students to “explain empowerment and how it is applied to leadership,” “identify the 3 states of empowerment,” and “be aware of the process to empower others.” Students must also develop an “awareness of conflict with others, body language and rapport.” A unit on “self-management” calls for students to “demonstrate and implement an awareness of self-regulating roles within a group” and “identify personal strengths and weaknesses when working in a team.” A unit on “criticism & praise” calls for students to “explain why positive and negative feedback is used in different ways to improve 62 63

Quoted in Gulf News staff report (2014). Curriculum for Al Bayariq Student Citizenship Program, obtained by author, 2010.

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performance” and “use praise effectively to increase confidence and motivation for an individual or team.” A unit on conflict management calls for students to “demonstrate self-control in conflict situations” and “Show how to resolve conflicts positively.” Despite the oddity of citizen empowerment as a unit in an authoritarian civics curriculum, neither the Western nor the Emirati instructors find it particularly subversive. As one matter-of-factly explained, “the selfempowerment lesson is not about political empowerment; it’s about business and personal empowerment.”64 Indeed, by 2011, a presentation promoting the program was explicitly linking “life skills” to the idea of work: the main objective was said to be assisting students in “acquiring core skills and values that will be foundational to their work in the next level.”65 Looking closer at the empowerment unit, we also find that term defined in a very intriguing and seemingly regime-appropriate way. “Empowerment,” it is suggested for instructors to tell their students, “is when you feel strong in your core, you have skills and tools that you have practiced, you can use straight away and you know they work for you.” And here we have a theme that has achieved significant momentum in the broader social engineering campaign – the notion that being “empowered” is not about politics, but rather about putting yourself to work, a shift in the symbolic arsenal of the state for mass persuasion to which we turn in Chapter 4.

conclusion In this chapter, I have documented a contemporary example of authoritarian social engineering that is quite different from the stereotype of the phenomenon, and thus it makes for a theoretically intriguing case. I have shown that UAE ruling elites and their foreign advisors are indeed pushing forward in an effort to foster what they see as a kind of enlightenment and knowledge renaissance that is necessary for their vision of progress and sustainability in the coming post-petroleum era. Ambitious, costly education reforms at all levels and related efforts to cultivate knowledge, creativity, and innovation, even in civic education, serve to document their efforts at social engineering. Their faith in education, in particular, suggests what Starrett (2008) and Fortna (2002) have described as 64 65

Interview with Al Bayariq instructor, Al Ain, May 2011. Powerpoint presentation on Al Bayariq Student Citizenship Program, October 2011, obtained by author.

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a tendency for political leaders to see education as a “charismatic” and “magical” force, capable of achieving almost anything. In the next chapter, I move to the ways in which ruling elites are attempting to guide this self-styled enlightenment toward pro-market, neoliberal ideals of citizenship and state–society relations. We shift, loosely speaking, from “minds” to “hearts.” Indeed, as much as the social engineering campaign represents, in many ways, a real attempt at a knowledge renaissance, we find that it also comprises a separate – and sometimes contradictory – effort at bourgeois or “pro-market” citizenbuilding under authoritarianism.

4 Symbolism, Spectacle, and the Shaping of the Post-Petroleum Citizen

On the occasion of the 43rd National Day on December 2, 2014, celebrating the anniversary of the UAE’s founding, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince and de facto head of the country, drew attention to the UAE’s past and present-day accomplishments (Al Nahyan 2014). “However,” he said, “we should not be complacent about those achievements but rather keep looking forward, thinking how such achievements can contribute to a more secure future for our nation.” For this to happen, he said, UAE youth, the “future of the nation,” must play a central role, and so their “proper growth” and “upbringing” are essential. Specifically: “We want our youth to be aware of the world around them and to embrace their role in the building of the nation.” Chapter 3 focused on the first concern, that of promoting knowledge and opening minds (“We want our youth to be aware of the world around them”). This chapter focuses on the second (“to embrace their role in the building of the nation”), that is, state efforts to influence not just minds, but hearts, to persuade citizens to embrace the new and more active roles envisioned for them. In this, UAE leaders also have much in common with earlier authoritarian modernizers. As Gagliardo (1967, 78–9) notes, the “enlightened despots” of the eighteenth century “increasingly recognized the need to awaken some popular energies, some popular voluntarism, in favor of reform.” They realized they could not carry out reforms successfully and thus achieve their visions of enlightenment without some level of popular buy-in. State-led social engineering was thus a “political tool among absolute monarchs who had begun to realize the real limitations of their absolutism.” In the UAE case, state-led social engineering also has a political character. Rulers seek to direct and shape the enlightenment they are trying to 98

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foster in particular ways. As we saw in Chapter 2, ideal citizens for ruling elites are not only more educated, creative, and worldly – i.e., “polytechnic” and globalized. They are also market-ready, entrepreneurial, tolerant, and socially conscious, yet remaining all the while loyal to the regime. They are loyal “bourgeois,” in the broad sense of the term – innovative, achievement-oriented, conscientious, civil, hard-working, risk-taking, business-starting, community-serving, and patriotic. In many ways, they embody what have been called the bourgeois virtues, within authoritarian constraints.1 As discussed in Chapter 2, much of this has to do with ruling elites’ own conceptions of state-led social engineering as working to “prepare” citizens for a more modern and ultimately post-petroleum future. And in this sense, there are echoes of efforts in the Soviet Union to mold the New Soviet Man. Yet UAE rulers are not Marxists and in their visions of the future they are arguably on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum.2 While citizen-building is always political in nature, this is especially so in the UAE case. Whereas a rentier social contract has governed state–society relations in the past, with social welfare provided in exchange for political allegiance, ruling elites are now trying to change the terms of the bargain. Of course, they would like to maintain citizens’ political allegiance and their own legitimacy. But they would also like to see less social and economic welfare expected from the state and more hard work and self-reliance displayed by citizens. State elites are attempting to discourage the rentier culture from the ground up and “create” such bourgeois citizens, effectively modifying the rentier social contract without being seen as breaking it by authoritarian decree. In short, if adult citizens take on new jobs, responsibilities, and lifestyles willingly, then ruling elites do not have to undertake painful structural reforms – and risk their own necks, politically – to make them do so. In this sense, social engineering is an attempt to use “disciplinary power” (Foucault 1977), to produce individuals and condition society rather than seek change via more overtly coercive measures. For good political reasons, as discussed in Chapter 2, UAE leaders are reluctant to apply more coercive measures; thus, in the public sector, wages continue to be inflated and job security largely assured. It is easy to see why citizens should prefer the status quo; in an important short-term and material sense, seeking out a government job is in their interest, and it is even the 1 2

On the bourgeois or capitalist virtues, see Mueller (1999) and McCloskey (2010). On the New Soviet Man, see Hopf (2002).

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citizen’s “right,” if government jobs are viewed as shares of the national oil trust. But rentier attitudes are also damaging for development. In its most ambitious form, then, social engineering aims to convince UAE citizens to behave in a way that is not in their own interest – as currently conceived – by redefining their interests and attitudes at a young and impressionable age. Indeed, from the leadership’s perspective, younger children are seen as “uncorrupted” by a larger rentier culture of entitlement and capable of being molded into the right kind of citizen. As Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai has said, the state must take on the task of “coaching the younger generation and guiding them in the right direction” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 41). As a result, the campaign is, at its core, a top-down effort to reshape citizens in ways that are ultimately familiar to scholars of nationalism and identity formation. The chapter is divided into two parts, focusing on the use of two timehonored methods of state-led social engineering – symbolism and spectacle. First, I consider shifts in the symbolic arsenal of the state. I show how social engineers, Emirati and foreign, are seeking to influence attitudes, manage cultural meanings, and mold identities in ways that support the new citizenship ideal of economic, civil, and cultural activism combined with political quiescence, while combatting entitlement. Next, I turn to the use of state-sponsored spectacles, including festivals, competitions, and monuments. I illustrate how political spectacles also contribute to pro-globalization, pro-market social engineering; they aim to influence not only UAE citizens but also expatriate residents and the broader international community.

the symbolic arsenal: cultivating the bourgeois virtues The manipulation of the symbolic world of meaning and understanding can be a powerful political instrument. Symbolic politics, as Edelman (1964, 20) put it, focuses not on “how people get the things they want through government”; rather, it examines the “mechanisms through which politics influences what they want, what they fear, what they regard as possible, and even who they are.” In the following sections, I examine symbolic politics in the UAE toward the shaping of loyal bourgeois. Symbolic shifts include the portrayal of work as intrinsically fulfilling; valorizing of responsibility, self-discipline, and the rational life; and recasting of notions of good citizenship to embrace the obligation to contribute.

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Work as a Calling A prominent example of the new symbolic politics concerns the meaning of work and its relationship to notions such as personal fulfillment, power, and identity. What is the point of working? What does it mean to be fulfilled, to lead a successful and happy life, to be respected? The social engineering campaign has some very revealing answers. As UAE Vision 2021 (2010b, 20) explains, “Joining the world of work is a first step towards personal fulfillment and economic empowerment.” In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber famously put forward a concept of “precapitalist” man with “traditional” attitudes toward work. The concept of work, for precapitalist man, was not imbued with the significance that it acquired for capitalist man. When precapitalist man was done working the allotted time, he stopped, even when given material incentives to work more; he lacked ambition, an inclination toward long-term planning, and the motivation to achieve at high levels. For Weber, a key change was the idea that work may be “an absolute end in itself – a ‘calling’” (1905 17), intrinsically satisfying and a means of selfrealization. “An attitude like this,” however, “is not . . . something which occurs naturally.” Rather, it “has to be the product of a long, slow ‘process of education.’” Such a process of education is widely in evidence throughout the UAE. The idea that work is an end in itself, that it is intrinsically fulfilling and ultimately empowering for the individual, is ubiquitous. Everywhere can be found posters and banners showing young Emiratis, smiling and hard at work.3 At Careers UAE, a huge state-sponsored job fair established in 2000, the slogan is “Empowering Nationals.” The slogan is a popular one in ruling circles. Tawteen, a program launched by the Abu Dhabi–funded Emirates Foundation in 2007 to guide young Emiratis into the workforce, has also adopted it.4 Not unlike the Stakhanovite movement in the Soviet Union, it operates a roadshow bringing motivational speakers from the private sector into classrooms to serve as role models of self-fulfillment through work. Indeed, although UAE social engineers would probably not be so direct, their efforts in these respects recall Lenin, who observed with

3 4

For an excellent dissection of such neoliberal symbolism in Dubai, see Kanna (2011). In this context, “tawteen” translates roughly to nationalization (and Emiratization in particular) of the workforce. The Abu Dhabi Tawteen Council (ADTC), the Absher Initiative, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Establishment for SME Development, and a range of other government and semi-government entities at the federal and local levels are also involved in the effort.

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chagrin that “The Russian is a bad worker compared with the advanced peoples.”5 Thus, “the task the Soviet government must set the people in all its scope is – learn to work.” The Stakhanov analogy is illuminating, but not perfect. After all, Stakhanovism was a Soviet movement that lionized heroic (public sector) workers and broadcast their astonishing feats of productivity in the context of a communist political system. In a way, the UAE effort turns this movement on its head, using similar methods of grassroots publicityraising, advertising, and heroizing to encourage a capitalist ideal. Hala Kazim, an Emirati citizen, is a good example. She was featured at the 2014 incarnation of Careers UAE, giving a “special series of motivational speeches designed to empower working women,” and widely celebrated in the UAE.6 She recently won the Mohammed bin Rashid Award for Young Business Leaders for her start-up, “Journey through Change.” The company, established in 2010, “aims to change individuals and their personalities” (Al Theeb 2011). It offers counseling, a cooking club, a book club, and adventure travel for Emirati women. On why she took the risk in starting a new business, she explained, “In the past three years, before I established this company, I was lost and did not know what I wanted to do exactly.”7 But then she found herself through work, and specifically entrepreneurial work: “Then one day, I realised that one thing I truly love is helping people.” From the perspective of pro-market social engineering, Hala Kazim is an excellent role model. Indeed, Laura Heseltine, who headed the Emirates Foundation–founded Tawteen project8 from 2007 to 2009, helps organize career counseling in schools and encourages teachers to emphasize the private sector, as opposed to the “obvious feeder route into the bloated public sector.”9 Khulood Al Nuwais, also associated with Tawteen, provided further insight into the meanings of work being disseminated by social engineers. When asked what the program’s slogan of “youth empowerment” meant, she said it referred to the program’s efforts to provide Emirati youth with “soft skills which they need to be employed, 5 6

7 8

9

Quoted in Siegelbaum (1988, 1). See Careers UAE website, 2014 features, at www.careersuae.ae/Content/2014-Features-1/ 21_106/, accessed February 25, 2015. Quoted in Al Theeb (2011). The Emirates Foundation program is not to be confused with the similarly named Abu Dhabi Tawteen Council (ADTC). Interview with Laura Heseltine, Abu Dhabi, July 2009.

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and to work.”10 More generally, she said, she and her colleagues are using a grassroots approach to combat the “myth” that the only good job opportunities for Emiratis are in the government sector. With career counseling in schools, for example, they are trying to “change the mindset,” using positive role models from the private sector and myth-busting TED-like talks. Tawteen has also tried to change mindsets through youth leadership camps, she said, across the emirates. These camps emphasize hands-on projects, outdoor activities, and team-building and leadership exercises, with a final project often judged by private sector representatives. As of 2011, about 300–400 students had completed the camp, both male and female, and some 7,000 had been exposed to one or more Tawteen programs. A newly hired teacher at a government school involved in broader education reforms explained how these ideas are being conveyed more directly in the classroom. She said that reformers are emphasizing the “idea of a career” as something new and desirable for youth to pursue as adults: We’re getting the students to think more actively about questions like, “What kind of a career is for me?” We’re developing the art of reflection, building up the idea of multiple intelligences and self-analysis, and trying to get students to think about their strengths and weaknesses, giving them the power of choice. For example, some students are good at drawing, others are interpersonally smart, others are word-smart. We’re helping them to answer questions like “Who am I?” and “How can I use my skills in the future?”11

Selecting a career, then, is being described as a way for young Emiratis to acquire a sense of control over their own lives (“giving them the power of choice”). It is also being pitched as a means for them to explore, discover, and express their own uniqueness as individuals (“Who am I?”). Another example of this reconfiguration of what it means to work can be found in the corner of the Ministry of Education devoted to “student activities.” Since the 1990s, the number of official “student activities” devised by the Ministry has increased dramatically. According to Saleh Ahmed Al Ustad, one of the section heads, they have also shifted in focus, so that now many emphasize that developing skills, getting a job, and working can be fun.12 Right now, Al Ustad explained, the youth “give much less than they take from the country.” What the country needs is to 10 11 12

Interview with Khulood Al Nuwais, Abu Dhabi, November 2011. Interview with teacher, Al Ain, June 2011. Interview with Saleh Ahmed Al Ustad, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011.

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“show [them] the way into what they like, so that what you like is your job.” Al Ustad highlighted new offerings in the Ministry of Education’s student activities that seek to accomplish this objective, such as skill-based competitions, industrial apprenticeships, and science festivals. Nowhere is such a shift in symbolism more prominent than in the regime’s excitement surrounding the idea of entrepreneurship as a means of self-discovery and source of personal fulfillment. For example, “The Entrepreneur” is a new reality TV show that was launched by du, one of the state-controlled telecommunications companies, to air on Dubai One starting in 2012; it was modelled after “The Apprentice” in the United States and similarly involves a business-oriented competition (Flanagan 2012). Likewise, the Young Entrepreneur Competition (YEC) was established in 2005 under the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan – a son of the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, and also something of a local heartthrob. Now an annual event, the YEC began by targeting kids aged 16–18 in high schools, offering them entrepreneurship training, product development support, and the chance to compete for prizes in creativity, innovation, marketing, and customer service. The final nationwide competition is held annually at Dubai Mall, where the participants run kiosks marketing their products from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily Nisrin Sasar, the state-employed coordinator of the YEC, noted that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid and his son wished to “inject the spirit of entrepreneurship into young UAE nationals.”13 As she explained, the youth: are the best seeds to start with. Your mind is still clear, you don’t have these obstacles of life; they don’t have these problems of paying bills, for example. They have the courage, the guts. They have the ability to make the jump. They have motivation and passion. For me, for example, I work here. I already have a job. Why would I start a business? I am secure; I have a salary. But the young people: they are ready.

This is social engineering at its most straightforward, conveyed through the image of the youth as the “best seeds” in which such ideas of work as self-fulfillment might grow into fruition. The coordinator said that some Emirati kids, who have never had any experience or knowledge of entrepreneurship, emerge from the event “changed completely.” She recalled one who said to her afterward, “Now I have learned what I want to

13

Interview with Nisrin Sasar, YEC coordinator, Dubai, November 2011.

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become.” Another, she recalled, was seen as a lazy student before he participated; afterward, he became far more motivated and independent. She said she could see the participants’ mentality changing in the following way: How many of them might be thinking, “Oh, my father is chairman or CEO of this business, or this ministry.” And they could follow in his footsteps. But, here they are, behind the desk, selling things. Getting practice, hands-on experience. Half of them have parents like that, but instead of taking the easy route they want to try it themselves. They want to have their own personality. And, they discover themselves. They come out of YEC not only as businessmen, but they create their own personality out of it.

As these remarks suggest, the social engineering campaign also contains a subtle stigmatization of certain types of work, notably those seen as linked to the “rentier” culture of dependence on government employment. The YEC coordinator, for example, criticized what she said was the “easy route” in which young people seek jobs in a ministry, a big family business, or other area where they have family links. Reflecting long-standing tribal and other political relationships, the big family businesses in the UAE are often linked to the rentier culture because of their reliance on the state for exclusive contracts, import rights, bail-outs, and other forms of protection and patronage. Dubai’s influential Al Gargash family, for instance, with close connections to the emirate’s ruling family, runs Gargash Enterprises, which has been the “authorized Distributor of Mercedes-Benz in Dubai since 1958.”14 The YEC coordinator drew a sharp contrast between taking the “easy route” by seeking employment in this rentier culture, on the one hand, and entrepreneurship, on the other. Thus, it is work of a certain kind that is primarily associated with these Weberian ideas of self-fulfillment and personal identity – a sort of work that happens to be very much aligned with ruling elites’ interest in providing less social welfare and creating more economically self-reliant citizens. Entrepreneurship and work in the private sector are valorized, while the government sector is often stigmatized, typically described as dull and unrewarding. Indeed, despite the often lower starting salaries, longer working hours, and shorter vacations, social engineers are highlighting other benefits to working in the private sector, such as opportunities to develop skills, more interesting and less routine job responsibilities, faster

14

See www.gargash.mercedes-benz.com, accessed November 15, 2012.

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promotion, and higher salaries down the line – as well as a sense of fulfilling one’s patriotic duty. As Kamraan Siddiqui, associated with the Absher Initiative15 launched in 2012 by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, the UAE’s president, put it, “The private sector may not offer graduates the same salary and comfortable conditions as the government sector, but if you apply yourself the chances of promotion and growth . . . are much greater.”16 Moreover: “The message I would give a young person is to think long term, to think in terms of doing something for your country in a really positive way.” Even in the government sector, certain areas of work are cast as superior to others. The preferred areas focus on the “new economy” (Davidson 2012a), largely driven by science and technology, and they fall between the public and private sectors. As Homaid Al Shemmari, the executive director of the parastatal Mubadala Aerospace, explained at the 2012 Transforming Education Summit:17 We want to transform our economy very quickly, but we need to bring that human capital and UAE national know-how up to speed . . . to bring sufficiently educated UAE nationals quickly into these industries. Going forward we need our UAE nationals to step up to the plate and to the challenge. And that’s what the leadership is doing – saying to UAE nationals, “We have job opportunities for you, stop looking at the government as the main source of employment in the UAE.”

Countless initiatives have sought to inspire youth interest in science and technology, with their designers hinting that work in these areas is intrinsically more rewarding than conventional government sector work.18 At the 2012 TEDxAlAin conference, for example, Abdullatif Al Shamsi, a head education reformer, highlighted the use of study trips abroad to show students that work in the areas favored by the state can be personally fulfilling: [They] just sent a group of students to NASA Space Center in Houston a couple weeks ago. Imagine kids at the age of 14 or 15 to have that kind of exciting opportunity. What an eye opener for those kids at that age. They also . . . send students to South Korea to work in the nuclear power plant. Again for a kid at that age to work with the Korean engineers, in a real nuclear power reactor, that’s

15 17 18

16 See www.absher.ae/en/, accessed February 28, 2015. Quoted in Simpson (2013). Personal observation, Transforming Education Summit (TES), Abu Dhabi, May 2012. See, for example, the Summer of Semiconductors, the Summer Challenge programs, the EmiratesSkills competitions, and the World Robot Olympiad, also discussed below in terms of their role as spectacles.

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something very exciting for students at that age. And you find that when they come back, they are very committed to this profession, they are hooked into this profession, and that’s what they want to do in the future.19

In some ways, these study trips represent an evolution of what Kanna (2011, 155) calls “a typical and thoroughly (male) Emirati rite of passage – the rihla or Bildungsreise” to other lands, and they are now increasingly open to Emirati females. Like the coordinator of the Young Entrepreneur Competition, Al Shamsi speaks of them as highly transformative. The aim, he elaborated in his TED speech, is to “give the students the exposure of . . . what the professional world is like when they are in high school,” as this will “prepare [them] to hit the ground running” as more productive and career-oriented citizens. When I interviewed him, he summed up by saying that the reformers’ vision is nothing short of “setting a new culture in society” by making the youth “want to achieve.”20 Responsibility, Self-Discipline, and the Rational Life In the UAE, many social engineering efforts also aim to imbue work with a new sense of dignity, portraying it as a natural part of a modern and rational life. For Weber, the spirit of capitalism involved a “well-developed sense of responsibility,” facilitated by a habit of “sober self-control” (1905, 17). In contrast to precapitalist man, capitalist man is “characterized to a certain degree by a form of asceticism” (1905, 24), and a “general attitude which, at least during working time, does not continually seek ways of earning the usual wage with the maximum ease and the minimum effort” (1905, 17). It would be a stretch to suggest that UAE social engineering is promoting an ascetic mindset. But it does contain myriad and sometimes rather quirky efforts to reshape what it means to lead a “rational” life that emphasize responsibility, self-discipline, and other classic bourgeois virtues. Consider, for example, the additional benefits that social engineers attribute to the growing number of state-funded opportunities for Emirati youth to travel abroad. A reformer at the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) said ruling elites think these worldly experiences foster self-reliance by encouraging youth to take care of themselves.21 When they are abroad living with a host family, he explained, they gain 19 20 21

TED speech by Abdullatif Al Shamsi, education reformer, Al Ain, April 2012. Interview with Abdullatif Al Shamsi, education reformer, Dubai, June 2011. Interview with Robert Thompson, head of special projects, ADEC, Abu Dhabi, August 2011.

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a “do-it-yourself” mentality, learning to take a bus or other public transportation, and they do their own laundry without the help of parents or a maid. Patricia Coles, a former principal at a government high school involved in the reforms, added that the state-funded trips abroad not only build self-reliance but also create ambition.22 Young citizens find that “They don’t just want to develop their country,” she said. “They want to compete globally and to become global players,” and they acquire the self-confidence and sense of focus they need to succeed. An eccentric move in this regard has been the state’s emphasis on martial arts. In Abu Dhabi, Brazilian jiu-jitsu has become a mandatory subject in many government schools, having been launched in 2008 for sixth and seventh graders.23 As of 2011, at least eighty-one Brazilian jiujitsu coaches had been hired as instructors and flown to the UAE to work in public schools. Reformers have also begun distributing judo leaflets to parents and advertising Aikido classes at the new state-funded summer camps (Ahmed 2011a). Jiu-jitsu training has even been incorporated into the UAE military and can be found in connection to the recent national service law. But why martial arts? The UAE Jiu-Jitsu Federation was established in 2012 under the patronage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, and its website provides some hints. It highlights the sport’s “numerous physical, mental, emotional and social benefits,” including fostering “discipline and self-control,” “willpower, perseverance, hard work and commitment,” and a “motivational and upbeat spirit even after setbacks.”24 Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed recently designated jiu-jitsu as the UAE’s “national sport.” Robert Thompson, the head of special projects at the Abu Dhabi Education Council, provided further insight into why ruling elites are drawn to martial arts and wish to incorporate it into the making of citizens. Based on his interactions with them, he said the sheikhs believe martial arts training promotes not just physical exercise but also the habit of “being a responsible person” as well as “respect and discipline.”25 He explained that the Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructors’ personal stories of determination and triumph had resonated with the sheikhs. By instilling self-discipline, some instructors have said, the sport helped lift them out

22 23 24 25

Interview with Patricia Coles, former principal, Al Ain, March 2011. Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014. See https://uaejjf.com/en/index.aspx, accessed February 25, 2015. Interview with Robert Thompson, head of special projects, ADEC, Abu Dhabi, August 2011.

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of poverty, idleness, or depression. According to Thompson, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, himself a martial arts fan, came into a middle school to watch the jiu-jitsu training one day, and after class was over, asked, “Do you think it has increased their discipline?”26 Even some of the most elemental aspects of the K-12 education reforms, upon closer inspection, have been designed not merely to improve education but also to promote responsibility and self-discipline. For instance, as noted in Chapter 3, in many high schools, students now move from classroom to classroom as they go about their day, rather than remaining in one classroom as if they were “in a prison cell,” to use the evocative words of reform advocates. Social engineers expect this change not only to improve education but also to encourage young UAE citizens to be more responsible, since they will need to follow their own individualized schedules to complete the day. As one Ras Al Khaimah teacher explained, “They will go from room to room, like adults. Before, it was like they were children. The teacher comes to them, brings them the materials.”27 In one of the education reforms out of Abu Dhabi, an official said a key aim was to “change the motivation of students” by “treating them like adults,” especially by encouraging discipline.28 “[Students in the new school] must be in class at 7:30,” the official explained, “and the school ends at 3,” longer hours than in the traditional government schools. In this way, the students are taught to “be career-focused and reliable.” More generally, social engineers expect that liberal, student-centered approaches to education will encourage youth to be more responsible and self-disciplined. As Sebastian Rubens Y Rojo, an education reformer at ADEC, explained, “Students used to do what the teacher said because the teacher told them what to do. Now, they are being asked to do more – to take responsibility for their own learning.”29 A mission statement released by the Ministry of Education in 2011 also makes this aim clear: the K-12 reforms are intended, not just to “achieve the highest levels in educational performance,” but to do so “in a way that helps deepen the spirit of responsibility in all levels and develops people’s obligation towards serving their community” (Mohammed 2008). 26

27 28 29

He said he wasn’t sure how to respond, but then thought of the following quip: “What happens on the mat, stays on the mat.” The crown prince seemed to enjoy the remark. Interview with teacher, Ras Al Khaimah, April 2012. Interview with education reformer, Abu Dhabi, June 2011. Interview with Sebastian Rubens Y Rojo, Abu Dhabi Education Council, Abu Dhabi, October 2011.

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In addition, there is a related and striking focus in the social engineering campaign on encouraging a certain vision of the “rational” life, which also aligns with Weber’s spirit of capitalism. Indeed, Weber saw this spirit itself “as a part of the total development of rationalism” (1997, 27). In this sense, the rational life includes the inclination to set goals and develop strategies to achieve them; a focused, determined attitude, especially in overcoming obstacles; and an “ability to concentrate the mind” (1997, 18). All of this includes a habit of “systematic self-examination” (1997, 79) and “regimentation of one’s own life” (1997, 86) so as to ensure that one is thinking and behaving rationally toward the achievement of one’s goals. Such Weberian conceptions of the rational life also have much in common with recent work emphasizing the importance of “character skills,” as well as cognitive ones, for later-life outcomes (Kautz et al. 2014). Celebration of the “rational” life is deeply embedded in state efforts to shape hearts and minds. Consider the new civics program, Al Bayariq, discussed in Chapter 3. According to a 2011 presentation, students will “be able to solve problems and make rational decisions” as a result of participation in the program.30 A poster associated with the program encourages similar habits characteristic of the “rational” life. At the top is written “S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Goals,” with the subtitle, “Define the Goal – make the goal SMARTER.”31 The acronym (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed, Exciting, and Recorded) provides a blueprint for how students might live their lives more rationally. Under “Specific,” for instance, the poster recommends that students “Try writing the goal down and saying exactly what you want to do or achieve.” For “measurable,” it suggests, “Give yourself ways to check how far you have got with your goal and when you have achieved it.” The promotion of the “rational” life is also closely linked to promarket and neoliberal citizen-building goals. For many social engineers, encouraging citizens to lead “rational” lives means encouraging their goal-setting and personal planning for the purposes of a post-petroleum future, as envisioned by ruling elites. A good example of the reconfiguring of what it means to be “rational” can be found in the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Students Personal Development Program, launched in 2011. This program is said to reflect the popular Dubai prince’s “vision 30

31

Powerpoint presentation on Al Bayariq Student Citizenship Program, October 2011, obtained by author. Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014.

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to equip young nationals starting from the early stages of their life with the necessary skills to better serve the country.”32 To accomplish this, the program will “coach students on future planning,” teach “personal development exercises,” and “encourage and motivate students to think and discuss their future plans and learn from each other.” As of 2011, it had been introduced into Grade 10 in Dubai public schools, and the plan was to have it continue through Grade 12. Both the theme of rationalism and its role in pro-market, neoliberal citizen-building are clear: the program envisions “young UAE nationals empowered by personal skills to take charge of their life path and become fulfilled, confident, responsible, and ambitious contributors of the society and the development of the Nation.” Many of these themes can also be found in the posters and other items placed on classroom walls as part of the new print-rich environment, designed to promote creativity and individuality.33 In an English language classroom in Abu Dhabi, for instance, posters displayed statements written by the students themselves, such as: • “We should have solutions to problems which will help the UAE be independent and healthy.” • “We think it will be better in the future for our lives to earn a living and understand commerce.” • “To have a better future we need to make new inventions and earn a living.” • “It is important that we all be creative.” In an Al Ain school where reforms were under way, a Tunisian expatriate teacher had put up similar posters.34 These displayed tips and slogans such as “If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders” and “I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.” One of the instructor’s quizzes tested reading comprehension and critical thinking by asking questions about several texts. One text was a poem called “Responsibility,” involving stanzas such as “I am much more than me/I have a part of the ocean/that is my country.” Questions following this text included “Why do you think this poem is called ‘Responsibility’? Use evidence from at least two stanzas to explain your answer.” Another text in the exam was entitled “The Good Citizen Story,” a topic to which we now turn. 32 33

Program material obtained by author, 2011. 34 Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014. Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014.

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A third kind of symbolic politics at play involves linking work of any sort – economic, social, cultural – to virtuous concepts such as national identity, civic-mindedness, and the overall health of the community. Earlier in this chapter, I asked, what does it mean to work? In addition to the answer that “Joining the world of work is a first step towards personal fulfillment,” UAE Vision 2021 (2010b) provides another revealing answer. “Work,” Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, president of the UAE, is quoted as saying at the start of the government strategy document, “is a true criterion of citizenship. It is evidence of sincerity and loyalty.” Toward the end of his life, Sheikh Zayed also began to recast notions of good citizenship along these lines. In his National Day speech in 2003, he said: We view the concept of citizenship as meaning loyalty to our country and a commitment to work for its benefit. Citizenship requires from each and every one of us that we should view the making of a contribution to our country as the yardstick by which we are judged, because the homeland is a single entity, and the building of it necessitates that all of us should work together, hand in hand, and that all of us should be ready to serve and protect it.35

Nationalism and patriotic love of country, then, are also being given as reasons for young UAE citizens to take up the more active roles envisioned for them. Indeed, as Sheikh Zayed’s remarks suggest, being a good citizen is increasingly being cast as equivalent to contributing along these lines. As Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid recently put it, “Dubai is not the place for people who are strong and healthy, but have no contribution to make, or are simply not prepared to work hard for success” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 39). Although UAE leaders have long sought to foster stronger nationalistic and patriotic attitudes, building loyalty to the UAE above that to family and tribe, only recently have these efforts been tied to pro-development social engineering.36 As we saw in Chapter 2, earlier visions of the citizen imagined the citizen as a relatively passive (albeit loyal) beneficiary of state largesse. This made it necessary, as discussed in Chapter 3, to revise the official K-12 civics curriculum out of the Ministry of Education to place greater emphasis, not just on UAE national identity, but also on “21stcentury skills,” and particularly those relevant to contemporary labor markets. In 2012, the Ministry of Education also launched the National 35 36

For the speech, see UAE Yearbook (2003, 30). On the booming “heritage industry,” see Alsharekh, Springborg, and Stewart (2008).

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Identity Preservation in Education project, with a similarly dual character. It provides resources for teachers to incorporate an emphasis on UAE national identity within all school subjects, beginning with five-year-olds (Ahmed 2012b). As the secretary general of the Dubai Executive Council explained, the program will both “enhance national identity among citizens” and “equip young people to further the achievements of the country.”37 Another recent K-12 intervention, the “security education program,” also reveals this dual character. As the Minister of Education, Humaid Mohammad Obaid Al Qutami, explained, the program reflects “The UAE’s keenness to raise a good citizen who is loyal and beneficial to his nation” (Hosn 2011). In recent years, a virtual cottage industry has arisen around the “teaching” of national identity in the UAE, and the effort to link good citizenship with the obligation to contribute must be viewed within this broader context. In 2008, for instance, Sheikh Khalifa, president of the UAE, declared 2008 the “year of national identity.” The Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Community Development subsequently organized a UAE National Identity Conference, where it was agreed that “experiential learning” of national identity was crucial, echoing some of the liberal student-centered rhetoric of the education reformers. As a Ministry of Education official explained, teaching the national identity means to “grow in [the youth] a kind of feeling that you are a UAE citizen,” not just through history lessons but through community service activities, problem-solving tasks, internships, and other concrete experiences.38 The general manager of the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding echoed this sentiment: “More needs to be done but it cannot only be through talk”39 The center offers mosque visits, traditional Emirati breakfasts, and a tour of the old Bastakiya area of Dubai, among other “cultural awareness” programs and events. Although many of these activities cater to foreign tourists, they are also increasingly designed to teach Emirati youth themselves about their own heritage and past. Thus, “They visit the [traditional] houses, have the Emirati meals and we talk to them about the [traditional] clothing,” the general manager explained, emphasizing the need to understand how poor the country used to be. Youth can also make old fishing nets and other items no longer frequently used. “Don’t just tell them how they used to make it,” he advised, “ask 37 38 39

Quoted in Ahmed (2012b). Interview with Saleh Ahmed Al Ustad, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011. Quoted in Ahmed (2012b).

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them to make it.” Social engineers believe this emphasis on the hardships of the past will help motivate present-day youth to contribute more, and this may be one reason that recent nationalist dioramas in airports and other places favor the Bedouin desert heritage, seen as tougher than that of the city-dwellers.40 As Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed said in his 2014 National Day remarks, quoting the late Sheikh Zayed, “the new generation should be aware of the suffering of its ancestors. This awareness will provide them with drive, firmness and solidity in order to complete the epic of construction and development initiated by our fathers and ancestors.”41 In this context, the celebrations for the UAE’s National Day, marking the country’s founding, have become noticeably more elaborate and participatory, with heightened pageantry and fanfare. Schools, universities, shops, and local and federal governing elites spend weeks in preparation, draping massive flags over the front of buildings, lining highways with nationalist placards, and selling do-it-yourself gear for citizens to participate in the celebrations. The bookshops sell face paint, headbands, scarves, wigs, and other apparel in the colors of the flag, and blown-up photographs of the sheikhs for citizens to attach to their cars. On National Day itself, these decorated cars can be seen making their way down major roads throughout the country in a kind of chaotic parade. In 2010, Zayed University arranged a festival of “flags, a traditional souk, Arabian tents, food and ornaments and other symbols of the UAE’s heritage and folklore,” with a turnout of over 3,000 students and staff (Sherif 2010). Students performed folkloric songs and dances, and arranged a play performed by professional Emirati actors “as a token of appreciation for the opportunities the UAE afforded them.” At the same time, these broader efforts at nation-building are often closely linked to the state’s campaign to reshape citizens along the lines of the neoliberal citizenship ideal. Indeed, hardly a week goes by in which UAE youth are not told in some way or another that they will be showing their love of country by making choices that align with this ideal, such as starting a business, seeking private sector work, taking on volunteer work, and so on. At Abu Dhabi University in 2010, National Day was 40

41

On selective re-imaginings of the UAE past, and the Bedouin emphasis out of Abu Dhabi, see Partrick (2012). This emphasis also reflects broader tribal and north/south divisions in the country. For more on “newly invented traditions” in the UAE, see the work of anthropologist Suleyman Khalaf (e.g., 2000, 2002), who emphasizes the romanticized way in which practices such as camel racing are now portrayed and celebrated. See Al Nahyan (2014).

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celebrated, according to its chancellor, by promoting the “active citizenship concept and the role of Emiratis in achieving the goals in accordance with the UAE’s strategic plan” (Sherif 2010). As he explained, “National Day should be a call for unified contributions to the continuing growth and development of the country.” Thus, for the celebration, the university invited young working Emiratis to share their “personal achievements and their efforts to make the UAE one of the most advanced countries in the world.” To some extent, these efforts recall state-led social engineering in globalized Singapore. Ong (2006, 194) writes critically of the effort there to cultivate a “self-enterprising citizenry,” with citizens both more able and willing to compete in the global economy. The new “moral calculus . . . requires a worthy citizen both to excel at self-management and to be globally competitive and politically compliant.” Thus, it is a “citizenship based on value-added human capital.” She observes that Singaporeans are increasingly being warned that they must acquire up-todate skills and expertise or else “lose out to expatriates and be reduced to de facto second-class status in their own homeland.” A Singapore media official is quoted as explaining that this is only fair, since jobs should be about merit and not race or ethnicity – or citizenship. Given the huge number of expatriates in the UAE, the notion of citizens being obligated to compete in the global economy is also embedded into state-led social engineering, though more obliquely. As Kamraan Siddiqui, linked to the Absher Initiative noted above, explained, “We’re in a globalized world and everyone is competing for jobs with China, Brazil, the US. The workforce has to be competitive, so Emiratis should get within the private sector and compete with people of all nationalities.”42 Fatma Juma, an Emirati senior associate with PricewaterhouseCoopers, sought to encourage young citizens to work in the UAE private sector for similar reasons. At the 2015 Young Emirati Forum, she said, “Being the citizen of a country like the UAE, which has such an international flavor with the cream of international professionals, it is crucial to grab the opportunity.”43 Interestingly, she also suggested citizens’ greater entrance into the private sector workforce would enhance civility and tolerance, which can also be seen as bourgeois or market-related virtues stemming from regularized interactions with the other. “I feel such interaction will also help international professionals in the country to understand and communicate with Emiratis,” she said, and Emiratis, for their part, 42

Quoted in Simpson (2013).

43

Quoted in Khaishgi (2015).

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“won’t be treated like aliens if they start working with international staff.” This again underscores the importance of globalization and migration – and the massive population of expatriates in the UAE resulting from these forces – in terms of affecting the ways in which citizens see themselves and rulers see the impetus for and nature of the citizen-building campaign. The active citizenship ideal favored by ruling elites also involves the obligation to contribute via volunteering and undertaking community service. The Ministry of Education’s revised civics curriculum, for example, emphasizes community service and volunteering as important civic duties. Likewise, curriculum changes introduced by Abu Dhabi’s main vehicle for education reform aim to “enhance civic responsibility and community engagement of students” (Abu Dhabi Education Council 2009). A model program for many ruling elites is Takatof, an Abu Dhabi–funded Emirates Foundation initiative dating from 2007 that operates across the UAE and intends to foster a stronger “culture of volunteering.”44 On why the program was founded, one head volunteer, Khaled Hasan Al Hosani, said he had heard that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed “saw a need for nationals to engage [more] in community service, in serving the nation.”45 According to the story that circulates, two of the sheikh’s sons went on a trip to volunteer in Tanzania. When they came back, as Al Hosani put it, “their personality had changed – for the better.” After “[the ruler] saw the changes, the influence of being a volunteer,” Al Hosani continued, “He thought, ‘If this is how my sons have changed, I want to change my other sons too,’” meaning the citizenry, and so Takatof was born. Another Takatof staff member, a senior operations manager, provided further insight into the program.46 He agreed that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed wanted to cultivate a culture of volunteering for its own sake. But he also said there was a security-related rationale, noting that one of the 9/ 11 hijackers was Emirati and Emiratis have been involved in other attacks. “The leadership,” he said, “believes that one reason these youth get involved is that they have nothing passionate in their lives and too much unstructured free time.” High school–age youth, in particular, are “profoundly bored,” he said. “They do nothing but stew after coming home

44

45

46

Interview with Peter Cleaves, Emirates Foundation CEO, Abu Dhabi, July 2009. For details, see www.takatof.ae/en, accessed February 25, 2015. Interview with Khaled Hasan Al Hosani, Takatof staff member, Abu Dhabi, November 2011. Interview with Takatof senior operations manager, Abu Dhabi, July 2009.

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from school. The concept of an after-school job [for pay or as a volunteer] is completely foreign.” His remarks echo concerns about youth in Saudi Arabia, where many young males spend their free time joyriding and skidding cars in ways that worry state officials and can be seen in a larger political light (Menoret 2014). So the UAE state effort to foster a “culture of volunteering” may also have a counter-radicalization rationale behind it. Whatever the rulers’ original motivations, Takatof is today engaged in combatting what staff see as a high sense of entitlement among UAE youth, with complex political, social, and economic drivers.47 As one explained, “There is a sense of entitlement, the expectations from an environment where everything is given to you, which Takatof is trying to dislodge by creating a culture of service, duty, and responsibility.” Khaled Hasan Al Hosani, the staff member noted above, explained how he tries to inculcate the idea of volunteering as a way of life in the training modules he runs. Young Emiratis are “instructed to ask themselves,” he explained, “‘What am I doing to help? What am I doing to clean up the beach? I don’t need to wait for the municipality.’” The training, he said, aims to “embed volunteerism among youth, to get them more engaged in giving back to their communities.” Brij Bali, an operations manager, added that volunteering is a “new concept” in the country (though, in an interesting exchange, Khaled Hasan Al Hosani interjected to say this was true but it was also an “old tradition in the Arab world”). “Our secret,” Bali explained, “is that we make volunteering fun.” Thus, some of the same ideational inducements are being used to foster active citizens in the civil dimension as in the economic dimension of citizenship. According to social engineers, contributing in the community as well as the economy is not only a badge of good citizenship, but also a road to personal fulfillment. A popular slogan for Takatof is “Discover the hero in you.” As Sabha Al Shamsi, an Emirati academic who earned a bachelor’s degree in the US, master’s degree in Canada, and doctorate in the UK, explained: Every citizen in the UAE needs to be an active citizen, in a positive way. So we need every individual to contribute – to make the most of things. Whatever we do, others will not develop us; we have to take over for ourselves. You have to feel you belong in your country as an active citizen. We’re proud of our country, we love it, but we need that training in citizenship. Until now we had everything given to us, literally on a golden plate. The government wants to get away from that, and let 47

Conversations with Takatof staff, Abu Dhabi, November 2011.

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the people work and be a part of the development of society. Our mentality is changing, through education, and the government is helping us learn to contribute.48

As an example, she said new programs with the Emirates Foundation are encouraging “brainstorming with young people, so if there is a problem, they can brainstorm about it and think of a solution.” A new programmatic area is also “social entrepreneurship,” she added, which will “help youth learn to depend on themselves and to help society to sustain itself.” Other efforts to combat what is perceived as a culture of entitlement – especially when it comes to widespread expectations among youth for high salaries, short working hours, and ample vacations – can readily be found. I saw, for example, many motivational posters to this effect in government schools. One showed an image of a poor foreign woman kneeling and begging for help, under the title: “If you think your salary is low, how about her?” The idea was apparently to get youth to think about the less fortunate in the world. Another poster displayed a picture of a new pair of sneakers alongside a picture of old, dirty sandals, with the caption: “Someone got you Adidas instead of Nike? They only have one brand!” Others exhort, “Let us complain less, and give more” and “We are fortunate, we have much more than what we need to be content.” These tactics of persuasion are especially intriguing given what is often seen as the other key source of entitlement: not the oil-fueled rentier state, but large populations of relatively poor migrant workers. For example, in Longva’s critique of “ethnocracy,” focusing on Kuwait, she draws attention to the “unique sense of empowerment derived from domination over the migrant underclass” (Longva 2005, 129). Such “rightless migrant workers, imported for the sole purpose of serving a native minority” – which she describes as a ruling “ethnie” having something in common with the privileged citizen elite in ancient Athens – inevitably affect the ways in which local identities evolve. Mistreatment of workers in the UAE is well known, not only by companies and government entities but also by individuals via the “sponsorship” system, known as kafāla.49 Seen in this light, the posters above make essentially moral appeals that may hit rather close to home, calling for youth to compare themselves to the less fortunate who may be serving as migrant domestic workers in their very own households. Thus, although social engineering does not appear to address the treatment of migrant workers directly, it contains indirect references 48 49

Interview with Sabha Al Shamsi, Emirates Foundation, Abu Dhabi, November 2011. See, for example, Human Rights Watch (2014).

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to the issue. The evidence also suggests that Sheikh Zayed was not unaware of these problems. Dresch (2005, 147) describes a 1993 meeting in which Sheikh Zayed “urged young men to live within their means, to live as his generation had done without maids, cooks and drivers.” Anti-entitlement propaganda can also be detected in the various environmental awareness campaigns unfolding around the country, which are embedded into the larger citizen-building effort. For example, an “ecoliteracy” program to be integrated into the new K-12 curriculum in Abu Dhabi encourages students to consume less and live more austerely; citizens typically benefit from free utilities or pay for them at highly subsidized rates (which are not offered to expatriate residents). As the director general of the Abu Dhabi Education Council explained with regard to the eco-literacy program, “We should not isolate it as a subject but it should be imbedded within the curriculum as part of the lessons”50 “Sustainability,” he continued, “is not just an emblem, it is a behavior and conduct which should be instilled, inculcated and practiced.” ADEC’s head of global partnerships clarified that the project focuses on “imbedding environmental issues and awareness techniques within the school curriculum – in sciences, national identity programs and social sciences – to discuss recycling, water conservation and energy-saving issues, from kindergarten to high school.”

spectacles and spectators: social engineering on display The last element of state-led social engineering is its use of state-sponsored spectacles. Festivals, ceremonies, monuments, and media have all been analyzed as spectacles, dramatizing politics by emphasizing spectacular images and symbols over substance, idealistic slogans over reality, and myth over complex historical truth.51 As such, spectacles may serve multiple purposes and cater to different audiences, both as “systems of signification and community,” as Lisa Wedeen puts it, and as “functional strategies to enforce dominance and construct community” (1999, 13). Wedeen gives the examples of royal iconography, the image of Elizabeth I as the Virgin Queen, and the French Revolution’s “cult of reason,” which may “dramatize the aspirations of the regime” and serve as “compelling pictures of the tensions, fears, and hopes that define a particular 50 51

Quoted in Olarte (2010). On spectacles in politics, see Edelman (1964), Mosse (1975), and Wedeen (1999).

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political epoch.” At the same time, they may be “designed to convey certain ideas to spectators” in an effort to shape hearts and minds. Spectacles, therefore, may serve both expressive and consequentialist ends. I turn now to the use of spectacles in the UAE to support proglobalization, and often simultaneously pro-market, social engineering. As with earlier incarnations of authoritarian modernization (Mosse 1975), the idea of monumentalism plays a prominent role, reflected through imposing architecture, striking visual design, and “built cities” in the pursuit of knowledge renaissance, as described in Chapter 3. When we examine these phenomena as spectacles, it is clear that they embody the regime’s enlightened self-image, aiming to impress it upon not only Emiratis and expatriate residents, but also the international community. Consider, for example, the rhetoric surrounding the new monuments on Saadiyat Island. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is described as follows: Transferring to an Arab country a cultural form born in Enlightenment Europe, [the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s] deep sense of identity is rooted in the notions of discovery, exchange and thus education. Its very name affirms the unprecedented alliance between the world’s biggest museum, a permanent place of beauty and knowledge, and modern Arabia, whose exceptional dynamism is at the heart of the contemporary world . . . The Louvre Abu Dhabi will express the universalism of its time, that of a globalized and interdependent world.52

Such initiatives also suggest the monumentalist faith in the transformative powers of architecture, being designed in part to uplift and inspire people – to “incite them to virtue” in the ways that leaders would like to see.53 In this regard, a ten-day “Journey of the Union” is revealing. In 2014, twenty-eight Emirati students were brought to visit Saadiyat Island in order to “understand the progress being made on the UAE’s cultural front” (Khaishgi 2014). Their reactions, as recorded in the state-owned newspaper The National, can be seen as exemplary from the perspective of social engineers. For example, fifteen-year-old Sultan Al Naimi is quoted as saying, “Saadiyat Island is a beautiful concept. It reflects our transition from our glorious past towards a brighter future.”54 The newspaper noted that Sultan aims to be the “best citizen in the 52 53

54

See www.louvre.fr/en/louvre-abu-dhabi, accessed February 25, 2015. Riesenberg (1992, 210) analyzes Sir Thomas More’s Utopia from this perspective: “The sights of citizens are to be elevated, quite literally, as they are made to gaze upon the statues of Utopia’s heroes set on high columns in the public spaces. These are to ‘incite them to virtue.’” Quoted in Khaishgi (2014).

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country” in order to fulfill Sheikh Zayed’s dreams for the coming generation. It is also reported that another student, sixteen-year-old Othaiba Almazroi, said she was “so impressed with Saadiyat” that she hopes to become an engineer and design her own monuments that will make “the entire nation proud.” She said, “Saadiyat Island should be a must-visit place for all young Emiratis. It is a source of inspiration.” The country’s public education reforms also place a strong emphasis on creating artistically inspiring, technologically advanced, self-contained environments in which youth can be molded into the right kinds of citizens. For example, Abu Dhabi is constructing new primary and secondary school buildings because the old ones were “not aligned with [the] new teaching philosophy,” according to its ten-year strategy (Abu Dhabi Education Council 2009). The designs of three architecture firms were selected out of twenty-seven firms that submitted proposals. According to newspaper reports, the new “green” schools, part of the Abu Dhabi Future School program, will use more energy-efficient air-conditioning and water-saving technology, and “the electricity that will be used in the classrooms will be generated on site” (Lewis 2009). As the director general of the Abu Dhabi Education Council explained, “We see school facilities as a wonderful opportunity for students to see with their own eyes and experiment first hand, simple but powerful notions of sustainability. ADEC new school designs are meant to be a ‘teaching tool’ itself, that will help expand the awareness of sustainability in the whole community where the school is located.”55 The first twenty-one schools built in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, and Al Gharbia as part of the program cost about $407 million, and were inaugurated in the fall of 2012. Emirati primary and secondary school students were actually invited to “design their own school building” in collaboration with the professional architects selected from the competition.56 Focusing on pre–World War II Germany – admittedly a very different political context, but illustrative in terms of the use of state spectacles – George Mosse (1975, 2) has emphasized the ways in which leaders may seek to “draw the people into active participation in the national mystique through rites and festivals, myths and symbols which gave a concrete expression to the general will” and thus transform “political action into a drama supposedly shared by the people themselves.” Something similar is afoot in the UAE case. At the 55 56

Quoted in Masdar (2011). Personal observations at the Building Future Education conference, Abu Dhabi, October 2011.

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Building Future Education MENA 2011 conference in Abu Dhabi, the Abu Dhabi Education Council and the Sammon Group, one of the competition winners and already building new schools in Saudi Arabia, arranged a competition for Emirati youth called “Design My Learning Space Live!” Students competed in teams to create handcrafted models and dioramas of their ideal school. Public festivals, lavishly supported and highly publicized, have also played a significant role in the UAE social engineering campaign. In Mosse’s analysis of Germany, festivals sought to make men more virtuous, with virtue defined in terms of patriotism, but in the UAE festivals are more aligned with a kind of patriotic neoliberalism that celebrates knowledge, creativity, innovation, self-reliance, civicmindedness, and entrepreneurship on behalf of the nation. Consider the Festival of Thinkers, a sumptuous “celebration of thought,” established in 2005 and held every two years by the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), one of the country’s three public institutions of higher education.57 It aims to “energize promising youth of the region to inspire, innovate and invent,” providing opportunities for them to network with leading global thinkers and Nobel Laureates. Looking out at the audience at the opening ceremony in 2009, Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, the HCT chancellor, called for the Middle East to “rekindle the spirit of thought, and celebrate our great thinkers as examples for all to follow.”58 “If only one young person in our land yearns and learns to use this wonderful gift of thought better,” he added, “maybe greatness will be the outcome.” When examining the Festival of Thinkers more closely, one finds a certain quasi-religious quality to it, familiar to scholars of political symbolism and spectacle. On the festival’s website, the event has been described as a “unique thinking event,” designed “in collaboration with lateral thinking expert Dr. Edward de Bono.”59 On his own website, de Bono is described as a cult-like figure, a kind of guru. He is referred to as the “Father of Creative Thinking,” who has helped millions to become more creative through the “direct teaching of thinking.”60 Indeed, like a traveling preacher translating God’s will to the masses, his “special

57 58

59 60

See the Festival of Thinkers website at http://fot.hct.ac.ae/, accessed February 25, 2015. Quoted on Festival of Thinkers website, http://fot2009.hct.ac.ae/chancellor.asp, accessed February 25, 2015. See http://fot.hct.ac.ae/about/, accessed February 25, 2015. See www.edwdebono.com/biograph.htm, accessed September 22, 2014.

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contribution has been to take the mystical subject of creativity and, for the first time in history, to put the subject on a solid basis.” Another event with spectacle-like characteristics is the Education Without Borders conference, established in 2001 and rather more like a festival than a conference. In 2011, it was held at the Burj Khalifa, the newest architectural landmark of Dubai and as of 2014 the tallest building in the world. Thus, the conference, “in keeping with the epic proportions of the Burj Khalifa,” involved a colossal screen, 65 yards long, which was designed to put “students and guests in awe of the technology on show,” according to a Khaleej Times (2011) report. Reflecting a combination of nationalism and cosmopolitanism seemingly well suited to “proglobalization” state-led social engineering, the opening ceremony, according to the report, involved a “powerful mix of traditional Emirati culture, music and performance” as well as “an array of international highlights in a visual and aural spectacular.” There was a “breath-taking horse show, featuring Arabian thoroughbreds performing to pulsating music” and a “dynamic and futuristic light show.” To top things off, Alain Robert, the “French Spider-Man” and world-famous climber, performed for audiences by climbing the Burj Khalifa, an event to rival any of the most extravagant spectacles associated with earlier authoritarian modernizers. The Summer of Semiconductors, the EmiratesSkills competitions, the World Robot Olympiad, the declaration of 2016 as the “Year of Reading,” and the Abu Dhabi Science Festival are additional spectaclelike events that contribute to state-led social engineering. The Summer of Semiconductors is a program that “immerses participants in the technologies of today and tomorrow through insightful lectures, hands-on workshops, collaborative group activities and fun field trips.”61 Emirati youth entering 9th or 10th grade choose the Future Scientist Program or Robotics Program, while older participants entering 11th or 12th grade choose the Microelectronic Technology or Future Technologist Program. In keeping with the anti-entitlement efforts discussed above, the program also aims to “inculcate ‘green’ habits and guide the youth in sustainability,” according to a program instructor.62 In 2011, youth were asked to recycle all materials during the program, and were shown an awardwinning documentary called “Waste Land,” in which Brooklyn artist Vik Muniz goes to a huge garbage dump outside Rio de Janeiro and creates art out of the materials on hand. Likewise, Summer of 61 62

See Advanced Technology Investment Company (2011). Quoted in Albawaba (2011).

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Semiconductor participants were encouraged to “create something innovative with the recyclable objects and showcase their work in a gallery during the closing ceremony.”63 The EmiratesSkills competition and World Robot Olympiad have similar social engineering aims. Ali Al Marzouqi, President of EmiratesSkills, explained that the key goal is to cultivate “the people that later on the government can depend on to go into the right areas,” and it is only for Emiratis.64 The initiative involves social engineers setting up skills-oriented clubs for youth around the country as well as an annual competition in categories like robotics, jewelry design, game programming, fashion technology, carpentry, floristry, health and social care, patisserie and confectionary, and web design, aiming to foster “an attitude in young Emiratis to competitiveness that will motivate them to constantly improve their skills and to strive for better achievements.”65 In 2011, the UAE held the first World Robot Olympiad in the Middle East. As Mugheer Khamis Al Khaili, then head of the Abu Dhabi Education Council, explained, “This event is an embodiment of our efforts to become an innovation-based knowledge economy . . . To turn this vision into a reality, it is important for us to support our students to become innovative, creative, and independent thinkers.”66 Moreover, “The fact that Abu Dhabi is hosting [the event] for the first time in the Middle East . . . is an important indication of our spirit of entrepreneurship and our active participation in the international community.” The director general’s words again highlight the simultaneously expressive and instrumental character of spectacles. The Abu Dhabi Science Festival is especially intriguing in this regard. It is an annual event aiming to bring the “wondrous fun of science to the UAE through the first large-scale community engagement event of its kind in Abu Dhabi,” with “nine exhilarating days of science-related events, hands-on workshops, interactive exhibitions, shows and demonstrations happening around the city.”67 It targets UAE families, intending to “spark the curiosity of the Emirate’s youth in science, technology and innovation” and “develop their critical thinking skills and instill a passion for science, technology and innovation in their hearts.” Importantly, it also demonstrates how the changes associated with the new citizen are being

63 64 65 67

See Albawaba (2011). Interview with Ali Al Marzouqi, EmiratesSkills president, February 2011. 66 See www.emiratesskills.ae/, accessed March 15, 2011. Quoted in Enzer (2011). See www.abudhabisciencefestival.ae/en/, accessed February 25, 2015.

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linked to what is described as a long-standing cultural heritage, and ultimately a cultural destiny for youth to fulfill. The international exhibition known as “1001 Inventions,” for instance, a centerpiece of the first Abu Dhabi Science Festival, invites visitors to “embark on an exhilarating journey that unveils the marvelous heritage of innovations and discoveries of the Arab and Muslim civilization.”68 According to Mosse (1975, 75), the German state festivals were to “be extraordinary occasions which lifted man above the isolation of daily life, but they were also to occur regularly and thus provide a sense of order.” In addition, they were “designed not merely to further the enthusiasms of crowds, but also to form them through the use of an orderly liturgy.” Thus, the German festivals commemorated events such as the German defeat of the Roman legions at Teutoburg Forest and the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig. By contrast, the Abu Dhabi Science Festival commemorates the accomplishments of Arab and Muslim thinkers, scientists, and inventors throughout history, with an emphasis on the Islamic golden age. In a very hip and contemporary way, it also promotes current role models for youth in these areas, some of whom are invented and presented as avatars. For example, at the 2011 inaugural festival, I was able to “Meet Hamad” a bespectacled cartoon boy in a Gulf-style kandūra and ‘iqāl (“national dress”), wearing a “trusty personalized tool belt” and goggles that are “super hi res with night vision.”69 The kandūra includes “reflective nano technology.” Hamad is introduced “as a very intelligent and innovative child who spends most of his time experimenting, discovering, learning and creating projects of science.” For girls, there is Fatema. Fatema wears a customized abāya, a “hyper-sensitive audible device” so she is “able to hear and record animal sounds,” and a “do-it-all micro processor” on her belt. She is “the brains of the team,” and “knows loads about science and loves to create new inventions with her brother Hamad. Fatema’s knowledge always comes in handy when the team are trying to create a new super cool invention.” One of the key characteristics of the German political cult, for Mosse, was the way it “called itself the true self-representation of the people” (1975, 207). Like Hobsbawm and Ranger in The Invention of Tradition (1983), he argued that governing elites present citizens with new norms, which, in order to motivate and enforce them, are described as “traditional,” reflecting the “real” culture. Mosse cites Mussolini’s belief that 68 69

Personal observation, Abu Dhabi Science Festival, Abu Dhabi, November 2011. Personal observation, Abu Dhabi Science Festival, Abu Dhabi, November 2011.

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“festivals, gestures, and forms had to be newly created which, in turn, would themselves become tradition,” triggering a new golden age (1975, 1). Yet such “invented traditions,” whether truly invented or not, almost always involve the art of selection. Thus, although creativity, science, innovation, and entrepreneurship are clearly “part” of the Middle East, its present and its past, social engineers would clearly like spectators to see them as an especially important, and even inherent, part of Arab and Muslim culture, for their own reasons. At the same time, this is complicated by the fact that social engineers often bemoan the lack of strong cultural underpinnings in these areas, at least in the contemporary era, leading to the need to “instill” them via education, symbolism, and spectacle. Such paradoxes are common in social engineering, as planners waver between seeing themselves as creators of new norms versus cultivators of pre-existing ones.70 An example of this paradox is presented by Dubai’s Celebration of Entrepreneurship, a weeklong festival and family of conferences designed to, as the event name suggests, “celebrate” entrepreneurship. On the one hand, in 2011, a key message of the event was that “We have always been entrepreneurs.”71 A recent Gallup-Silatech poll (2009, 23) was often cited, which declared Arab youth to possess a “hearty entrepreneurial spirit” greater than that sported by the youth in other regions.72 On the other hand, many of the events pointed to the lack of entrepreneurship in the Middle East, and “traditional” biases in society and culture against it. Thus, it was not always clear what was being celebrated.

conclusion In this chapter, I have illustrated how UAE ruling elites are attempting to manage their top-down enlightenment so that it accords with proglobalization, and often simultaneously neoliberal or pro-market, ideals of state–society relations and the ideal citizen, without directly 70

71 72

The Soviet propagandists in the 1920s, for instance, went back and forth between the idea that they were shaping the interests of the working class, essentially giving them ideologically correct interests, and the subtly different idea that they were helping the working class to realize their own true interests (Kenez 1985). Personal observations, Celebration of Entrepreneurship, Dubai, November 2011. The poll was carried out in collaboration with Silatech, Qatar’s own “bold new initiative” and “innovative social enterprise,” founded in 2008 by Sheikha Mozah, which “envisions a world in which every young person is prepared to succeed, engaged in decent work, and actively pursuing their dreams.” See www.silatech.com/home/about-us/, accessed March 2, 2015.

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threatening their hold on power. With Weberian symbolism and lavish state-sponsored spectacles, social engineers are seeking to produce the kind of loyal bourgeois citizen and broader society needed by, and appropriate for, their vision of a progressive, enlightened, and post-petroleum future. Thus, while state-led social engineering involves important efforts to open minds and spur knowledge renaissance, it is also deeply political in character. In essence, ruling elites are attempting to shift the terms of the rentier social contract – and the basis for their own legitimacy – in subtle yet significant ways. What is actually being achieved? Are the sheikhs “creating” the citizens they want? Why or why not? I move now to empirical questions concerning the outcomes, both intended and potentially unintended, of state-led social engineering. In Chapter 5, I combine qualitative, survey-based, and experimental evidence to explore the effects of the campaign in various areas, while in Chapter 6, I turn to the reasons for social engineering outcomes.

5 From Enlightenment to Entitlement Intended and Unintended Outcomes of Social Engineering

Are leaders succeeding in their efforts to reshape citizens? Is social engineering paying off? This chapter explores social engineering outcomes. It begins with an exploration of how UAE citizens themselves are reacting to the changes under way. Next, it moves beyond popular impressions to a more systematic investigation of outcomes, focusing on a public school reform that has played an important role in the broader campaign to foster a stronger market culture and knowledgebased society. The identification of micro-level outcomes allows us to test hypotheses about both the intended and potentially unintended effects of such social engineering, particularly in ways that are more nuanced than is typical in the larger literature on state-led social engineering and the making of citizens. The data also allow for an important exploration of gender differences across citizenship dimensions. Finally, the chapter zooms out to investigate social engineering outcomes from a broader perspective. It is worth noting that state-led social engineering is still under way, and likely to continue for a while. Social engineers are often aware, albeit impatient, that the change they seek can take time. Midcourse analysis can build knowledge by shedding light on which strategies are “working” as leaders intend, which are failing, and which may be leading to unexpected consequences. And indeed, as the following sections will illustrate, I find evidence that state-led social engineering is succeeding in some respects, but also backfiring in others. The next chapter investigates what may account for such outcomes in citizen-formation.

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the view from below So far we have focused on the perspective of the social engineers themselves – their goals, reasoning, and strategies. Interviews and ethnographic evidence collected in palace settings combined with an analysis of the official rhetoric revealed how ruling elites see the changes under way. We also investigated the key mechanisms of social engineering, focusing on education reforms, new emphases in public symbolism, and statesponsored spectacles. But how do UAE citizens view this campaign? Do ordinary citizens support its components? Are the initiatives taken seriously? Obviously, audiences don’t always share the same meanings of policies as their original planners have intended (Yanow 1996). Although the campaign is still under way, and these attitudes are in flux, several basic categories of response are easily identified. First, there is a strong segment of Emiratis who see these initiatives as a threat to UAE national identity. This should not be surprising. In fact, given the radical nature of some of these changes, it is perhaps surprising that more nationalist backlash has not arisen. A 2010 speech given by Maryam Lootah, a well-known professor at UAE University, is illustrative here.1 The shift to English as the language of instruction in public schools for important subjects like math and science – and its role as an increasingly dominant language in business, public events, and even the public sector – attracts particular criticism. It is “denying the right,” she argued, “to learn in one’s mother tongue” and thus causing an erosion of Arab and Emirati identity.2 Moreover, far too much of the education budget has been dedicated to financing foreign experts, “hindering the self-confidence” of UAE nationals who should be more involved in their own reforms. These critics tend to see social engineering as a combination of Western cultural imperialism and leaders’ insulting lack of faith in their own culture – yet another example of sheikhs in the oil era taking undue liberties and steamrolling over citizens in pursuit of their own idiosyncratic notions of modernity and progress. In this same category of anti-imperialist response can also be found the small Islamist movement in the UAE, within which Al Islah is the bestknown group of activists. In a leaked US Embassy cable from 2008, for example, a website linked to the movement is said to have “strongly objected to . . . allowing Western universities (particularly American ones) to establish 1

2

Personal observation, First Annual Education Conference, Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), Abu Dhabi, October 2010. Anxiety over language is not surprising; a large literature explores the politics of language and national identity. See, for example, Simpson (2008).

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local campuses – a trend that [the group’s leader] claimed corrupted Emirati youth and diluted Emirati culture. [The leader] regularly referred to nonMuslims as ‘non-believers,’ which runs against the grain of the UAEG’s desire for a tolerant image.”3 The UAE government has indeed been tough on Islamist (and other) critics, especially post-Arab uprisings as the UAE has embarked on a domestic security clampdown and also expanded its foreign policy efforts to quell regional Islamism in more muscular ways.4 Interestingly, while the Islamists in the UAE tend to criticize “Western” influence, some Emiratis view the Islamists themselves as advocating an essentially foreign ideology, based not on Emirati traditions but on Egyptian and Palestinian ones.5 Many cite the influx of Islamists into the UAE in the 1960s, particularly Egyptians fleeing Nasser’s crackdowns, who brought with them the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology and subsequently became powerful as teachers, curriculum developers, and administrators in the UAE’s fledgling public education system. Such differing perspectives expose underlying tensions about what is “indigenous” and what is “foreign” in the contestation over UAE culture and identity. A second response to the social engineering campaign derives less from the sense that reforms are “Western” in character and more from a perception of exclusion from their implementation and the potential benefits they bring. Many in this group are found in the poorer northern emirates or the outlying regions of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, far from those respective capital cities. As a school principal in Hatta, a town several hours west of Dubai, put it, “They don’t care about us. We get nothing from them.”6 A well-known professor at UAE University, Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, offered a good example of this perspective.7 Asked about the new NYU–Abu Dhabi, he said, “It’s an illusion. It’s a bubble there, an isolated entity that has absolutely nothing to do with the society. A few people are sitting in that nice beautiful place. Is that a knowledge economy? If so, then there is a misunderstanding of what a knowledge economy is about.” He also emphasized the fact that very few Emirati students are actually enrolled at NYU–Abu Dhabi. (Ruling elites and admissions staff counter that this is because the standards are high and the number of eligible Emiratis low, not 3

4 5 6 7

See U.S. Embassy Abu Dhabi, “08ABUDHABI1440: Ministry of Education Dismissed 83 Emirati Teachers” (2008), available at www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=08ABUD HABI1440, accessed February 10, 2015. See, for example, Roberts (2016) and Human Rights Watch (2016). Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014. See, also, Al Nuaimi (2012) and Salama (2013). Interview with public high school principal, Hatta, Dubai, September 2011. Interview with Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, university professor, Abu Dhabi, June 2012.

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because of a deliberate effort to exclude.) Ruling elites, Abdulla added, “come up with all these lofty plans . . . and the nationals get frustrated – we are not being included, we are underestimated, unappreciated.” To underscore the point, he gave a highly critical account of the effort by a new provost from University of California, Los Angeles – hired by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family and the former minister of higher education and scientific research – to reform UAE University using many of the initiatives described earlier in this book: [The new provost] comes in and says, “Okay, I’m going to make the university among the 10 or 100 best universities in the world.” Okay, well, this is a thirtyyear-old university, I mean, what the hell? Then comes Sheikh Nahyan, who says, “Okay, yes, my goodness, what do you want?” He says, “I want 3 billion dollars,” or something. And he says, “Okay, the best way to do that is to start PhD programs, research, publications, etc.” But, you don’t have the local [Emirati academic] caliber to do this, so you go on and bring all these [foreign academics], and you pay them the money, give them all these things, and it costs you half of UAE’s first quarter or whatever budget. Wasted on a nonsense program like this! This is a concrete example of a PhD program that is cooked, that cannot be sold in any credible university anywhere, that depends on importing thirty people none of whom are Emiratis.

Of course, this is not the only perspective on the reforms at UAE University, and others can be found in Mills (2010b). Reforms, for example, may also have faltered because funding never came through. By this account, the new provost was recruited by Sheikh Nahyan to transform UAE University into a “world-class” one, but Sheikh Nahyan was ultimately unable to secure funding for the effort due to palace politics, with preference going to the more powerful Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed’s own higher education projects. Others suggest the new provost raised faculty ire by increasing standards, introducing more rigorous internal and external peer review processes, and calling for an end to preferential treatment for Emirati academics over expatriate ones. On the whole, then, the social engineering campaign has met with some significant criticism, particularly in the sensitive area of education reform. In the northern emirates, such criticism has reportedly escalated under the minister of education, Hussain Ibrahim Al Hammadi, appointed in 2014, with Emirati teachers resigning en masse (Shaaban 2015).8 Yet, compared

8

Based on conversations with Ras Al Khaimah education professionals at the Gulf Comparative Education Society’s (GCES) Annual Symposium in Kuwait in April 2016,

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to the criticism of regimes elsewhere in the region in the context of the Arab uprisings, such criticism has not had the same kind of resonance and mass appeal.9 Indeed, in schools, where the campaign has been most aggressive, teachers who are critical of reforms generally do not criticize the overarching idea to improve and “modernize” education, even along so-called “Western” lines. Rather, they focus on issues of implementation. Reforms, they say, have happened too fast and too haphazardly, without sufficient communication with people on the ground. As one complained, “ADEC is [just] a building,” referring to Abu Dhabi Education Council, a key education reform entity set up by the ruling family in Abu Dhabi.10 Before there were personal connections between school staff and Ministry officials; now these types of relationships are more formal and institutionalized. Many teachers said they don’t know who to call if they have questions, and they get lost in the new automated response systems. Others said that teachers are not receiving enough guidance on how to deal with local communities. As one explained, “No one is working with the parents to say, ‘This is the reform and this is why it is important.’” “The idea,” the teacher added, “that you cannot get straight A’s all the time is new. [Students and parents] don’t understand this. Getting a C is seen as shaming, not ‘average’ or ‘in need of improvement.’” A 2012 survey of 138 Emirati women in a teacher training program in Abu Dhabi highlighted a general lack of knowledge about the specifics of reforms (Dickson 2012). In response to the question, “If you had known how schools would change due to the developments which would take place during the time you were at [this teacher training] college, do you think you would still have enrolled in the course?” Almost half said no or they were not sure, with many citing the ways in which reforms have heightened expectations – lengthening the school day, for instance, requiring better English proficiency, and instructing teachers to develop some of their own materials to complement the official curriculum. Teachers critical of the reforms were quoted as saying “Nowadays, working as a teacher is too difficult”; “They have increased the teaching loads. Teaching is too much now!”; and “I want to teach. But if I had known

9

10

some teachers are also being punished by the Ministry for taking photos of poor conditions in some of the public schools. For an overview of different types of dissent in the UAE as a result of the Arab uprisings, see Forstenlechner, Rutledge, and Alnuaimi (2012). Conversations with teachers in public schools, UAE, 2010–2014.

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that I had to get 6.5 [on the International English Language Testing System, or IELTS] to be a teacher I would not have chosen to be one.” The study also found cohort differences. First-year students in the teacher training program were more positive about reforms, with some saying their enthusiasm for change inspired their desire to teach in the first place. This cohort difference brings us to a third type of response. I visited over twenty-five public schools aiming to understand how youth, arguably the most important “objects” of the social engineering campaign, actually view it. From Abu Dhabi to Fujairah, Emirati kids were noticeably excited about the changes under way. They described how classes had become more interesting. They pointed to their own work posted on the walls of the now “media-rich” classrooms. They mentioned field trips to the new museums, role-playing games, independent research projects that allow them to investigate a subject of their choosing. Away from the watchful eyes of administrators, they would often confess that their new teachers – often hired out of countries like Britain, America, Finland, Australia, and New Zealand – were some of the best and most inspiring teachers they ever had. What do they think about learning math, science, and English in the English language, rather than Arabic? “It’s good!” Arabic is good too, they said, but they already speak it at home, and English will help them more in the long run. As we will see, however, young people’s enthusiasm for reforms does not necessarily mean social engineering for the making of citizens is working as leaders have intended. Mishaal Al Gergawi, whose opinions about citizen loyalty I described in Chapter 2, put this positive perspective rather well, if a bit provocatively. Asked about education and language, he said: It should be in English. You know why? Look, I think we as Arabs should get over the fact that we’ve been in the dark ages for hundreds of years. I’m sure that there were French noblemen who would send their children to study in Sicily in like 1000 AD. Why? Because the Muslims had the best schools. Now, the West has the best schools. Simple. Why don’t you learn from the West and then create your universities and then you can do it in Arabic? It’s nice that you’re very proud of your language and everything, but what’s the best curriculum in science or math in Arabic? Who has written it? Where is it? Does it exist? I don’t think people should [forget] Arabic and just become English speakers. Europeans speak four or five languages. I think we should at least be capable of being bilingual. There’s no excuse for people not being bilingual. But given a choice between learning mediocre or average math in Arabic, or learning amazing math in English, then, yeah, English.11 11

Interview with Mishaal Al Gergawi, Dubai, May 2012.

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effects of social engineering To what extent is social engineering working to shape attitudes as leaders intend? Can we move beyond popular impressions and anecdotal evidence, and gather more systematic data about the effectiveness of social engineering in fostering more engaged, hard-working, socially conscious “bourgeois” or market-friendly citizens? To do so, I collected original survey data on citizenship attitudes from over 2,000 Emirati youth across the country. I used a difference-in-differences (diff-in-diff) empirical strategy comparing “treated” and “control” subjects across grade cohorts, which allows for a relatively straightforward means of testing hypotheses about the effects of social engineering. For example, have “treated” subjects become more entrepreneurial, market-oriented, and interested in volunteering, relative to controls? Or do the two groups show no differences in their attitudes in these areas? Do the data point to unintended effects? For the treatment group, I focused on a set of new high schools developed as a central part of the broader social engineering campaign for the (re-)shaping of youth. As with several of the country’s experiments in education reform, this one has a royal patron, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the powerful crown prince of Abu Dhabi. In his words, the mission of the new high schools, initially run by the Institute of Applied Technology, is to fashion the citizens “needed for the UAE to build a knowledge-based economy.”12 Indeed, these schools are viewed by their designers as a powerful instrument for social engineering. According to treatment school admissions staff, almost all students who enter into treatment (high/Cycle 3) schools come from regular government (middle/Cycle 2) schools, whereas their middle school classmates continue on into regular government high schools. Abdullatif Al Shamsi, helping to head the reform effort, explained that UAE youth are “too relaxed”; they are “in a sleeping mode.”13 Al Shamsi is an Emirati citizen who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree at Boston University and Ph.D at Duke in mechanical engineering. Having worked as a professor at UAE University in Al Ain for many years, he thinks Emirati college students are too interested in “signing checks” and “giving signatures” as managers and administrators, rather

12 13

See vision statement, available at www.iat.ac.ae/, accessed October 15, 2012. Interview with Abdullatif Al Shamsi, managing director, Abu Dhabi, June 2011.

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than working to design, build, and innovate, and he wants to improve both their skill level and character development prior to university. The new public schools are thus intended to “bring [Emirati youth] to life,” “motivate them to work,” get them “excited about knowledge,” and help them “give back to society.” He described the origins of the reform in the vision of the country’s monarchs, who want to build a more diversified knowledge-based economy driven by Emirati, not foreign, human capital. The new schools are seen as having the responsibility to teach the knowledge and skills as well as “plant the motivation” in Emirati youth to take on these new roles as more active contributors to the social, cultural, and economic development of their countries. These public schools broadly promote the ideal of the new citizen as conceived by the leadership, and they are thus different from regular or “traditional” public schools in several respects. For example, as is already the case in the country’s public university system, English is the main language of instruction in the new schools, viewed as the more globalization-relevant language over Arabic (though students continue to learn in Arabic in certain classes, such as Arabic and Islamic Studies).14 These schools also offer a new civics and character-building program – Al Bayariq, described in detail in Chapter 3 – aiming to transform Emirati youth into “loyal, responsible and productive citizens of the UAE,” with interactive modules on teamwork, tolerance, and responsibility.15 The overall curriculum is new and more vocational, adapted from an American curriculum that emphasizes creativity, problem-solving, and student-centered teaching methods, as well as more emphasis on science and technology and career counseling. By contrast, traditional government schools follow the official Ministry of Education curriculum, known for its emphasis on rote memorization. Only in Arabic and Islamic Studies is the curriculum used in the new schools the same as that used by the Ministry, except that both subjects are allotted less time per week in the new schools – a quiet effort to reorient citizens’ priorities away from religion and toward labor market skills. In keeping with the social engineering campaign’s emphasis on reducing entitlement and fostering an ethos of contribution, the new curriculum also requires a summer internship and 100 hours of 14

15

As noted, English is already the language of instruction in UAE public universities, and as reforms spread that is increasingly true of the K-12 public education system. Interview with curriculum developer, Abu Dhabi, August 2011.

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community service, unlike in regular government schools. Finally, the schools enforce stricter rules and regulations, intended to promote professionalism, conscientiousness, and a stronger work ethic, and students are paid a stipend, which is thought to encourage attendance and high achievement. Overall, the theme of flourishing within a context a globalization is prominent in treatment schools, while globalization has traditionally been presented as a threat in regular government schools; a more extensive content analysis of the curricula in treatment schools versus regular government schools, focusing on civics, can be found in Jones (2017). Analyzing these new high schools as “treatment” schools can therefore contribute to knowledge about the outcomes of the social engineering campaign. Moreover, although there are differing education reform initiatives under way, this one is widely seen as successful, not only among ruling elites but also among students themselves; indeed, in 2014, one of its founders and the chairman of its board of trustees was appointed the country’s new minister of education, a sign of highlevel confidence in the reform. There is thus good practical motivation to examine effects on citizen-formation, in addition to the theoretical rationale of exploring a type of state-led social engineering, promarket or pro-globalization in character, which has so far received limited research attention.

theoretical expectations of social engineering If social engineering is succeeding, we should expect treatment schools to produce the kinds of citizens they have been designed to produce. In Chapter 2, I sketched ruling elites’ ideals for citizenship, focusing on goals for social engineering in the four dimensions of the state–citizen relationship; these are reflected in the rationale and design of education reforms like the one discussed above. Broadly, I showed how ruling elites would like to influence the economic and civil dimensions of the state–citizen relationship in a pro-market, neoliberal or “bourgeois” direction, while treading lightly over the political dimension. Leaders hope to strengthen the national dimension as well, promoting patriotic and nationalistic attitudes. Desired changes include a greater interest in entrepreneurship and private sector work; a lessened sense of entitlement to state jobs and other forms of government largesse; a greater willingness to volunteer and contribute to the community;

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Some desired citizen-formation outcomes

Citizenship dimension National

Increased patriotism, national pride

Civil

No change in support for civil rights; increased civic-mindedness, tolerance

Political

No change

Economic

Increased self-reliance, entrepreneurialism, risk-taking; decreased reliance on government jobs, sense of entitlement

figure 5.1 The post-petroleum citizen

and an intensified feeling of positive, regime-supportive nationalism, as shown in Figure 5.1. What does theory tell us about the likelihood of success in state-led social engineering? As discussed in Chapter 1, existing research offers conflicting predictions. Thus, in testing hypotheses about the effects of social engineering, I explore three broad perspectives, discussed below. These include a failure or “no change” scenario; a constructivist “success” perspective; and a third modernization-based possibility predicting change, but not of the intended variety. Materialism and Elite Failure As we have seen, much of the classic qualitative and historical literature on state-led social engineering paints a pessimistic picture. It emphasizes inherent difficulties, the “stickiness” of culture, and basic material prerequisites for change (Mitchell 2002; Scott 1998; Weber 1976). People, it argues, are not so easily molded. The UAE case not only meets all four of James Scott’s conditions increasing the likelihood of failure in state-led social engineering, but also raises questions because of its status as a rentier state.16 As such, material incentives are poorly aligned with antirentier, pro-entrepreneurial or pro-market social engineering goals. Therefore, there are good theoretical reasons to predict failure. Indeed, in Peasants into Frenchmen (1976), Eugen Weber found that peasants 16

“The most tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering,” Scott (1998, 4) argues, “originate in a pernicious combination of four elements” – the administrative ordering of nature and society, high modernist ideology, authoritarianism, and weak civil society.

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could not be “engineered” successfully into nationally integrated Frenchmen until material developments, such as the building of roads linking the city to the countryside, occurred that made such identity changes seem worthwhile and profitable. Drawing from this literature, we should expect similar failures in the UAE case. From a rentier-materialist perspective, it is easy to see why many UAE citizens prefer the rentier status quo, particularly in the economic dimension with the public sector offering what are often higher entry-level salaries, shorter working hours, longer vacations, and better job security. In this vein, many are likely to react with skepticism: in the absence of change in these material incentives, why should rational citizens change their preferences, adopting a new entrepreneurial ethos, considering alternative career paths, sacrificing their own time to volunteer for community service, and the like? This perspective therefore predicts no change in citizen attitudes, particularly in the economic dimension. Constructivism and Elite Success At the same time, however, there are good reasons to expect success in state efforts to mold citizens in at least some of the citizenship dimensions at hand. As discussed in Chapter 1, a growing number of scholars adopt a constructivist outlook, emphasizing the critical role played by elites in consciously shaping citizens’ attitudes, seen as invented and malleable. A good review of this literature and its disagreements with the “persistence” school can be found in Banerjee and Duflo (2014). To give a powerful example, despite skepticism about the power of social engineering with no direct changes in incentives or constraints, Blattman et al. (2014) find that an education campaign on conflict resolution in Liberia led to shorter and less violent land disputes. Some studies have also evaluated programs attempting to encourage pro-market orientations in the former Eastern bloc through educational interventions, with some modest successes identified (Slomczynski and Shabad 1998; Thomas and Campbell 2006). Athayde (2009) finds evidence that participation in a Young Enterprise company program, modeled on the US Junior Achievement programs, boosts enterprise potential among young people.17

17

However, in a meta-analysis reviewing these types of evaluation efforts in entrepreneurship education in six European countries, Hytti and Kuopusjärvi (2004) criticized weak research designs across the board, particularly a lack of control groups or other means of establishing internal validity.

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Drawing from this constructivist logic, then, there may be less cause for pessimism in the UAE case than the classic theory would suggest. Indeed, rentier state theory has been criticized for its seemingly high level of economic determinism, pessimistically portraying reforms of any type as essentially doomed to fail despite an empirical record of reform within and across rentier states that has been far more mixed.18 At the individual level, rentier attitudes also vary, though theories of the rentier state sometimes give the impression that everyone is equally rentier in outlook. The UAE is, moreover, a country with significant resources, political will, and global talent; in these respects, it should be as capable as others, if not more so, of carrying out ambitious social engineering projects. As described in Chapter 4, myriad social and ideational incentives have been put in place, and there are some important economic ones as well, such as interest-free loans, the suggestion that the state may “top up” citizens’ private sector salaries, and other kinds of support.19 This perspective therefore predicts success in state efforts to reshape citizens in the economic, civil, and national dimensions of citizenship. At the same time, we should expect no change in the political dimension, since such change is not being actively promoted. Modernization and Unintended Consequences A third scenario emerges from modernization theory, and points to unintended consequences. As Huntington (1968) famously argued with the concept of the “king’s dilemma,” autocrats’ efforts at modernization can backfire by unintentionally raising citizens’ political consciousness. Political scientists have long connected “modernized” teaching methods, replacing traditional approaches that rely on rote learning, with heightened demands for self-expression, autonomy, and participation in the political process (Lerner 1958; Lipset 1959). Cross-nationally, education is highly correlated with democracy, and more educated people are widely found to be more interested and engaged in politics (Almond and Verba 1963; Weakliem 2002). Micro-level empirical work also provides evidence for a causal link between education and political attitudes like

18 19

On this point, see Hertog (2010), Luong and Weinthal (2010), and Herb (2014). See Salem (2014) on new rules for subsidizing Emirati participation in the private sector workforce, proposed by the Federal National Council (FNC) and similar to those in other Gulf countries.

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interest in politics, political engagement, and support for free speech (Dee 2004; Milligan, Moretti, and Oreopoulos 2004).20 Applying insights from this literature, we should expect to find evidence of unintended effects in the political and civil dimensions of citizenship, particularly in the direction of heightened interest in political participation, personal freedom, and civil liberties. Modernization theory does not offer straightforward predictions in the economic dimension.21 On the one hand, there is evidence that modern education can raise individual achievement motivation, diversify career interests, and build self-confidence in the ability to thrive in competitive environments. In The Achieving Society, for example, David McClelland (1961) found cross-national empirical evidence linking “modern” curricula with achievement motivation and economic growth rates. On the other hand, an important critical tradition in the sociology of education argues that “modern” education can instead dampen achievement motivation by perpetuating rigid social hierarchies (Bourdieu 1996; Bowles and Gintis 1976; Willis 1981). This perspective may thus lend itself more readily to the possibility of mixed social engineering outcomes.

empirical strategy How can we explore the effects of state-led social engineering in the UAE on young citizens’ attitudes via treatment schools? As with many educational experiments in the United States and elsewhere, students are not randomly assigned to these schools; here, an admissions test is required to assess basic skills. In the school effects literature, these are familiar challenges and several strategies have been used to address them, including, in the case of Catholic school effects, instrumental variables models (Neal 1997) and the “selection on observables” approach used by Altonji et al. (2005). In the case of charter school effects, propensity score matching has been used (Woodworth et al. 2008). Here, as noted, I use a difference-in-differences strategy comparing the differences in Emirati youth attitudes across

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See Lochner (2011) for a useful review. The literature typically examines the impact of additional years of education on political attitudes, not different types of education. An important exception is Friedman et al. (2011), who found that a randomized girls’ merit scholarship program in Kenyan primary schools led to greater political knowledge and desire for personal autonomy in women who attended the treatment schools, relative to those who attended control schools. Weakliem (2002) notes that education’s effect on economic attitudes receives relatively less attention than its effect on political attitudes.

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younger and older cohorts within control schools to the differences in those same attitudes across the same “pre” and “post” cohorts in treatment schools. The difference in attitudes in treatment schools – from entry to exit – is thus compared to the difference in attitudes in regular government schools. Hence, I combine a diff-in-diff empirical strategy with standard cohort analysis, following Duflo (2001) and Bleakley (2010).22 Although not perfect, this approach has several key advantages for causal inference.23 First, it controls for selection bias in treatment assignment. It does so by subtracting out initial differences in attitudes between treated and control students, preventing any unobserved, time-invariant factors from biasing treatment effect estimates. Such factors may include initial income levels, innate ability, levels of parental education, and other demographic differences. Second, the strategy removes bias stemming from aggregate factors that would cause changes in attitudes over time or across grade cohorts, even in the absence of the treatment. Such factors may include age or maturation, and broad socio-economic and political changes. Key to the approach is the identifying assumption of common trends, since the control group is used to infer the counterfactual change in attitudes, on average, for the treatment group in the absence of the treatment. The approach assumes that the average change in attitudes would be the same for both control and treated students, had the treated students not been treated. Although it is impossible to assess this assumption directly, I discuss evidence for its plausibility below before turning to the results. Treatment effects are estimated using the diff-in-diff strategy by fitting the following OLS regression model, in which Y i is the outcome for individual i; “treat” is a dummy taking the value of 1 if individual i is in the treatment group and 0 otherwise; “post” is a dummy variable taking the value of 1 if individual i is in the “post” group (older grade cohort) and 0 otherwise; and “treat*post” is the interaction of the two, taking a value of 1 when individual i is in both the treatment and “post” groups. Yi ¼ β0 þ β1 ðtreatÞ þ β2 ðpostÞ þ β3 ðtreat  postÞ þ εi

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Although diff-in-diff is commonly associated with longitudinal data, the strategy is a much more general one; it may also be used to control for unobserved but fixed omitted variables when data can be grouped by cohort or other dimensions, rather than time (Meyer 1995; Angrist and Pischke 2008). For an overview, see Angrist and Pischke (2008).

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Here, ϵ i is a random variable, which is assumed dependent across observations within schools to account for the clustered assignment of individuals at the school level (and standard errors will take account of this clustering). Self-reported income and levels of parents’ education, as well as emirate fixed effects and date surveyed, are included as control variables. The regression coefficient β3 is the difference-in-differences estimator; the OLS estimator for this coefficient is algebraically equivalent to the average difference across the treatment schools from pre to post, minus the average difference across the control schools from pre to post Survey Design and Measurement To study the effects of social engineering in treatment schools, I developed a survey measuring attitudes related to the four key areas of the citizenship framework presented in Chapter 1. The survey adapted validated instruments from existing surveys such as the Arab Barometer (AB) and World Values Survey (WVS), and was piloted extensively in the UAE before use. Below I comment briefly on each dimension of citizenship and the types of attitudes that were measured in the survey in relation to it. More detail on dependent variables can be found in the appendix, along with question wording and answer scales. In the national dimension, the survey measured patriotic and nationalistic attitudes. As discussed, these are attitudes leaders would like to increase in young citizens to support their developmental agenda. To measure patriotism, the survey adapted Kosterman and Feshbach’s widely used Likert scale (1989), with items such as “I love the UAE” and “People should support the UAE government even if they think it is doing something wrong.”24 To tap national pride, the survey adapted an index from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) with items capturing feelings of national pride in specific substantive areas, such as a country’s history and culture, political influence in the world, style of government, and economic achievements.25 Turning to the civil dimension, the survey also tapped attitudes that leaders wish to increase in young citizens, such as civic responsibility and tolerance. To measure civic responsibility, respondents were given

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Responses to individual items comprising the index were coded on a scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree, and then averaged. Responses to these items were coded on a scale ranging from 1 = not proud at all to 7 = very proud, and then averaged.

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a scenario in which littering had sullied a landmark, and asked how much time they would be willing to volunteer to help with the clean-up over a two-week break.26 Following Jamal and Nooruddin (2010), the survey measured tolerance by asking respondents to what degree they thought it important to encourage children to value “tolerance of others” (ranging on a scale from 1= not very important to 7 = very important). Also in the civil dimension, the survey measured more politically oriented attitudes, including support for freedom of information and government accountability. To measure the former, responses to two questions tapping attitudes toward movie and Internet censorship were averaged.27 To capture support for government accountability, the survey averaged responses to three Likert items, such as “Information on whether government policies are effective should be made available to the public.”28 In regard to the political dimension, the survey measured personal interest in participating in politics as well as support for the general right to do so. For the former, two questions were combined: “How interested are you in contributing to public decision-making in the UAE?” and “How interested are you in contributing to public decisionmaking in your own emirate?”29 To tap support for the general right, respondents were asked “For the development of the UAE, please rate how important you consider the right of UAE nationals to have a say in government policymaking?” with an answer scale ranging from 1 = not important at all to 7 = very important. The survey also tapped support for “traditional” political participation. Respondents were asked, “How often do you think the leadership of an Emirate should spend meeting

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The question was developed through consultation with local volunteers and piloted through qualitative fieldwork. Responses were coded on a scale ranging from 1= none, the government should handle it, to 14 = the whole break. Local experts considered more direct measures too sensitive. At the same time, fieldwork suggested that film and Internet censorship are highly salient issues for young people in the UAE, making them useful proxies. Responses were coded on scales mirroring similar WVS items, ranging from 1 = UAE citizens should not be able to watch any movie they want to 7 = UAE citizens should be able to watch any movie they want, and 1 = UAE citizens should not be able to access any website they want to 7 = UAE citizens should be able to access any website they want. Higher scores indicate higher support for freedom of information. The other two were “UAE government agencies should share information about their activities with citizens” and “UAE nationals should know more about how the government spends money.” Higher scores indicate higher support for government accountability. Responses were coded on a scale ranging from 1 = not interested at all to 7 = very interested, and then averaged.

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with Emirati leaders and heads of families in person in order to resolve problems and discuss other matters?” Higher scores indicate support for higher-frequency consultation between rulers and citizens.30 Finally, in the economic dimension, the survey tapped the types of attitudes that leaders are most eager to change, which are also the ones linked to the notion of the “rentier citizen” in the theoretical literature.31 Accordingly, the survey measured support for the right to a government job, the hallmark of the rentier social contract, which leaders see as an attitude of entitlement that they wish to decrease. Respondents were asked “For the development of the UAE, please rate how important you consider the right of UAE nationals to receive a government job?” with an answer scale ranging from 1 = not important at all to 7 = very important. In addition, the survey tapped pro-market attitudes that leaders are keen to increase in young citizens. Given UAE leaders’ enthusiasm for fostering a stronger spirit of entrepreneurialism, respondents were asked to rate their willingness to start a business to support the development of the country, with responses coded on a scale ranging from 1 = not willing at all to 7 = very willing.32 The survey also measured “work ethic,” adapting a WVS index of Likert items such as “People who don’t work become lazy” and “Work should always come first, even if it means less free time.” Responses were coded on a scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree, and then averaged.

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Responses were coded as follows: 1 = once a year, 2 = once every 6 months, 3 = once every 3 months, 4=once a month, 5 = once a week, and 6 = every day. More direct items tapping support for democracy, such as those on the Arab Barometer like “A democratic system may have problems, yet it is better than other systems,” could not be used because of the sensitive political context, as discussed in the appendix. See Tessler, Jamal, and Robbins (2012) and Jamal and Tessler (2008) for valuable discussions of the challenges of measuring support for democracy in the Arab world. See Beblawi and Luciani (1987) for a classic account of rentier-style citizenship attitudes, as well as Crystal (1990), Ayubi (1995), and Yates (1996) for more recent references to cultures of rentierism. Even though some scholars describe a rentier “mentality,” I measured rentier-style attitudes separately because of anticipated multidimensionality. For example, those who view government jobs as a citizen’s right may also have a high work ethic. Although some may be skeptical of whether high school-age youth think about such issues as government job availability and business start-ups, my qualitative fieldwork evidence strongly suggests that they do. Cross-national surveys targeting similar age ranges also show that Arab youth think intently about these issues. See, for example, Gallup-Silatech’s “Voices of Young Arabs” (2009) targeting 15- to 29-year-olds, as well as the ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Surveys (2013, 2014) and Injaz-al-Arab’s “Unlocking Arab Youth Entrepreneurship Potential” (2013).

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Data Collection and Sample As of 2015, seven treatment schools at the secondary level had been established.33 Of these seven, the first five to be established were boys’ schools, followed by two girls’ schools with more on the way for both genders. (K-12 public education is gender-segregated by law.) Four of the seven treatment schools are located in Abu Dhabi emirate, the largest and most populous of the seven emirates, and another three are located in Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, and Fujairah, respectively. For inclusion in the study, I selected all five of the boys’ treatment schools.34 To establish the control group, I selected five comparable government schools after examining their demographics and consulting with local education experts and administrators. The five control schools were all regular government schools in which the Emirati student population matched the treatment schools in terms of size, ethnic background, and emirate. They were also geographically proximate to treatment schools. Most importantly, the control schools were selected for inclusion in the study because local experts confirmed that no reforms had been initiated in them and they had no outlier characteristics. Thus, they are typical of the larger set of “regular” government schools in the country, which are relatively homogenous in character. All such schools, regardless of emirate, are strictly administered by the federal Ministry of Education in a top-down fashion and adhere to its centrally developed curriculum, administrative practices, hiring- and-firing practices, and pedagogical approaches. Thus, the final sample included two treatment and two control schools in Abu Dhabi, and one of each in Dubai, Fujairah, and Ras Al Khaimah, respectively. Within each school, I selected appropriate “pre” and “post” samples of students to meet the requirements of the diff-in-diff design. The “pre” category comprised boys in younger, incoming grade cohorts (Grade 9 33

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Studying at the seven treatment schools are about 3,000 Emirati youth between the ages of 15 and 18. In the country as a whole, there are about 723 government schools, including primary, middle, and secondary, in which about 218,000 Emirati youth study. Government schools represent about 61% of all 1,190 K-12 schools in the UAE, and cater almost exclusively to UAE citizens. The other 39% are private schools that cater to various nationalities, including Indian, Pakistani, Iranian, and British schools, and often follow their own national curricula. In addition, some 84,000 Emirati youth study in private schools, mostly in Dubai (UAE Ministry of Education 2010). Students at the girls’ treatment schools were also surveyed, but they could not be included in the main diff-in-diff analysis because these newer schools did not yet have any outgoing seniors. An analysis of gender differences across the citizenship dimensions can be found later in this chapter.

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or 10) and the “post” category comprised boys in Grade 12, capturing baseline and endline attitudes of students. Within each school, the surveys were administered during class time to all students in each available classroom or auditorium. Typically, I introduced students to the survey in Arabic, and then administered it by paper. In some cases, all classes in a grade were surveyed, creating a census for the cohort. In other cases, some classes were omitted because they were involved in other activities. Some classes, for example, were taking exams or in gym with no desks and could not be surveyed. In addition, although students were not randomly selected, there is little reason to expect sampling bias due to self-selection because no students opted out. Students (n = 2,001) were surveyed in 2011–2012. Descriptive Statistics and Evidence Supporting Identifying Assumption Since the diff-in-diff identifying assumption is not directly testable, indirect evidence can be used to evaluate its plausibility. For example, to estimate the effects of an increase in the New Jersey state minimum wage on employment, Card and Krueger (1994) used a control group of fast-food restaurants in Pennsylvania, a state that did not impose a minimum wage increase, to infer the counterfactual change in employment, on average, for a treatment group of fast-food restaurants in New Jersey (had they not been treated). In the UAE case, students at regular government schools who had not experienced any educational reforms are used to infer the counterfactual change in attitudes, on average, for students in treatment schools. Below I discuss evidence supporting the parallel trends identifying assumption. As we might expect, some demographic differences do appear. Overall, as shown in the appendix, students in treatment schools reported higher incomes and levels of parental education, which is not surprising, given that better-educated parents may encourage their children to attend treatment schools. Younger students in both control and treatment groups also reported higher incomes and levels of parental education. Cross-cohort differences in self-reported demographics may be due to actual socioeconomic differences across grade cohorts, or else differences in perception, with younger students having a rosier perception of their relative socioeconomic status compared to the “older and wiser” group. Such demographic differences should not introduce bias into the diffin-diff estimator so long as they are roughly parallel. This is because, as discussed, the estimator subtracts out differences in attitudes stemming

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from fixed differences between treatment and control groups, such as socio-economic background and students’ levels of innate ability, as well as aggregate or over-time factors common to both groups. The data show that demographic differences are indeed roughly parallel in the case of self-reported income, and this pattern is broadly reflected for self-reported levels of parental education as well.35 A “placebo” test is a more precise measure. In conventional designs, it focuses on variables that the treatment is not expected to influence, and tests the hypothesis that their trajectories from pre to post (i.e., “change scores” in the conventional terminology) are significantly different for treated as compared to control students.36 In this case, treatment schools are not expected to influence students’ reported incomes and levels of parental education differently from pre to post, compared to control schools. I estimated the diff-in-diff “effect” of treatment schools on these variables, using the OLS model described above clustering standard errors by school with appropriate controls. As expected, no significant treatment effects were found. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that different starting points may propel students to differing trajectories; this is a built-in limitation of the approach. Yet diff-in-diff designs typically provide powerful controls, as discussed above, which are rarely found in—and much-needed by—the largely qualitative-historical literature on state-led social engineering and the making of citizens.

findings and discussion How is state-led social engineering via treatment schools affecting citizenship attitudes? In this section, I discuss the results of the diff-in-diff analysis, focusing on the most conservative regressions clustering standard errors by school and controlling for income, parental education, emirate-level fixed differences, and date surveyed. These results can be found in Column 4 in the detailed regression tables presented in the appendix. Overall, as I explain below, the results point to success in the national and civil dimensions, but failure and perverse outcomes in the political and economic ones.

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As shown in the appendix, an analysis of students’ self-reported levels of support for science, which can be taken as a reflection of their levels of interest in science, also suggests that this is a stable or fixed difference across treatment and control groups, and thus not likely to bias treatment effect estimates. See Rosenbaum (2002) on “placebo” tests.

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Consistent with constructivist expectations, the data suggest that leaders are indeed achieving their goals in the national dimension of the state–citizen relationship. Treated students showed heightened patriotic and nationalistic attitudes, relative to students in regular government schools across pre and post grade cohorts. For example, while control students’ scores on the patriotism index stayed roughly the same from pre to post, treated students’ scores increased, indicating a positive treatment effect (p = 0.01).37 The data also suggest, consistent with heightened patriotism, that treatment schools boosted overall feelings of national pride, and particularly with respect to pride in the UAE’s history and heritage (p = 0.006).38 Success in the national dimension of state-led social engineering is especially noteworthy because of the nationalist backlash triggered in some quarters. As noted above, a central concern has been that young Emiratis will grow up without sufficient appreciation for their own national identity and culture, particularly with the emphasis on English and bilingualism. As Maryam Lootah, an outspoken critic of the reforms, has put it, “If we decide to teach only a few subjects in Arabic, then we must not complain that we have lost our identity” (Ahmed 2010). Yet these data suggest that treatment schools are enhancing appreciation for UAE national identity and culture, rather than causing these elements of citizenship to fade away. The Civil Dimension Next, I turn to the civil dimension of citizenship. Here again the evidence suggests success in state-led social engineering, with treatment schools boosting civic responsibility and tolerance. Younger students at both treatment and control schools, when asked how much time they would be willing to volunteer to assist with a community clean-up effort, gave similar responses. By the end of the treatment period, however, students’ attitudes toward volunteering appeared to have diverged. Relative to controls, treated students were more willing to contribute time as volunteers in their communities, suggesting a positive treatment effect (p =

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The patriotism index had similar internal reliabilities across treatment and control as well as cohort groups. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.55 for the overall sample, 0.51 in the treatment group, 0.67 in the control group, 0.54 in younger cohorts, and 0.59 in older cohorts. The six-item national pride index displayed a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.92 for the overall sample, 0.91 in the treatment group, 0.94 in the control group, 0.92 in the younger cohorts, and 0.93 in the older cohorts.

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0.05). Likewise, the data indicate a positive treatment effect for tolerance (p = 0.00), suggesting that treatment schools succeeded in encouraging students to view “tolerance for others” as an important value. These results are also consistent with constructivist expectations. At the same time, no significant treatment effects were found for the civil attitudes leaders do not wish to change, despite the dire predictions of modernization theory when it comes to traditional monarchs seeking to build more “modern” but politically compliant citizens. Treated students did not display significantly heightened support for freedom of information and/or government accountability, relative to control students across pre and post grade cohorts.39 Overall, then, the evidence suggests that state-led social engineering is succeeding in fostering more tolerant, socially engaged citizens, while avoiding raising their political consciousness in the form of heightened demands for freedom of information and/or checks on the power of the state. This seems consistant with a broader pattern in the Arab region in which “civil society” becomes top-down and de-politicized, potentially in connection to evolving autocratic survival strategies (e.g., Yom 2005). The Political Dimension Results in the political dimension paint a more complex picture, pointing to some unintended consequences. Here, as discussed, state-led social engineering has not been designed to foster significant change, with leaders preferring to maintain the authoritarian status quo. Yet political attitudes did not remain unchanged. In fact, treated students from pre to post displayed an increase in their interest in participating in political decision-making, compared to control students (p = 0.01).40 This result is consistent with the predictions of modernization theory. Importantly, however, the results do not reflect an overall shift toward liberal democratic orientations, as much of modernization theory envisions. Instead they suggest more of a personal empowerment dynamic with antidemocratic undertones, similar to what Friedman et al. (2011) found in 39

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The freedom of information questions had to be removed from the surveys administered in Abu Dhabi and Fujairah, due to political sensitivity. However, further analysis excluding those emirates revealed similar non-effects; in other words, no evidence suggests that social engineering enhanced support for freedom of information. For the two-item index of interest in political participation, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.84 for the overall sample, 0.84 in the treatment group, 0.83 in the control group, 0.84 in the younger cohorts, and 0.87 in the older cohorts.

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a study of the effects of a merit scholarship program on schoolgirls in Kenya. Thus, although treated students displayed greater personal interest in political participation, i.e. for themselves, their support for the idea of political participation as a right for others showed a significant decrease (p = 0.04). Control students showed little difference in their support for the right of all citizens to have a say in government policymaking from pre to post, while treated students showed a steep decline. This pattern is repeated in support for “traditional” political participation, where a negative treatment effect was also found (p = 0.03). Together, these results suggest that treatment schools decreased support for political participation as a right – in its modern or traditional form – while increasing young people’s own interest in political participation. Interestingly, then, in both the civil and political dimensions, social engineering appeared to boost personal interest in engagement, while not triggering an interest in rights overall. The Economic Dimension The results in the economic dimension also pointed to perverse outcomes. The data suggest that social engineers are not only failing in their drive to build more market-oriented, entrepreneurial citizens, who will be less dependent on government jobs, but that their efforts are actually backfiring. Treated students did not show lessened belief in the right to a government job, relative to students in regular government schools across pre and post. As discussed, this is a citizenship attitude that state leaders are very keen to decrease in the rising generation. Yet, rather than decreasing belief in the right to a government job or leaving it unchanged, the evidence suggests that treatment schools preserved and reinforced it, displaying an overall positive and significant treatment effect (p = 0.01). For treated students, the belief that citizens have a right to a government job increased from pre to post, relative to controls. Since this is the most direct measure available of perceptions of the social contract in the economic dimension, this result is very striking. In short, it is exactly the opposite of what leaders expect to achieve via state-led social engineering. As I will show in Chapter 6, focus groups add an important dimension to this result, suggesting that treated youth have come to feel that they alone should have the right to a government job, while other citizens should not. What about instilling an entrepreneurial spirit and building a stronger, market-friendly work ethic? Again, and strikingly, the diff-in-diff data

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suggest that treatment schools produced perverse outcomes, reducing young people’s willingness to start a business to support the development of the country rather than boosting their entrepreneurial ambition as intended (p = 0.02). This seems consistent with their heightened convictions surrounding the right to a government job. Finally, the data do not support the hypothesis that treatment schools enhanced work ethic, thus fostering more favorable attitudes toward work. Together, these findings in the economic dimension point to a social engineering effort that is fostering not more market-friendly attitudes, but an unexpectedly heightened culture of entitlement. Gender Differences At the time of fieldwork, girls’ treatment schools were brand-new. Since they had not been open long enough to have any Grade 12 cohorts, it was too soon to explore the impact of state-led social engineering on young UAE females (as opposed to males) using a diff-in-diff strategy. However, the larger survey dataset I collected allows for a useful descriptive analysis of gender differences. Do young UAE men and women orient differently toward the state? Do they conceive of the rights and responsibilities of the citizen in different ways? During the course of my fieldwork, I surveyed almost 2,000 UAE girls, mostly in regular government high schools but also in the younger cohorts in treatment high schools. In this section, I use this data to explore important gender differences across the citizenship dimensions discussed above. But first, it is useful to provide some background on the context of gender in the UAE. For many, given the region’s patriarchal norms, it is surprising to hear that the Middle East has largely achieved gender parity in terms of education. In fact, females are beginning to surpass males both in terms of enrollment and test scores, creating a “reverse” gender gap (Ridge 2014). However, women’s labor market participation lags behind, contributing to what the World Bank calls a “gender equality paradox” (World Bank 2013b).41 Likewise, and for a host of reasons (Langohr, Lynch, and Baker 2016), women’s participation in political life is typically lower than that of men, albeit with significant variation by country. These trends are broadly reflected in the UAE. For example, it is striking that over 70 percent of students at UAE public universities – limited to 41

This narrative has been contested in interesting ways by Adely (2012) in the case of Jordan.

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Emirati citizens and where most Emirati citizens obtain their college degrees – are female. On global rankings of gender equality, the UAE typically places among the best within the Arab world, especially in education and health outcomes.42 As of 2016, women made up 20% of the diplomatic corps, and there were eight women ministers and nine women members (including the head) of the Federal National Council (FNC), the forty-member advisory parliamentary body that is half-elected and half-appointed by rulers.43 An Emirati woman, Mariam al-Mansouri, made international headlines when she led air strikes against ISIS; she is the UAE’s first female fighter pilot. Yet significant challenges to gender equality endure, especially in the legal system where polygamy for men remains legal and the consent of a male guardian is required for a woman to marry, among other issues. UAE ruling elites have sought to incorporate women into the social engineering campaign, promoting women’s rights and highlighting women’s achievements – as well as responsibility – toward the fashioning of a more modern UAE. Hence, an official report entitled “Women in the United Arab Emirates: A Portrait of Progress” stresses both the aim to “establish a new benchmark for gender empowerment in the region” as well as the “national imperative for women to contribute to the development process.”44 Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, chairwoman of the General Women’s Union and widow of the late Sheikh Zayed, the country’s first president and founder, is a key force behind top-down empowerment; indeed, in 2015, she re-launched the National Strategy for Empowerment of Emirati Women. In 2011, Sheikh Khalifa, Sheikh Zayed’s oldest son and the country’s current president, issued a long sought-after decree allowing the children of Emirati women who marry non-Emirati men to apply for citizenship; previously, and as is the case in many other Gulf countries, only men who married a foreigner could pass on their UAE citizenship to their children (Issa 2011). All this will not be surprising to scholars of gender and politics who focus on the region (Joseph 2000a; Kandiyoti 1991). Middle East reformers have often championed women’s rights, yet at times for their own political reasons. As Joseph notes, they have arguably “used women to imagine their communities as modern” (2000b, 6), with authoritarian modernizers such as Atatürk and the Shah declaring that women should be learning,

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See, for example, the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2014 or the UNDP’s Gender Development Index. See www.uae-embassy.org/about-uae/women-uae, accessed May 25, 2016. See UAE Ministry of State for Federal National Council Affairs (2008, 3).

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working, and contributing for the benefit of the nation; women thus become “emblems of modernity,” a sign of how progressive countries and their rulers are. As a result, the seeds are planted for a controversial and in some ways Svengali-like alliance between women and the authoritarian leaders who protect and promote them while continuing to block democracy (Al-Rasheed 2013; Brand 1998). In the official report noted above, for instance, a woman is approvingly quoted as follows: “In other countries, women have had to fight for their political rights, whereas women in the UAE have been granted these rights, so let us never take our rights for granted. We shall remember every right entails responsibilities and we will work hard to live up to the expectations of our leaders and our society.”45 With this background, we turn now to the sample. I collected surveys in eight regular government girls’ schools (two in Abu Dhabi, three in Dubai, one in Fujairah, and two in Ras Al Khaimah), as well as (the only) two treatment schools, both in Abu Dhabi. In what follows, I limit analysis to students in regular government (or control) schools because of the complexities introduced by state-led social engineering in treatment schools. Thus, we are left with 519 Emirati boys and 1,305 Emirati girls in regular government high schools. I focus on gender differences controlling for income, levels of parental education, emirate, date surveyed, and grade, clustering standard errors by school. The results give food for significant further thought, and lend credence to the idea that UAE men and women do orient differently toward the state. First, the national dimension: the girls in the sample were unambiguously more nationalistic, reporting significantly higher patriotism (p = 0.00) as well as pride in the UAE (p = 0.00). In the civil dimension, there were no significant differences between girls and boys in terms of their willingness to volunteer, support for tolerance as a value to encourage in children, or support for the freedom of information. However, there was one interesting difference in the civil dimension: girls were significantly more supportive of the idea of government accountability (p = 0.03). Thus, they agreed more with statements such as “Information on whether government policies are effective should be made available to the public” and “UAE nationals should know more about how the government spends money.” Additional gender differences emerged on the political and economic dimensions. In the political dimension, differences were not significant with regard to support for the right to political participation, either in its modern or traditional form. But the girls did show significantly less 45

See UAE Ministry of State for Federal National Council Affairs (2008, 6).

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personal interest in political participation (p = 0.01). Thus, they reported less interest in contributing to public decision-making in the UAE or their emirate. The economic dimension was especially intriguing. Girls’ interest in starting a business was not significantly different from that of boys, but they were more supportive of the right to a government job (p = 0.00). In addition, their work ethic was higher (p = 0.03). Hence, they agreed more with statements such as “People who don’t work become lazy,” “To fully develop your talents, you need to have a job,” and “Work should always come first, even if it means less free time.” These results must be treated with caution, but they are suggestive and call for further research on gender differences in the making of citizens. Here we can speculate briefly about the reasons for such differences. For example, it may be that girls are more nationalistic due to a gender-specific sense of gratitude, since the country’s rulers are so visible in supporting and promoting women in particular; more will be said in Chapter 6 about the complex role of praise when it comes to the making of citizens. Indeed, rulers’ copious praise for women may also help to explain the girls’ greater support for the right to a government job, if such praise is backfiring as described in Chapter 6.46 Their apparent higher work ethic is also interesting, and it is consistent with a common perception that Gulf females are more “serious” as students, typically ascribed to the fact that they have less mobility and freedom in society and thus fewer options to distract from their work. That girls in the sample scored higher on work ethic, but were also more demanding of the right to a government job and hence more “entitled” from the rulers’ perspective, is particularly provocative. This may reflect the tensions for women between the top-down push for a modern and more “bourgeois” citizen and the social expectation that women ought to focus on family and the domestic sphere, for which government jobs with their reduced hours may appear to be a better fit.47 Why girls would be more demanding of government accountability, yet at the same time less interested in participating in politics, is also not obvious. One might expect that a greater concern with government accountability would lead to a greater interest in political participation (as a means to help bring it about). Indeed, this is the classic sequence in

46

47

As Al-Rasheed has argued in the case of gender politics in Saudi Arabia, “It appears that all these modern Saudi women expect to rely on an authoritarian state to extract their rights from men, protect them against excessive restrictions, and promote them as the new voices in society” (2013, 137). See Mitchell et al. (2015) on these tensions in Qatar.

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T.H. Marshall’s (1950) narrative of how modern citizenship arose in Britain, with civil demands (such as demands for greater fairness) preceding and ultimately motivating political ones (such as demands for the vote). Perhaps UAE women’s civil consciousness is a first step toward greater political consciousness, and thus on a path that diverges from that of UAE men, given that boys in the sample were more interested in participating in politics (higher political consciousness) but less supportive of government accountability (lower civil consciousness). This difference may also reflect gendered experiences, types of socialization from a young age, and gender role conformity, resulting in a lower motivation among females to be politically interested and authoritative.48 Broader gender differences may also play a role. For example, there is evidence that women are more risk-averse and averse to competition (Croson and Gneezy 2009); female citizens in the UAE might see civil demands as less risky than political ones, or worry more about the risks of democracy and prefer gradual reform. It is also possible that they simply do not view political participation, whatever the risks, as the best means to achieve government accountability, meaning they are not on any predetermined Marshallian “path.”49 Indeed, diversity in citizenship paths and configurations is an important theme in this book. In addition, there is some evidence that women are more moral and pro-social, which might help to explain a greater concern with the good of society as a whole (accountability of government for all) than with the imperative of political participation (for self).50 In this vein, Suad Joseph has suggested that women, particularly in the Middle Eastern context, experience citizenship differently from men. She proposes the idea of a relational or connective self, rather than the more familiar “individual citizen-self” in Western citizenship theory. As she argues, the former do not “experience

48

49

50

See Burns et al. (2001) and Karpowitz and Mendelberg (2014) for valuable investigations of politically relevant gender differences in the US context. In the Middle East context, see Benstead, Jamal, and Lust (2015). Friedman et al. (2011) found evidence that a girls’ merit scholarship program in Kenya led to less satisfaction with government performance, but notably not greater support for democracy as a means of addressing perceived problems. See chapter 3 in the Pew Research Center (2013) survey on gender and work in the United States. Although men and women valued most job characteristics similarly, they did differ markedly on one: women were more likely than men to say that having a job that helps society is extremely important to them. In addition, in a review of the empirical literature on ethical decision-making, O’Fallon and Butterfield (2005) note that, although the evidence for gender differences is mixed, when they arise, it is typically women who appear to be more ethically and morally sensitive.

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boundary, autonomy, separateness as their primary defining feature. Rather, they focus on relatedness” (Joseph 2000b, 24). These insights point the way toward future research on gender and the making of citizens. Summary of Social Engineering Outcomes Overall, the survey evidence suggests a mixture of intended and unintended outcomes in the state effort to cultivate “loyal bourgeois.” As shown in Figure 5.2, in the national and civil dimensions, the evidence indicates success from the perspective of the social engineers. Thus, as planned, youth exposed to social engineering appear to have become more patriotic, proud of their country, willing to volunteer in service to the community, and tolerant. Notably, the evidence does not suggest they have become more demanding of civil rights. However, the findings also point to failure and perverse outcomes in the political and economic dimensions. Here, the data suggest that social engineering has heightened entitlement, strengthening belief in the right to a government job, dampening entrepreneurial ambition, and triggering interest in political participation for self but not others. As I will show in Chapter 6, these results are consistent with my qualitative fieldwork evidence, including focus groups with students and interviews with staff, and they point to the rise of what I term entitled patriots.

Dependent Variables

Intended Effect

Actual Effect

National • Patriotism, national pride

Increase

Increased

Civil • Support for civil rights • Civic-mindedness, tolerance

No change Increase

No change Increased

Political • Support for political rights • Personal interest in participation

No change No change

Decreased Increased

Economic • Support for right to a government job • Entrepreneurial aspirations/risk-taking

Decrease Increase

Increased Decreased

figure 5.2 Social engineering outcomes

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zooming out: social engineering on a larger canvas How do the outcomes of state-led social engineering look from a wider angle? A broader investigation also points to mixed results, and often along similar lines to those revealed by the analysis above, hinting at successes in some areas but perverse outcomes in others. In particular, the evidence suggests a certain heightened enthusiasm for the country and its drive for change, but not necessarily a heightened commitment to that change, let alone a willingness to take on challenges, make sacrifices, take risks, and persevere to help achieve it. In this section, I review broader evidence on the outcomes of state-led social engineering, including qualitative fieldwork data on volunteering and entrepreneurship initiatives, external evaluations of UAE education reforms, and how the UAE fares in global rankings on education and entrepreneurship. As discussed earlier, state-led social engineering in the UAE involves shaping both hearts and minds, targeting the attitudes as well as the skills of the citizenry. And on the skills front, there are some promising signs. In the country’s drive to foster a bilingual society – for example, fluent in English as well as Arabic – there is evidence that social engineering is beginning to pay off. Between 2003 and 2014, the average score on the CEPA-English exam administered annually to Emirati youth in Grade 12 rose from 150 to 166.51 CEPA is the new SAT-like national exam established in 2003, which was designed to reward skill over memorization, as well as circumvent the mass cheating that has plagued traditional Ministry of Education exams. Ryan Gjovig, the head of CEPA, described the change as significant, with most of the gains seen in the government school sector and thus furnishing evidence that educational experiments in the public school system are working (Swan 2013). However, during the same time period, CEPA-Math scores did not show a similar rise. In addition, in recent years, UAE students’ test scores for English on the IELTS, an international test of English proficiency, have increased (Todorova 2012). Between 2009 and 2012, the UAE also saw an increase in its scores on the PISA, an international assessment of fifteen-year-olds’ reading, math, and science skills (Nazzal 2013). On PISA as well as other international tests such as TIMSS and PIRL, however, the UAE performs well below the world average, though above most other Arab countries 51

See the Common Educational Proficiency Assessment (CEPA) website, linked to the website of the UAE Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, http://ws1.mohesr .ae/cepa/CEPA_DET_EN.aspx?str=AB, accessed March 3, 2015. Score trends can be found at http://ws1.mohesr.ae/cepa/Files/Interpreting_CEPA_Scores.pdf, accessed March 3, 2015.

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(Salama 2012; Steer, Ghanem, and Jalbout 2014). Females also consistently outperform males, a growing trend in the Middle East and worldwide (Ridge 2014). There is also evidence of greater creativity and critical thinking. In 2010, a team from the University of Georgia conducted an external evaluation of one of the Ministry of Education’s public school reforms, the “Schools of the Future” initiative.52 In some schools, the evaluators observed that “Students are beginning to develop and exhibit leadership skills as a result of the student-centered instruction and activities. Therefore, they are more creative and greater risk-takers when developing and manipulating content knowledge: they feel empowered and demonstrate improved attitudes” (2010, 15). The evaluators’ own survey of 1,914 Emirati students in reform schools found that a majority were positive about the changes, overwhelmingly agreeing with statements such as “The teaching in my classes is better than it was before” and “I think all students should attend a school like this one” (2010, 60–61). Yet they also identified important issues to resolve. For example, they found that student-centered teaching of science in some schools had become more “hands-on” – in keeping with the liberal educational philosophy discussed in Chapter 3 – but not sufficiently “minds-on,” since teachers lacked in-depth content knowledge and/or the English proficiency to explain key concepts. Teachers were using out-of-the-box science demonstration projects such as a “float/sink activity with wood,” which students enjoyed, but whose underlying purpose teachers did not fully understand or could not communicate. In the least successful reform schools, they observed teachers: using the rudiments of student-centered instruction but not its essence. For example, the desks are in groups and the student work is project-based, but there is no evidence of feedback on the projects, the student work is neither rigorous nor challenging, and there is no evidence of formative assessment to guide instruction. The teachers wanted ‘partial credit’ for beginning the changes toward better teaching. (2010, 23)

Compared to students, the evaluators found teachers and parents to be far less enthusiastic about the reforms under way. For example, teachers using the new methods “believe that their colleagues in [other Ministry 52

Report obtained by the author, entitled “External Evaluation of the Madares Al Ghad Program in the United Arab Emirates: Final Comprehensive Report of Findings and Recommendations.” Prepared by the External Evaluation Team from the University of Georgia College of Education and Global Consulting Associates. May 17, 2010.

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of Education] schools do not have the increased workload yet are paid the same” (2010, 20). Others “want to retain their schools’ traditional ‘cultural norms,’ such as flexible working hours, leaving school without consent, switching schedules at the last minute, and so on” (2010, 19). “In our interviews with parents,” the evaluators added, “they stressed their desire to help their children with science homework, but felt inadequate to do so without a textbook as a guide” (2010, 26). As discussed, reforms are shifting the emphasis away from memorizing textbook content and toward greater critical thinking and skills development. Overall, this evaluation is consistent with my qualitative fieldwork evidence. Earlier in this chapter, I described the enthusiasm on the part of youth for the reforms, and contrasted this with the more critical reactions and frustrations voiced by older Emiratis. In my school visits, Emirati students said they enjoyed being asked for their opinion on issues, seeing their work posted on classroom walls, engaging in group work, and other aspects of the new student-centered teaching methods. Yet students’ apparent enjoyment of reforms acquires a layer of complexity given the diff-in-diff findings above. Although it may be gratifying for social engineers, it does not necessarily mean that social engineering is working to reshape citizens as intended. Importantly, just because youth are enjoying themselves more in school, improving in English language skills, and showing greater signs of creativity and leadership does not mean they are adopting the key attitudes that leaders want to foster. What about the outcomes of state-led social engineering outside of the traditional educational context? How have changes in public symbolism and the proliferation of state-sponsored spectacles affected citizens? Lisa Wedeen (1999) has shown that the effects of such symbolism and spectacle can be more complex than one might expect. In Ambiguities of Domination, focused on Syria under Hafiz al-Asad, she argues that new symbolism, rousing rhetoric, and elaborate spectacles put forward by the regime did not succeed in building legitimacy and genuine support for it. However, she shows that such efforts did succeed in another sense by compelling citizens to act “as if” they revered their regime and viewed it as legitimate. Thus, although citizens did not believe in the regime, they obeyed it rather zealously, behaving as it wanted them to. My qualitative fieldwork evidence suggests a similarly complex set of outcomes in the UAE case, with an interesting twist. At numerous public festivals and other events, UAE youth can be observed full of patriotic enthusiasm for the social engineering campaign, consistent with the diffin-diff findings above pointing to success in the national dimension. Yet, in

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the economic and civil dimensions, there are signs of perverse outcomes, suggesting that youth are embracing the idea of the campaign more than anything else, thus behaving only “as if” they were true believers in the new ideal of the citizen as loyal bourgeois. For example, at the annual Young Entrepreneur Competition in 2011, the excitement of the UAE youth hawking their wares in row after row of stalls at Dubai Mall was abundantly clear.53 Their stalls were lavish and eye-catching, and they were certainly attracting a significant amount of media attention, mostly in praise of the apparently vigorous entrepreneurial spirit on display. Some expatriate youth participants, however, were skeptical of the media blitz focused on Emirati participants. Two Indian girls born and raised in the UAE, for instance, explained how they bought blank photo frames at Ikea and then decorated them by hand with their own designs to sell at the competition.54 By contrast, they said that many of the Emirati teams had bought finished products to which they added no additional value, despite rules against this. “They usually have lots of people helping them,” one complained, “like their maids, who are doing a lot of the work in the morning to set up [the stalls].” The two also revealed that a group of Emirati girls tried to pay them 700 AED to switch locations in the mall, even though this too is not allowed. (The teams with the best business plans are selected in advance and rewarded with a prime location in Dubai Mall.) They suggested replacing the award for “Best Stall Display” with one for “Best Product Display,” so that the competition would focus on the products themselves and not who has the nicest stall. Given tension between Emirati and non-Emirati residents of the UAE, such fieldwork evidence should be interpreted with caution. Still, the girls’ perceptions are important, and they hint at perverse outcomes in state-led social engineering, suggesting an embrace of the campaign in letter but not in spirit. In a recent op-ed, Khalid Al Ameri (2014), a young Emirati entrepreneur, also suggested as much. The UAE government has introduced a significant number of incentives for entrepreneurship, he wrote, and these have succeeded in stoking interest. Yet they have not succeeded in changing “how we as a society view professional success, which has more to do with status than it does with the impact of the work we do; more to do with your job title than how you choose to use your talents, and more to do with what government entity you are affiliated with than the entity you are trying to create.”

53

Author’s field notes, Dubai, May 2011.

54

Author’s field notes, Dubai, May 2011.

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Within this context, he argued, the state effort to cultivate a more vibrant entrepreneurial culture has led to the “rise of people I have termed ‘part-time entrepreneurs.’” He described these as individuals who occasionally attempt to start new businesses, but simultaneously seek to hold full-time government jobs because of the high social status they confer. Eternal dabblers, they are excited about the idea of entrepreneurship, but lack the courage to see it through, and they never become truly successful as entrepreneurs because they devote too little time and effort to their new businesses. Interestingly, Al Ameri’s observations are consistent with some of the broader comparative data on entrepreneurship available from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).55 In the UAE, these data often show positive attitudes about the idea of entrepreneurship, including high confidence on the part of UAE individuals that they have the necessary skills and experience to start a business. Moreover, business start-up rates are good in the context of the Arab world. However, the data also point to high business discontinuation rates, as well as a high fear of failure relative to some other Arab countries. My fieldwork evidence on the effort to cultivate a culture of volunteering also suggests more enthusiasm for a certain glorified idea of volunteering than the reality of it. The staff at Takatof, for example, the main statesponsored entity tasked with this effort, point to growing interest in volunteering.56 The program started with zero volunteers in 2007, and as of 2013 boasted 33,000 registered in the online system (Bell 2013). At the same time, Takatof staff complained that many do not understand what volunteering is, and expect to be paid for their efforts. One had to explain to a group that “If you get paid, we will be like any other event management company. This is not volunteering.”57 According to staff, some also see “volunteering” more as an opportunity to attend a highprofile event than anything else. Hence, rounding up volunteers outside of Dubai and Abu Dhabi has been a challenge, since volunteering activities outside the big cities are more likely to take the unglamorous form of

55 56 57

See McCrohan et al. (2010), El Sokari et al. (2013), and Rosinaite (2013). Conversations with Takatof staff, Abu Dhabi, November 2011. Those who composed the Takatof website also felt obliged to make this clear, including “Do I get money at the completion of each volunteering activity?” as a frequently asked question, with the terse answer “No. You can’t get money. As you are giving back to your UAE community which is of high value, you will attain precious life knowledge and skills that will constantly enhance your life and career development.” See http://www.takatof .ae/en/faq.aspx, accessed December 15, 2016.

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picking up litter at the beach rather than manning a booth at a Formula One event. I conclude this section with a final anecdote from fieldwork data, one that seems especially suggestive of perverse outcomes. A staff member at Tawteen, the Abu Dhabi–funded Emirates Foundation program to promote UAE youth employment (different from the Abu Dhabi Tawteen Council), described one of the “leadership camps” developed as part of the overall effort, aiming to build creativity, confidence, and other “soft skills” needed for success in the private sector.58 The camps involve a project component, with students working in teams and ending with a competition. Projects are assessed by a group of judges, typically drawn from the private sector. When I asked for examples of winning projects, the Tawteen staff member said the most recent one was not an idea for a new product or service but an “advertising campaign to encourage [other] Emiratis to join the private sector.” An image arises of enthusiastic social engineers begetting even more enthusiastic social engineers – but not “true” bourgeois – in a kind of recursive nation-building loop.

conclusion An investigation into the outcomes of the social engineering campaign yields mixed results. In this chapter, I first described “the view from below,” contrasting the enthusiasm on the part of youth for many of the changes under way with the more critical perspectives of older generations. Next, I moved beyond popular impressions, using a diff-in-diff strategy to explore the effects of state-led social engineering on youth attitudes. This evidence suggests that social engineers are achieving their goals in the national and civil dimensions, enhancing patriotism, national pride, interest in volunteering, and tolerance. Moreover, social engineers appear to have achieved these results without triggering heightened demands for democracy in the form of civil and political rights, thus avoiding the typical unintended consequences. By contrast, findings in the political and economic dimensions point to failure and unintended consequences. Indeed, far from the apolitical, market-oriented citizens that UAE leaders want – that misty authoritarian ideal – the findings suggest a very different story altogether, one in which social engineering is triggering citizen entitlement among youth, fostering heightened 58

Conversations with Tawteen staff, Abu Dhabi, November 2011.

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expectations of state sponsorship and personal political involvement combined with a dampened entrepreneurial spirit. Using the survey data, we also saw some striking gender differences in how young Emirati citizens orient toward the state. The findings concluded with an investigation of the social engineering campaign on a larger canvas, which also pointed to mixed and potentially perverse outcomes in the making of citizens. To return to the three theoretical perspectives outlined earlier, neither “enlightenment” of the liberal democratic variety predicted by modernization theory, nor “enlightenment” of the neoliberal authoritarian variety desired by ruling elites and predicted by constructivist narratives of elite success in molding citizens, is indicated by the results. Yet the “failure” hypothesis is not satisfactory either, given the evidence that social engineers succeeded in reshaping citizens’ attitudes in some important areas. Indeed, it would appear that treated students became more patriotic and proud of their country, but also more entitled, and less willing to take risks to help develop it – in other words, entitled patriots. Although such an outcome is not easily explained by existing theory on state-led social engineering, it is broadly aligned with recent empirical work illustrating unexpected ways in which social engineering can backfire (Friedman et al. 2011; Fouka 2014). In this sense, it is possible to interpret social engineering outcomes as indeed a sign of “enlightenment,” if enlightenment is entitlement. In the next chapter, I turn to the reasons for these outcomes.

6 Nationalism as Self-Esteem Boosting Explaining the Paradox of the Entitled Patriot

When we think of patriots, we often think of people willing to take risks and make sacrifices for their country. We may even consider them more willing to do so than others – to work hard, give up their own time and energy, forego self-interest, and otherwise incur costs for the sake of the nation.1 So the concept of entitled patriots, who show an unusually strong love of country but not an unusually high willingness to make sacrifices for it, is peculiar and counterintuitive. And yet this is a central pattern emerging from the evidence on the outcomes of state-led social engineering in the UAE. Love of country is more complicated than it appears.2 As Keller (2008, 74) observes, it is a “singular, powerful and perplexing psychological phenomenon.” What explains these outcomes? More broadly, what accounts for the paradox of the entitled patriot, in the UAE and potentially beyond? This chapter investigates these questions. I begin by showing why standard explanations for success and failure in state-led social engineering do not fully explain the social engineering outcomes in the UAE case, discussed in Chapter 5. Overall, these outcomes are more complex and nuanced than theory predicts. Responding to Charles Tilly’s call to embrace such complexity in state–society outcomes, I suggest an alternative causal mechanism, which focuses on the role of nationalism. Although nationalism is 1

2

Political theorists often include these qualities as constitutive of patriotism itself. In a much-cited work, for example, Stephen Nathanson (1993, 34–35) characterized patriots as having a particular “willingness to sacrifice to promote the country’s good” in addition to a special affection or love for one’s country, concern with its well-being, and sense of personal identification with it. On the complexities of “love of country,” see Callan (2006) and MacMullen (2014).

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often viewed as a powerful means of motivating citizens, I combine qualitative fieldwork and original experimental evidence to show that certain types and uses of it can produce unintended effects, “crowding out” the very attitudes and behaviors that state-led social engineering was intended to instill. Thus, the chapter makes a theoretical contribution by offering a counter-intuitive way in which the “making of citizens” can backfire.

limitations in existing theory None of the three theoretical perspectives on state-led social engineering discussed in Chapter 5 can fully explain social engineering outcomes. That is primarily because the results are a mix of intended and unintended outcomes, and they are thus more complex than existing theory predicts. This is not to say that the theory does not provide essential insights, only that it paints with a very broad brush. Consider the constructivist scenario. Drawing from the nationalism literature as well as recent empirical work on interventions in the developing world, this perspective predicts elite success in social engineering. Yet the results illustrate success only in some dimensions of citizenship. Why should elites be successful in shaping the national and civil dimensions, but not the political and economic ones? With only constructivism to guide us, the reasons for variation are somewhat mysterious. The same can be said for theory predicting elite failure. As discussed in Chapter 5, this perspective draws from the classic literature on state-led social engineering. It predicts no change in citizen attitudes. Yet the evidence suggests that elites are succeeding in changing attitudes in some important dimensions of citizenship. Moreover, in the economic and political dimensions, the evidence does not illustrate failure in the sense of “no change” in citizen attitudes. On the contrary, it suggests that social engineering is having an effect, just not the effect that elites intended to produce. Thus, although this perspective may help to explain why elites often fail at social engineering, it is less effective at explaining unintended outcomes pointing in the opposite direction from that which was intended. An example will serve to demonstrate. By now it is a truism to observe that elites are likely to fail when they seek to mold society by design because of a certain inherent hubris in the exercise and lack of local knowledge. In this narrative, whoever the architects of the new society might be – elite bureaucrats, newly empowered revolutionaries, foreign occupiers, international development NGOs, a modernizing monarch – they share

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a fundamental and fatal flaw. That flaw is typically described as an insufficient appreciation for the local culture and on-the-ground conditions that they wish to transform; thus, they do not understand “how things work here.” From Friedrich Hayek to James Scott, scholars have warned us of these important pitfalls in state-led social engineering of all political stripes. Yet can insufficient knowledge of the local context explain the UAE results? Although the argument provides important insights, it is ultimately too broad-brushed to be fully satisfactory. If UAE social engineers lack local knowledge, why should this undermine their social engineering efforts in some areas but not others? And why would it cause some of their efforts to backfire, rather than simply fail to produce the intended changes? Moreover, social engineers in the UAE, who are a diverse group of Emirati and non-Emirati elites, vary in their knowledge of the local context, suggesting that something else is needed to explain the results. As I will argue shortly, it is not the blanket absence of knowledge so much as the presence of knowledge that is intuitive but flawed that best explains social engineering outcomes, and particularly the paradox of the entitled patriot. Potential explanations emerging from theories of the rentier state, emphasizing the primacy of material interests, are likewise unable to account for the range of intended and unintended outcomes. For example, we might observe that material considerations are likely to be most salient in the economic dimension. This would lead us to expect the economic dimension of citizenship to be especially difficult to reshape, especially in the context of a rentier state where elites’ pro-market social engineering goals conflict with citizens’ material interests in maintaining the rentier status quo.3 Even putting aside the economic determinism in such an argument, it is clear that the theory may shed light on reasons for failure, but it is far less successful in explaining unintended outcomes. Why should pro-market social engineering in a rentier state render citizens even more “rentier” in their economic outlooks than before, less entrepreneurial and more demanding of the right to a government job, let alone more patriotic, tolerant of others, and willing to volunteer? The answer is not obvious. At first glance, the third perspective discussed in Chapter 5, which draws from modernization theory, is more promising because it allows for a mix of social engineering outcomes, both intended and unintended. 3

As noted earlier in this book, the mismatch between social engineering goals and the material interests of the local population is a key reason given for social engineering’s early failures in Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen (1976).

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However, this theory tends to predict the rise of a certain kind of citizen – essentially a liberal-democratic one in the Western mold – as an accidental by-product of modernization. Yet, in the UAE case, the evidence does not suggest that social engineering is fostering liberal-democratic citizens. Rather, it points to greater interest in political participation for oneself, combined with less support for extending the right to all, and it does not suggest any increase in demands for civil rights. As I will show, the same pattern is ultimately found in the economic dimension, when we consider the qualitative evidence. It is a heightened sense of entitlement – demand for privilege, not rights and not democracy – that is the key result in need of an explanation. In these ways, the results are more in line with critiques of modernization theory, which show how modernizing initiatives can, rather than liberate individuals and trigger demands for change, reinforce the status quo. From this angle, the “social reproduction” school of thought in the sociology of education is especially important to consider, given the UAE campaign’s emphasis on education as a vehicle for state-led social engineering.4 Scholars in this school have argued that modern schooling, of both an elite (Bourdieu 1996) and non-elite variety (Willis 1981), can churn out individuals who accept rather than question the status quo through mechanisms such as the transmission of cultural capital. This is somewhat related to what Weakliem (2002) calls the “core values” hypothesis in how education affects political attitudes, as opposed to the “enlightenment” hypothesis. This approach also provides some useful hints into the reasons for outcomes, but it is ultimately unsatisfying in the UAE case because of its overdetermined character. First, it is important to clarify that the treatment schools discussed in Chapter 5 are not “elite.” If anything, these government schools are viewed as vocational (quite the opposite of “elite”) due to their emphasis on labor market skills. Still, perhaps students feel themselves to be elite as a result of being accepted into a new kind of school; Friedman et al. (2011) call this the “public recognition” effect. That is plausible and may be part of the story, but it does not sit well with the diff-in-diff data from Chapter 5. In short, the data do not reveal sharp differences in entitlement attitudes between treated and control students in younger cohorts, which is what we would expect if the experience of “being accepted” accounted for social engineering outcomes alone. Rather, attitudinal differences – such as divergence in support for 4

In the American context, Bowles and Gintis (1976) offer a classic example of the approach.

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the right to a government job – emerge across pre and post cohorts, suggesting that something going on within schools over time is responsible. Turning to the nature of the social engineering campaign, one might reasonably ask whether the simple fact of receiving a “better” education than others is responsible for the outcomes identified. Isn’t it reasonable to suppose that this might lead to heightened entitlement? This is a plausible part of the story as well. It is true that a good education can raise aspirations. But, as with the notion of “elite schooling,” the idea that a “good education” naturally leads to the range of outcomes identified here is overly deterministic. In fact, it would seem to elide the deeper issues of causation: what is it about this “good education” that is producing the paradox of the entitled patriot, particularly given that its designers explicitly molded it to produce a totally different kind of citizen? Moreover, not everyone who receives a “good education” emerges with a heightened sense of entitlement. Whether this occurs is likely to depend on a variety of factors, ranging from individual-level characteristics and family background to the character of social engineering and the ultimate lessons learned. Even “elite” schools can teach humility, grit, and an appreciation for hard work. Indeed, in the UAE, some remark that it is the “elite” private schools where Emirati youth study together with a diverse assortment of expatriate youth that are producing the best citizens across all four dimensions.5 Finally, recent work on authoritarianism adopts a rationalist approach, convincingly explaining many outwardly puzzling phenomena as the result of a rational strategy by which leaders perpetuate authoritarianism.6 Here, one might wonder if UAE leaders are, in fact, getting exactly what they want. Perhaps ruling elites intended to “co-opt” citizens all along, rendering them both more patriotic and more dependent on the regime and thus unlikely to challenge it. It is impossible to dismiss this as one possible motivation among others. However, it is not consistent with ethnographic evidence collected in palace settings, interviews with ruling elites, and analysis of government strategy documents, which 5

6

Author’s field notes, UAE, 2010–2014. This is an attitude commonly expressed in Dubai, and also by ruling elites across the country (who typically send their children to private schools). International private schools, in particular, are said to foster tolerance through their diverse student bodies, as well as better education, entrepreneurial ethos, and stronger work ethic due to higher-quality teaching. Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2011) exemplify the approach. See, also, Gandhi (2008), Blaydes (2010), and Weiss (2013).

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strongly suggest that leaders do not want to build citizens who are even more “rentier” in outlook, entitled, and dependent on the state than they were before. Rather, as discussed in Chapter 2, they are drawn to their idea of citizens as loyal bourgeois – more engaged economically, socially, and culturally, but not politically. In addition, it is difficult to characterize socially engineered youth as truly “co-opted.” Given that they feel entitled to more, they could well be the first to protest when more is not given, or more is not available to be given. This is a twist on the “revolution of rising expectations” logic, since it is the state via state-led social engineering that has made citizens feel entitled to more in the first place. In Oman, Arab Spring protests focused less on demands for democracy and more on calls for a more generous welfare state (Worrall 2012). Protesters marched in the name of higher salaries, larger subsidies for housing and electricity, and lower pension contributions. By heightening entitlement, ruling elites may well be sowing the seeds of their own demise, triggering an inflated sense of relative deprivation – the perceived discrepancy between what people think they ought to get and what they do get.7 Thus, while it is true that socially engineered youth display heighted patriotism, this attitude could be what Eamonn Callan (2006) calls an “idolatrous” form of patriotism, based more on worship of false gods than the real thing – in this case, the continuing receipt of benefits from the state instead of the state itself. It is important to stress that a variety of factors are likely giving rise to the social engineering outcomes in question, and they may be difficult to disentangle from one another; this is one reason why a multi-method approach involving qualitative fieldwork and experiments can be especially useful. Existing theory provides clues toward an explanation, but it is not fully satisfactory. As a result, I now take Charles Tilly’s advice. In studying state-led social engineering, he suggested we move away from broad-brush theoretical perspectives and instead focus on the nature of the actual outcomes that arise, mixed and complex as they often are, and which contingent causal mechanisms best explain them. My aim is

7

See Gurr (1970) for a classic statement of relative deprivation in a conflict setting. In addition, in their study of why so many violent jihadists have engineering backgrounds, Gambetta and Hertog (2016, 48) emphasize the role of engineers’ frustrated ambitions after the golden era of state-led planning, which lionized engineers as a vanguard for development and modernization. As economic and political conditions deteriorated, engineering graduates “felt deceived by the development rhetoric of their regimes and thought they deserved more than they were able to get,” with some turning to political violence (2016, 48).

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therefore not to provide a theory that can explain every twist and turn on the road to citizen-formation in the UAE case, but rather to account for the mix of intended and unintended outcomes that were actually found.

the role of nationalism So what explains the paradox of the entitled patriot? I draw attention to the complex role of nationalism as a motivator.8 Not surprisingly, nationalism figures prominently in the UAE campaign. Leaders wish to boost nationalistic and patriotic attitudes in citizens, building loyalty to nation and state above tribe and family. They also expect that promoting nationalism as a heady cocktail of faith in self and faith in nation will motivate citizens to take on new and more active roles in the development of the country – and thus buy into state-led social engineering. The strategy makes sense. We are accustomed to thinking about nationalism as a powerful way to motivate citizens to take risks and achieve in times of war and peace alike. Indeed, in political theory, love for one’s nation and/ or country is widely seen as a powerful solution to the “civic motivation problem.”9 In the UAE case, moreover, leaders are not going so far as to ask citizens to risk their lives on the battlefield. Rather, they expect nationalism to motivate citizens to contribute in different ways, aimed at building their vision of a post-petroleum future – i.e., to consider alternative career paths, compete in the private sector, accept reduced job security, take on entry-level positions, work more, start new businesses, volunteer more in their communities, display more tolerance, achieve, better ration their use of public utilities, and so on. Of course, leaders use direct nationalist appeals, such as urging citizens to innovate “for their nation,” but it is more accurate to say they conceive of nationalism as a broad motive force. Thus, although “nationalism” and “patriotism” may not, by themselves, motivate people to start businesses, they may help to do so by imbuing such activities with a heightened dignity and status, redirecting self-

8

9

As noted in Chapter 1, I use “nationalism” and “patriotism” in similar ways to signify love for, identification with, and a special concern for one’s nation and country, respectively (Nathanson 1993; Smith 1998). See MacMullen (2014). The “civic motivation problem” refers to the fact that citizens often recognize and agree with the moral reasons for them to participate, engage, and/or contribute, but fail to do so in practice. In democracies, for example, people’s actual motives to vote may be weaker than their moral reasons for doing so, leading to low voter turnout.

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interest into new channels.10 Anthony Smith (1998, 97) aptly describes the motivational power of nationalism in this broadly developmental sense: To achieve social integration and development, elites had to mobilize the masses and encourage them to postpone gratification and accept considerable sacrifices. The virtues of patriotism, commitment, hard work, frugality and self-sacrifice had to be inculcated in the newly enfranchised citizens. Nationalism . . . served the purposes of the elites of the new states admirably, for [it] . . . urged the citizens to labour for the good of the whole nation.

My evidence suggests an important twist on the motivational power of nationalism, depending on the way nationalism is understood and put to use. UAE leaders are indeed striving to connect nationalism to the virtues of commitment, hard work, frugality, and self-sacrifice. However, they are also using nationalism in a different and more problematic way that privileges praise and the goal of invoking pride. Leaders believe such “feel good” nationalism will excite youth and motivate them to contribute. But the results for citizen-formation are complex. The strategy does excite citizens, I argue, but it does not truly motivate them. By flooding their campaign with this type of “nationalism-lite,” I show that social engineers are succeeding in making citizens more proud and more nationalistic, yet in ways that are ultimately insubstantial and even counterproductive. It is thus their strategy of motivating citizens – not lack of local knowledge, the inevitable effects of the rentier state, or the unavoidable consequences of a good education – that is responsible for social engineering outcomes. The paradoxical result is the entitled patriot, marked by a love of country that is emotionally intense and sincerely felt, but does not involve humility and sacrifice and instead revolves around status. As I will show below, the argument has strong foundations in social psychology and experimental economics research on the ways in which external incentives can backfire, “crowding out” the very attitudes and 10

Liah Greenfeld (2003, 34) puts this point well in the case of English nationalism as a broad motive force for capitalist development: “It would be wrong to say that members of these strata perceived nationalism as instrumental to their (given, economic) interests. Rather, superadded onto their occupational and estate identities, national identity changed the nature of these other identities, changed the meaning – the potential importance – of belonging to these strata . . . and thus necessitated the formation of new interests, which were perceived at once as the interests of these economically active strata and as national interest.” In the UAE context, one can imagine nationalism helping to tip the balance for young people deciding between queuing for years waiting for a government desk job, on the one hand, and taking an entry-level position in the country’s private sector at a lower starting salary, on the other, knowing that the country needs diversification.

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behaviors they were intended to incentivize. I proceed as follows. First, I show why the social engineering campaign, particularly in its use of nationalism, is so praise-heavy and rewards-driven in the first place. This is not inevitable, and it is rooted in leaders’ beliefs about the nature of the citizenship problem. Next, I present qualitative fieldwork evidence illustrating that social engineering is indeed backfiring precisely because of its emphasis on praising and rewarding citizens against a nationalist backdrop. Although leaders believe such a strategy is motivating youth to take on the challenges of a post-petroleum age, the evidence suggests it is actually de-motivating them to do so. Finally, I present original experimental evidence in support of nationalist “crowding out” effects.

the new paternalism: nationalism as self-esteem boosting Ruling elites in the UAE do not see themselves as unfeeling autocrats, unsympathetic to the plight of the people, to their wishes, desires, and overall well-being. Rather, they envision themselves as benevolent mother- and father-figures, nudging their citizens, like their own children, to better themselves, both for their own good and for the good of the nation. I call it a “new paternalism.” In political theory, paternalism has traditionally referred to limits on citizens’ autonomy and freedom to act, justified as being for the citizens’ own good; mandating the use of seatbelts is a basic example of this. Yet, in the UAE case, ruling elites wish to enhance citizens’ autonomy and freedom to act, albeit within the constraints of soft authoritarianism. As with traditional paternalism, the idea is to influence citizens’ behavior – for their own good and that of the broader society – but not by imposing limits, scolding citizens, and taking things away. Instead, this is to be accomplished by opening doors, praising citizens, and providing them with everything they might need to succeed. As Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid has put it, “Young people cannot shape a future befitting them, their nation and their country, without being provided with incentives, coaching, love and care” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 41). That UAE leaders would turn to such a paternalistic social engineering strategy is, in some ways, not surprising. Rentier states are known to lack coercive power over their societies, and citizens buy into the political community in part because of the carrots a resource-rich state can offer (Crystal 1990; Chaudhry 1997; Karl 1997). Encouraging citizens via praise and other positive incentives brings to mind old rentier norms of

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governance. But political utility is not the only reason for leaders’ embrace of the paternalistic approach. Ethnographic evidence combined with an analysis of rulers’ speeches and writings reveal that many ruling elites subscribe to it because they genuinely believe it will work. In short, they think that citizens – if they are going to look beyond easy government jobs, compete successfully in the country’s private sector, start new businesses, solve social problems, volunteer in their communities, and otherwise take up new and more challenging citizenship roles – need to believe more in themselves, as well as their nation. As a result, they want to build up citizens’ confidence, pride in their country, and sense of self-efficacy. An example will illustrate. In the Ras Al Khaimah palace, the ruler of the emirate, Sheikh Saud, was considering new summer programs for UAE youth focused on areas such as business and entrepreneurship, civics and character-building, and English, math, and science.11 Referring to citizens in general, he said, “They are all like our children,” before reflecting on one program under discussion he thought could be especially effective. It was an Outward Bound-like summer camp in the Ras Al Khaimah mountains with a strong civic flavor, aimed at building physical as well as character skills and focused on leadership, determination, and selfreliance. It sounded strenuous, and unlikely to attract many applicants, if made optional. But Sheikh Saud applauded it, saying it would be like “going cold turkey.” Explaining, he said, referring to the rentier mindset, “It is an addiction. [Citizens] must be encouraged to rise above it. To take the challenge, to prove themselves.” As this story suggests, there is a perception among ruling elites that rentier mindsets are a kind of addiction, one that is treatable in the short term (if not curable without broader structural changes). In this way, there is a tendency to psychologize the citizenship problem, perhaps conveniently forgetting that citizens are behaving in their own rational interest, given material incentive structures in the rentier state. This is where the new paternalism is most evident. Ruling elites do not want to limit citizens for their own protection, as with traditional paternalism; rather, they see citizens as limiting themselves, as well as their nation, because of their addiction to an easy life of state-sponsored welfare. Youth, in particular, are seen as mired in a stultifying rentier culture, not of their own choosing, which inhibits their individuality and creative potentials and ultimately renders them bored, unfulfilled, unproductive citizens, albeit relatively well off. Yet, in rulers’ minds, citizens lack the confidence to cast off the 11

Author’s field notes, Ras Al Khaimah, February 2011.

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rentier shackles and try something new. As one of the Abu Dhabi reformers involved with the treatment schools discussed in Chapter 5 put it, “They are afraid. They don’t have the confidence.”12 Sheikh Saud of Ras Al Khaimah put it more directly: “They are afraid to compete in the real world.” Ruling elites therefore want to give citizens the skills and confidence they need to succeed. As Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai says, “All that is needed in order to reach these goals is to show our people the right direction and nurture their potential for innovation, creativity, selfconfidence, determination and leadership” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 8). Ruling elites want to “help” citizens develop the strength to rise above rentier mindsets and see the greater good, both for themselves and for their nation. For social engineers, this centers on praising and rewarding citizens to boost not just their self-esteem but also their national pride. Indeed, the two are inextricably linked in the campaign. To build a postpetroleum and more “modern” future, ruling elites think the people need to believe more in themselves as well as their nation, so pride in self and pride in nation are closely intertwined. As Sheikh Saud explained, when Arab Spring protests broke out in Egypt, “[For citizens to contribute more] the Ruler must give the people pride, and dignity. Not like Mubarak.” He meant encouraging them to feel proud of their country as well as themselves, fully embracing the dignity of both. As a result, the campaign is full of a form of nationalism that is essentially self-esteem boosting. This involves elaborate iconography, larger-than-life banners, and dramatic ceremonies all reminding citizens to love and be proud of their country, its rulers, and ultimately themselves. It involves the spectacle of ruling elites praising the nation, praising each other, praising themselves, and praising citizens in the context of the nation’s equally praise-worthy march toward progress. An excerpt from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid’s speech on the UAE’s 41st National Day, in 2012, is illustrative (Al Maktoum 2012a): My fellow Emiratis . . . Brothers and sisters . . . My confidence in you is boundless . . . You have shown aptitude, proficiency and know-how to lead us into a prosperous future . . . You continue to prove that the “Spirit of the Union” lives deep within you . . . You have shown an outstanding sense of patriotism knowing that your leadership is part of you . . . You have proudly exhibited, generation after generation, your loyalty to a beloved homeland that dwells deep within your hearts . . . This is why I am proud to extend my warmest 12

Interview with education reformer, Abu Dhabi, June 2011.

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congratulations on this dear occasion to every single one of you. It is with pride that I congratulate my brother . . ..

In My Vision, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid elaborates on these themes: “All I want now is for each one of our young men and women to make their own success story – the story they deserve, one that allows them to raise their heads high and tell themselves, their family and their friends, ‘I am proud of what I have accomplished’” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 93). In his 2014 National Day statement, he said, “Dear Emirati men and women, I know that you are overwhelmed with the feelings of happiness, pride and glory as Emiratis who are closely tied to their country and who stand by their leaders with whom you were able, over the past 43 years, to achieve a unique model for development that has won the recognition and appreciation of all” (Al Maktoum 2014). In Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed’s own 2014 National Day remarks, he said, “For our future ambitions, the sky is the limit and we will go ahead unabated, knowing no limits. The achievements made by UAE citizens over the decades . . . speak volumes for the depth and strength of will for building the excellence of our State” (Al Nahyan 2014). Some may argue that flowery language and excessive flattery are part of Arab culture and/or language more generally, or tied into authoritarian ritual, and these are interesting points. But they do not change the fact that the effects of such practices on citizen-formation are not well understood, and for UAE ruling elites, praise is part of a strategy they believe will motivate citizens. As Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid clearly explains, “Although we are at the beginning of a new millennium and exploring new ideas, some Arab governments still fail to give their people any cause for optimism. This leads their citizens to become pessimistic and as a natural consequence, the whole society becomes pessimistic” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 106). Indeed, “Where is the wisdom in restricting action and stifling creativity?” and “Where is the encouragement? Where is the motivation?” (Al Maktoum 2012b, 94) Further, “When we are facing development issues that need us to run in order to successfully face them, how can I expect anyone to run if I keep putting obstacles in their way? Where is the proper development track in the Arab world? What is the use of encouraging a soldier to fight when you have not trained and armed him properly?” (Al Maktoum 2012b) In a 2016 piece for Gulf News (Al Maktoum 2016), the ruler of Dubai reiterates these paternalistic convictions, taking them as a key lesson of the Arab uprisings. In explaining the creation of a new UAE Ministry of Happiness,

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Tolerance, and the Future, along with the appointment of a twenty-twoyear old Minister of Youth, he writes: The changes reflect what we have learned from events in our region over the past five years. In particular, we have learned that failure to respond effectively to the aspirations of young people, who represent more than half of the population in Arab countries, is like swimming against the tide. Without the energy and optimism of youth, societies cannot develop and grow; indeed, such societies are doomed. (Al Maktoum 2016)

It is important to emphasize that a strategy of “feel good” nationalism, or nationalistic self-esteem boosting, makes a certain intuitive sense, and a significant body of research on the correlates of achievement backs it up.13 Fostering self-confidence and a sense of self-efficacy through methods like praise and positive reinforcement is a time-honored way to motivate. So too would boosting nationalism appear to be an effective way to encourage citizens to contribute to their nation’s development, and combining the two via “feel good” nationalism could be a stroke of genius. In addition, ruling elites may also be right that citizens and the country as a whole, only a few decades old, lack confidence. Indeed, the sheikhs would seem to “know” their small number of citizens reasonably well; they certainly meet with them more regularly than do American presidents, so their “local knowledge” is likely to be higher than one might expect. Young citizens themselves have asked for greater motivational support. A recent survey of unemployed Emirati youth by the International Council on Security and Development (2010, 19) noted that “almost a quarter . . . acknowledge that lack of commitment, work ethic and motivation are among the main reasons for youth unemployment in both the private and public sector.” Thus, some “call for public campaigns that would address this issue, arguing that no amount of structural reforms and employment quotas will make much impact without a change in the way of thinking.” On how rulers should address the problem, a twenty-four-year-old female Emirati citizen is quoted as saying, “Have faith in Emiratis’ abilities and give them the chance to prove themselves.” Another says, “They should change the mentality of the people and the stereotyping they have in their minds regarding the working conditions in the private sector.”

13

To give a recent example, Alkhateeb and Abushihab (2014) find a correlation between self-esteem and academic achievement in a sample of Arab-American elementary students.

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The rulers’ idea, and key to the new paternalism, is that they are helping to prepare citizens for the “real world” of an intensely competitive global economy, one they will ultimately be forced to contend with in the post-oil age. As one explained, a key mistake in post–Soviet Russia was not “preparing” the society for success – not building up an effective market culture that would be for the good of citizens as well as the nation.14 But are they building up citizens in the right way? This is the key question, and we return to it shortly.

the complex role of foreign experts The armies of foreign experts that ruling elites have recruited to assist in social engineering, in the UAE and elsewhere in the Gulf, play a complex role, one that I explore elsewhere in more depth.15 They are a diverse group, hailing from countries such as the United States, Britain, Finland, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, New Zealand, India, Australia, Argentina, and Brazil, thus mirroring the Meiji approach as discussed in Chapter 3. They operate at different levels within the domestic hierarchy of foreign expertise. In the education reform sector, many work directly within schools as teachers, principals, school management coaches, and teaching mentors. Their motivations for coming to work in the UAE vary. A 2011 study of instructors in the UAE’s higher education sector uncovered several types (Chapman et al. 2014). For example, adventure seekers included both young, mobile “academic nomads” as well as recent retirees at the end of their careers but not ready to stop working. Another type was redemption seeker, experts seeking a new beginning after hardships like divorce, limited opportunity for career advancement, or tenure denial. In this section, I highlight two ways in which foreign experts tend to enable the new paternalism with its emphasis on nationalism as selfesteem boosting. First, many foreign experts, like ruling elites, also believe that UAE youth will never be self-reliant and entrepreneurial if they do not believe in themselves and their nation. As a result, they too take to praising and rewarding youth in an effort to boost their confidence and sense of selfefficacy, and this often has a nationalist bent. For example, one British teacher in a public high school undergoing reform described the key goal as helping students “develop the confidence to be able to face any problems that face [them], to feel that they really can make a difference in 14

Author’s field notes, Ras Al Khaimah, April 2014.

15

See Jones (2014b).

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their country.”16 A Jordanian colleague and teacher at the same school elaborated, pointing at a nationalist, Bedouin-themed life-size diorama in the hall: “They have come so far. Some of them, their grandparents or even their parents were illiterate. We are trying to give them the confidence, so they can succeed.”17 It is also common to hear foreign experts expressing dismay at how UAE youth have been treated in general, and this too appears to motivate a concern with building their confidence and self-esteem. “No one ever asks them what they think, what they want,” said an American education reform adviser.18 “It’s like they aren’t worth anything,” she added, telling a story about an older Egyptian teacher she once met who attached a whip to his belt and angrily described his own students as “monkeys.” Foreign experts criticize not only child abuse in the traditional education system, but also parents’ failure to attend school events, meet with teachers, and otherwise pay attention to the quality of their children’s education. These foreigners’ support for student-centered methods and the “whole child philosophy” reflects these concerns. In a new Teacher Guidebook from 2012, for example, reformers emphasize that, in the new system, it is students who will be “at the center of an active teaching and learning environment supported by schools, families, and the community.”19 The second way in which foreign experts may unwittingly undermine education reform derives from the domestic political context. In short, when foreign experts arrive in the UAE, they quickly discover that they must operate in a precarious environment, marked by intense rivalry and high turnover. Although they are powerful players in agenda-setting and other respects, they swiftly learn to fear the possibility of offending or insulting a UAE citizen or the local culture. This is because a complaint from a UAE citizen can rapidly lead to a foreign expert’s downgrading, termination, and, on occasion, quiet deportation.20 Many foreign experts adapt by steering clear of causing any offense, gradually accumulating knowledge about how to avoid trouble. Thus, like ruling elites, they too praise the nation, its citizens, and its rulers. In schools, new civics and English teachers recruited from abroad dwell excessively on inoffensive “feel good” topics like the larger-than-life 16 17 18 19

20

Interview with teacher, Al Ain, June 2011. Interview with teacher, Al Ain, June 2011. Author’s field notes, Abu Dhabi, June 2011. Teacher Guidebook 2012, Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), Abu Dhabi. Obtained by author. For a first-person account, see Duffy (2012). See, also, BBC News (2015).

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greatness of Sheikh Zayed (the founder of the UAE), the wisdom of the current rulers, and the amount of respect and admiration that other peoples have for the UAE. One Scandinavian instructor, for example, reported spending over a month on a unit called “Proud to be an Emirati” in one of the new textbooks developed for English language learning, itself developed by foreign experts.21 She also said that many of the student-centered techniques that foreign experts use end up, for better or worse, having a nationalistic and self-affirming flavor. She recalled a creativity-building assignment devised by foreign experts in which students made their own thatched booklets exploring all the reasons they are proud to be Emirati. As we will see, not all social engineers, foreign as well as Emirati, are entirely comfortable with these methods of motivating citizens. In fact, some are very critical, particularly those working at lower levels in the campaign who are in direct contact with socially engineered youth. Privately, they believe that ruling elites would be critical too and would modify their strategy if they knew its unintended effects on citizenformation. However, they rarely make their views known due to the economic and political incentives they face, and fear of their immediate supervisors. As an Emirati reformer at the Ministry of Education put it, “If I say something, it will be taken against me, and I’ll be out.”22 Many foreign experts, working on renewable, multi-year contracts, benefiting from high salaries and excellent packages, and having brought their families to live in the UAE, are especially hesitant to rock the boat. As one working in a girls’ school said, the best strategy is generally to “keep your head down and your mouth shut.”23 Thus, for several reasons, foreign experts tend to enable an atmosphere in which youth receive lavish praise couched in nationalistic themes.

nationalist “crowding out” effects How do citizens actually respond to these nationalistic efforts to encourage and motivate? To answer this question, we have to hear from citizens themselves. In addition to surveys, I collected qualitative fieldwork evidence in the treatment schools discussed in Chapter 5, where youth are being socially engineered in keeping with the overall campaign. This 21 22 23

Interview with teacher, Ras Al Khaimah, May 2011. Interview with education reformer, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011. Interview with teacher, Al Ain, June 2011.

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evidence was remarkably consistent with the diff-in-diff findings on the effects of social engineering that pointed to the rise of entitled patriots. As I will show below, it also supports my argument about the reasons for social engineering outcomes, emphasizing the surprising potential for nationalism to “crowd out” achievement motivation, productive risktaking, civic-mindedness, and other attitudes aligned with development.24 My argument builds on a significant body of research in social psychology and experimental economics on the “hidden costs” of incentives.25 Praise, positive reinforcement, tangible rewards, and monetary inducements are differing types of external incentives intended to shape attitudes and behavior. The research, however, shows that their effects can vary based on a variety of factors, especially how the incentives are actually interpreted by the “objects” of social engineering. In a notable example, Gneezy and Rustichini (2000) found via a field experiment across Israeli daycare centers that a fine, introduced to penalize parents for picking their children up late, ended up increasing the number of late pick-ups. Rather than modifying the behavior as expected, the (dis)incentive backfired because parents understood it to mean that late pick-ups had become socially acceptable. Positive incentives such as praise, prizes, and monetary inducements can go awry in other ways. Before we move to the UAE campaign to explore these backfiring dynamics, it is instructive to consider the outcomes of another social engineering campaign in which rewards and self-esteem boosting played a prominent role, though not in the context of nationalism and citizenbuilding. Since the 1960s, concerns about low self-esteem and lack of confidence have been prominent in the United States as well, believed to be the cause of many personal and social problems ranging from underachievement and unemployment to violence and drug abuse. As a result, social engineers sought to boost self-esteem in a variety of settings. For example, in the 1980s, the state of California established a task force for the purpose, and many other efforts to boost self-esteem are still under way. American culture also came to embrace the goal (Twenge 2006). It is likely that some of these ideas traveled to the UAE, not only through the influence of foreign experts, but also through ruling elites’ own experiences living and studying in the West as young men and women in the 1960s and 1970s.

24

25

For another recent argument connecting “crowding out” effects, culture, and economic attitudes, see Aarøe and Petersen (2014). For reviews, see Deci et al. (1999), Henderlong and Lepper (2002), and Gneezy et al. (2011).

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In 1999, a report was commissioned by the Association for Psychological Science (APS) to examine the outcomes of this campaign in the United States (Baumeister et al. 2003).26 Despite significant theoretical enthusiasm for high self-esteem, the report identified very few established benefits associated with it. Empirically, those with high self-esteem do tend to be happier and more self-confident; they see themselves as more popular, socially skilled, smarter, and more attractive than other people. However, these advantages exist mostly in their own minds. They are generally not confirmed by others, and high self-esteem can veer into narcissism. Indeed, the report found that the benefits of high self-esteem accrue mostly to the self, with potential costs borne by society, arising from “having some people regard themselves as superior to others and hence entitled to exploit their fellows or demand preferential treatment” (Baumeister et al. 2003, 38). Below I apply these insights to a new domain – the making of citizens. I show how a similar motivational strategy can be used in a spirit of nationalism on a larger social engineering canvas and end up backfiring, leading to political consequences in the form of entitled patriots. The sections that follow illustrate how such “feel good” nationalism can trigger status consciousness and dampen intrinsic incentives, crowding out some of the key attitudes and behaviors in support of development that leaders have aimed to inculcate in the first place. Triggering Status Consciousness In keeping with the new paternalism, in the treatment schools discussed in Chapter 5, youth receive very high doses of praise, both for themselves and for their nation, intended to motivate them to contribute to their country. Rulers personally come to congratulate students and tell them how proud they are. The schools themselves are awash in nationalism, with motivational posters, patriotic banners, and dioramas bringing the nation’s proud history to life. Quotations from rulers, such as “The true wealth of a nation lies in its youth,” are enlarged and emblazoned. For UAE leaders, as discussed, these are appropriate ways to motivate citizens to rise above rentierism and contribute to their country’s development, and this is not surprising. Praise is often assumed to be a straightforward and effective motivational tool, building self-esteem, confidence in ability, and a sense of self-efficacy. However, its effects can 26

The APS was then known as the American Psychological Society.

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be much more complex. As Henderlong and Lepper (2002, 775) emphasize in their review of the literature, praise is not a “simple one-way transmission from the evaluator to the recipient but rather a complex social communication in which the role of the recipient is just as critical as the role of the evaluator.” Although praise can sometimes succeed in modifying behavior in positive ways, it can also have surprisingly negative consequences. Certain types of praise can intensify status consciousness, engender a feeling of “specialness,” discourage risk-taking, and dampen intrinsic incentives to achieve.27 For example, Forsyth et al. (2007) tested the hypothesis that praise from professors incentivizes students to increase their academic performance in an experiment. All students in the study received weekly emails from the professor containing a review question related to the week’s assignment, but some were randomly assigned to receive an additional message of praise intended to enhance their sense of self-worth and thus motivate them to achieve. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, lowperforming students receiving the weekly self-esteem boosts performed worse on subsequent tests. Thus, praising students did not lead to higher achievement. In the UAE case, the “hidden costs” of praise are also evident, yet in a larger citizen-building context. Four focus groups with seniors in the treatment schools discussed in Chapter 5 suggest that socially engineered youth have indeed been made to feel high in self-esteem.28 As one said, “We are leaders.” The evidence makes it clear that students feel good not only about themselves but also about their nation due to the praise and attention they receive and illustrating how pride in self and pride in nation can go hand in hand. For example, when asked why students in treatment schools might be more patriotic than others, one answered, “Because [the Rulers] believe in us.” The evidence thus supports the diff-in-diff findings from Chapter 5 suggesting that social engineers have succeeded in enhancing patriotism and love of country, and it shows why: students are proud of the regime for being proud of citizens, and themselves in particular, in a kind of positive feedback loop.

27

28

For examples in the experimental literature, see Baumeister et al. (1990), Mueller and Dweck (1998), Kamins and Dweck (1999), Cimpian et al. (2007), and Gunderson (2013) et al. For book-length works, see Kohn (1995), Deci and Flaste (1996), and Dweck (2007). On the links between praise and entitlement, see Rose, Anastasi, and Hoffman (2011). Author’s focus groups with seniors in treatment schools, Al Ain, June 2012.

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At the same time, the focus group evidence also helps identify why social engineering is backfiring. Students’ comments suggest that they are interpreting UAE leaders’ praise and encouragement, not so much as incentives to achieve, but as signs of their own elite status. One student put this very clearly when he said that the attention from rulers “makes the schools special and the students in the schools special.” “When we go to competitions or events,” another said, “we see them, and they know we are there and they want to meet us.” Another gave the example of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince, telling the students how proud he is and asking for a special photograph to be taken with them. Based on my ethnographic evidence collected from interactions with ruling elites, the crown prince probably believed such direct praise would help motivate youth to achieve, showing them how much he cares. However, the evidence suggests that it is instead triggering status consciousness and a feeling of specialness, consistent with the experimental literature. That literature also shows that praise – by provoking a concern with one’s status – can discourage risk-taking, especially when the praise is applied liberally and linked to identity instead of performance. Here the praise is indeed applied liberally; it is linked to national identity as well as the identity of the socially engineered themselves. And, as the literature would predict, socially engineered youth, despite their heightened love of country, do not appear ready to confront new challenges, take risks, and make sacrifices. Instead, they are preoccupied with status, and most expect to be rewarded with top-level government jobs. As one explained, “I want to have a good position [in government], a high one, and to have a salary that fits me.” “I want a higher position,” another said, “and to get a higher salary.” Another said he was interested in obtaining a postgraduate degree abroad, but not particularly interested in working. “For myself,” he said, “I want to get a [Master’s Degree or Ph.D.] because I’m not interested in working or making money.” Bourgeois the socially engineered are not. In their social engineering efforts, leaders appear to have offered so much praise for citizens and their nation that high school youth subjected to it feel they have already done their patriotic duty. Congratulated by ruling elites, for example, socially engineered youth have come to feel they are entitled to more than other citizens. When asked if every UAE citizen should have the right to a government job, the students reacted negatively. “No,” one explained, “and the same thing applies to students from our schools and [regular] government schools. We work hard, we put extra

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effort in studying, so why should we be equal to them?” Another added: “It depends. If he is hard-working, he should have this right. If he isn’t, he shouldn’t have the right.” Focus groups therefore add a crucial dimension to the diff-in-diff findings, which suggested only that treated students came to believe more strongly in the right to a government job, not who most deserves that right. These youth appear to think that they deserve more from the state, due to the sense they have been given by the powers that be that that they are especially hard-working citizens. It is as if ruling elites have instilled a “credentialist” form of meritocracy (Collins 1979) in the place of the rentier mindset, based on status rather than performance, the feeling of being a hard-working person and thus one’s baseline level of “deservingness,” rather than working itself.29 Indeed, and consistent with the tendency for those with high selfesteem to overrate themselves, socially engineered youth feel superior to students in regular government schools, especially in terms of their appreciation for hard work, but it is not clear that their appreciation for hard work is actually higher. When asked how to improve the school reform, students suggested making the school day shorter and making assignments easier. Because projects are harder than in regular government schools, one student said they are forced to cheat. “They give us a project, but we can’t do it in a month. So we copy.” Thus, although these findings can be usefully connected to the literature on the rise of technocrats elsewhere, they also diverge from that literature in important ways; technocracy is one thing, but technocracy being instilled in teenagers, and without an associated work ethic or graduate-level expertise, is something else, and closer to the notion of “psychological entitlement” (Campbell et al. 2004).30 The focus group evidence also illustrated that socially engineered youth feel entitled, not just to economic rights, but to political ones. The diff-indiff data suggested that treated students were themselves more interested in participating in politics, but less supportive of extending that right to all citizens. In focus groups, when asked if the number of elected representatives to the country’s Federal National Council (FNC) should be increased, students rejected the idea. One replied that the number was already too large. Elaborating, he explained that he was interested in playing a more important role in politics because “as minds get better, 29

30

On economic attitudes and conceptions of “deservingness” of state support, see Aarøe and Petersen (2014). On technocracy, see Centeno and Silva (1998) and Putnam (1977).

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the greater the chance of finding innovative solutions to problems.” Another student agreed, adding, “The leaders should choose” who can participate, implying that he and other students in treatment schools were likely to be chosen. It is important to keep in mind that ruling elites do not see themselves as “favoring” particular citizens over others. Rather, they see themselves as using nationalism to motivate citizens to achieve, building citizens’ confidence in themselves and their nation. The evidence, however, suggests that citizens are interpreting such efforts, not as incentives to achieve and contribute, but as signs of their own high status. At the same time, youth should not be blamed for what state-led social engineering has wrought. Indeed, the findings are remarkably consistent with the broader experimental literature on how praise can foster high self-esteem, but also crowd out achievement motivation, productive risk-taking, and related attitudes. In the UAE context, the consequences are political: nationalistic praise has made citizens love their country more, but has also led to a heightened sense of entitlement that is not likely to support development. Dampening Intrinsic Incentives Leaders use not only praise but also other types of external incentives against a nationalist backdrop, which are intended to motivate citizens to achieve at high levels and contribute to their country’s development. In treatment schools, for example, social engineers provide youth with everything they might need to succeed as globally competitive knowledge workers, including state-of-the-art equipment and iPads. For ruling elites, as with the praise lavished on citizens and the nation, these are also appropriate ways to help, support, and motivate youth to step into more active citizenship roles, consistent with the new paternalism. One head official, for example, said he wants students to receive Apple laptops, not Microsoft ones, so that they will easily interface with their iPads and iPhones. This way, he explained, “if they have an exam the next day but they want to go meet their friends at a Starbucks, they don’t have to stay at home and give up on the meeting. They can go, and study while they are there by reviewing the material on their iPhones.”31 Leaders see themselves as helping youth to succeed by providing them with support of this kind. Research on how incentives can backfire, however, highlights an important negative effect of rewards and other tangible incentives on 31

Interview with education reformer, Abu Dhabi, June 2011.

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intrinsic motivation. In this literature, people are viewed as extrinsically motivated when they carry out activities in response to external incentives; they are thus activated from the outside.32 Payments, prizes, and awards (as well as praise) are forms of extrinsic motivation. People are viewed as intrinsically motivated when they carry out activities because the activities are inherently fulfilling. For example, one may carry out an activity because it is enjoyable, interesting, or challenging, the “right” thing to do, or one’s civic duty to do it. A large literature shows that offering external incentives for such activities can have unintended effects, dampening people’s intrinsic incentives to do them in the first place. In the case of civic-mindedness, for instance, Richard Titmuss (1970) famously argued that paying people to donate blood, rather than increasing their willingness to do so, may reduce it by dampening intrinsic incentives to donate out of a sense of duty. In an empirical study, Frey and Oberholzer-Gee (1997) found that the fraction of citizens willing to support a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) project – beneficial for the country as a whole but potentially costly for the local community hosting it – fell by half when citizens were offered monetary compensation. In a field experiment, Gneezy and Rustichini (2000) found that paying high school students to do volunteer work can reduce the effort they invest in it. Thus, when monetary incentives are introduced for activities that presumably offer their own reward, intrinsic motivation can suffer, sometimes so much so that the opposite of what was intended is actually achieved.33 In the case of creative, interesting, or challenging tasks, rewards can also backfire in similar ways. Deci et al. (1999) have found that paying students to solve puzzles can diminish their intrinsic motivation to do so – their natural curiosity, thirst for knowledge, or sense of fulfillment in solving a problem. In experiments, those paid to solve puzzles are less interested in trying to solve them without additional payments. They also choose easier problems and typically learn less. Broader research on monetary incentives in education is consistent with these findings, suggesting that payments can increase attendance and enrollment but are far less effective at fostering higher achievement (Gneezy, Meier, and Rey-Biel 32

33

On intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, see Deci et al. (1999) and Benabou and Tirole (2003). Interestingly, political theorists have made a similar point. As MacMullen (2014, 74) observes, “financial compensation and other incentives for civic action have a role to play, but such strategies for harnessing citizens’ narrow self-interest may increase the quantity of civic action at a grave cost to its quality.”

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2011). External incentives can therefore dampen intrinsic incentives, not only to contribute to worthy causes, but also to achieve in general. Qualitative fieldwork suggests similarly negative effects in the UAE citizen-building effort. Treatment schools, for example, are awash in monetary incentives believed to motivate high achievement, good behavior, and civic responsibility. According to instructors at the time of this research, students are provided with a monthly stipend of 500 dirhams. They also receive an additional bonus of 2,000 dirhams every year from the civic education program operating in the schools. On the one hand, it is clear from focus groups that such incentives make students feel proud, likely contributing to their love of country and feeling that rulers believe in them. On the other hand, interviews with teachers and other school staff point to negative effects on intrinsic incentives. One instructor in a treatment school in Abu Dhabi, for example, recalled his bafflement when, after he assigned an exercise, a student asked during class, “How much money will you give us?”34 As Suvorov (2013, 1) puts it, rewards can be addictive; “offering [a reward] once requires keeping offering it in order to motivate the agent.” A civics instructor in a treatment school in the northern emirates told a similar story.35 The UAE military recently began offering a two-week program for students during the December break. When his school started again in January, the instructor noticed that many students stopped coming to his civics class. So he asked why there was suddenly such low attendance, particularly given the bonus students get for attending the civics program in treatment schools. Students were quite frank: they explained that the military had paid them higher bonuses for attending its two-week civics program. So they decided it wasn’t worth it for them to attend the school’s civics classes any more. This is consistent with the broader research on rewards dampening intrinsic incentives. Accustomed to receiving monetary compensation, students are less willing to carry out ordinary school activities without additional compensation. Another example comes from an instructor who organized a field trip to a water park. Because of the trip, students returned home later than usual. “Most of my students didn’t come to school the next day,” he reported. “Their excuse was that I had kept them late the previous day.”36 He gave another example that occurred some weeks later. 34 35 36

Interview with teacher, Abu Dhabi, May 2011. Interview with teacher, Fujairah, May 2011. Interview with teacher, Al Ain, May 2011.

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After a lavish graduation event that ended at 9:30 pm on a Wednesday, none of the seniors came to school the next day, because “You kept us too late yesterday.” Thus, students expected compensation in the form of class time, suggesting intrinsic incentives to learn and achieve are eroding. Prizes are also widely distributed. In the civics program in treatment schools, for instance, instructors are sent boxes of iPads, smartphones, and watches, the extravagance of which even they find problematic. One instructor, exasperated with these motivational strategies, said it was like telling students: “Good job today, you get a Rolex.”37 He also pointed to how such practices can create escalating demands, leading students to feel entitled to even higher-value rewards. As Condry and Chambers (1978, 66) have observed, “rewards often distract attention from the process of task activity to the product of getting a reward.” According to the instructor, when the iPad prizes were distributed, some students “complained that they are the old model and they should get the new model.” He recalled another incident in which he found some of the cell phone prizes that students were awarded in a trash can. When confronted, the students said the phones were Nokia, and “even our maids do not have these phones.” They wanted Blackberries. Nationalism, when it relies on praise, self-esteem boosting, payments, and prizes to galvanize citizens to achieve and contribute, can have unintended “crowding out” effects on development-friendly mindsets. Such efforts by state elites to “support” citizens and help them in these respects can build gratitude and love of country – the “patriotic” side of the entitled patriot. But they can also end up triggering status consciousness and dampening intrinsic incentives to achieve and contribute in the first place. Within the social engineering campaign, there are those who are aware of these unintended consequences. As one Emirati reformer bemoaned, the approach is not “encouraging the kids to develop on the inside.”38 But these dissenters tend to keep quiet, as discussed, because of their own incentive structures.

experimental evidence: testing “crowding out” effects To test nationalist “crowding out” effects, and also explore their potential generalizability beyond treatment schools and beyond the UAE itself, 37 38

Interview with teacher, Al Ain, May 2011. Interview with education reformer, Ministry of Education, Dubai, November 2011.

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I conducted three experiments. All three provide corroborating evidence for such effects and thus give good reason to rethink how nationalism is constructed and used to motivate citizens in the context of a global market era. In the first experiment, building on the qualitative fieldwork evidence discussed above, my goal was to test the hypothesis that nationalistic praise can foster a sense of entitlement to a government job, potentially crowding out alternative career paths. Importantly, only students in regular government schools were included in this experiment, and not students in treatment schools, so that the hypothesis could be tested outside of the original context in which it was generated. Study participants were 75 Emirati students in Grade 11 (65% male), drawn from available samples of students at four regular government high schools in Abu Dhabi.39 They were randomly assigned to a praise condition or a control condition. In both conditions, participants were told that the researcher was studying youth attitudes, and asked to fill out a short questionnaire. In the praise condition, however, participants were primed with a nationalistic self-esteem boost embedded into the instructions at the start of the questionnaire. This message was: “Getting a high school diploma is a very important achievement in the UAE, which many people recognize and admire.” The results provide striking support for the hypothesis that nationalistic praise can foster a sense of entitlement to a government job – exclusively so, and at a very young age. As Figure 6.1 shows, praised students agreed significantly more with the statement, “Not every UAE citizen deserves a government job,” and follow-up discussions revealed that praised students felt they should be the ones being offered government jobs. Consistent with the qualitative fieldwork evidence, nationalist selfesteem boosting seemed to engender a feeling of specialness with political consequences. Indeed, the experimental results suggest that even quite small doses of it in the UAE context can trigger the feeling that some citizens are entitled to more than others. In two additional experiments – one in Jordan and one in the UAE – I extended this analysis to examine how nationalistic praise and selfesteem boosting affect other attitudes relevant for development, such as achievement motivation, productive risk-taking, and “grit,” or persistence in the face of failures and setbacks. In both experiments, I found 39

The experiment benefited from the valuable logistical support of the Al Qasimi Foundation, based in Ras Al Khaimah.

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Mean agreement

3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 No praise

Praise

figure 6.1 This graph displays mean responses to the item, “Not every UAE citizen deserves a government job,” with an answer scale ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree. The difference in means was significant (p ≤ 0.01, two-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.63).

additional evidence of nationalist “crowding out” effects. However, because these experiments also explored different ways of using nationalism to motivate citizens, I postpone a detailed discussion of them to Chapter 7, which focuses on social engineering alternatives. Overall, the experimental evidence concurs with the qualitative fieldwork evidence on the reasons for social engineering outcomes. Although these reasons are naturally complex, experiments can help to pinpoint important causal mechanisms, here focused on the troubling effects of nationalistic praise

conclusion This chapter has explored the reasons for social engineering outcomes, focusing on why state efforts to cultivate more “bourgeois” citizens would go awry. Following Charles Tilly, I have argued that existing theory on state-led social engineering is generally too broad-brushed to account for the rise of entitled patriots in the UAE case. Combining qualitative fieldwork and experimental evidence, I have argued that this outcome is best explained by nationalist “crowding out” effects. Reflecting a new paternalism, social engineers believe that nationalistic praise, self-esteem boosting, and other forms of “support” will motivate citizens to achieve and contribute to their country. However, the evidence suggests that such efforts can not only trigger a sense of entitlement, but can also crowd out the very “bourgeois” virtues that leaders operating in a global market

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era want to inculcate in citizens in the first place. Although such “crowding out” effects are aligned with research in social psychology and experimental economics, they have not been linked to broader state efforts to shape and motivate the citizen. The chapter thus makes a theoretical contribution to our knowledge of contemporary citizen-building. Although we are used to thinking about nationalism as an effective way to motivate citizens, the evidence here serves as a warning that its effects can be much more complex. This is theoretically intriguing, not only because of our assumptions about the motivational power of nationalism, but also because, when we do think about nationalism backfiring, it is usually by triggering jingoism, not in “crowding out” attitudes such as achievement motivation and productive risk-taking aligned with strong market cultures.40 Where else might we expect to see nationalist “crowding out” effects? In the next chapter, I consider issues of generalizability, particularly whether such effects are likely to arise beyond the UAE and other rentier authoritarian contexts. Overall, I suggest that nationalist “crowding out” effects stem more from the ways in which nationalism is constructed and used than the overarching political context. For this reason, democracy by itself is not likely to solve problems of civic entitlement, over-reliance on government jobs, and related issues, and could render them worse. I also consider the question of social engineering alternatives in the context of a global market era, which put nationalism to work in different ways and build on the recent work of theorists of citizenship and nationalism.

40

See, for example, Nussbaum and Cohen (2002) on the more typical “unintended effects” associated with excessive nationalism and patriotism.

7 Conclusion

Social engineering is a tricky and controversial business. The very idea is reviled by some, viewed as an exercise in hubris, morally questionable, and doomed to fail in practice. Others see it in less stark terms. The realist will observe that almost all political communities engage in some form of social engineering, whether they are fully aware of it or not, so we ought not to ignore the phenomenon. The idealist will argue that social engineering, in some guises and for some ends, is important and desirable for the making of a better world. This book takes a realist view, with a sprinkling of idealism. I have argued for a renewed focus on state-led social engineering, and particularly the making of citizens, 2.0. This I define broadly as the challenge of building citizens for a global market era, and it is a challenge that states and citizens alike may interpret and address in different ways. At its core is the question of how to build engaged citizens in an era in which national identities are largely given, interstate war is less frequent, and the global economy is fast-moving, technologically demanding, and more competitive than ever. In this context, cultivating citizens who can “fight,” not on the battlefield but in market economies, is likely to be an important goal. So is fostering some healthy combination of national loyalty and global cosmopolitan awareness. And so is building “bourgeois” citizens who are entrepreneurial and market-friendly, who are well equipped for global capitalism, but who are also ethical, compassionate, and tolerant. The specifics of how the challenge is defined and addressed will vary, and not all approaches will be equally successful. The challenge itself is a universal one, but it is also one that is especially crucial to the future of the Middle East. As is widely known, the region is 192

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not well integrated into the global economy, governments are often the largest employers of citizens, public sectors are reaching saturation points, and well over a quarter of the ballooning youth population is unemployed – the highest among all global regions.1 Since the Arab uprisings, important political changes have taken place, but violence and radicalism have also flourished, and economic stagnation continues. In Egypt, youthled protests were effective in expressing collective outrage, but protesters lacked clear agendas for tackling the country’s challenges. Such complex problems do not, of course, boil down to inadequate citizen-building and social engineering, due to leaders botching up the making of citizens, 2.0, but they are contributing factors, and are likely to plague these societies for some time, whether they are democratic or authoritarian or something in between. In short, through no fault of their own, many citizens in the Middle East are not being supported and nourished in ways that enable them to flourish under conditions of globalization, and this is the issue at the heart of this book. To build knowledge about how leaders are interpreting and addressing the making of citizens, 2.0 – and what results they are achieving – I have offered a multi-method study of state-led social engineering in the United Arab Emirates. In the context of the Middle East, the UAE effort is an important one. Few Arab state leaders have the resources and political will to carry out such an ambitious social engineering project. That project also aligns with what observers both in the region and outside of it have been advocating for years – the nurturing of more vibrant “knowledge societies” marked by high achievement, economic dynamism, and liberal character skills like tolerance, open-mindedness, and critical thinking. The UAE effort thus deserves close attention. In the rest of this chapter, I summarize the book’s key findings and contributions and consider their broader implications. One might wonder, for instance, whether lessons learned from a social engineering campaign in an authoritarian rentier state are very generalizable. This is an important point. As suggested above, in the context of the Middle East, building knowledge about the UAE case is intrinsically worthwhile because the UAE is an early adopter of widely advocated changes. But I also suggest that the lessons it offers about pro-market, pro-globalization social engineering, both its promise and its pitfalls, do extend beyond the

1

See, for example, Richards and Waterbury (1996), Dhillon and Yousef (2009), and Cammett et al. (2015).

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case itself. In the latter part of the chapter, I consider alterative social engineering strategies relevant for the making of citizens, 2.0, which build on the UAE experience. My discussion draws from theory about the future of nationalism, relevant findings from social psychology, and additional experiments I conducted in Jordan and the UAE. Overall, I argue that there is a need for political scientists to rethink how nationalism motivates citizens to achieve and contribute in the context of a global market era.

key findings and contributions Chapter 1 presented the theoretical foundations for the study of social engineering and the making of citizens. It introduced my concept of the making of citizens, 2.0, and offered a more nuanced theoretical framework for the study of contemporary citizen-building. Chapter 2 turned to the UAE. With the aim of “seeing like a sheikh,” the chapter examined the view from the top, using the framework offered in Chapter 1 to categorize UAE leaders’ goals for social engineering in the national, civil, political, and economic dimensions. We saw that leaders are drawn to a certain ideal of the citizen as loyal bourgeois: more market-oriented, entrepreneurial, and civic-minded, less government-dependent, and ultimately uninterested in politics. In Chapters 3 and 4, I delved into the mechanics, the “how,” of social engineering. We saw that neoliberal structural changes – of the sort that many outsiders often recommend – are currently off the table. Such changes are seen as painful for citizens and politically risky for leaders. This is so in many empirical contexts, but here especially because of the oil-fueled rentier social contract. As a result, leaders have turned to social engineering, aiming to reshape the hearts and minds of citizens from a young age using education reform, symbolism, and spectacle. Chapter 3 focused on “minds” – state efforts to expand knowledge, enhance individuality, and promote creativity and critical thinking. Chapter 4 focused on “hearts” – state efforts to instill attitudes and values aligned with the new citizen ideal. An intrinsically political undertaking, state-led social engineering seeks to mold and prepare UAE citizens to contribute more vigorously to their country’s development, particularly as the post-petroleum age looms nearer, yet without provoking a desire for political participation. Chapters 5 turned to the outcomes of the campaign. We saw evidence that the campaign is succeeding in increasing patriotism, love of country, and pride in the nation, as well as tolerance and a willingness to volunteer.

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At the same time, the evidence suggested that the campaign is leading to unintended consequences: it appears to be heightening entitlement in the form of belief in the right to a government job, while reducing interest in starting a business. The evidence also indicated heightened entitlement in the political dimension, suggesting that social engineering had made citizens themselves more interested in contributing to political decisionmaking, but less supportive of extending that right to others. Overall, the results point to the rise of citizens who are more patriotic and civic, yet also more entitled – what I call entitled patriots. In Chapter 6, I investigated the reasons for social engineering outcomes. I argued that existing theory on state-led social engineering, while it provides important clues, is generally too broad-brushed to account for these outcomes. In short, why should pro-market, proglobalization social engineering give rise to entitled patriots? Drawing from research on how incentives can backfire, I argued that nationalist “crowding out” effects are a key ingredient accounting for this paradox. I showed that certain types and uses of nationalism, intended to motivate citizens to achieve and contribute to development, can end up triggering status consciousness and reducing intrinsic incentives. The result of such nationalism as self-esteem boosting is citizens with high individual and collective self-esteem, who love their country more, but who also display a heightened sense of entitlement – and a dampened entrepreneurial spirit. I substantiated this argument with qualitative fieldwork evidence and a trio of experiments I conducted in Jordan and the UAE, which I will discuss in further detail below. The book makes several key contributions. First, it contributes to the comparative politics literature on the making of citizens, directing attention toward evolving challenges in the context of a global market era. Much work on citizen-building focuses on first-order challenges, such as instilling a basic sense of national identity and recognition of the state as legitimate public authority. Valuable research also addresses the challenge of building good democratic citizens. This book contributes by turning the focus to lesser-studied issues, such as the economic character of the citizenry. It also highlights the need, in particular, for research on different interpretations of pro-globalization social engineering in the contemporary era. Further, the book moves beyond classic questions of why and how states shape citizens to a multi-method, conceptually disaggregated, and thus more nuanced investigation of the outcomes they achieve. Responding to Charles Tilly’s call for research on state-led social engineering that acknowledges complexity and nuance, the book puts forward

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a conceptual framework that “unbundles” the state–citizen relationship. The framework builds on the work of T.H. Marshall, Thomas Mann, and others to incorporate the idea of responsibilities as well as rights, the perspective of rulers as well as citizens, and the fact that Western liberaldemocratic citizenship is not the only type of citizenship. The book uses this framework not only to categorize leaders’ goals for social engineering but also to measure citizen-formation outcomes. Scholars may find the framework useful for the study of state-led social engineering in other settings. Finally, the book offers an unexpected way in which state-led social engineering can go awry, which probes deeper than the conventional approaches that emphasize a lack of local knowledge. I have emphasized not a lack of knowledge so much as the presence of an intuitive – but flawed – knowledge at the top about motivating people and shaping their behavior. Indeed, we are used to thinking about nationalism as a powerful tool to motivate citizens and encourage them to “buy in” to broader developmental agendas. However, in the context of building citizens for a global market era, I show how certain uses of nationalism can backfire, “crowding out” development-friendly attitudes. This marks a theoretical contribution, not only because of our assumptions about the motivational power of nationalism, but also because the unintended consequences are different from the “usual suspects” when it comes to nationalism backfiring, such as xenophobia and jingoism. Although the notion of “crowding out” effects is novel in the context of the making of citizens, it has strong theoretical foundations. Such effects are aligned with the broader research in social psychology and experimental economics on how praise and other types of external incentives can backfire.

broader implications for the making of citizens, 2.0 The book suggests several broader implications when it comes to reshaping citizens for a global market era. The first is that state efforts along these lines need not come at the cost of a watered-down sense of national identity. With globalization intensifying and threatening to homogenize world culture, many worry about a possible erosion of diverse national and cultural identities. This is the “dystopian future,” in Michael Herb’s words (2014, 31), that some fear; in the Gulf countries this manifests most evocatively in the specter of small citizen populations being “swallowed up” by masses of foreigner workers. Social engineering efforts to cultivate

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more globalization-ready citizens understandably raise fears that the citizens who result will be adaptable and skilled, but also rootless. Perhaps they will emigrate to greener pastures; now that they are so globalization-ready, why should they love their own country more than any other? Perhaps they will care so little about their own culture that they will not teach it to their children, so the culture itself will gradually disappear. The findings in this book offer a particularly stark counter-example to this line of argument. In the UAE, many are concerned about proglobalization social engineering for precisely the reasons given above. For example, they criticize the shift from Arabic to English as the language of instruction in public schools for science and math, worrying it will lead students to forget their Emirati and Arab heritage. This is a core part of UAE leaders’ efforts to cultivate bilingual, globalization-ready citizens, and mirrors similar strategies in Singapore, India, and elsewhere. Critics also lament the lessened emphasis on Islam. Ruling elites will often respond that UAE citizens’ sense of religious identity – in contrast to their labor-market skills – is quite healthy and robust, and perhaps even over-emphasized in the context of education, so there is no need for social engineering to push it further. These kinds of worries are valid and legitimate, and need to be taken seriously as societies negotiate differing approaches to the making of citizens, 2.0. But this book’s findings are striking in suggesting that the UAE effort to cultivate more globalization-ready citizens is not, as one might fear, leading to citizens who are rootless and unappreciative of their national identity. On the contrary, the evidence here suggests that social engineering has – successfully – rendered young citizens more patriotic and nationalistic, compared to their un-socially engineered counterparts. Indeed, socially engineered youth were both better at English and more proud of UAE national identity and culture.2 This is important, and aligned with broader research illustrating that globalizing forces, far from dampening particularistic identities, can reinforce them, sometimes in positive and “enlightened” ways and other times in more destructive ways.3 2

3

In these respects, my findings are consistent with those of Ahmed Kanna, whose anthropological study of contemporary Dubai highlights the rise of “flexible citizens,” using the terminology of Ong (1999). Such citizens are “fluent in Arabic, English, and sometimes other languages, well-educated (in a Western-style business curriculum), and often welltraveled,” but do not “reject Emirati or Muslim identities” (Kanna 2011, 34). See, for example, Jones (2014a) on “enlightened nationalism.”

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A second broad implication, and a related one, is that pro-globalization social engineering need not focus exclusively on the economic dimension. In the UAE, such social engineering involves not only cultivating more entrepreneurial and market-ready citizens who will be less dependent on government jobs, but also building tolerance, a civic spirit, love of country, and willingness to volunteer, viewed as interrelated within the new citizenship ideal. This suggests that the making of citizens, 2.0, in theory as well as practice, need not be understood primarily as a cynical matter of creating economically “valuable citizens” (Ong 2006), appreciated only for their market worth. The fact that social engineering for globalization, as understood in the UAE, extends beyond the economic character of the citizenry is also significant for two other reasons. First, critics of capitalism suggest that markets erode community, social capital, and moral values, leading to greater selfishness and atomistic behavior.4 If this is true, then state attempts to render citizens more “market-ready” may unintentionally strip them of ethical and social bonds. Yet the findings in this book illustrate that such attempts need not lead to these outcomes. Indeed, in the UAE, the evidence suggests that pro-globalization, pro-market social engineering is not only being interpreted in broad-minded ways, but that it is also enhancing some important ethical and social bonds, increasing the willingness to volunteer and the value citizens place on tolerance for others. In these ways, the findings are aligned with what Andrea Muehlebach has found in her anthropological study of Italian welfare state reform. Her ethnographic evidence suggests that neoliberal reforms in Lombardy produced a “highly moralized kind of citizenship,” re-igniting community engagement and volunteerism (Muehlebach 2012, 6). Such surprising results recall the original meaning of the term “neoliberalism,” referring positively to a “new liberalism” that would, by emphasizing humanistic values, be more moderate than its classical predecessor (Boas and Gans-Morse 2009). Second, many argue that market economies need social and ethical underpinnings to function effectively.5 If this is true, then it is especially important for “pro-market” social engineering to, as in the UAE case, be interpreted broadly, not only for social and ethical reasons in and of themselves, but also for reasons of market efficacy and efficiency. Without such underpinnings, the sought-after market economy may not actually work; this is often taken to be an important lesson from the 4 5

See, for example, Gray (1998), building on earlier Marxist-style critiques. See, for example, Schumpeter (2008, 61).

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Russian experience. When it comes to state-led social engineering for a global market era, the question of how best to mix and match promarket orientations with pro-community ones is likely to be an important area of future research. To cynics, this book should provide some hope that the making of citizens, 2.0 need not be interpreted along narrow economic lines, depriving citizens of ethics and community. Building tolerance, in particular, in today’s atmosphere of heightened cultural sensitivity across the West and the Islamic world is an impressive achievement. A final broad implication concerns our understanding of nationalism, its uses, and its misuses. Today, national identities are largely given, it is true, but their strength is not. With war less common, it can no longer be counted upon to bind citizens together in the face of a common threat. As Herbst (2000, 130) argues in the context of Africa, many state leaders “have yet to systematically develop a strategy of how to build nationalism in times of peace.” This book illustrates that some leaders may have done so: the UAE is a country that has never been involved in a major interstate war, yet its leaders seem to be succeeding in boosting nationalistic and patriotic attitudes. This is no small achievement in a country only a few decades old, where tribal identities still run deep. At the same time, the book raises questions about the true nature of such attitudes, and their role in motivating citizens to contribute to broader developmental agendas. In the UAE case, the evidence suggests that social engineering rendered citizens more patriotic, but also more entitled. Heightened nationalistic and patriotic attitudes did not translate into a heightened willingness to work hard, take risks, achieve at high levels, and contribute to the country’s development. The notion of entitled patriots is counterintuitive, since we are accustomed to thinking about patriots as being especially willing to make sacrifices for the good of the nation. But it is also aligned with recent work emphasizing the indeterminacy of patriotism and nationalism when it comes to predicting specific attitudes and behaviors.6 As Adria Lawrence (2013, 232) has argued, in the context of nationalist mobilization in the French colonial empire, nationalism is a “flexible ideology, but also an empty one – it defines the borders of the political community without specifying its purpose or type.”7 What “love 6 7

In political theory, see Keller (2008). In the context of explaining patterns of anti-communist sentiment and organized opposition in the postwar era, Darden and Grzymala-Busse (2006, 111) also emphasize this idea of nationalism alone as empty or indeterminate: “It is the content of nationalism, not its advocacy of uniting political and administrative units, that determines whether it serves as a force for consolidating democracy or for undermining liberal rule.”

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of country” entails, what it means to be a patriot, and what behaviors an amplified national identity actually implies can vary enormously, between and within countries. The devil is in the detail. I have argued that nationalist “crowding out” effects best account for the paradox of the entitled patriot in the UAE case. The broader implication is that not all nationalisms are equally motivating when it comes to reshaping citizens for a global market era. Some uses of nationalism can backfire, “crowding out” attitudes such as achievement motivation and productive risk-taking that are aligned with robust market economies. The strategy of using nationalism – and on a deeper level, the type of nationalism itself – is thus essential to examine.8 When nationalism is essentially collective selfesteem boosting – emphasizing praise of citizens, pride in the nation, and material encouragements to build confidence and a sense of self-efficacy – then it can end up de-motivating citizens to achieve and contribute. It does so by triggering status consciousness and a sense of entitlement, while dampening intrinsic incentives, which is consistent with the broader research on how certain types of praise and other types of external incentives can backfire. This does not mean that the resulting citizens do not love their country; rather, it means that they are likely to be entitled patriots, who love their country, but not enough to take risks and make sacrifices for it. Their patriotism is a thin one that revolves more around status than humility and sacrifice for the larger good of the nation. In the remainder of the chapter, I consider the generalizability of nationalist “crowding out” effects and explore social engineering alternatives. Drawing from the literature on the future of nationalism as well as social psychology research on the effects of praise, I propose and test different ways of using nationalism to motivate citizens, building on the UAE experience. I discuss results from experiments I conducted in Jordan as well as the UAE, which put nationalism to work in different ways for the purposes of building globalization-ready citizens.

are nationalist “crowding out” effects generalizable? This book points to surprising pitfalls when it comes to the making of citizens, 2.0. But are these pitfalls – nationalist “crowding out” effects – very generalizable? Should anyone outside of the UAE worry about them? 8

Indeed, to the extent that nationalism is a cultural construct, which elites may manipulate, then it is itself a strategy.

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These are important questions, and more research is needed, in general, on the role of nationalism in contemporary state-led social engineering. Indeed, how nationalism is used to motivate citizens for any purpose within the context of a global market era – where national identities are largely given, many nations already have their “own” states or some other form of recognition, war is far less frequent, and patriotism is out of fashion in much of the world – is a perplexing question central to the making of citizens, 2.0. In such circumstances, figuring out ways to avoid the negatives of nationalism and build on the positives is a key question for future research. Below I suggest that, as a general matter, when leaders promote a kind of nationalism emphasizing praise for identity – the fixed characteristics of a nation and its citizens – rather than praise for effort and contingent achievements, they run the risk of triggering status consciousness and a sense of entitlement, which can crowd out intrinsic incentives to achieve and contribute. This could happen anywhere from the United Arab Emirates to the United States. That is because citizenship, by its exclusive nature, always involves a degree of entitlement. As Gwenn Okhrulik (2011, 126) notes, citizenship everywhere “provides membership in a community, empowerment, privilege, and rights, but for those excluded, it is a catalyst for subordination, vulnerability, and marginality.” Rendering citizenship more salient by promoting nationalism necessarily carries the risk of intensifying the entitlement attitudes that are inherent to the concept. Social engineering strategies – the ways in which nationalism is put to use and ideas of citizenship conveyed – can have different consequences. But aspects of the local political context can make nationalist “crowding out” effects more likely, and affect the form they take. Drawing from the UAE case, two factors in particular are likely to matter. The first is the extent to which citizens see the state primarily as a provider of economic and social benefits. In such contexts, when leaders praise and reward citizens in a nationalist spirit, hoping to motivate them to achieve, the feeling of specialness they unwittingly instill may lead citizens to believe they – now feeling themselves to be special as citizens as well as special citizens – deserve even more from the state than before, and perhaps more even than other citizens. Subjective feelings of “deservingness” have been amplified. This type of entitlement occurs because of the way the state is already perceived. “We are a great nation, and great citizens,” the implicit reasoning goes, “so give us what we deserve.” This is the classic way in which praise can escalate pre-existing demands. As Rogers Smith (2003, 83)

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has observed, though in a slightly different context, it is risky to sell a political community “strictly in terms of its economic benefits.” Among other things, it can foster a “destructive ethos of unbridled greed among elites and constituents alike” (2003, 83). The degree to which the state is perceived as the ultimate provider, with social and economic benefits playing an excessive role in ideas of membership in the political community, varies between and within countries. It is not an Arab Gulf or rentier state-only phenomenon. This perception, which is understandable and need not be illegitimate, can arise and harden not only from rentier practices in resource-rich states, but also from ideological legacies of socialism and communism as well as collective memories of economic hardship, inequality, and oppression. In much of the developing world, for example, the success of anti-colonial nationalist movements led to high expectations, with the newly independent states viewed as problem-solvers extraordinaire, vehicles for lifting up the formerly oppressed nations. Sometimes leaders exacerbated this dynamic, as when Nasser famously promised every Egyptian university graduate a government job. A strong sense of the state as a provider can also stem from state-led social engineering.9 Of course, questions about the role and purpose of the state are deeply contested. The key point here is that the perception of the state as the ultimate provider is not limited to the UAE and other rentier states, and may facilitate nationalist “crowding out” effects well beyond nominally rentier contexts. A second factor likely to influence nationalistic “crowding out” effects is the pre-existing nature of status in a society. I have argued that praising citizens and their nation can lead to status consciousness, and particularly a feeling of high status. But how is status defined? If high status is associated with government jobs, then citizens made to feel they have a high status may also feel entitled to government jobs. This is certainly the case in the UAE, but it is also somewhat the case in places as diverse as Greece, Spain, China, and the former Soviet republics, to say nothing of the wider Middle East and North Africa. Government jobs may offer a high status even in places where the state is not viewed primarily as a provider, simply for cultural reasons. In this case, nationalist “crowding out” effects arise not because praise escalates pre-existing demands on the state, but because it triggers a more general form of entitlement. This sense 9

Alesina and Glaeser (2008), for example, attribute the striking differences in these kinds of welfare state attitudes across Europe and America to ideologically divergent efforts at social engineering by successful political forces.

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of entitlement focuses less on what one feels one ought to get from the state, and more on what one feels one ought to get out of life in general. Being made to feel one has a high status in the context of one’s nation can thus mean different things – from heightened expectations of state sponsorship to heightened expectations of privilege elsewhere in society. In this sense, it is interesting to speculate about the possibilities for nationalist “crowding out” effects in the US context, and especially what form they might take. Excessive praise for American citizens and their nation seems unlikely to trigger heightened expectations of government jobs and other forms of government largesse. Thus, it may not crowd out “market culture” as such. But it could help to foster entitlement in other domains, particularly in foreign policy due to the country’s great-power status, effectively “crowding out” prudent and ethical decision-making on the world stage. Obviously, a high level of pride in one’s own culture has historically informed imperialistic notions such as “the white man’s burden” and “mission civilisatrice”; indeed, in nineteenth-century France, education sought to “teach Frenchmen to be confident of their nation’s superiority in law, civilization and republican institutions” (Moody 1978, 89). Deeply instilled pride may also have something to do with overestimating the appeal of “the American way” worldwide and the country’s own capacity for top-down social engineering – “nation-building” – in contexts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Nationalist “crowding out” effects, then, may extend well beyond the UAE, particularly when understood in broad terms to reflect a sense of entitlement that can end up “crowding out” a range of desirable attitudes and behaviors. In the next sections, I turn to the question of strategy – how nationalism is actually used to motivate citizens to achieve and contribute. Social engineering strategy is a factor over which leaders have more control, and I show that it is an important one, with variations in the way nationalism is used having potentially significant implications. Even in rentier states, nationalist “crowding out” effects are not inevitable and may be avoided to an extent.

varieties of nationalism: motivating citizens for a global market era This section makes a contribution toward theorizing and testing alternative ways of using nationalism to motivate citizens to achieve and contribute in the context of broader developmental agendas. To put it more boldly, I consider the future of nationalism, but not in the usual way of

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seeking to align it with cosmopolitanism, universal values, and global citizenship ideals. I discuss the perils of pride, the ways in which scholars have thought to improve upon nationalism, relevant findings from social psychology on the question of motivation, and the results of experiments I conducted in Jordan and the UAE that build on these insights. The experiments draw on the UAE experience and aim to avoid “crowding out” development-friendly mindsets. The Perils of Pride All nationalisms invoke pride, self-respect, and a sense of collective dignity. As Charles Taylor (1999, 234) put it, the nation is “a matter of dignity, in which one’s self-worth is engaged. This is what gives nationalism its emotive power.” For Anthony Smith (1996, 384), the shared memories and collective self-imaginings embedded in nationalism provide a “source of pride and dignity, and a common destiny.” This can be highly galvanizing. As Liah Greenfeld (2003, 3) notes, “It is this sense of dignity that lies at the basis of national patriotism and commitment to national causes” of any kind, be they economic, military, cultural, or otherwise. Similarly, for Ernest Gellner (1964, 177), the “main boon which nationalism has conferred on mankind . . . may be political.” Not only, in Gellner’s view, does nationalism preserve pluralism and a variety of approaches to progress in contrast to imperial orders, but nationalism also raises the spirits of formerly oppressed peoples, providing a new dignity and self-respect. But how much pride is too much? This is an important question. Although pride can play a positive role – Hannah Arendt considers it a key political virtue animating the “quest for excellence” – the perils of too much national and civilizational pride are also well known to scholars. These include militarism, aggressiveness, xenophobia, and an inability to think critically about one’s own nation or state.10 To give a recent example, in A Turn to Empire, Pitts (2009, 240) carefully traces imperialism and the conquest of non-European peoples to a rise in “civilizational – and more specifically national – self-confidence.” So too can pride stir up militarism and xenophobia, perhaps best illustrated by the dangerous combination of nationalism and Social Darwinism that arose in the late nineteenth century. And pride may also be linked to terrorism. 10

On the perils of connecting individual self-esteem to nationalism, in particular, see Spinner-Halev and Theiss-Morse (2003).

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In an innovative study of why so many violent jihadists have engineering backgrounds, Gambetta and Hertog (2016, 160) highlight “the nationalistic pride that autocratic Middle Eastern regimes had injected in massive doses in their elite graduates,” which led to dangerously high levels of frustrated ambition and feelings of relative deprivation when engineering graduates did not achieve the success and status they expected. Fouad Ajami (2012) has also drawn attention to the perils of pride in the contemporary Middle East, suggesting that education, by dwelling on an Arab-Muslim “history of greatness,” poorly equips youth to cope with the vicissitudes of the modern world. In 2012, he wrote a provocative Washington Post op-ed, entitled “Why is the Arab world so easily offended?” It was written in response to the storm of violent protests that erupted in part because of a short film trailer, posted on Youtube and widely viewed as anti-Islamic. He put this in the context of wounded pride – the feeling that “a vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness.” Focusing on why contemporary terrorism is disproportionately Islamist, M. Steven Fish (2015) has made a similar argument, suggesting that “in the contemporary world, Christians won big. And the frustration and humiliation that Muslims now feel as a result can help explain terrorism.” Ajami (2012) elaborates below on the role of social engineering in these respects: In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they fashioned a brilliant civilization that stood as a rebuke to the intolerance of the European states to the north. Cordoba and Granada were adorned and exalted in the Arab imagination. Andalusia brought together all that the Arabs favored – poetry, glamorous courts, philosophers who debated the great issues of the day.

This is not to say that feelings of humiliation and injustice are not justified. However, from the perspective of social engineering, and like other scholars we will turn to below, Ajami criticizes an excessive focus on the inherent greatness of a people. Using nationalism, then, in an effort to uplift and motivate a people by instilling pride, self-respect, and a sense of dignity can be for the good, but it can also be risky. Indeed, this book suggests that leaders need to be careful, as ever, in how they use nationalism. But the research findings in

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this book also build knowledge by adding another kind of peril to the list. In the UAE, playing the nationalist card and building up pride did let the genie out of the bottle, but the genie did not stir up xenophobia, militarism, and blind faith in culture, the usual unintended consequences; in fact, socially engineered citizens valued tolerance more. Instead, it kindled a heightened sense of entitlement, not likely to benefit any kind of economy, let alone an entrepreneurial, post-petroleum one, and it dampened intrinsic incentives to achieve and contribute. An important question thus arises: are there ways to reframe nationalism to motivate citizens more effectively and avoid such unintended consequences? Balancing Self-Respect with Self-Improvement The general question of reframing nationalism in the contemporary era is one that scholars have recently explored in some depth, with an emphasis on how to balance collective self-respect with the need to self-criticize, adapt, and improve. Although their focus has generally not been preparing and motivating citizens for developmental purposes, some of their insights are very relevant in these respects, as we will see. Ian MacMullen, for example, calls for less overall emphasis on pride. As he argues, “a country’s history is all too often presented to its citizens with a heavy emphasis on great achievements and episodes of virtue, about which citizens can feel proud, and scant attention to the debacles and sins, which would prompt unpleasant feelings of shame” (MacMullen 2014, 84). This promotes a blind love of country, he argues, impairing the ability to self-criticize and learn from mistakes. To prevent this, he suggests that “the positive emotions (of pride) . . . be significantly offset by negative emotions (of shame).” Overall, he favors promoting civic identification, so that citizens feel connected to their country – or one might as easily say “nation” – and motivated to improve it, but do not feel a blind love for it. Rogers Smith (2003) adds an important nuance to this line of argument, one that I extend and test in the following sections. In building up a sustained sense of peoplehood, he emphasizes the importance of “ethically constitutive stories.” These are stories of the nation that portray membership as intrinsic to who a person is and thus natural; since such stories are invariably positive, they make membership seem inherently worthwhile and ennobling. As Smith explains, “To believe one’s self to be a beloved child of God or a member of a superior race or the descendent of heroic ancestors or the bearer of a brilliant culture is to have a firm basis for a sense of meaning, place, purpose, and pride” (2003, 98). Ethically

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constitutive stories motivate us; they give us a “sense of partnership in a larger, meaningful collective existence and its shared endeavors” (2003, 101), and they, in some form or another, may be essential for human flourishing. But Smith is also concerned with the perils of pride. So he advocates that such stories offer praise not for the supposedly inherent and fixed qualities of a nation – its “greatness” – but rather for shared historical experiences, adaptability, and perseverance through thick and thin. Indeed, he suggests that “most people will be more strongly motivated, rather than alienated, if they see their political identities as partly constituted by histories displaying both good and bad elements” (2003, 160). If nationalism always involves some type of praise for citizens and their nation, he suggests that it focus more on contingent choices, processes, and achievements, rather than a primordialist sense of collective self. Thus, the nation should be praised, not as a fixed and unchanging entity established long ago and piously preserved through history, but rather as a dynamic collective creation imbued with agency and evolving purpose, which can endeavor to change and improve itself. MacMullen (2014, 84) also hints at this distinction in the types of pride that nationalism can invoke. He rejects nationalistic praise “whose function is to cultivate positive sentiments toward the polity itself,” preferring the type focused on “arousing feelings of pride at some of the polity’s specific actions.” Liah Greenfeld (2003), a scholar of nationalism who is especially concerned with its role in contributing to market economies, also draws attention to the ways in which pride and dignity are invoked. She argues that nationalism facilitates market economies when it imbues economic growth with a positive value, so that both national and individual pride are tied to economic achievement, and economic activity itself is given a heightened dignity above and beyond its role in furthering individual self-interest. Yet whether this occurs “depends on the type and specific character of particular nationalisms,” and not every nationalism has this “built-in component” (2003, 23). Some nationalisms, she suggests, “may be consistently opposed to linking national dignity (and, by implication, personal status) to moneymaking, denying it dignity, and may lack the element of economic nationalism altogether” (2003, 475). Greenfeld does not directly examine how existing nationalisms in the contemporary era might be recast along these lines. Yet her historical arguments are suggestive and call for further research in these areas. They also align with the broader concern in the literature for nations of the future to better balance self-respect with self-improvement.

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As we will see below, the idea that nationalism, to recalibrate in these ways, should praise nations and citizens for their contingent achievements, rather than their identities as such, is closely aligned with the social psychology literature on the nature of praise itself and the conditions under which it succeeds as a motivator. Together, these insights point to better ways in which nationalism might be used to motivate citizens to achieve and contribute in the context of a global market era, particularly for the shared purpose of building stronger market economies that can create jobs for all, and, at the same time, foster pride and self-confidence. Insights from Social Psychology A central theme in the literature on motivation, as discussed in Chapter 6, is that praise, while often assumed to be a straightforward and effective tool to motivate individuals and shape their behavior, can have complex effects. Such effects result in part from the different ways in which praise is actually understood and interpreted by those receiving it. In this respect, an important finding is that different types of praise often lead to different outcomes.11 Indeed, in an uncanny reflection of the suggestions above on how to avoid the perils of pride in the context of nationalism and citizenbuilding, a growing body of research emphasizes the benefits of “processpraise” over “person-praise.”12 Process-praise, as the name suggests, is process-oriented; it focuses on a person’s contingent choices, strategies, and effort or work put in, as in “You worked really hard, and that’s great” or “The work you did is strong.” Person-praise, by contrast, focuses on the person being praised, stressing what appear to be that person’s natural traits and abilities; an example is “You’re great.” The research illustrates that sustained exposure to the two types of praise can lead to very different outlooks on the nature of human attributes in a wide variety of domains, which in turn affect motivation, cognition, and behavior.13 In short, and particularly in youth, personpraise encourages the belief that human attributes are fixed and unchangeable, while process-praise encourages the belief that they are malleable (Mueller and Dweck 1998; Kamins and Dweck 1999; Gunderson et al. 2013). Interestingly, the divide is a familiar one to scholars of nationalism

11 12

13

For an overview, see Henderlong and Lepper (2002). See, for example, Mueller and Dweck (1998), Kamins and Dweck (1999), Bayat (2011), Gunderson et al. (2013), and Brummelman et al. (2014). For a useful recent discussion, see Gunderson et al. (2013).

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and identity formation, with the former akin to a “primordialist” outlook and the latter a more “constructivist” one. In the social psychology framework, person-praise has been found to foster an “entity” motivational framework, with human attributes such as intelligence, goodness, and worthiness seen as fixed (i.e., “primordial”) entities given by nature. For those with an “entity” framework, success in life is viewed as the result of natural fixed abilities, rather than hard work and effort.14 Having to work hard is not viewed positively, since it is an admission of low fixed ability. By contrast, process-praise encourages an “incremental” or “growth” motivational framework, similar to constructivist views of identity, in which human attributes are seen as malleable.15 Failure is not stigmatized, and is instead viewed as a way to learn and improve. Success is seen as the result of hard work, well-chosen strategies, and deliberate practice. Those with incremental motivational frameworks are more likely to enjoy challenges, seek them out, and generate strategies for improvement. In experiments, those receiving process-praise are more likely to select harder puzzles to solve and adopt adaptive, mastery-oriented responses to setbacks, compared with those who receive person-praise (Mueller and Dweck 1998; Kamins and Dweck 1999). It is worth noting that selfesteem boosting has tended to emphasize person-praise. This is due to an earlier theory suggesting that praising people, independently of how well they perform, will motivate them to achieve at high levels by increasing their general sense of self-efficacy (Branden 1969). Although selfesteem boosting can have other positive effects, such as encouraging one to feel good about oneself, the research now casts significant doubt on the idea that it motivates high achievement (Baumeister et al. 2003; Forsyth et al. 2007; Brummelman et al. 2014). Interestingly, given our purposes of considering these findings in the broader context of citizen-building, the benefits of process-praise may extend well beyond the realm of “achievement” as commonly understood in an intellectual and educational context. Research suggests that incremental motivational frameworks are also associated with pro-social attitudes and behaviors, encouraging what we might think of “achievement” in the domain of ethics.16 In other words, those who believe that human attributes are fixed and unchangeable tend to extend this belief system to social and ethical attributes as well as cognitive ones. For example, they 14 16

15 See Blackwell et al. (2007). Ibid. See, for example, Erdley and Dweck (1993), Levy and Dweck (1999), and Giles and Heyman (2003).

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believe that people they judge as “bad” are doomed to remain that way. As a result, they are less motivated to resolve interpersonal conflicts and tend to endorse negative group stereotypes, even in the face of counterevidence. Moreover, these overall mindsets are themselves malleable; thus, interventions can encourage people to adopt more entity-oriented or incremental beliefs about achievement (Blackwell et al. 2007). By documenting the benefits of process-praise over person-praise, then, the social psychology research on motivation aligns with, and provides empirical microfoundations for, the arguments by scholars in political science that social engineers should praise a nation’s contingent achievements rather than its fixed identity. This literature also points to ways in which nationalism might be repositioned to avoid “crowding out” effects, encouraging not a sense of entitlement but the motivation to achieve at high levels, productive risk-taking, and other development-friendly attitudes.

testing alternative social engineering strategies: jordan and the uae Below I use experiments in Jordan and the UAE to explore alternative social engineering strategies, which put nationalism to use in different ways for the purposes of motivating citizens. I test hypotheses that build on my UAE fieldwork as well as the literatures discussed above. This section has two key goals. The first is to test for the existence of nationalist “crowding out” effects in additional empirical contexts, examining generalizability. The second is to explore more “process-oriented” social engineering alternatives that emphasize praise for the achievements of citizens and their nation rather than fixed abilities and identities. Jordan Jordan is another state in the Middle East where significant effort is being made to foster a more vibrant “knowledge economy.” Jillian Schwedler (2012) describes Jordan as a “neoliberalizing authoritarian state,” and the same might be said for the UAE. As in the UAE, state-led social engineering in Jordan to foster greater creativity, problem-solving, entrepreneurialism, and high achievement across the board has been extensive, and ruling elites are largely driving the effort, assisted by international partners.17 For 17

See Shirazi (2010) and Kubow and Kreishan (2014).

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example, the World Bank has contributed more than $120 million since 2003 for Jordan’s “Education Reform for Knowledge Economy” program (Shirazi 2010). The 2003 education reform plan emphasizes that “entrepreneurial life skills and mindsets . . . are major goals” (Masri et al. 2010, 9). Spearheading many of these efforts, Queen Rania has emphasized the “power of education,” which “lies not in the pages of textbooks, or the recital of facts and figures. It resides in the mind of a child who is taught how to think. How to learn. How to navigate the world, avoid whirlpools, climb mountains.”18 Curtis Ryan (2002, 117) highlights King Abdullah’s commitment to neoliberal-style reforms, and quotes one of his former cabinet ministers observing that “development is what defines [the king].” Both Jordan and the UAE are pro-Western monarchies whose leaders have sought to build a unified national identity over pre-existing tribal identities; in Jordan, this has most recently taken the form of the “Jordan First” campaign. Although Jordan is not resource-rich, it has rentier characteristics because of its reliance on foreign aid, with many citizens preferring government jobs and viewing the state as a major provider (Knowles 2005; Ryan 2002). It is thus a likely candidate for nationalist “crowding out” effects, similar to those found in the UAE. Thus, with the Jordan experiment, my goal was to examine how different types of nationalistic praise and encouragement, coming directly from government officials, would affect development-related attitudes. As in the UAE experiment discussed in Chapter 6, in which a small dose of nationalistic praise triggered a heightened sense of entitlement to a government job, I focused on high-school age youth in regular government schools (n=288, 59% female).19 Following Kamins and Dweck (1999), I adapted a vivid role-playing approach using scenarios in which I manipulated the types of praise study participants imagined themselves receiving in a survey. For treatment groups, the praise was embedded in the survey after each student completed an initial demographic section. Students in the first treatment group received nationalistic person-praise, in which the scenario described how the student was selected based on a school project to meet King Abdullah 18 19

See Queen Rania’s website, www.queenrania.jo/rania/vision, accessed March 5, 2015. The sample included Grade 10 students attending six government schools. Two were located in Amman, two north of Amman in the Ghor area, and two south of Amman in the Karak area. Four were girls’ schools, and two were for boys. Data were collected in Jordan in March 2014 with the excellent logistical support of the Queen Rania Foundation.

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because he or she was very smart and a leader, and the country “needs people like you, who are so smart.” Students assigned to the second treatment group received nationalistic process-praise: they read that they were selected because they worked hard, and because the country “needs people like you, who are willing to take risks and tackle big challenges.” The third (control) group received no praise. Thus students received nationalistic-person praise, nationalistic process-praise, or no praise at all. Within schools, subjects were randomly assigned to the three groups. The survey included items that tapped aspects of entitlement, achievement motivation, and adaptability (or response to failure). The aspect of entitlement on the survey related to subjects’ expectations about government employment. The item read, “I expect to be offered a good government job.”20 For achievement motivation, I adapted an instrument (Leggett 1985) assessing subjects’ willingness to take on challenges in which they might learn something new, yet which are also difficult and so involve some risk of failure – a measure of productive risk-taking. All students were asked what kinds of puzzles they would like to try solving: easy ones where they know they’ll get the answer right, or more challenging ones, where they might learn something; the resulting measure of productive risk-taking combined answers to three items.21 To measure adaptability, or response to failure, all students read a gentle failure scenario toward the end of the survey, adapted from Kamins and Dweck (1999), in which they imagined themselves trying to give a speech but forgetting some of their lines. Subjects were then asked whether they would like to try giving the speech again tomorrow.22 Importantly, research suggests that a high tolerance for failure and willingness to persist in the face of setbacks are crucial features of successful entrepreneurial cultures (Saxenian 1994). The results support the hypothesis that nationalistic praise can unintentionally “crowd out” development-friendly mindsets. Strikingly, as Figure 7.1 shows, those who received nationalistic praise, regardless of the type, agreed significantly more with the statement, “I expect to be 20 21

22

Answers were coded on a scale ranging from 1=Strongly disagree to 7=Strongly agree. The three items were “I’d prefer to do some puzzles that aren’t too hard so I don’t get many wrong,” “I’d prefer puzzles that I’m pretty good at so I can show that I’m smart,” and “I’d prefer puzzles that are easy so I’ll do well.” Responses were coded on a scale ranging from 1=Strongly disagree to 7=Strongly agree, reverse-scored, and then averaged so that higher overall scores indicate higher willingness to take on challenges. The item read, “I would like to try giving the speech again tomorrow,” and responses were coded on a scale from 1=Strongly disagree to 7=Strongly agree.

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Expect to be offered a good govt job

7 6.5 6 5.5 5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 No praise

Nationalistic process-praise

Nationalistic person-praise

figure 7.1 Compared to those receiving no praise, those who received nationalistic person-praise were more expectant of being offered a good government job (p ≤ 0.01, two-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.42). The same was true for those receiving nationalistic process-praise (p ≤ 0.001, two-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.55). The difference in the means between the two treatment groups, however, was not significant.

offered a good government job,” compared to those who received no praise. Thus, mirroring the results from the UAE experiment discussed in Chapter 6, the findings suggest that being praised in a nationalistic spirit can encourage a sense of entitlement to a government job. Although the mean levels of agreement differed significantly when comparing the control group and the two treatment groups, the difference between the means across the two treatment groups was not significant. Further results from this experiment point to nationalistic “crowding out” effects on productive risk-taking, and suggest that the type of nationalistic praise can matter. As shown in Figure 7.2, those in the control group who received no praise were the most willing to say they wanted to try solving harder puzzles in which they might learn something new. Those who received nationalistic person-praise were less willing to take on challenges compared to those in the control group, and the difference in means was significant. This was not the case for those who received nationalistic process-praise; mean levels of productive risk-taking were not significantly different across the control group and the nationalistic process-praise group. This is consistent with the social psychology literature illustrating that person-praise is especially detrimental when it comes

Conclusion Willingness to take on challenges

214 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 No praise

Nationalistic process-praise

Nationalistic person-praise

figure 7.2 Those in the control group who received no praise were the most willing to take on challenges. Compared to those receiving no praise, those who received nationalistic person-praise were less willing to take on challenges (p ≤ 0.01, two-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.41). Mean levels of productive risk-taking were not significantly different across the control group and the nationalistic processpraise group. Those in the nationalistic process-praise group were more willing to take on challenges than those in the nationalistic person-praise group, but the difference was just shy of significance at the 10% level.

to motivating high achievement, while process-praise can be far more effective. A similar pattern was found in the results for adaptability, or response to failure. As discussed above, all students read a gentle failure scenario toward the end of the survey in which they forgot some of their lines while attempting to give a speech. Then they were asked to rate their agreement with the statement, “I would like to try giving the speech again tomorrow.” The results were striking. Those who received nationalistic personpraise were the least willing to say they wanted to try giving the speech again tomorrow; they displayed the lowest adaptability in the face of failure. By contrast, those who had initially received nationalistic processpraise or no praise at all were significantly more willing to try the speech again the next day, compared to the nationalistic person-praise group. This result is also consistent with the social psychology literature illustrating how person-praise can lead to maladaptive responses to failure, with subjects giving up on tasks immediately after setbacks and avoiding similar types of challenge in the future. Overall, then, this experiment provides additional evidence for “crowding out” effects, complementing the findings from the UAE experiment discussed in Chapter 6. Nationalist-tinged praise, intended to

Willingness to persist after a setback

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5.6 5.4 5.2 5 4.8 4.6 4.4 4.2 4 No praise

Nationalistic process-praise

Nationalistic person-praise

figure 7.3 Compared to those receiving no praise, those who received nationalistic person-praise displayed less adaptability (p ≤ 0.05, two-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.30). Mean levels of adaptability were not significantly different across the control group receiving no praise and the nationalistic process-praise group. Comparing the two treatment groups, those who received nationalistic process-praise displayed greater adaptability than those who received nationalistic person-praise (p ≤ 0.05, two-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.32).

motivate citizens to achieve at high levels, may unexpectedly de-motivate them to do so, crowding out development-friendly mindsets by enhancing entitlement, inhibiting risk-taking, and eroding the ability to adapt productively to failure. Consistent with the social psychology literature, the findings also suggest that certain types of nationalistic praise – namely praise for contingent achievements (“process”) over fixed ability (“person”) – may help to avoid nationalist “crowding out” effects in the making of citizens. United Arab Emirates A third experiment examined the deeper question of whether differently constructed images of the nation itself affect development-friendly mindsets. What makes the Emiratis, the Americans, the French, the Japanese, and all the rest who they are? What are citizens told to believe in these respects? And what are the implications of these beliefs? In this experiment, I build on the findings above as well as the work of Rogers Smith on the implications of differing stories of peoplehood. Although Smith focuses more on ethical implications, his suggestions for reframing

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nationalism, as discussed above, may be very relevant for fostering development-friendly attitudes too. In other words, nationalisms that help inspire people to do good may also motivate them to do well, encouraging achievement at high levels across social, ethical, cultural, intellectual, and economic domains. For this vignette-style experiment, I constructed two short texts describing the UAE nation. My goal was to test the hypothesis that stories of peoplehood emphasizing pride in contingent achievements (i.e., nationalistic process-praise) are associated with higher motivation to achieve and productive risk-taking compared to those emphasizing pride in a fixed national identity (i.e., nationalistic person-praise). To construct these texts, I drew from Rogers Smith’s Stories of Peoplehood (2003) as well as the social psychology literature on types of praise. In Stories of Peoplehood, Smith considers different national stories, with an emphasis on “ethically constitutive stories,” as discussed above. These define the “core” of a people, portraying membership as both positive and intrinsic to who a person is. As Smith (2003, 69) puts it, “All members of a community valorized in an ethically constitutive story are offered a secure sense of self-worth or self-respect because of their innate participation in a valuable common identity, as one of ‘God’s chosen people,’ a ‘master race,’ a great culture or historic people.” But such stories of peoplehood can vary in important ways. Although some may emphasize a fixed identity that is biological, based on fixed bloodlines, or religiously ordained, others can be “purely historical, in that they present the communities and forms of membership existing in the world into which we are born as the contingent products of past historical actions” (2003, 65). Smith argues that such secular historical accounts of peoplehood are preferable to those emphasizing a fixed and unchanging identity, since they open the door to self-improvement. In the American case, for example, Smith notes that some stories of peoplehood are designed more to “persuade Americans of their special greatness and moral superiority than they are to suggest ways Americans might confront and improve upon their failings” (2003, 193). He prefers the latter: to see “the American story as primarily authored by the American people themselves, acting as agents in human history, and to hold them – us – responsible for defining our civic aims and identity” (2003, 188). The two texts I constructed for the UAE experiment build on these ideas. One portrayed the UAE nation as having a fixed identity that is inherently special and great, blessed by God. It was thus a variation of nationalistic person-praise. It read as follows:

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The UAE is a very special country, and so are its citizens. It is an ambitious, successful, and confident nation, blessed by God with rich natural resources. It is a world-class country that rivals the best countries in the world. Because of its greatness, it serves as a role model and leader in the Middle East. Everyone admires and respects the UAE.

The other text portrayed the UAE nation as a work-in-progress, primarily authored by the UAE people themselves and open to self-improvement. It emphasized shared historical experience, contingent achievements, hard work, diversity, and well-chosen strategies, rather than inherent greatness. It was thus a variation of nationalistic process-praise. It read as follows: The UAE is a work in progress. It is a multinational country with great cultural diversity. Over history, it has overcome great poverty and achieved progress by making good decisions and using natural resources in a wise way. Its people have worked very hard to achieve higher standards of living. Although the UAE has faced some challenges, it has learned every time, and it will grow stronger as its people continue to contribute to development through hard work, sacrifice for the nation, and problem-solving.

Students at two regular government high schools (n=131, 45% male) were randomly assigned to read one of the two texts.23 After reading the text, all students filled out a short questionnaire, which used the same instrument discussed above tapping achievement motivation in the form of productive risk-taking – that is, subjects’ willingness to take on challenges from which they might learn something, but which also involve the risk of failure. Figure 7.4 displays the results. As predicted, those who read the text emphasizing the UAE’s contingent achievements (i.e., nationalistic process-praise) were significantly more willing to take on challenges than those who read the text emphasizing the UAE’s inherent greatness (i.e., nationalistic person-praise). Thus, these results provide further evidence that certain types and uses of nationalism can “crowd out” development-friendly mindsets. They are also aligned with the shared insights of nationalism scholars and social psychologists about the question of motivation and the need to balance self-respect with self-improvement. Overall, the experimental results suggest that process-oriented nationalisms that stress contingent achievements, rather than fixed abilities and 23

The two schools were located in Ras Al Khaimah, the northernmost emirate; one was a boys’ school, the other a girls’ school. Data were collected in the UAE in April 2014 with excellent logistical support from the Al Qasimi Foundation.

Conclusion

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Willingness to take on challenges

4 3.8 3.6 3.4 3.2 3 2.8 2.6 2.4 2.2 2 Nationalistic process-praise

Nationalistic person-praise

figure 7.4 Those who received nationalistic process-praise displayed higher levels of productive risk-taking, or the willingness to take on challenges, compared to those receiving nationalistic person-praise (p ≤ 0.05, one-tailed, Cohen’s d = 0.29).24

identities (i.e., “greatness”), are better suited to the making of citizens for a global market era – and perhaps the grander task of encouraging human flourishing on a global level.

building citizens in imperfect contexts The making of citizens, 2.0 is a multilayered and universal challenge, and one that seems especially crucial to the future of the Middle East. Yet some might find it unrealistic to speak of the “making of citizens” at all in contexts that are often authoritarian, corrupt, conflict-ridden, and otherwise problematic. Others might feel there is something fundamentally unfair about autocrats urging their subjects to work harder, start new businesses, exhibit greater self-reliance, study more, tolerate others more, volunteer more – in other words, to take on new and more active roles, without enhanced political and civil rights. And there is indeed something very unfair about it. Without a greater stake in society and sense of overall fairness, why should anyone seek to achieve or contribute? Why should they “love” their country and contribute to its development?25 24 25

A one-tailed test is justified because the hypothesis was directional. Margaret Levi (1997) has made this point well, albeit in the context of consent to military conscription and thus what I call the making of citizens, 1.0. In Consent, Dissent, and

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It is an important question, and greater democracy in the Middle East may well help to solve issues associated with the making of citizens, 2.0. But it is unrealistic to expect democracy to be a silver bullet, in these respects as in others. The experience of newly democratic Tunisia, apparently the lone success of the Arab Spring (Bellin 2012; Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds 2013; Masoud 2015), is suggestive. Young Tunisian men interviewed on the subject of why Tunisia has so far supplied the highest number of recruits to ISIS – despite Tunisia’s democratic transition – stress that democracy has not solved their problems, particularly in terms of creating jobs (Kirkpatrick 2014). Fadi Ghandour, Arab entrepreneur and founder of Aramex, the leading logistics and transportation company in the Middle East, put things more pointedly: “Yes, political freedom and political expression are important. [But] without economic vibrancy, in any country, democracy becomes an empty promise.”26 This is not to denigrate courageous Arab Spring protests and other efforts to promote democracy, increase accountability, and fight corruption. These are essential parts of the overall reform agenda in the Middle East. Rather, it is to stress that the challenge of reshaping citizens for a global market era is likely to arise regardless of whether countries are democratic, authoritarian, or “hybrids.”27 Amat Al Alim Alsoswa, a Yemeni journalist and activist, and also former director of the UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Arab States, also makes the point. Focusing on education reform in particular, she says that “[Arab countries] will have no alternative but to tackle this issue.”28 Interestingly, the region’s transnational entrepreneurial movement has also seemed to embrace the idea that business creation, social entrepreneurship, and other forms of human achievement and flourishing can, and indeed must, happen despite political contexts that are far from perfect.29 Palestinian-born Saed Nashef, a venture capitalist, has observed that “So much is happening despite occupation and political challenges.”30 Arif Naqvi, a founder of Dubai’s Celebration of Entrepreneurship, the

26

27 29 30

Patriotism, she argues that citizens’ willingness to consent to military conscription in democracies depends on the extent to which they view the government as treating them fairly and anticipate that other citizens will do their share. Thus, consent is contingent upon overall levels of perceived fairness. Quoted in Peel (2012). See, also, Brown (2011) for a recent treatment of the important question of whether and when democracy “makes things better,” and the role of economic development. On hybrid regimes, see Levitsky and Way (2010). 28 Quoted in IRIN News (2012). For an overview of the movement, see Schroeder (2013). Quoted in Schroeder (2013, 192).

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week-long event described in Chapter 4, criticizes the tendency in the international press to describe the region as “one big war zone.”31 “Events that happen in Syria,” he adds, “should not detract from what the region can accomplish.” Drawing from his interviews with young Arab entrepreneurs, Christopher Schroeder (2013, 14) has observed that they are “above all realistic about the odds against them, yet unfazed by the political and infrastructural barriers . . . [They] are not naïve. They expect setbacks. But they believe they are on the right side of history.” As that remark suggests, although business creation and entrepreneurship are not phenomena we typically associate with issues of citizenship and social responsibility, many within the Arab start-up culture seem to connect them all the same. A key theme is that citizens must not only protest, but also build. In a piece on contemporary women entrepreneurs, journalist Elizabeth MacBride (2013) writes, “The women involved see themselves at the vanguard of a movement that is about more than economics.” Fadi Ghandour, the Aramex founder, and among the movement’s most ardent supporters, has been especially vocal in making these points. He essentially stresses the need for young citizens to address shared problems, aiming to build society as well as tear corrupt elements of it down. He argues that the Arab Spring itself is an expression of the new entrepreneurial mindset, and should be about job creation as much as political reform.32 To this end, he calls for a “generation that creates companies, a generation that employs rather than looks for employment.”33 On his blog, he elaborates on these themes, noting that “unemployment is denying legions of Arab youth a dignified and productive life.” Without new approaches in the “struggle for our societies’ socio-economic progress,” such problems: will haunt future generations, much like they have harassed and demoralized past ones. Now that the Arab world is contemplating a transformative leap, we, in the private sector, must seize the moment, recognize our vital role in the development of our region, tap into our huge reservoir of knowledge and experience and put vision and resources in action.34

It is worth noting that the UAE, along with Jordan, is a major hub for the growing transnational entrepreneurial movement, and it is not difficult to see why. The UAE, despite its persistent authoritarianism, consistently ranks among the best the Arab world has to offer in terms of the ease of doing business, low corruption, high transparency, and strong rule of

31 33

32 Quoted in Schroeder (2013, 195). See Peel (2012). 34 Quoted in Derhally (2012). See Ghandour (2013).

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law.35 Millions of Arab and other expats flock to Dubai to work, study, start new businesses, create art, find mates, make the world better, and otherwise lead meaningful lives within a diverse, calm, and relatively tolerant environment boasting significant positive energy. Strikingly, and despite the post-Arab Spring security crackdown in the UAE, the 2014 Arab Youth Survey reported that most young Arabs list the UAE as the top country in which they want to live, adding too that it is the country they most want their own countries to follow and emulate (ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller 2014). The UAE’s appeal may even have been amplified by the Arab uprisings.36 The challenge of citizen-building – of any kind – within “imperfect” contexts is thus a complex one, with political, social, economic, and moral dimensions. Despite its popularity, the UAE is also a country whose residents lack political rights, and where significant social injustice exists, particularly in light of conditions for migrant workers and many of those living in outlying regions. No citizen-building context will ever be perfect. Ultimately, the question of whether the “making of citizens” for a global market era is fair or else doomed to fail within authoritarian, rentier, and otherwise imperfect contexts may be less important than the fact that it is happening, and thus deserves close study. Indeed, the deeper question may be how it happens at all – how creativity, innovation, business creation, the arts, civic-mindedness, and the like can sometimes flourish within imperfect political environments and despite suboptimal institutions. In this respect, the literature on Renaissance Florence is fascinating, and suggests future avenues for research. Florence of that period had much in common with areas of the contemporary Middle East, with elements of authoritarianism, corruption, and clientalism, with personalistic, family, and other connections akin to wasta playing a significant role in shaping people’s destinies. Yet, despite all this, Florence displayed dazzling creativity, its residents achieving at high levels and often innovating in business, science, the arts, literature, constitutional design, and political theory. As Padgett and McLean (2006, 1465) put it, “the most striking global feature about Renaissance Florence is the sheer multiplicity of domains in which inventions occurred: inventions seemed to cascade 35

36

See Mustafa (2012), Broomhall (2012), Arnold (2013), John (2014), as well as Transparency International’s reports, the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business surveys, and the Rule of Law Index by the World Justice Project. As Marc Lynch (2016, xviii) observes, “An absolutist monarchy like the United Arab Emirates or Qatar or a military dictatorship like post-coup Egypt may look appealing when compared to the horrors of a collapsing Libya or an apocalyptic Syria and Iraq.”

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from one domain to another.” The puzzle, then, is “How did such a conservative and traditional place, not motivated to innovate per se, nonetheless innovate so prolifically?” Applied to the contemporary Middle East, the question might be reframed to emphasize how some in the region are innovating despite their own imperfect political contexts, and how others might be better supported and encouraged to do so too via social engineering and other strategies. Research on the making of citizens, 2.0 – under stress, in a sense – would be very useful, and it might build productively on the literature on Renaissance Florence, focusing on how citizens and some political leaders find workarounds and unexpected avenues of innovation, similar to Diane Singerman’s “avenues of participation” in urban Cairo. For example, surprisingly, given the commonsense notion that political turmoil is bad for development, Padgett and McClean (2006, 2011) find that political turmoil in Florence facilitated its overall inventiveness. They also question the idea that “impersonal” markets said to mark the rise of capitalism were ever so impersonal and unburdened by tradition and family in the first place. As Saudi activist and businesswoman Reem Assad, encapsulating the spirit of this book, has said on the subject of the Arab world’s female entrepreneurs, “How things will unfold remains uncertain . . . It is the process of progress and growth that is worth documenting and learning from.”37 We can learn from the UAE’s efforts at “pro-globalization” and “pro-market” social engineering, its own drive for a knowledge renaissance, even though the country is young, authoritarian, and rentier. Indeed, this book builds knowledge about both the opportunities as well as the risks involved in seeking to build more “entrepreneurial” citizens in less-than-perfect circumstances. State efforts to foster “knowledge societies” may unintentionally heighten entitlement, worsening problems of over-reliance on government jobs that they intend to solve. Nationalism can backfire in unexpected ways, and might need to be reframed not only for ethical but also economic and other reasons. Heightened entitlement can co-exist with greater love of country, tolerance, and civic-mindedness in the form of entitled patriots. Above all, the challenge of reshaping citizens for a global market era is likely to be with us for some time. There is thus a need for more research examining how leaders in different contexts are addressing it, what outcomes they are achieving, and why.

37

Quoted in Syeed and Zafar (2014).

appendix a Ethnography, Interviews, and Focus Groups

Evidence collected included ethnography, interviews, and focus groups during fieldwork in the UAE from 2010–2014, approved by the Yale University Institutional Review Board (IRB). Interviews and focus groups were conducted in Arabic, English, or a combination. Settings included palaces, school classrooms, school administrative offices, business offices, government offices, and cafes or restaurants. With permission, interviews and focus groups were recorded to ensure accuracy. Recordings were later transcribed into digital format to facilitate keyword searches. Quotations in the text are reproduced and attributed to specific individuals when the statements were made publicly, or when permission to quote was granted. All requests by individuals who preferred not to be named have been honored. With respect to ruling elites, the ethnographic approach offered a particularly valuable method to “see” phenomena the way the actors themselves do, as described in Schatz (2009). Repeated interactions provided a means to develop a trusting environment in which ruling elites felt comfortable and would let their guard down. Immersion thus provided opportunities for deeper insights into thinking patterns and added a richer layer of understanding compared to that which can be gleaned from scripted speeches and carefully crafted websites. The interactions among ruling elites in palace settings that I observed varied considerably, and included discussions about shared social and political challenges, elaborate jokes, storytelling, and also a kind of “poetic dueling” that is characteristic of Arabian culture. As an obvious outsider, I embraced the role, as Venkatesh (2002) suggests, and posed questions for discussion in order to observe the dialogue that resulted. 223

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Appendix A

I generally did not offer my own opinions, but instead maintained a low profile after posing initial discussion questions. To allow the conversations to proceed organically, I did not take sides. As the only nonEmirati, my presence was certainly noted, but as attendees became accustomed to my presence, they noted it less over time. In the interest of ethnographic reflexivity (Shehata 2006; Pachirat 2009), it is worth noting that my outsider status seemed to relax the ruling elites present at the events, who became less concerned about anything they might say in my presence compared to an Emirati guest who would be tied more closely into the local community, where gossip spreads like wildfire. Likewise, and consistent with Schwedler (2006), I found that my gender did not become a barrier to research in the Middle East, as some have suggested. Indeed, it helped to open doors, perhaps because I was viewed as less threatening. Male research colleagues hypothesized that my gender may have encouraged ruling elites to be more relaxed, and to feel themselves in a safer domestic space where their opinions would not be judged. In his biography of the shah of Iran, Abbas Milani (2011, 36) observed that the elder Reza Khan, the shah’s father, was “more comfortable, less starchy, and less pompous,” more “himself” with Europeans and Americans than with other Iranians. That pattern was likely present in my own ethnographic fieldwork with the ruling elites of the UAE. Because I was an academic, and not an Emirati or journalist, and also because of my Arabic language skills, ruling elites were likely more comfortable in my presence, and more willing to offer their views.

appendix b Survey Evidence

Below can be found question wording and answer scales for dependent variables used in the survey of Emirati youth attitudes (Figure A.1). The survey (typically delivered in Arabic) adapted validated instruments from existing surveys such as the Arab Barometer (AB) and World Values Survey (WVS). It was piloted on a sample of sixty-two Emirati youth in the fall of 2010. Approval of each survey question and the oral statement of informed consent given before administration of the survey was obtained from the Yale University Institutional Review Board (IRB). Each question was also approved by an Emirati university professor. As a result, certain questions were removed and phrases adapted due to local insights about political and cultural sensitivity. For example, as shown below, instead of the word “sheikh,” the preferred phrase was “the leadership of an Emirate.” Likewise, the Arabic term for “the news” was typically substituted for “politics,” and “public decision-making” was preferred to “political participation,” as shown below. In some schools, the questions about freedom of information could not be asked. The survey did not elicit any personally identifying information from respondents. Figure A.2 displays means and standard deviations for the pre and post cohorts within control and treatment groups. Figures A.3-A.6 show the diff-in-diff estimates of treatment effects for the national, civil, political, and economic dimensions of citizenship, respectively. A deeper discussion of these tables, sensitivity checks, and further analysis follows. Figure A.7 tracks attitudes toward science in treatment and control groups across cohorts. This was measured with a four-item instrument, including Likert items such as “Science and technology are making our lives healthier” and “Most scientists want to work on things that will 225

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Appendix B

make life better for the average person.” Responses were coded on a scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree, and then averaged. Higher scores indicate more favorable attitudes toward science. The graph suggests that students’ attitudes toward science are a stable or fixed difference across treatment and control groups. Thus, the diff-in-diff approach controls for it. Of course, it is always possible that differing starting points lead to differing attitudinal trajectories, but the graph below suggests that students’ attitudes toward science did not evolve differently and were instead a stable difference between the two groups.

discussion of sensitivity checks and further analysis The difference-in-differences strategy is a relatively strong one, controlling by design for a wide variety of factors that might affect outcome variables when the identifying assumption is met. These include both fixed differences between treatment and control groups (e.g., selection effects) as well as differences common to both groups over time that might affect attitudes (e.g. maturation effects). But the design also has limitations, like any other approach. Here I address some of these limitations through sensitivity checks and further analysis. In Figures A.3–A.6, columns 1–4 display diff-in-diff average treatment effects resulting from the main analysis clustering standard errors by school and controlling for demographics, emirate fixed differences, and date surveyed. Columns 5–8 display the diff-in-diff average treatment effects using additional specifications. An important initial observation supporting the robustness of the results is the consistency of estimates in the main analysis. Columns 1–4 show that estimated effects remain relatively stable across multiple specifications with differing control variables, including income, parental education, and fixed emirate-level differences. Columns 5–8 report diff-in-diff average treatment effects after performing several sensitivity checks, with each regression including all control variables and continuing to cluster standard errors by school. Column 5 displays ordered probit estimates, due to the use of ordinal dependent variables, such as seven-point Likert scales. These estimates are consistent with the main analysis, suggesting statistically significant change in the same directions. Column 6 reports the results controlling for individual schoollevel differences. The results were not generally sensitive to the addition of nine school dummies as controls.

Dependent variable National dimension a. Patriotism

b. National pride Civil dimension a. Willingness to volunteer for community service

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b. Importance of encouraging tolerance in children c. Support for freedom of information

d. Support for government accountability

Survey question

Answer scale

Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Includes Average of four items; each item: 1=Strongly agree items such as “I love the UAE” and “People should support the to 7=Strongly disagree UAE government even if they think it is doing something wrong.” How do you feel about the UAE in each of the following areas? Average of six items; each item: 1=Not at all proud Includes items such as “its history and cultural heritage,” “the to 7=Very proud way its government works,” and “its military.” Littering has made a major national landmark very unattractive, and some people think that UAE citizens have a civic obligation to help clean it up. How much time would you be willing to volunteer to help the clean-up effort during a two-week break? People value different things when raising children. What do you think is most important to encourage in children today; “tolerance of others.” The statements below show a range of opinions that people have about different issues. If you agree completely with the statement on the left, then choose 1. If you agree completely with the statement on the right, then choose 7. Otherwise, circle a number in between 1 and 7 that best fits your own opinion regarding these issues. Choose only one number for each question. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Includes items such as “Information on whether government policies are effective should be made available to the public” and “UAE government agencies should share information about their activities with citizens.”

(1) None, the government should handle it; (2) 1 hour; (3) 2 hours . . . (14) All 2 weeks 1=Not important at all to 7=Very important Average of two items: 1= “UAE nationals should not be able to watch any movie they want” to 7= “UAE nationals should be able to watch any movie they want; 1=“UAE nationals should not be able to access any website they want” to 7= “UAE nationals should be able to access any website they want.” Average of three items; each item: 1=Strongly agree to 7=Strongly disagree

Political dimension a. Personal interest in political participation

228

How interested are you in contributing to (1) public decisionAverage over two items; each item: 1=Not making in the UAE? (2) public decision-making in your own interested at all to 7=Very interested Emirate? b. Support for general right of For the development of the UAE, please rate how important each 1=Not important at all to 7=Very important political participation for all of the following is to you; “The right of UAE nationals to have citizens a say in government policymaking.” c. Support for traditional How often do you think the leadership of an Emirate should spend 1=Once a year, 2=Once every 6 months, 3=Once political participation meeting with Emirati leaders and heads of families in person in every 3 months, 4=Once a month, 5=Once order to resolve problems and discuss other matters? a week, 6=Every day Economic dimension a. Support for the right to For the development of the UAE, please rate how important each 1= Not important at all to 7=Very important a government job of the following is to you; “The right of UAE nationals to receive a government job.” 1=Not willing at all to 7=Very willing b. Willingness to start Imagine the federal government is encouraging young UAE a business nationals to take on new responsibilities in the development of the country. How willing would you be to start your own business as an entrepreneur, even though it might fail? a. Work ethic Do you agree or disagree with the following statements? Includes Average of five items; each item: 1=Strongly disagree to 7=Strongly agree items such as “People who don’t work become lazy” and “Work should always come first, even if it means less free time.”

figure a.1 Question wording and answer scales

Control Variable Income

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Level of mother’s education Level of father’s education n*

Treatment

Description

Pre

Post

Pre

Post

Indicator for income bracket (scaled 1–7), higher scores indicate higher self-reported income Indicator for mother’s education (scaled 1–3), higher scores indicate higher education Indicator for father’s education (scaled 1–3), higher scores indicate higher education

4.25 (1.11)

4.11 (0.96)

4.67 (0.96)

4.34 (0.88)

1.49 (0.61)

1.49 (0.69)

1.92 (0.67)

1.71 (0.70)

1.54 (0.68)

1.66 (0.76)

2.06 (0.71)

1.99 (0.76)

276

243

1260

222

* The pre cohort for treatment schools is particularly large because the treatment schools were growing, with greater

numbers of students being admitted. In addition, treatment schools follow the American high school model (Grades 9–12), while regular government schools offer only Grades 10–12. Treatment schools thus admit students to begin in both grades 9 and 10, and both cohorts were surveyed for the pre category in the treatment group, compared to only Grade 10 for the control group. figure a.2 Descriptive statistics for diff-in-diff data

Main analysis

(1) ols Dependent variables Patriotism

230

National pride Controls Income and parental education Emirate-level fixed differences Date surveyed

(2) ols

(3) ols

Sensitivity checks

(4) ols

(5) Ordered probit

(6) Add school dummies (ols)

(7) Remove Grade 9 (ols)

(8) Remove Dubai treatment school (ols)

0.28** (0.08) 0.70*** (0.13)

0.25* (0.08) 0.67** (0.16)

0.22* (0.07) 0.59** (0.14)

0.27* (0.09) 0.77** (0.22)

0.28** 0.10 0.47** (0.16)

0.20+ (0.10) 0.65* (0.23)

0.20 (0.13) 0.70* (0.25)

0.26* (0.09) 0.68* (0.24)

No No No

Yes No No

Yes Yes No

Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes

Notes: + p