Abstract

The Arab uprisings have disrupted many long-standing assumptions about the nature of political change in the Middle East, inspiring renewed expectations or skepticism about the processes of regional liberalization and democratization. The scale and outcomes of the citizen-led changes that began in late 2010 were unprecedented, but debates over democracy and political change facilitated by tech-savvy youth are not. In fact, these issues have histories and examples from other Arab countries that can offer conceptual insights for making sense of contemporary regional upheavals. In Kuwait, for example, a constitutional monarchy has been incrementally ceding power since the 1960s to one of the most autonomous of Arab parliaments, interspersed with periods of social unrest.

Dr. Fahed Al-Sumait described processes of political communication in Kuwait as currently practiced by Islamists, liberals, women’s activists, and other political actors who play a central role in the country’s efforts toward gradual liberalization. He outlined respondents’ strategies for targeting audiences, crafting messages, and utilizing various means of communication to deliver information and collect public feedback. The findings came from fieldwork interviews over a 10-month period overlapping the beginning of the Arab uprisings with respondents representing approximately forty percent of the legislature and half of the cabinet, as well as civil society leaders, political activists, academics, journalists and the leaders of each major political “party.” While Kuwait possesses regionally unparalleled levels of media saturation, high degrees of press freedom, and a politically active citizenry, at the same time it shares several social, economic, and political elements with neighboring countries. This makes its analysis important in itself and simultaneously relevant to larger discussions on pan-Arab and pan-Islamic forms of political change.