Political Institutions of Kuwait

Full Transcript:

Introduction: 

What you do you know about Kuwait’s political system. Probably like most listeners, I’d say not that much. So this episode provides many facts and insights into the political institutions of Kuwait. Looking at various democracy ratings, Kuwait is assessed as a partial democracy by some and as an authoritarian regime by others. What becomes clear though in this discussion is that the institutions really do matter, and their evolution over time changes the balance of power.

With Luai Allarakia I discuss Kuwait’s political system and institutions. He lays out the most important developments since its constitution was written in 1962, and how Kuwait – a country of 4.3 million people –  tries to manage its political trajectory between presidentialism and parliamentarism. It is following its own path, that is led by a hereditary monarch, the emir of Kuwait. While a lot of power is concentrated in the emir, who can appoint the prime minister, the National Assembly of Kuwait, or KNA in short, is elected by the people. Elections are a national sport in Kuwait, says Luai. 

He shares with us many institutional features and rules that may seem very specific to Kuwait, but are interesting to compare to other political systems. In the end, you realize that the system is based on many different written and unwritten rules and norms – like any political system. 

So in this conversation we really take the time to go into some detail of Kuwait’s institutions and I think it’s really worth it to talk about the specificities that are partly similar and partly different from a well-established democracy.

Luai Allarakia is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Richmond in the US. He got his PhD in Political Science and Government from the University of Houston, where he wrote his thesis on the Dynamics of Legislatures in Monarchical Regimes, exemplified by Kuwait’s National Assembly (KNA). His research specializes in Kuwait’s legislature, the Saudi Shura Council, and Gulf Arab affairs. He also regularly comments on political developments in the Gulf states. You can follow him on Twitter and Linkedin and link to his profiles in the show notes.

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the thirty-third episode of The Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of this episode on my website rulesofthegame.blog. Please send any feedback to rulesofthegame.ddi@gmail.com. If you like the podcast and want to do me a favor, please give it a 5-star rating. If you’d like to support my work, consider buying me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com and you find the link to it on my website rulesofthegame.blog. 

Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Luai Allarakia.

Discussion:

Stephan Kyburz: Luai Allarakia, welcome to the Rules of the Game Podcast. I’m very happy to have you on the show.

Luai Allarakia: Thank you so much for having me. I’m a huge fan of the podcast. 

Stephan Kyburz: Cool! That’s great to hear. First question is always what is your first memory of democracy or politics in general? 

Luai Allarakia: It’s not so much a memory of democracy, It’s really a memory of politics. You know, given where I grew up. I grew up in Saudi Arabia. I spent most of my life there until I did my PhD around 26 years old. I would say my life was always infused by politics. I mean I remember some of my earliest memories were the clashes with some Khomeini inspired protesters in the you know the Grand Mosque. I lived through the invasion of Kuwait in 1991. But to me my introduction in politics was really the trauma of 9/11. I was actually doing my bachelors in the U.S. And you know the events broke out in 9/11 and my parents didn’t think it was very safe for somebody from Saudi Arabia to be there. And so they said maybe it’s better for you to just come home because things are very tense. When I went back, you know the trauma led me to read everything I could get my hands on about politics. I’m like what was going on? Why did something so drastic, so insane, so horrible, so brutal happen? And you know I started reading some of the typical literature. I started with a lot of Chomsky and that really inspired me to kind of understand the events that were happening. But by the mid 2000’s, I was really getting sick of the repetitive arguments from some of the works I was looking at and I’m like this is… I needed something new, I wanted something more structured. So I started reading a bit more about institutions and how they work and things like that. And I eventually went to the U.S. to do my PhD, it was around 2008, actually, 2009. And the funny thing is, is as I got into a PhD program, this coincided with another traumatic event, which was the Arab Spring. So the Arab Spring sort of exploded during my first semester in graduate school. And for me that was a game changer. I had been interested in authoritarian regimes and why they persist. But now these events seem to take place and it was shocking to me how little regard there was in that whole discussion for institutions and for actually building institutions from scratch. And so that really inspired me to, especially the trauma of the Arab Spring not succeeding and mostly becoming kind of a chaotic event that really inspired me to study institutions. Hopefully as a safeguard for when the next moment like this comes to be armed with understanding of institutions and how could they have worked in critical moments like the Arab Spring. 

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks for sharing those memories. And I think these windows of opportunities are very important and they’re quite rare, right? So that’s also something I try to do on the podcast with the discussions. When there is a window of opportunity, people have to be ready, right? And know what’s maybe possible. 

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz: Today, we’d like to talk about Kuwait, about the institutions in Kuwait. You refer to, you know, the Arab Spring, so maybe we can start there, like what influence had the Arab Spring in Kuwait?

Luai Allarakia: That’s what’s interesting about Kuwait, is that the Arab Spring influence was to in many ways intensify the internal or domestic, you know, dynamics that existed in Kuwait. So I wouldn’t say it changed much because in the case of Kuwait, there were always a set of institutions that lend themselves to a very different type of transition in Kuwait than in other Arab countries. The system is set up in a way where like you can transition to Democracy just by changing certain provisions of the constitution or certain dynamics of power without having to go through the drastic kind of changes that went on in other countries. And so in Kuwait you had massive protests in 2011 that ended up with people essentially breaking into the Kuwaiti National Assembly over charges of corruption, but really the main impetus was massive cases of corruption against pro government MPs and the Arab Spring just inspired a different type of tactic within that dynamic. I didn’t actually need Kuwaitis to say something like we want to remove or overthrow the system just because for them that’s a big no, no. They want to preserve the system. They just want to make it more democratic. 

Stephan Kyburz: So most people probably in the audience of the podcast, maybe, know not that much about Kuwait. Maybe some know that it’s an emirate and it’s in the Persian Gulf. But you know, can you say a few words about the country and also then about the institutions, the Emir, you know, what’s the role of the Emir and what are the main, the principal political institutions?

Luai Allarakia: Of course, executive legislative relations or you know, the way the Constitution of Kuwait is set up has actually a really fascinating story behind it. And this has been a bit frustrating for me because whenever you see a discussion of the origins of the Kuwaiti system and exceptionalism, the discussion is always about, you know, the sort of structural reasons that led to this. Either you had merchants in the pre-oil state of Kuwait and they were very strong. And so the government had to integrate them and as a result of that, it had to create institutions to integrate the merchants and part of these institutions were consultative ones. Some people say it was the Iraqi threat. If you want a good overview of this, there’s a very good paper by Michael Herb. I’ll send you the name of it later, but it’s a very good paper that kind of lays out the main arguments for this exceptionalism. However, one of the things that have been like kind of frustrating to me is that people almost never talk about the founding moment in Kuwait’s history where the institutions were put in place and how that discussion went. So there was a constituent assembly that was set up in 1961 and that constituent assembly went through a pretty extensive discussion of the constitution of Kuwait. And if you look at the transcripts of the proceedings of the constituent assembly, the transcripts of the proceedings to approve the parliamentary rules of procedure in Kuwait, as well as the explanatory notes of the Kuwaiti constitution, you get a lot of interesting insight into this and you realize that this wasn’t a coincidence. These guys had a specific idea in mind. So here’s how it started. And it’s really interesting. You look at the discussion and you go back and you see discussions by one of the opposition members, […], a very well known opposition member at the time and he expresses concern about what he thinks is kind of a disproportionate power that the executive is being given in the constitution. And the answer given by one of the legal scholars and a member of the constitutional committee at the time of […] is a very interesting answer. He says, look in Kuwait, we are lucky to put this constitution in this time frame because we have the experience of other countries. We don’t want to go with something like a presidential system because while it’s stable in many ways, there is the fear of despotic rule and personalistic rule in that. And most of all, he said it’s untenable in Kuwait, because, well, it’s a monarchy, not a republic, so you can’t really have a president. And so he says then parliamentarism was another sort of venue for us. But what’s interesting is he describes parliamentarism as more democratic, but he actually says it actually produces highly unstable cabinets and he interestingly refers to the experience of Europe in the interwar period. And though he doesn’t actually say specifically which country, I’m almost positive, he’s actually talking about the French 4th Republic just because of the way he’s talking about, how motions of confidence were out of control and how you needed a powerful executive but an executive that’s also embedded within the structure of a parliamentary system. So, in many ways, you look at these discussions and you realize that Kuwait is trying to manage a third way between parliamentary and presidential democracy, which isn’t semi-presidential, it’s a different one. One legal scholar, maybe one of the most popular scholars in Kuwait, Abdul Malik Saleh (?) actually describes Kuwait’s system – and this is one of the most odd things for me to hear – as an Orleanist system and I assume it refers to the Orleans dynasty in France. And when I looked into what the comments were based on, I could tell that he was influenced by the French text of Maurice Duverger, in particular: one called the “Institutions of the Republic”. And I don’t speak French, I am sorry, and in this one, Duverger actually lays down the principles of what he calls an Orleanist system in which he says: look, you have a duality of responsibility. So the executive or the cabinet is actually responsible not only to the parliament but towards the Emir. Secondly, there is a wide ranging and critical power of the head of the state. So these are the main principles of this sort of Orleanist system and how does it work in practice? Here’s how it works in practice: The Emir in Kuwait is the hereditary head of the state. He appoints the cabinet and he can also dismiss them. The Emir exercises his powers to the ministers and he does this after traditional consultations. Note here that the main confidence of the cabinet starts off with the Emir. So you don’t have an investiture vote to confirm the prime minister or cabinet. And the idea of consultation is actually a very vague one: traditional consultation. So it’s very clear that the Emir only has the responsibility to have, you know, quote unquote consultations, but really the main responsibility of the cabinet starts with the Emir. Not only this, but the ministers actually become members of the National Assembly. They become something called ex officio members where they can vote on all issues except motions of confidence. And because the ministers are not chosen from the assembly solely, they are chosen from outside the assembly, the consultation of Kuwait adds something interesting and it says: the number of ministers should not exceed one third of the number of the members of the National Assembly. The reason they do this is they don’t want the assembly to lose its representative character, and they want to sort of cap the number at about 16 ministers, many of which would be from outside the assembly. 

Stephan Kyburz: Maybe quickly, just to recap, those discussions that you mentioned in the beginning, they were leading to the constitution of 1962. 

Luai Allarakia: Absolutely, yes. 

Stephan Kyburz: And all those institutions including the prime minister, the cabinet and how they are related to the Emir, and then how parliament relates to the government and the Emir that is all written already in that constitution. Is that right? 

Luai Allarakia: Absolutely. So these discussions end up becoming part of the constitution. There are a lot of interesting things – I’ll be honest with you – the constitution or the constitutional discussions in the constituent assembly, don’t end up changing much. I’ll be honest with you. So, whatever the framers of the constitution had in mind, they ended up mostly passing it. But here’s where the balance comes and here’s where the role of the Kuwaiti National Assembly comes in. The assembly actually has the right to interpellate any members of the cabinet. So they can not only just ask questions, they can interpellate them. So once, like an investigation. Any individual member of the KNA, the Kuwaiti National Assembly, I’m just going to call it KNA from now on, just to make it easier. Any individual member of the KNA can actually put forth an interpellation. These interpellations can actually lead to motions of confidence, where if 10 members decide that they want to put forth a motion of confidence based on that interpellation. And if the majority of the KNA votes, then whichever minister is being interpellated has to actually resign if the confidence is removed from him right now. Now the question is, does this work with the prime minister? Well, this is where once again, you see this interesting balance. In normal parliamentary systems, more or less, once the prime minister’s, once the confidence in the prime minister is removed, he/she generally has to leave. However, in the case of Kuwait, they don’t call it a no confidence motion, they actually call it no cooperation vote. Again, this no cooperation vote can be raised by 10 members and one of the key differences between that and the motion of no confidence is if a no cooperation vote is successful, the prime minister isn’t automatically dismissed or he doesn’t resign. Rather, the emir has to make the decision whether to dismiss the prime minister or relief of power or just to dissolve the assembly. Now, once the assembly gets elected again, a new assembly, if that assembly decides that we don’t really like the prime minister in power yet again, if they vote again, a no cooperation vote, then he has to resign. So, you see how like, even though the National Assembly has great powers to remove individual ministers, they have the power to say, we can’t cooperate with the prime minister, the ultimate final decision is up to the Emir who decides whether he wants to dismiss the prime minister or dissolve the assembly, but then the assembly has yet another chance to remove the prime minister, but this one is going to be the new assembly, right? So it’s an interesting balance. 

Stephan Kyburz: So the emir will essentially observe what’s happening in the National Assembly and how many people oppose the prime minister and the cabinet maybe and then based on that, probably make his call, right? Now, before you know, we go more into these relationships between these different institutions, it would probably be good to know, you know, how is the National Assembly elected? How often are elections held? I know the National Assembly has 64 members I think, and some like 50 are elected and the others are appointed. Can you briefly outline what the National Assembly looks like? 

Luai Allarakia: So the National Assembly is elected every four years, right? But technically, since the Emir has the power to dissolve it and since, you know, no cooperation votes can also lead to the Emir dissolving the assembly. That tenure could be less than four years. And in fact, it’s very rare, at least since 2003 for an assembly to actually go through four years. But otherwise it’s elected every four years. There are 50 members. In addition to that, the ministers that the Emir appoints, those become ex officio members. They can vote on everything except motions of confidence. And, you know, the electoral law has varied over time in Kuwait, but it’s mostly been like different forms of a plurality system with the district magnitude of over one, more than one. 

Stephan Kyburz: I read that it’s a single non transferable vote system (SNTV). So there are multi-member districts and people usually have just one vote. 

Luai Allarakia: It changed several times. The way it started off was a 10 district system where people had five votes, right? So the number of votes was exactly equal to the district magnitude. And then in 1981, after the government shutdown the assembly in 1976 unconstitutionally. And one of the ways in which it tried to gain some balance of power was to make the electoral system even more disintegrated by increasing the number of districts to 25, reducing the number of votes equal to two. And that was based on the district magnitude of two. But then the opposition gained some ground and was able to successfully push forth a system that it felt was more representative. I don’t personally think it was, but that was their opinion where you had five districts, 10 MPs for each district and then four votes, right? And then, when the Emir ran into trouble with the assembly once again in 2012, he decided to change the electoral system by decree. He kept everything, he kept the number of districts the same, the number of MPs the same. But he reduced the number of votes. The logic was if people have four votes, then they could vote for one MP based on whatever, you know, their personal tribal affiliation was or whether they’re familiar association is and then for the other three, they could actually make a political vote. Sometimes they can even vote for impromptu lists. So the Emir thought this was for him like one of the ways in which you can control the opposition was to reduce the number of votes, is just one vote. And in that way it becomes sort of an individualistic vote. And it becomes really, really hard for organized impromptu blocs to actually organize themselves just because, you know, how they would have to compete with each other under an SNTV system. Whereas in a bloc system, they don’t have to, all they have to do is just ask their followers to tell them, okay, you have four votes, one is your own three of these, you know, vote for this particular list. Whereas if you have one, you essentially have to have your own members compete within the same sort of district. 

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks for explaining those developments and before going back to the powers of the Emir. So what does the parliament look like? I guess they’re like different factions with different views, some more liberal, some more conservative? 

Luai Allarakia: The assembly starts off, you know, it really reflects the ideological trends in the Arab world at the time. So, initially you actually have one kind of a very well organized opposition bloc against other blocs that are organized on a pro government basis and some of them are organized honestly on almost like sectarian basis or social affiliation basis. You have an Arab nationalist bloc that later on becomes a leftist bloc. This is in the period before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and that’s kind of how the factions are organized. You have one big opposition bloc, it becomes smaller over time, that’s mostly Arab nationalist leftist. And then you have other employees, some of whom are independent and they voted the Arab nationalist bloc. But the majority is pro government. After the 1990s, the fact that many countries that like held the banner of Arab nationalism essentially supported the invasion of Kuwait or were basically very timid about it, that really changed the structure in Kuwait, where like you saw new ideological trends come to the forefront and this has started happening in the late 80s, where you started to have liberal blocs, Islamist blocs and populist blocs. So, for a long period of time in Kuwait, these were the main three trends: liberal, most of which were like former nationalists, Arab nationalists, they became liberals, populists and then you have Islamists of different variations. So you have the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis, they have different variations, but these are the three main blocs. And what’s interesting is that because in Kuwait political parties are neither sanctioned nor really prohibited. There’s really no clear constitutional amendment, like saying you can’t have parties or you should have parties. So the way blocs are organized is based on two things: there are political blocs and that usually means the way these factions are organized outside of parliament, once they make it into Parliament or they get elected, they form bigger blocs. So for example, if you have a Salafi bloc, a political bloc, something called Hadas, the Muslim Brotherhood bloc and then there’s another like Islamist bloc. Once they make it to parliament, a lot of times they conglomerate into like one big bloc – an Islamist parliamentary bloc. So in Kuwait the way it’s organized, it’s political blocs that sometimes can work in and outside of parliament and then parliamentary blocs which are more overarching. So you can have sometimes populists and liberals working together in one bloc. Sometimes you don’t. This trend of blocs actually all but disappeared by the late 2000s. So by 2012, you know, most of these blocs kind of disappeared and that’s mainly because you didn’t have political parties and because the new law SNTV really doesn’t encourage this kind of coordination. 

Stephan Kyburz: The politicians they run as independents or not under the label of party or a bloc. Is that right? 

Luai Allarakia: It depends. So the thing is some of them run and people know that they’re running Hadas. Hadas is a pretty important bloc, it’s a Muslim Brotherhood bloc, one of the most organized blocs in Kuwait. And so its members do not necessarily run in elections as Hadas, but people know they are. And they have meetings and they have an official organization but they don’t really run that way. But people know that you know Hadas is running four members, one in each district or you know three in this district. So people kind of vote for them. Sometimes what will happen is like these political blocs will run on a list but the list will have a different name than the actual official name. So Hadas will have a different name just because it doesn’t want to be affiliated with someone with a particular organized bloc, right? Other times what happens is the MPs just make the decision. So under the SNTV system there was an interesting bloc made of four people, […] group and basically they made a really interesting decision. They said look if we run as a list we might actually do. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna spread out over four districts and we’re all gonna run independently. But people kind of know that even though they were running independently that they were going to form like one bloc, right? So it’s just a decision that these MPs make once they get to the elections. And under SNTV it’s really, really hard to run under a list. It’s very difficult because think about it if you’re running a list in the same district you’re basically competing with each other. And so when you talk to your supporters you’ll have to say you literally have to find a way to tell them to divide their vote amongst three candidates. That’s extremely hard to do in one district.

Stephan Kyburz: Before going back to the executive legislative relationships. How much are the people involved? How high is turnout? Or is the parliamentary election, is this a really crucial event in political life? 

Luai Allarakia: It is a national sport in Kuwait. Okay, parliamentary elections are definitely a national sport in Kuwait. Everybody participates in it. There was a period of time when people got really frustrated and so you saw turnout dip, but the lowest turnout has ever dipped in Kuwait, has never been very drastic. So interestingly, it’s always been higher than like turnout in advanced democracies. And depending on the year, it could go up to something like 80% turnout or something. Even more than that. It’s pretty high turnout, People do participate. There was a period when people got really frustrated in particular, the December 2012 and the 2013 assemblies were boycotted by the opposition. So they had some of the lowest turnouts in the history of Kuwait. But once the opposition decided to participate again, starting 2016, turnout was incredibly high. So generally it is actually pretty high.

Stephan Kyburz: And let’s go back to the Emir and the Orleanist points of discussions you mentioned. So maybe we can go back to the powers of the Emir and how he relates to the cabinet, the prime minister and to parliament?

Luai Allarakia: Absolutely. So just to be clear, the whole Orleanist language I’m using here, or the structure, my words and I wish I could speak French because then I would have gone back to what Duverger was saying and to kind of understand it. I’m taking what legal scholars in Kuwait have said about Duverger in Arabic and I’m kind of relaying it to you, like how they conceive the system. Just to be clear. So the second principle is the critical powers of the right. The first one is the dual responsibility: a responsibility to the cabinet and to the Emir. And we talked about that and how it works with the appointment of the ministers and how it also works in terms of the motions of confidence and no cooperation vote. The second part of this is the critical powers of the Emir. So he’s a hereditary Emir, right? So he’s not elected. He has very wide ranging powers that you can see listed in the articles of the constitution of Kuwait: articles 54, 78 like describ in detail and you find a combination of ceremonial and critical powers. Some of these critical powers actually don’t even need the reference of the KNA, of the Kuwaiti National Assembly. For example, the Emir can choose his deputy Emir. He doesn’t need the permission of the KNA and he can even launch a defensive war. He can conclude treaties and for all of these, he doesn’t really need to refer to the KNA. He even has powers that are very interesting and very close to something called executive orders in the US, where if he wants to ensure that the bureaucracies or laws are executed a certain way, then article 72 of the constitution gives him the right to do that. He also has the power to dissolve the assembly at his own will. This is article 107 of the constitution. So as long as he has a clear reason for dissolving and as long as that reason isn’t repeated every time the assembly is dissolved, then he has the right to do this. So the dissolution of the assembly isn’t just based on the removal of the prime minister, no cooperation vote against the prime minister. The Emir can actually just dissolve the parliament if he thinks it’s becoming too unwieldy right? Another interesting power is his power to pass something called decrees of necessity, article 71 of the constitution. So if it happens that at the time that the assembly or the KNA is not in session or is dissolved, that a matter of necessity arises, the Emir can actually pass a decree of necessity to rectify this matter. This is a very, very controversial provision by the way, because in 2012 it was used to pass an electoral law, the SNTV law, and the opposition thought this was a big No No, because it wasn’t a matter of necessity. But the interesting thing about this particular power is that unlike the other powers, it’s actually balanced out by some powers for the KNA. So even though the Emir can pass decrees of necessity, these decrees of necessity have to be voted on in the Kuwaiti National Assembly as soon as it’s back in session. Or if it’s dissolved, first day after the assembly is sworn in, right after the elections. And if the KNA doesn’t actually vote to approve these decrees, they don’t have the power of law. 

Stephan Kyburz: There is a strong power for the Emir to have decrees implemented. But if the parliament does not approve them as soon as they are in session, then those will be revoked. Is that right? 

Luai Allarakia: Absolutely.

Stephan Kyburz: My question now is, you know, the Emir appoints the prime minister, right and the prime minister appoints his cabinet. So is the cabinet pretty much a reflection of the ideologies and the power of the Emir or what is the relationship between the cabinet and the Emir? How close are they? 

Luai Allarakia: That’s a very good question. It really depends, essentially depends on the period of time and how the Emir – what the balance of power is. So if you have an assembly that’s mostly loud and oppositional, then the Emir has to consult. Now remember that one of the articles of the Kuwaiti constitution specifically states that the Emir has to go through traditional consultations. If you refer back to the explanatory notes of the Kuwaiti constitution, they specifically mention who the parties involved in this traditional consultations are, but since there’s really no clear process, government formation in Kuwait, if the Emir wants, he can stall and he could essentially just have consultations and eventually just appoint whichever cabinet he wants. Just because the traditional consultations can really mean anything, right? It’s not like an elaborate formation process, like the one you have say in Germany. Interestingly enough, it’s actually a process that’s weirdly close to the ones you have, like in India or the Netherlands, where it’s really nothing that specifically tells you how government is formed, right? It’s just an assumption that there’s going to be coalitions in India. It’s an assumption that the majority is going to do it. In the case of Kuwait, since you don’t have coalition government or a majority, really traditional consultations can just be reduced to the Emir asking MPs, the former speaker of parliament, or the current speaker of parliament questions. You can consult with the main big parties. He could take the representatives of MPs or whoever the MPs decided as a representative and have discussions with them. And then based on that he can make the decision. Now again, depending on the year, there are some years where the government decided that it wanted to follow a certain formula. So you always have this formula where you have the Shia, a representative of the Shia sect in the government. You always had a representative of the […] in the government. So there was like this attempt to make a balanced cabinet when you had representatives of the largest tribes or specific religious minorities represented. There were other times when the assembly was strong enough to actually haggle with the government and essentially be able to impose some of its names. In February 2012, the opposition was able to push through a couple of their names. They were very overzealous, but eventually they came to a middle ground and the government agreed to give them a couple of names. In the last election, interestingly, the opposition, there was almost a crisis in the country after elections once again, just because one of the appointed ministers was a minister that was also a member of parliament and he actually resigned in a very odd manner even before the cabinet was fully formed. And so when he did that, he caused the crisis. And the Emir had to meet with the representatives of the KNA, he had to ask their opinions. It’s a very unstructured process that is based largely on norms and these norms honestly over time vary. And if the Emir decides that he doesn’t want to follow the norms, if the balance of power is on his side, yes he can, right. Now, it isn’t. But if the balance of power is on his side, he generally can mostly appoint the members of the cabinet, nothing would happen because constitutionally the only thing that says that he has to take the opinion of the KNA is traditional consultations. That’s it, that very vague word. 

Stephan Kyburz: So, if I understand you correctly, the Emir, when he appoints the prime minister and the government is formed, he tries to include some of the interests that are represented in the National Assembly. Would you agree with that? He tries to balance different interests. So he’s not just completely ignoring what’s happening in the National Assembly, right? 

Luai Allarakia: Yeah. And it’s very rare for him to fully ignore it if that’s the question, yes. So, he can, he does not have to take the full recommendation of societal groups or the KNA once it’s elected, but he does have to take their opinion into consideration and come up with some sort of compromise. Sometimes members of the KNA think that this compromise is enough. But the reality is No. It’s very rare that the Emir simply appoints the cabinet members.

Stephan Kyburz: And what does that mean for the process of writing laws. Is it rather that the executive proposes laws and then the National Assembly just rejects or approves them? Or is there also an inverse case where the National Assembly proposes a law and then the government decides what to do with it? 

Luai Allarakia: So, that’s a very good question because we didn’t really discuss legislation just yet. So, the good thing about the constitution of Kuwait from a sort of legislative perspective, is that KNA members can actually initiate laws and no law can be promulgated unless the KNA passes it and it’s sanctioned by the Emir. So this is very clear in the constitution. And like I said, not only this, but when the Emir issues decrees, they have to be submitted to the KNA within 15 days whether the KNA is or is not in session, or if it’s resolved right. Now the Emir also has the right to initiate laws and promulgate them as well. So both sides have the right to initiate laws. Now, the question of who has the agenda control is an interesting one, because up until this year, there was a big difference between the laws that were proposed by the KNA and the laws that were initiated by the Emir. Before this year, both in the constitution and internal rules of procedure, if the KNA actually initiates a law, it first has to go through something called the Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee and that Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee then puts the law in the right legal form and it ensures that it’s not in violation of the constitution and then it can be proposed on the floor. Whereas laws proposed by the Emir and the executive can just go straight to the relevant committee. It doesn’t have to go through that hurdle. The KNA voted for the first time that we’re going to weaken the power of the Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee and we’re going to change the rules of procedure, so that laws initiated by a member of the KNA can go straight to the relevant committee without having to go through the hurdle of the Legal and Legislative Affairs Committee. Now this sounds nice except, in answer to your question, we have another problem which is: this has to do with the legality of the laws and their constitutionality. But who sets the agenda and schedule is another story, right? And this has actually weirdly never been a clear question in Kuwait. So the government definitely has a clear advantage as to what laws can go into the agenda. Whereas the assembly, the way it goes is really interesting. It has to go to something called the Parliamentary Affairs, a bureaucratic body that’s unelected. And that bureaucratic body discusses with the Speaker of Parliament and with members of the KNA who are part of the parliamentary office of the KNA, they discuss what the agenda should look like and then they decide what the schedule looks like, right? And so the tradition has been first come first serve, except for government laws. And the reason why government laws had an advantage is because, well they have their own legal experts and they don’t have to go through the Legal Affairs Committee. Whereas for members of the KNA they have to go through a lot of hurdles. So a lot of lawmaking disadvantages the KNA, both for constitutional reasons and for reasons it’s just purely logistic. But they’re trying to change that now, my personal opinion is that this is not a good idea, but to discuss that later.

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz: Let’s look a bit more towards institutional reform or changes of the structures. Now, I’ve read in one article that the Emir had a recent quite important speech where he mentioned a correction to Kuwait’s political path. What did he mean with that? And what is the current situation of politics? And are there any reforms or changes in the system on the table? 

Luai Allarakia: So that speech was a culmination, was a response to a sit-in that the MPs had, that lasted almost like less than a month. And the sit-in’s demand was that we need the Speaker of Parliament removed. Like this was one of the main contentions. I mean, they had other reasons. They referred to constitutional violations. My personal opinion, I don’t want to get into too much detail, is that there were no severe constitutional violations. If anything, it just had to do with the fact that there are some serious gaps in the way the constitution and parliamentary rules of procedure are written. And those who were being exploited by the government, but there was no direct violation. But anyway, so there was a sit-in and in response to this sit-in, the Emir said that, you know what, I’m going to call for new elections and not only this, but for the first time, the government isn’t going to be involved in choosing the members of legislative committees and it’s actually not going to vote on who the Speaker of Parliament is, even though constitutionally and based on the internal rules of procedure, the government has the right to vote on committee seats and on Speakers of Parliament. So that was part of it. The only problem was part of this discussion was that we will not come anywhere near the constitution. So the constitution with its problems with this limitation will probably remain. However, there are some serious efforts from the opposition, whether I agree with them or not, there are serious efforts to rewrite the internal rules of procedure to streamline legislation and make it faster.

Stephan Kyburz: Just to understand: so that was part of parliament who did like a sit-in and was requesting for the speaker to be removed. Was that related to those reforms in the procedures?

Luai Allarakia: Partly there was a frustration, but really the whole story starts with the situation that developed after 2012 in Kuwait where you had some MPs making some very strong speeches in which they directly addressed the Emir. There was a break in into the KNA in 2010 or 11. And so a lot of people were, you know, jailed and there were harsh sentences against them and some of them essentially had to choose exile and run off. So there was a huge discussion once the opposition decided to come back to the assembly, in 2016 of amnesty. And now this amnesty was finally passed as a decree from the Emir in 2020. But the opposition had an issue with the way it was passed. I don’t want to get into personal opinions, but they had an issue with the person who was involved in negotiating this amnesty, who was an MP as well. And so part of that sit-in was their frustration with the speaker who they just simply didn’t want anymore because he had made some egregious violations in the past. For example, there’s nothing in the internal rules of procedure of the constitution that says that you can postpone interpellations indefinitely. And yet he allowed for a vote on something like this to happen. And so this is a serious violation of the constitution. Now, the opposition was able to get his demand of removing that particular measure. But still, the opposition felt that even if the speaker was forced to remove this measure and even if the amnesty was passed, this speaker is tainted, we really don’t want him anymore. They came up with a lot of excuses for that sit-in, but it was very clear that the major thing was that we just simply don’t want that speaker anymore. Now, once the speaker was gone, to their credit, whatever their faults are, the opposition did try to pass large sweeping changes to the internal rules of procedure and they’re trying to do that. Again, I have my own opinions of whether they’re efficient or not or whether they’re the right ones or not. But just to simply have that idea in mind is to be a reasonable move forward towards more streamlining of legislation. 

Intermezzo

Luai Allarakia: Yes, I think we’ve talked about the institutions and all these details, but I feel like people don’t really get a sense of what the trajectory was and I would divide them into five phases. So, you had a phase one and this phase started from 1963 up until the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This phase was a struggle to preserve the constitutional system. And it was very clear that the executive had no qualms about possibly removing the system if it had the power to do so. So, you had attempts to electoral fraud in 1967, you had an unconstitutional closure of the assembly in 1976 and in 1986. Not only this, but as the assembly was closed in 1986 that stretched out up until 1990. And just before the Iraqi invasion, the government actually created a new assembly called the National Council, a third of which was appointed and which didn’t have legislative powers. It was mostly consultative and that basically collapsed because of the Iraqi invasion in 1991. The second phase is the post-invasion period in the 1990s, which was a very stable period where only one assembly was dissolved, but it was actually dissolved constitutionally. So it was within the rules of the game. Now, you got into the third phase, which is starting in the 2003 assembly. And you got this new environment developing in Kuwait where the MPs are more courageous and more willing to push forth more interpellations and more motions of confidence. And the reason is that traditionally the post of prime minister was tied to the post of the Crown Prince, but that was separated in the 2003 assembly. Not only this, there was a succession crisis in which the KNA was heavily involved in the transition process. So, as a result of that, it got like a new wave of confidence and in that period, you see like a crazy avalanche of interpellations of motions of confidence that just explode in that period. That continues and in 2010, you see the unraveling of the system that simply can’t absorb the number of interpellations and motions of confidence. And the tools for resolving conflict become more complicated. So the government starts to seek backdoor ways of let’s send this interpellations to the Legislative Committee to see whether it’s constitutional. Let’s send it to the Constitutional Court to see if it’s constitutional or not. Let’s make this a secret gathering. And so the result later on is that the Arab Spring is exploding in 2010. And then there’s a corruption case that coincides with that. And then the opposition starts to increasingly take these extra parliamentary measures. And as a result, you have the development of a large class of opposition members who are exiled for the first time in Kuwait’s history and jailed. This is very unusual for Kuwait. And that leads to two assemblies that are based on electoral system that the opposition rejects, in 2012 and 2013. And then the opposition decides to come back in 2016. And that’s where the development discussed later on comes about, which is the discussion of okay, so, the people who made mistakes in 2011, 2012, the people who are exiled, are they coming back? Are we going to stop these measures of delaying interpellations, making it hard to initiate them? Are we going to stop these measures? A lot of this discussion happens and it ends up with this explosion, that sort of happens in 2020 and the sit-in. And then you have the current situation which is stability really for the first time in Kuwait’s history since 2010, I would say.

Stephan Kyburz: Just to summarize, so after 2003, you had like a lot of activity, political interpellations, questioning the confidence in government, and then you had this really extreme period where essentially the opposition went to exile. And then in 2016 it came back and there were all these discussions about the amnesty. So that was kind of a normalization in a way. But still it kept on being quite turbulent. Is that right? 

Luai Allarakia: Yeah, so the opposition came back in 2021, if I’m not mistaken. So, that assembly is when they came back. The 2016 assembly was one where like there were discussions of how we’re going to do this, what laws we’re going to pass? Really controversial discussions. Some of them, you know, had MPs walking out, MPs like causing a ruckus. But in 2020, in the 2020 assembly, finally, this was passed. But like you said, there was still turbulence and that was finally resolved so far because you never know so far, it’s been resolved and things are a bit more calm now. But just to give you a picture of a quick comment, you might find this interesting? You know, that from 2003 onwards, not a single assembly in Kuwait’s history actually completed its full four year period except for one in 2016. And the reason that assembly completed its period is because of Corona and because the Emir died during that period. But really all of them were dissolved either within a matter of three or two years. Some of them were resolved within a year, by the way, six months. That would just give you a picture of how things really came to unravel in the period of 2003 onwards. 

Stephan Kyburz: And then in 2020, a new Emir came to power, right? And did that change the game? 

Luai Allarakia: So that’s basically what the opposition was banking on. And they tried a lot of pressure. They tried going back and forth. Initially, the Emir was receptive and then he became kind of recalcitrant because the demands were overzealous from his perspective. But then finally, with this speech that was given, it was, it was given by the Crown Prince, who had taken over the powers, and the speech given by the Crown Prince. We can at least for now say that it looks like a new period is starting. And how stable it is going to be, it’s going to become clear in the next year or so. 

Stephan Kyburz: Back to my question, in terms of reforms of institutions, what would be possible in the next few years, and what is your personal opinion on which reforms would be most important?

Luai Allarakia: I think that first and foremost, I don’t think that the system in Kuwait should remain based on independents or individual candidates . Because if you look at the way motions of confidence and motions of no cooperation are set up, they’re actually not that easy. It’s not that easy to vote no confidence because they’re based on majority of the members of parliament. Not the majority, who are actually in the assembly at the time, but the majority of all of the members. Interpellations are fairly easy. But still moving an interpellation to something, to a motion of confidence isn’t easy. So, if you look at the literature that’s really interesting. There’s been just released recently, like a paper by José Antonio Cheibub, in which he says, look, a lot of european states learned the lesson of having permissive motions of confidence. By institutionalizing this instrument and making it a bit difficult, like Germany you can’t really have a motion of confidence unless you know who the next president [chancellor], right? And so it gives a lot of examples. I looked at Cheibub’s paper and it looks to me that Kuwait doesn’t fall in the range of having a permissive motion of confidence, it’s actually complicated. So when I took a step back, I realized, well, the reason is, it’s a very individualistic system and if a single member can push forth an interpellation that can become a very unstable instrument, because every time somebody doesn’t agree with the policy or they want to, for example, a […] minister, just for personal reasons, all they have to do is just put forth an interpellation that you just need one member. And even if that interprellation doesn’t lead to a motion of confidence, having too many of these in one session can really stall legislation. So, for me, one of the first things I would do is institutionalize a party system to be honest, or at least make it so the internal rules of procedure ensure that you must have parliamentary blocs. If it’s controversial through the constitution to pass a law for parties, then at least the rules of procedure should make it so that the Emir will not meet with individuals, he will only meet with people with a minimum of like five who come up, you know, or six who are like members of a certain parliamentary bloc that they announce on the first day of election, or like in like the first two weeks or something like that. And then you could make interpellations based on those blocs. That basically institutionalizes a better, more cooperative way to put forth interpellations, so that those don’t become an instrument of the simple individual MPs who aren’t dissatisfied with the system. Another thing is that I think that the formation process is a huge problem in Kuwait. It doesn’t make sense to me that like you have a formation process which just relies on traditional consultations. No! Go back and look at the experiences of countries that have had more elaborate ones. You don’t have to make it complicated, like the one in Germany for example, or the one in Ireland where you have to have two votes in Ireland, for example, two types of investiture votes. But at the very least have something a bit more elaborate than simple consultations. Otherwise it’s going to be based on norms. And let’s be honest, nowadays in 2022 it’s very clear with democracies that relying on norms, probably not a good idea. We need a lot more institutionalized rules just because norms are unraveling and you really can’t trust individual politicians. And the last thing is, there’s a lot of vagaries in the internal rules of procedure in the constitution of Kuwait. And those become battlegrounds between the opposition and the government. So, for example, what’s the role the caretaker government exactly in Kuwait, we have a lot of them, and they happen a lot and this is very common in parliamentary systems, like Belgium, for example, is notorious for having caretaker government can last for over a year. In the case of Kuwait, that seems to be a possibility. So the provisions for something like a caretaker government isn’t very clear in Kuwait. Like what do they do? Can they vote on laws? What laws can they vote on? There’s a host of other things that would change, but I don’t want to take up too much time. But this is what I would change: make a party system, change the constitution so you have better measures for interpellations and government formation and finally change and streamline the parliamentary rules of procedure, so that legislation is easier. And so that some of these vague points that have to do with caretaker governments and like controversial points that become points of contention between the government and the opposition are no longer based on norms. They’re based on clear specific rules that are written. 

Stephan Kyburz: That’s all very interesting. And we could probably spend a lot of time on each of these points. But maybe your first point about building a stronger party system is also very important for the other two points, right? If you have a better party system, more constructive work in parliament, you would also probably improve the procedures and the formation process. 

Luai Allarakia: Definitely. That would definitely be one thing. And just an interesting point because here’s the thing, if you look at the classification of Kuwait in general. You use, for example the Przeworski, Limongi, Cheibub classification that is dichotomous, you can you immediately classify it as an authoritarian regime, right? If you look at other classifications like V-dem or Freedom House, they say it’s a partial democracy. And yet when I try to think of like things to reform in Kuwait, none of them have to do with say we need to make this a more democratic process. As an intrinsic value, that’s a good thing, we should all strive for that of course. But for me there were a lot of technical details that have to do with these things that I talked about that if you reform them, you probably could have a very nice smooth transition to democracy. That’s better than like a rapid assumption that if you have just a quick transition, for example, a popular prime minister, then that type of transition might actually backfire, because you might have a transition that is too rapid. Popular prime minister within the same structure of Kuwait for me is probably going to lead to a lot of inefficiencies and that could backfire because people could say, oh look what the result of democracy is. So that’s why I think, honestly, paying attention to these very detailed rules and understanding how you can streamline them and make them more smooth is actually a very good stepping stone towards democratizing any system. Because when you democratize, you democratize within the structure of a more stable smooth system rather than doing it rapidly. 

Stephan Kyburz: And that’s why I know that’s great, I love details and I love how you really have a great understanding of procedures and how they matter. I think that’s very important.

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz: For people who would like to read more on the case of Kuwait and its political institutions. Do you have any articles, books that you’d recommend?

Luai Allarakia: For stuff that has to do with the parliament of Kuwait, whatever is published in English is very scant. A lot of the stuff is in Arabic. But I’ll recommend the stuff that’s in English. There is a couple of people, it’s not political science, but if your interested in following the events in Kuwait, the Arab Gulf Center in Washington does a lot of very good work, I write with them sometimes. So you’ll find even like people from Kuwait writing there, […], is a very good writer. Like he’s probably someone you want to follow if you want to know the minute details of Kuwait. Kristin Diwan also writes a lot of interesting stuff on Kuwait if you’re looking for like kind of the current affairs discussion. If you want to look at elections in Kuwait, there’s a very good paper by Andrew Leber and Courtney Freer which talks about the tribal advantage in Kuwaiti elections. Courtney Freer is also a very interesting name that writes about Kuwait. There’s also a sort of newer scholar who’s writing on Kuwait called Daniel Tavana. So he does a lot of very good work. He has an interesting paper on why the opposition votes against the government. That’s an interesting quantitative paper and regression model. So, he does a lot of interesting work. I think that’s it. I think for motions of confidence, the recent article by Cheibub is a very, very good one. I think it was called Parliamentary Governments in Western Europe. It’s just released, literally this last year. Really good article. We tend to as a result of the Linz factor think of parliamentary systems, are more stable, better than in the presidential systems. Well, this paper actually tells you that well, there aren’t as stable or necessarily better than the presidential systems that they’ve had to go through their own periods of reckoning where they became institutionalized. If you want more stuff about that I referred to about investiture votes, there’s a big collection by I think Shane Martin, I’ll send you the name. It’s a very good, big book that literally covers investiture votes and government formation in European countries and some countries out of Europe. So these are the two things that are kind of referred to. 

Stephan Kyburz: I will include those resources in the show notes, for sure. And I’ll also link to your work. There’s still so many topics that we could talk about with regard to Kuwait and its development of institutions, but maybe we’ll leave that for another conversation. Would be great to have an update at a later point. Yes, so Luai Allarakia, thank you very much for being a guest on the podcast. It has been a very insightful conversation. Thank you. 

Luai Allarakia: Thank you so much.

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