Dreaming of Efficiency: Qatar Capitalist Consequentialism Under Emir Hamad

Abstract

In the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the geopolitics of the Gulf and Qatar’s outsider role in the region are particularly deserving of critical attention. A lot has been written on military balance and bold Qatari endeavours, for example in the context of regime change in Libya, but only a few authors have paid attention to the more or less subtle normative bases of Qatar’s foreign policy. This article examines these foundations by taking a closer look at the reign of Emir Hamad (1995–2013). Rather than providing one more assessment of state-driven norm entrepreneurship, it identifies some crucial components of the Qatari approaches to modernity, namely economy- and business-inspired concepts such as efficiency. While these concepts might have played a rather instrumental role in the first place, facilitating Qatar’s unprecedented rise as an international actor, they also entail distinct normative assumptions and even a certain degree of utopian thinking. In this vein, the article seeks to highlight those aspects in actual Qatari foreign policy and to provide an issue-specific assessment of Emir Hamad’s political legacy.