Kuwait's Thaw

In the last election, liberal and reformist candidates faired relatively poorly, dropping from 14 to three seats. Will the participation of women reverse this trend?

No, I don't think so. We don't have great indications of voting results, but to the extent that we do, women will vote similarly to men, and on some issues, might be even more conservative than men. Kuwait has really small electoral districts, which means that politics is really retail in Kuwait. So a lot of the issues will be neighborhood issues—who sticks up best for this neighborhood—and will not necessarily be connected with big broad political and social issues. There is very often an assumption [in the United States] that women are an oppressed group in Arab societies specifically and in Muslim societies in general, and that if you liberate them they will be voices for liberalism and reform. Yes, there are certainly women who are, but for the most part, women's social and political beliefs are not that much different from men's. They are very much part of the same society, reflecting the prevailing ideas of that society.

Does the Kuwaiti Parliament have the power to effect change? Or is it a puppet legislature like many other parliaments in the region?

The Kuwait Parliament has always stood out in the region. Members of the ruling family do not run for Parliament. There aren't any real parties and thus no governing parties that dominate the Parliament, like what happens in Egypt and Tunisia. And what that means is that in Kuwait, there is a Parliament that is a little bit feistier, a little bit more independent, that debates issues with a little more openness, that has a very strong sense of its own prerogatives and defends them. So in this sense, it's a very active and lively Parliament. Where it has always fallen down is on follow-through. It's often badly divided, inefficient, sidelined into symbolic issues, polarized between Islamists and liberals and this sort of thing. So it's a Parliament that attracts a tremendous amount of attention. It is a really vital and import public forum, but it is not clear that it is an important decision-making body.

What are some of the major issues of this election?

This election specifically was called because of a confrontation between the government and the Parliament over the electoral law. Essentially right now you have Kuwait divided up into very small districts, which makes politics operate on a retail level, so reformers in the Parliament wanted to reform the law to have larger districts. It sounds like a small, technical change, but they thought that this would really convert the political system so that candidates would have to run on ideology and platforms and perhaps even lead to the formation of political parties. That would really change the flavor of Kuwaiti politics. Instead of appealing to your neighbors, you would have to cater to broad-base constituencies.