Description
Although Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have various historical, political, cultural and structural similarities, they have followed different and even conflicting foreign policies towards the events, conflicts and civil wars in the Middle East, from Libya to Yemen, since the beginning of the Arab Uprisings. This study aims to investigate the reasons behind the differences between these two Gulf monarchies’ foreign policy attitudes against the Libyan Civil War by using role theory. In other words, this study will test the following hypothesis: The foreign policy attitudes of Qatar and the UAE towards the Libyan Civil War have differed due to their different national role conceptions. The theoretical framework and methodological tools provided by role theory will enable this work to analyse how international and domestic factors together have influenced the behaviours of Qatar and the UAE towards the civil war in Libya. In this regard, to explain the divergent foreign policies, Qatar and the UAE’s socialisation experiences as the external factors and domestic role contestations as the internal factors will be investigated by using content analysis and process tracing which are the main tools broadly employed in the existing role theory literature. This study will contribute to the role theory scholarship by combining socialisation experiences and domestic role contestations to explain foreign policy roles. Furthermore, it will enrich the theoretical approaches in foreign policy studies of the Middle East by applying role theory to the foreign policies of two Gulf countries.
Keywords: Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Libya, Middle East Politics, foreign policy analysis, role theory, socialisation, role contestation
