Description
This paper aims to investigate the role of the elected members of parliament (MPs) in the Kuwaiti National Assembly (KNA) in shaping Kuwait’s foreign affairs between 1962 to 2022. While the literature on Kuwait’s foreign affairs such as diplomacy and mediating policy in the geopolitics of the West Asia & North Africa (WANA) region exists, more analysis on the role of the legislative branch in shaping such foreign affairs is required. The paper examines the influence of the elected parliament on the formulation of Kuwait’s foreign affairs, in other words I raise the following question: What is the role of the elected parliament in shaping Kuwait’s foreign affairs? To answer it, I focus on the elected parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee in the KNA by following an inductive approach and systematically trace and code the archival data of KNA’s official transcript files. The data gathered from these files undergo a coding process, resulting in a relational dataset of memberships and formations of every elected KNA’s foreign affairs committee throughout the proposed time frame. This dataset allows for contextualizing any suggested bills, discussions, or committee reports proposed by the MPs and related to foreign affairs, elucidating the role of the elected members in the committee’s formation. The dataset provides a nuanced insight into the demographic shifts within the committee’s memberships, shedding light on the evolving role of the governance and the KNA role in shaping foreign affairs. With this approach, this paper investigates the role of the KNA by examining specific pivotal international events such as ‘Arab Spring’ and Ukraine/Russia war as I take these case studies to test the impact of the elected committee within the National Assembly on Kuwait’s foreign affairs.
