Qatar

While petty corruption in Qatar is not a widespread issue, the country has few checks and balances able to exercise oversight over the country’s leadership. Power is heavily concentrated in the emir, and the ruling family has monopolised most important policy areas and posts in the country. At the top, there are few integrity mechanisms to ensure that narrow interests do not drive public policy or exert undue influence over state functions.

In practice, opaque budgeting processes allow state elites free reign to arbitrarily allocate state revenues off the budget, which creates a series of corruption risks. The use of personal, clientelistic networks to obtain rents or contracts from the state is also believed by analysts to be common practice. In addition, despite the fact that Qatar’s wealth affords its citizens a relatively high quality of life, they enjoy only limited civic and political rights.

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