- IRAN AND DUBAI LEAD THE WAY189
raise utility rates; 21 of 26 respondents said the government was either “very sensi-
tive” or “extremely sensitive” to citizen opinion on subsidies.
- Author interview with member of UAE government on condition of anonymity,
Dubai, April 8, 2012. Also detail from policy making focus group held at UAE Prime
Minister’s Office, March 5, 2012.
- Dubai electricity sector official, interviewed by author on condition of anonymity,
January 9, 2013. See also Zaher Bitar, “DEWA to Introduce Fuel Surcharge,” Gulf News,
J u l y 1 4 , 2 0 1 1 , h t t p : / / g u l f n e w s. c o m / b u s i n e s s / g e n e r a l / d e w a - t o - i n t r o d u c e - f u e l - s u r c h a r g e
- The Media Office for HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al- Maktoum, 2011. Note that
some citizen families never received an increase at all. Some of these were headed by
current or retired members of the security services or by important tribal or ruling
family members who continued to receive free or discounted electricity thanks to
favored relations with the ruling family.
- Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, “DEWA Sukuk 2013 Limited,” financial dis-
closure for investors (Dubai: DEWA, February 28, 2013), 81– 82, 91.
- The Dubai benefit reform came just three months prior to a petition for increased
democratic representation that emerged in 2011. That petition, signed by 132 promi-
nent Emiratis, circulated prior to the tariff hike. Several signers of that petition were
jailed. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, “The UAE: Holding Back the Tide,” OpenDemo-
cracy, A u g u s t 5 , 2 0 1 2 , h t t p : / / w w w. o p e n d e m o c r a c y. n e t / k r i s t i a n - c o a t e s - u l r i c h s e n / u a e
- h o l d i n g - b a c k - t i d e.
- Author interview with Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, UAE political scientist, Dubai, Janu-
ary 31 2012.
- Author interviews with energy policy officials in Dubai government, 2012 and 2013.
- Hazem Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani, “Introduction,” in The Rentier State, ed. Hazem
Beblawi and Giacomo Luciani (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 16.
- Material in this section is based on Jim Krane, “The Political Economy of Subsidy
Reform in the Persian Gulf Monarchies,” in The Economics and Political Economy of
Energy Subsidies, ed. Jon Strand (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 191– 222.
- The 42 percent responded that subsidies represented “their share” of the national
energy wealth.
- Sixty- one of 76 respondents (80 percent) said “yes” to the question “Several academ-
ics have stated that subsidies in the GCC are perceived by nationals as rights of citi-
zenship. Do you agree?”
- Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et al., “Political Institutions, Policy Choice, and the Sur-
vival of Leaders,” British Journal of Political Science 32 (2002): 559– 90; Gordon Tull-
ock, Autocracy (Hingham, MA: Kluwer, 1987), 122– 23; Timur Kuran, “Sparks and
Prairie Fires: A Theory of Unanticipated Political Revolution,” Public Choice 61 (1989):
41– 74; Ronald Wintrobe, “How to Understand, and Deal with Dictatorship: An Econ-
omist’s View,” Economics of Governance 18, no. 3 (2001): 35– 58.
- Wintrobe, “How to Understand, and Deal with Dictatorship”; Bueno de Mesquita
et al., “Political Institutions, Policy Choice and the Survival of Leaders”; Bruce Bueno
de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003),
