The Kuwaiti Cabinet - Essay Example

By looking into the events that followed the country’s independence, it is possible to identify critical features that defined the Kuwaiti cabinet between 1962 and 1988.

The 1962 cabinet represented high family-based ties in the political arena. Even though members of the cabinet had different personalities and backgrounds, they share close family relationships in one way or another. For example, the Al-Asabah family and the larger Asil family held a significant proportion of the cabinet over the aforementioned period. The majority of cabinet members came from influential Kuwaiti families. In this respect, dominant cabinet ministers also represented some of the most influential families in the history of Kuwait.

Over and above family-based monopoly in the cabinet, a significant number of cabinet members were well off compared to the rest of the population. The majority of cabinet ministers came from wealthy families, and most importantly, they were wealthy themselves. This made them even more influential as far as the politics of the country were concerned. In addition, more than 50% of ministers in Kuwait were in their 30s or 40s in terms of age. This made the 1962-1988 Kuwait cabinet one of the most youthful in the world.

Even as Kuwait made critical progress politically, education and literacy levels were still a challenge to the larger populace. Cabinet members had basic education, but most of them lacked advanced academic and professional experience. For example, the number of engineers in Kuwait was significantly low at a time when the newly independent nation was striving to invest heavily in technological development. In 1962, engineers were less than ten in the entire Kuwaiti population.

Critical disparities were also evident regarding where ministers attended their schools. Cabinet members with basic primary education attended school locally, and so did members who had secondary education. College and university degrees, however, required that education be accessed outside Kuwait. This shows that some Kuwaiti ministers were more contemporary than others and that the entire cabinet was more informed than the rest of the population. Cabinet members, therefore, had a higher general life standard than the people they led.