Crs Report for Congress

The UAE’s relatively open borders and economy have won praise from advocates of expanded freedoms in the Middle East while producing financial excesses, social ills such as prostitution and human trafficking, and relatively lax controls on sensitive technologies acquired from the West. The social and economic freedoms do not necessarily translate into rapid political opening; the UAE government remain authoritarian, even as it allows informal citizen participation and traditional consensus-building. Members of the elite (the ruling families of the seven emirates and clans allied with them) routinely make national decisions unilaterally, obtain favored treatment in court cases, and are favored for lucrative business opportunities. However, economic wealth has allowed the UAE to largely, although not entirely, avoid the popular unrest and demands for political change that have erupted elsewhere in the Middle East in 2011.