English abstract
Abstract
An apparent rise of jobseekers' discontent evident in Omani social media and related demands for government jobs created a need for this research. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to examine government policies toward Omani jobseekers as a response to the social demonstrations in 2011. In addition, it attempted to utilize three theories: social contract, path dependency, and social movement to elaborate an understanding of the problem,
This research relied on mixed methods in data collection. It followed a retrospective analysis approach for public policy analysis, which mainly aims to understand the current problem properly and describe and analyze the policies which are already taken and implemented.
It was found that a pattern of government policies toward jobseekers is characterized with reactive policies and refers to the past legacy according to path dependency theory to deal with crises. The social contract in Oman has revolved around this expectation of government protection. The state building and nation building projects coincided with the centralisation of power and an oil economy that expanded that massively. Therefore, reactive policies were carried out by the government in 2011 and after that raised certain challenges such as a rise of resignations in private sector, financial deficit in the general budget, increased attractiveness of government jobs and a policy of implementing and then cutting off jobseeker allowances, which fed jobseekers' frustration.
Finally, the research concluded that the government could utilize critical junctures theory, which says that a crisis may create the opportunities to break a cycle of the path dependency and allow scope for policy innovation. The political capital of His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos through direct speech to jobseekers, the drop in oil prices, training schools, giving unemployment benefit that is conditioned by re-benefit requirements for jobseekers, and a jobseeker union, all could assist to shift the overall perception of jobseekers from public sector-oriented to private sector oriented and may mitigate potential political and security risks associated with unemployment in Oman.
