Talk:2021 Qatari general election

Requested move 29 December 2014

Requested move 22 June 2016

GENERAL election

This is not a GENERAL election whatsoever. A "general" election is when you elect, say, the legislature and the president of the country at the same time. You do not elect the emir, right? Or, a "general" election is at least when at least two bodies are elected. In this case it's only the Consultative Assembly that's getting elected. I guess the only reason this article was not called "legislative election" is because the Consultative Assembly is not really legislative. But "general election" is even more absurd. I suggest renaming the article to "2021 Qatari consultative assembly election". --85.249.46.14 (talk) 03:24, 2 October 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the recent move back to "general"

Hello, @Number 57.

In the move back, you linked to WP:NCELECT, and wrote: "general is the term usually used for parliamentary elections in monarchies".

A few notes:

1. WP:NCELECT does not have guidelines about "general elections", and does not mention monarchies.
2. The sources do not refer to this as a general election.
3. As the sources and the article show, Qatar's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, last month described the vote as a new "experiment" and said the Council cannot be expected from the first year to have the "full role of any parliament".^[1] Qatar itself seems to have never framed this as either a general or a parliamentary election, so I don't see why the title of this encyclopedic article should.

I have more to say, but think that the above should be sufficient, and would like to hear your response to it first.

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 09:37, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

@Number 57 Oops, I forgot perhaps the most conclusive point:

WP:NCELECT clearly states: For elections to particular bodies or offices, default to the form "[date] [country name or adjectival form] [body/office] election". The following examples also seem to support the title I moved to.

Thanks and good tidings. غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 09:39, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

The reason I quoted NCELECT was that you moved the article title to one that used "elections" whereas the guideline requires "election"; the remainder was explaining my rationale for using 'general'.

With regards to the claim that they are not referred to as general or parliamentary elections, Qatar's constitution refers to them as 'general elections' in the explanatory notes to articles 77 and 83, as do various academic articles and Qatari media. Number 57 11:36, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't mind elections instead of elections, the pluralization was just because I was thinking in Arabic. Again, though, WP:NCELECT quite clearly states that For elections to particular bodies or offices, default to the form "[date] [country name or adjectival form] [body/office] election".

At any rate, I think that it is telling that none of the sources that were already in the article refer to it as a general election, and it suggests to me that WP:COMMONNAME leans away from "general elections", especially considering the as determined by its prevalence in a significant majority of independent, reliable, English-language sources bit. From the sources you found, the constitution one is obviously a bit of a nonstarter in terms of independence and reliability, as is the Qatar Tribune one (owned by a cousin of the current emir), and one of the academic sources you brought has a sister of the emir as its chief writer... Not to mention, the Qatar Tribune one also says that Qatar has been conducting general elections to the Central Municipality Council since 2009, which goes to show how fast and loose they are with using that term.

I have some direct questions for you before we continue the discussion, if you please:

1. Do you agree that WP:NCELECT strongly leans towards naming the particular body?
2. Do you agree that, at the very least, "general election" is not clearly a more WP:COMMONNAME than naming the body (which is sometimes written in English as the Shura Council, and sometimes, as in Wikipedia, as the Consultative Assembly)?
3. Are there any other reasons which you think make "general election" a superior choice to my suggestion?

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 14:59, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the bit of the guideline that you keep quoting (For elections to particular bodies or offices, default to the form "[date] [country name or adjectival form] [body/office] election"), this format is rarely used for national elections, hence why we have 2021 Japanese general election (not 'House of Representatives'), 2024 United Kingdom general election (not 'House of Commons'), 2022 Swedish general election (not 'Riksdag'), 2023 Spanish general election (not 'Cortes Genrales'), 2024 Jordanian general election (not 'House of Representatives'), 2023 Omani general election (not 'Consultative Assembly'), 2022 Lesotho general election (not 'National Assembly'), 2024 Kuwaiti general election (not 'National Assembly'), 2022 Bahraini general election (not 'Council of Representatives) and so on.

The answers to your questions are respectively:

1. No, per the explanation/examples just given
2. I think this is irrelevant given the relevant naming convention is NCELECT not COMMONNAME; however, if you want to refer back to the five main WP:CRITERIA for article titles, you will see that one of them is consistency, and as demonstrated above, not using 'general election' would not be consistent with all those examples given
3. I refer you back to my original statement that 'general election' is the most commonly used election article title for parliamentary elections in monarchies, as demonstrated by the aforementioned examples).

Number 57 15:26, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the more detailed response, it helps me better understand where you're coming from. I appreciate your passion for consistency, and generally share it with you. In this case, however, I think that there are matters which outweigh it.

WP:CRITERIA also mentions Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects, and later in WP:AT it is also stated that Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources.

In Cambridge Dictionary, both the main dictionary and the Business English one define it as being about a vote to elect or choose "the government", while the American one defines it as "a national or state election, not a local one".

I think that the list of article names you provided is very useful to understanding the problematic ambiguity here:

1. To my understanding, the elections for the Japanese House of Representatives, the UK House of Commons, the Swedish Riksdag, the Spanish Cortes Generales and the the Lesotho National Assembly are all essentially a vote for who runs the country. Every single one of those articles that you linked also includes information about the elected body electing a prime minister.
2. Unfortunately, to my understanding, the elections for the Jordanian House of Representatives, the Omani Consultative Assembly, the Kuwaiti National Assembly and the Bahraini Council of Representatives are very much not votes for who runs the country. None of these articles that you linked to even has the PM before and after part of the infobox, other than the Jordanian one, where the king simply appointed a new one, who was his chief of staff until then. And when it comes to the one-time election for 2/3 of the Qatari Consultative Assembly, I can tell you with 100% confidence that statements by RS and all manifestations of our regime itself conclusively show that it was absolutely not a vote for who runs the country.

When googling "definition of a "general election"", you get on the first page:

1. The Wikipedia article, which is an absolute mess and is acknowledged to be heavily tilted towards the US and UK while not representing "a worldwide view of the subject";
2. Sources that refer specifically to elections in the US or UK;
3. The Cambridge Dictionary, whose definitions I referred to above;
4. The quintessentially American Dictionary Merriam-Webster, which defines it as an election usually held at regular intervals in which candidates are elected in all or most constituencies of a nation or state.

Given that the term "general election" is frequently thought of as a vote for who runs the country/state, or in the US as a contrast to local or primary elections, I think that its current uniform use for the articles that you listed is deeply and problematically ambiguous.

My take is that since "general election":

1. Is a deeply ambiguous and poorly-defined term;
2. Carries heavy implications;
3. Is heavily seen through an Anglo and "Western" prism;

Then:

1. Its propagating "consistency" between completely different types of elections is actually an argument against, not for;
2. If an election is unambiguously and overwhelmingly called and referred to as a "general election" by the country/state it takes place in and by RS, and any other title would be confusing/inaccurate, I see no other recourse than to use that name in the title, even if it is unambiguously not a vote for who runs the country/state;
3. If we wish to preserve as much consistency as possible, then, if they are at least sometimes referred to that way, we may also maintain "general election" for elections like those you named in Japan, UK, Lesotho etc., which fulfil both meanings of the term, being nation/state-wide elections for a body which ultimately holds power over the executive.

For Qatar specifically, imo, "Parliamentary election" shouldn't do since the Assembly is definitely not a parliament with power over the executive, and when it comes to "legislative election", it could hardly even be called a legislature in the same breath as a legislature in a somewhat democratic country, since the emir could always ultimately overrule even a (never-in-a-million-years) two-thirds majority for legislation.^[2] I think that there is good reason for why many RS elect (ha) to specify the name of the body when referring to this election.

And while you say that "this format is rarely used for national elections", WP:NCELECT, which you call "the relevant naming convention", says nothing about "national elections", or "general elections". It has a general convention to include "type" for "individual elections and referendums", with a list of very non-controversial names, and then the more specific convention which I "keep quoting" is to default to "body/office" for "elections to particular bodies or offices" which I think the Qatari Consultative Assembly very much fits, considering its very particular nature.

I apologize that this ended up this long. It's a complicated issue, and I put a lot of work into it. I obviously have a personal stake in this, and somewhat of a chip on my shoulder, but I tried to examine the matter seriously and objectively. I also apologize if my tone at any point appears aggressive or is unpleasant. I assume that you are genuinely coming at this from wanting consistency for the sake of the encyclopedia, which I totally appreciate.

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 11:09, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't think it's a complicated issue and the claim that the title 'is heavily seen through an Anglo and "Western" prism' is nonsensical given the fact that the Qatari constitution uses the term 'general elections'. I am not going to respond to the result of the convoluted wikilawyering (which looks like it was AI generated) in the wall of text response. Number 57 12:15, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Firstly, if the issue is too much text, let me make the case more concisely:

1. The term "general election" is mostly understood in English through the prism of the US and UK, or "West" more widely.
2. The term "general election" is frequently understood in English to mean an election for a government.^[3]
3. In the election articles that you listed in democracies, the "general elections" were indeed ones that ultimately determined the government.
4. In the election articles that you listed in non-democracies, the "general elections" were ones that had no meaningful effect on the makeup of the executive.
5. Therefore, specificity and precision should lead us to name these latter elections, which are each for bodies with various authorities (but none significant over the governments of the countries), per the "[date] [country name or adjectival form] [body/office] election" guideline for "elections to particular bodies or offices" in WP:NCELECT.

Now for the rest, if you care to read more:

1. No AI was used to write that response, let alone to generate it. I think that calling it "convoluted wikilawyering" and insinuating AI generation, alongside your use of the word "nonsensical", is pretty uncivil and ABFy, but I'll put that aside for now. Please try to AGF. I don't think that my case for not using "general election" for elections that have no effect on who runs the country is that "convoluted" or weird, especially since the term isn't all that frequent in RS describing this election.
2. I struggle to see how one can think that this is not a complicated issue.
3. I also struggle to see how Qatar's use of the term "general elections" in its constitution makes nonsense my claim that the term is seen through a Western and Anglo prism to mean that general elections are about choosing who rules the country in a democracy. That the state under Hamad (at the time the Constitution was written) made mostly-empty gestures regarding liberalization and democracy to receive support from the West has been argued for quite convincingly in scholarship,^[4] and RS have drawn attention to the 2021 elections finally coming, after being promised since 2003, right before the spotlight of scrutiny of the 2022 World Cup, and having very limited meaning for Qataris.^[5] I also think that you will very much struggle to find officials or official outlets calling this election a "general election". QNA consistently called it "Shura Council Elections", and I couldn't find a single example where it called it a "general election". Also note that it reports on bodies such as the "Media Support Committee for the Shura Council Elections" and the "Shura Council Elections Supervisory Committee".^[6][7] So in summary, I don't see how the explanatory notes to the constitution using this term some of the time detracts from (let alone makes "nonsensical") my showing that the Anglo and Western understanding of "general election" is quite different from the subject of this article, and of the other articles on elections for inconsequential bodies in autocracies that you linked to.

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 14:30, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure I have much to add to the above. This is English Wikipedia so we use English terms. Many other countries in the region with similarly powerless parliaments also have the term 'general election' for their article because that is a standard name for such an election. Number 57 22:12, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

I think we're on our way to WP:3O.

1. I just don't understand what supports the statement that it is the "standard name" both for an election to a powerless pseudo-legislature entirely subservient to an absolute monarch and for a genuine democratic parliament that determines the makeup of the government.

2. I've clearly shown that "general election" is an ambiguous term often understood as an election that determines the government, and so it seems pretty clear to me that it is unfit for purpose for places where that is not the case, especially if it is not the central term being used.

3. In this particular case, I've also clearly shown that the official Qatari News Agency consistently referred to it as "Shura Council Elections", and never as "general election", and moreover, pointed to the official Qatari "Shura Council Elections Supervisory Committee" and "Media Support Committee for the Shura Council Elections". Not "General Election Supervisory Committee", nor "Media Support Committee for the General Election".

3.a. At this juncture, I would also like to point you to what you said over here: "There are two types of general elections; one is where the presidency and parliament is elected together. The other is when it is just a parliament. In terms of usage for the latter, it's really down to the local terminology." The official term seems pretty clearly to be "Shura Council Elections", as per the above. Turning it into "Qatari Consultative Assembly election" (English term and dropping the pluralization) seems fine to me.

3.b. And regarding concerns you raised here about recognizability when using the name of a local parliament, not a single one of the English sources currently used in this article (same before I got involved in it) seems to use "general election", so it hardly seems like either WP:COMMONNAME or recognizable. "Legislative" is used quite often, as is "Shura Council" and its English equivalent. Again, the official name seems pretty clearly to be "Shura Council Elections", and given that sources frequently point out how limited the legislative powers of this body are, using "legislative" also seems more misleading than helpful, and so the For elections to particular bodies or offices, default to the form "[date] [country name or adjectival form] [body/office] election" guideline from WP:NCELECT seems perfect.

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 12:12, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

If you want to move the article, start a WP:RM; 3O is not the suitable venue to request a move. Number 57 13:43, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

1. Thanks, I was not familiar with that process;
2. I think this goes beyond just a requested move for this one article;
3. I would appreciate starting with a 3rd opinion anyway, even if we do end up going down the route of a RM.

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 16:20, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

It doesn't go beyond a move for this article. It is purely about this article's title. Any discussion about other articles' titles should not take place here. Number 57 17:36, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

That seems to me to be somewhat over-rigid. A discussion can easily go from a specific subject to a wider one, and normal collaboration on Wikipedia, even when made in reasoned disagreement, easily accommodates that imo. Anyway, I will think on my next steps. غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 07:51, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

3O Response: Agree with غوّاص العلم; this is not what most English speakers would call a general election, per their reasoning. Number 57 is correct that article titles should, in general, be consistent, so I would recommend to غوّاص العلم starting discussion about this at the village pump. Also, please use template:reflist-talk instead of template:reflist on talk pages. ⇖ /.°°.\ ⇗ ^{(They/Them/Their)} 22:03, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

The village pump is absolutely not the correct venue for this sort of discussion. If Ghawwas wants the article moved, he should use the WP:RM process. An no offence, but you should not be providing third opinions on matters of guideline or policy after editing Wikipedia for less than days. Number 57 01:16, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

To clarify, I was saying that they could use the village pump to discuss the policy surrounding the naming of multiple election articles that currently have ambiguous or wrong names. ⇖ /.°°.\ ⇗ ^{(They/Them/Their)} 01:21, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

That is not what the village pump is for. The correct venue to discuss election article titles in a more general sense would be Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (government and legislation). Number 57 01:23, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Oh okay. Thank you for the improvement. ⇖ /.°°.\ ⇗ ^{(They/Them/Their)} 01:37, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

I appreciate the attempt, and naturally I don't hate that you agree with me on what English speakers would and wouldn't call a general election, but I tend to agree with my interlocutor in saying that perhaps you should wait to have a bit more experience on Wikipedia before providing third opinions and so on.

I genuinely appreciate your enthusiasm for the project though, and expect (with no pressure ;) ) great things from you!

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 07:56, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

Requested move 1 July 2026

2021 Qatari general election → 2021 Qatari Shura Council election –

1. Sources used in the article and sources overall overwhelmingly do not use the term "general election".

2. The official Qatar News Agency always calls it "Shura Council Elections", never "General", and Qatar has a "Media Support Committee for the Shura Council Elections" and a "Shura Council Elections Supervisory Committee".^[1][2]

3. The term "general election" is ambiguous, and is often understood in English to mean elections that affect a government,^[3] which is not the case here, nor in elections for similar bodies in other non-democratic countries, going against Precision from WP:CRITERIA.

4. WP:NCELECT does not have a specific guideline on "general election", and due to the particular nature of the Shura Council as a pseudo-legislature with limited powers, I believe that the appropriate guideline here is the following: "For elections to particular bodies or offices, default to the form "[date] [country name or adjectival form] [body/office] election"."

Thanks and good tidings, غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 08:11, 1 July 2026 (UTC) غوّاص العلم (Ghawwas) (talk) 08:11, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose per the points made in the discussion above; 'general election' is a common term and is used for elections in nearly all monarchies (regardless of how much power the parliament has). Renaming this article would be inconsistent with election article titles for other countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman etc (which all use 'general election'). And as noted above, the Qatari constitution refers to it as a general election. Number 57 15:22, 1 July 2026 (UTC)
• Comment – Wouldn't 2021 Qatari legislative election make the most sense here in terms of consistency? General election articles usually include elections of the head of state (e.g. president). Yue🌙 (talk) 08:06, 2 July 2026 (UTC)
  • That's not the case – general election articles do not 'usually' include elections of the head of state; 2021 Japanese general election, 2024 United Kingdom general election, 2022 Swedish general election, 2023 Spanish general election, 2024 Jordanian general election, 2022 Lesotho general election, 2024 Irish general election, 2024 Indian general election, 2024 Pakistani general election and 2026 Thai general election are not elections for the head of state of the countries in question (most of which are monarchies and some of which are parliamentary republics). Number 57 16:06, 2 July 2026 (UTC)