Contents

Foreword

مرصد الإدارة, the Administration Observatory in the Arab Region, publishes this report as the first release of the Arab Access and Experience Index. It replaces an earlier release that presented the same survey as a social inclusion index. The revision is both technical and conceptual.

Technically, the survey was re-scored from the raw country files against the questionnaire, with an explicit item specification and absolute scores; all ten states surveyed are reported, with the evidence base of each stated. Conceptually, the report no longer claims that the instrument measures social inclusion. It describes what the data record, access and experience across eleven domains, and reads the relation between them through a public administration lens.

Summary

At a glance

Samples are not representative: scores describe respondents, not national populations. Comparisons are indicative and small differences carry no weight. See Data and methods.

Governments can expand services, infrastructure and formal entitlements without producing a corresponding improvement in how residents experience them. The A-SCOPE MENA survey makes this visible for ten Arab states. It records, for eleven domains of everyday life, what residents report being able to obtain or take part in and how they evaluate it. Across the ten states the access and experience indices correlate at 0.45, and the relationship is carried by one state: without Tunisia, which records the highest value on both, the correlation is 0.00.

The report asks two questions. (i) How do access to and experience of services, resources and opportunities vary across Arab states and domains? (ii) What do divergences between the two reveal about the conditions under which public provision becomes access that people can use and value?

The argument is that the central administrative challenge is not only to provide more but to turn provision into services that people use and value. The survey observes the outcome of that process, not its workings. The report therefore treats the access–experience gap as a potential indicator of problems in delivery and states every administrative explanation as a proposition consistent with the data rather than a finding established by them.

The instrument adapts the Social and Community Opportunities Profile (Huxley et al., 2012) to the Arab region, with three domains added: civic participation and voice, environmental conditions, and service provision and assistance. For each domain it asks two kinds of question. Access records what respondents can obtain, use or take part in. Experience records how they evaluate it.

The eleven domains differ in kind. Some are public services; others are material conditions, basic conditions, or social and civic opportunities. Their common denominator is the ability of people to reach and benefit from the institutional, material, social and civic conditions of everyday life. The report does not describe the composite as social inclusion, a construct against which the instrument has not been validated in the region, and it does not describe it as a measure of service delivery, since family relationships and leisure are not public services.

The data do not measure bureaucratic capacity, efficiency, implementation, front-line discretion, procedures, service quality as delivered, responsiveness as practised, expenditure, staffing or organisational capability. These enter the analysis only as possible explanations and implications.

The report reads the survey through a chain of four stages: provision, access, use and benefit, experience. Provision is what public institutions put in place; access is what residents report being able to reach; use and benefit is whether access becomes use, given affordability, eligibility, procedures, information and distance; experience is whether residents find what they reach adequate and responsive. The survey observes access and experience.

Four conditions govern whether provision becomes experience. (i) Availability: is the service present? (ii) Accessibility: can people obtain it? (iii) Administrative responsiveness: can users navigate the system, complain and be answered? (iv) Experience: do people find it adequate and useful? The first is recorded in part by the access measure and the fourth by the experience measure; the second and third are where administrative explanations lie and are not observed.

The proposition that follows is that administrative capacity matters because it determines how far formal provision becomes effective and experience. The data are consistent with this proposition at the level of states and domains. They do not establish it.

Fieldwork took place in 2023 and 2024 in ten Arab League states, all of which are reported: Jordan (n = 299), Morocco (254), Egypt (253), Yemen (252), Tunisia (251), Kuwait (129), Qatar (119), Lebanon (103), Iraq (101) and Saudi Arabia (100), 1,861 respondents in total.

The raw country files were aligned to the questionnaire column by column. 188 items are scored: 120 on the access measure and 68 on the experience measure. Each item is assigned to a domain by its place in the questionnaire, rescaled to 0 to 100 in the direction of access or positive experience, with the direction taken from its response options. Codes for do not know and not applicable, and any value outside the documented response set, are missing; nothing is imputed. A domain score is the mean of its two measures; the index is the unweighted mean of the eleven domains.

Scores are absolute: 50 means that respondents on average sit at the midpoint of the items, and no state score depends on which other states are included. The limitations are material: non-probability samples of 100 to 299; a cross-sectional design; item response between 52 and 96 per cent; cultural differences in reporting satisfaction; two states affected by conflict during fieldwork; twelve Arab League states not covered.

The samples are not representative of national populations. The scores describe the respondents surveyed, cannot be generalised to the populations of the ten states, and should be read as exploratory and descriptive evidence, not as national estimates or measures of government performance. Annex A sets out the consequences for interpretation and the design of the next, representative wave.

The index ranges from 66.2 (Tunisia) to 46.7 (Iraq) around a regional mean of 54.2. The spread between states, 19.5 points, is narrower than the spread between domains within most states, which runs from 16 points (Kuwait) to 56 (Tunisia).

Tunisia is first on both measures (access 64.9, experience 67.6). Beyond it the measures rank the states differently. Kuwait, Lebanon and Yemen follow on access; Morocco, Lebanon and Egypt on experience. Yemen is fourth on access and ninth on experience; Morocco is ninth on access and second on experience.

The samples are not representative of national populations. The scores describe the respondents surveyed, cannot be generalised to the populations of the ten states, and should be read as exploratory and descriptive evidence, not as national estimates or measures of government performance. Annex A sets out the consequences for interpretation and the design of the next, representative wave.

The strongest domains are family and social relationships (65.3), safety (61.2), health and care (60.3) and housing (60.2). The weakest are service provision (45.9), civic participation (47.6) and leisure (47.8). Several domains carry the ranking of states: family relationships (r = 0.93), safety (0.92), digital access (0.91) and environment (0.90). Education (−0.48) and service provision (−0.47) move against the index: the states that score highest overall tend to score lowest on the two domains of direct public provision.

§d-leisure§6.1 Leisure and community participation

Role of government: Limited · Social opportunities

Access ranges from 34.5 (Tunisia) to 57.7 (Iraq) and experience from 37.3 (Iraq) to 81.3 (Tunisia). Across states the two measures move in opposite directions (r = −0.82), the strongest inverse relationship in the index.

Yemen and Iraq record membership and activity (57.5 and 57.7) that residents do not experience as satisfying (41.3 and 37.3). Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco and Egypt record the reverse: limited recorded participation (34.5, 36.7, 34.6, 38.1) and much higher satisfaction (81.3, 61.4, 56.8, 53.6). The Tunisian gap, −46.8, is the largest negative gap in the index.

§d-digital§6.2 Digital access and use

Role of government: Shared · Basic conditions

Digital access is the most dispersed domain (standard deviation 13.9) and closely tied to the index (r = 0.91). Tunisia (58.8 access, 94.3 experience) and Lebanon (62.5, 70.5) lead; Yemen (30.0, 37.9) and Iraq (30.8, 33.8) trail. Qatar (34.5) and Saudi Arabia (38.8) record low access.

It is the one domain in which experience exceeds access in every state, by 3 points in Iraq and by 35.5 in Tunisia.

§d-housing§6.3 Housing

Role of government: Shared · Material conditions

Access is high in every state (57.3 in Egypt to 92.6 in Tunisia) and exceeds experience in all ten, by 0.9 points in Morocco and by 15.8 to 26.2 points in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait and Tunisia.

Tunisia leads on both measures (92.6 and 66.4), Lebanon is second (75.2 and 64.8); Kuwait records a large gap (66.4 and 45.0).

§d-safety§6.4 Safety and policing

Role of government: Direct · Basic conditions

Access exceeds experience in all ten states, from 0.6 points in Iraq to 23.6 in Tunisia and 21.7 in Lebanon. Every Tunisian respondent reports walking alone after dark and no victimisation (access 100.0). Morocco follows (71.4 and 70.3); Iraq is lowest on both measures (43.8 and 43.2).

Safety is one of the domains that carry the ranking of states (r = 0.92).

§d-finance§6.5 Work, income and finance

Role of government: Shared · Material conditions

Access ranges from 47.4 (Yemen) to 89.9 (Tunisia); experience from 41.7 (Iraq) to 63.9 (Tunisia). Access exceeds experience in nine states, most in Tunisia (26.0), Morocco (15.3) and Jordan (12.4); Egypt is the exception (47.9 and 49.1).

§d-education§6.6 Education and training

Role of government: Direct · Public services

Yemen (67.2) and Qatar (67.2) record the highest access; Tunisia (25.3) and Morocco (33.1) the lowest. Tunisia also records the lowest experience (38.7) and the lowest domain score in the sample (32.0). Kuwait records high access (57.8) with low experience (42.0).

The domain moves against the index (r = −0.48): the states that score highest overall tend to score low on education.

§d-health§6.7 Health and care

Role of government: Direct · Public services

Health shows the largest access–experience gap of any domain: access averages 72.4 and experience 48.2. Access exceeds experience in nine states, by 15.1 points in Kuwait to 46.1 in Yemen (78.8 and 32.7); Tunisia is the exception (76.8 and 78.4).

Experience ranks the states: Tunisia (78.4), Morocco (57.4) and Egypt (50.9) lead; Yemen (32.7), Iraq (36.9), Qatar (39.0) and Saudi Arabia (39.8) trail.

§d-social§6.8 Family and social relationships

Role of government: Limited · Social opportunities

Contact is high in every state (70.3 in Jordan to 85.5 in Yemen). Experience ranges from 87.0 (Tunisia), 69.7 (Lebanon) and 69.2 (Morocco) to 37.1 (Yemen) and 36.9 (Iraq). The gap exceeds 25 points in Yemen (48.4), Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait; in Tunisia experience exceeds contact.

The domain is the one most closely tied to the index (r = 0.93).

§d-civic§6.9 Civic participation and voice

Role of government: Shared · Civic opportunities

The second weakest domain in the region (mean 47.6). Tunisia (57.4) and Kuwait (57.3) lead; Kuwait records the highest access (67.8). Morocco records the lowest access (26.5) and the highest experience (59.3), a gap of −32.8. Lebanon records the lowest domain score (40.2).

Across states access and experience move in opposite directions (r = −0.34).

§d-environment§6.10 Environmental conditions

Role of government: Shared · Material conditions

Tunisia (63.6), Lebanon (61.8) and Morocco (58.4) record the least exposure; Saudi Arabia (35.6) and Yemen (39.7) the most. Experience of the response ranges from 43.5 (Jordan) to 65.2 (Tunisia) and 63.9 (Kuwait).

Tunisia, Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen and Saudi Arabia rate the response above their exposure; Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt the reverse.

§d-services§6.11 Service provision and assistance

Role of government: Direct · Public services

The weakest domain in the region (mean 45.9). Kuwait (57.9) and Qatar (54.0) lead; Tunisia (34.0), Lebanon (38.5) and Morocco (39.2) trail. The domain moves against the index (r = −0.47): Tunisia and Lebanon, first and second overall, are last and second last on services.

Access and experience move in opposite directions across states (r = −0.33). Yemen records the highest access (66.8), reflecting receipt of assistance by 158 of 252 respondents, with low experience (36.8); Morocco, Tunisia and Lebanon record the lowest access (25.8, 26.5 and 28.8).

Access exceeds experience in 74 of 110 state-by-domain cells. The gap is consistent in four domains: housing (mean +13.5) and safety (+10.8) show access above experience in all ten states, health and care (+24.2) and family relationships (+19.4) in nine of ten, Tunisia being the exception. Digital access shows the opposite in all ten states (mean −10.6).

Two patterns matter for administration. High access with low experience appears most sharply in Yemen (+16.8 on the index), Iraq (+12.5), Saudi Arabia (+10.5) and Qatar (+10.1). Low access with high experience appears in Morocco (−4.8), Egypt (−2.9) and Tunisia (−2.7), and in particular domains: leisure in Tunisia (−46.8), digital access in Tunisia (−35.5), civic participation in Morocco (−32.8), services in Morocco (−26.8), leisure in Lebanon (−24.7).

Neither pattern can be read from one measure alone. A satisfaction survey would place Morocco second in the region; a coverage survey would place Yemen fourth. Only the two measures read side by side show where provision is not turned into experience, and where satisfaction masks a deficit.

Service provision and civic participation are the domains in which public administration is measured most directly: receipt of social assistance and legal aid, the expectation of obtaining them without informal payment, opportunities to influence government and the expected accountability of officials. In both, access and experience move in opposite directions across states (r = −0.33 and −0.34).

Tunisia and Lebanon, first and second on the index, are last and second last on service provision; Lebanon is last on civic participation. Morocco records the lowest access in the sample on services (25.8) and civic participation (26.5). Where material and social conditions are strong and these domains weak, the pattern is consistent with a deficit at the administrative interface: procedures, eligibility, information, complaint handling and channels of voice. The survey does not observe these directly.

Iraq and Yemen record the lowest experience indices (40.4 and 42.2), the largest gaps and the lowest digital access and safety. Yemen nevertheless records the highest access on services (66.8) and among the highest on family contact, self-rated health and education.

The service score reflects receipt of assistance: 158 of 252 Yemeni respondents report it. The survey does not identify who provides the assistance. The pattern is consistent with, but does not establish, the possibility that humanitarian provision compensates for weak state capacity. What the data do show is that assistance received is not experienced as adequate: experience of services in Yemen is 36.8.

The states are grouped by the shape of their access and experience profiles, not by regime or region. The typology follows the empirical problem: where in the chain from provision to experience the process appears to fail.

State notes

Provision is not implementation. A government can put infrastructure and entitlements in place without producing access that residents report. The access measure records the result of implementation, not the provision behind it.

Access is not utilisation. Formal availability does not guarantee use. Where the access items record availability and use separately, use falls well below availability: pooled across the ten samples, leisure facilities are reported present in 68 per cent of answers and used in 44 per cent; civic organisations are reported nearby in 59 per cent and membership in 31 per cent.

Utilisation is not experience. People may use a service and judge it inadequate, unaffordable, irrelevant or unresponsive. Health and care, where good health sits beside low satisfaction with care, and service provision in Yemen, where receipt of assistance sits beside low satisfaction with it, are the clearest cases.

Administrative capacity as a link between provision and experience. The proposition that administrative capacity determines how far provision becomes effective and experience is consistent with the evidence at the level of states and domains. It is not tested by it. Testing it requires data the survey does not contain: administrative records, procedures, expenditure and front-line practice, linked to respondents.

(i) Improve service responsiveness. Simplified procedures, feedback and complaint mechanisms, and transparency of decisions address the stage of the chain the survey cannot observe and the domains where the gap is widest.

(ii) Measure experience. Coverage and infrastructure indicators miss the divergence documented in this report; experience measures belong in the performance frameworks of service agencies.

(iii) Target the gaps between access and experience. Where access is high and experience low (health and family relationships everywhere; the Gulf states and the conflict-affected states on the index), quality, affordability, relevance and responsiveness are the first places to look.

(iv) Address material deficits. Where experience exceeds access (Morocco and Egypt; civic participation, services and education in particular), satisfaction masks a deficit that expanded provision would address.

(v) Build administrative continuity. In Iraq and Yemen, sustaining delivery through the transition from humanitarian to state provision is the precondition for improving experience.

(vi) Measure access and experience in every survey. Statistical offices and service agencies can collect access and experience in the same instrument, with probability samples, disaggregation and repeated waves.

The evidence from ten Arab states is that access and experience are distinct, that they diverge in patterns that differ by domain and by state, and that the domains closest to the administrative interface are among the weakest and move against the overall index. The central administrative challenge is not only to provide more, but to turn provision into access that residents can use and value. Measuring both, and reading the distance between them, is where public administration can begin.

Annex A. Methodology

Instrument

A-SCOPE MENA adapts the Social and Community Opportunities Profile (Huxley et al., 2012) to the Arab region. It covers eleven domains, eight from the source instrument and three added for the region: civic participation and voice, environmental conditions, and service provision and assistance. Each domain combines questions on access and on experience.

Sample

Fieldwork took place in 2023 and 2024 in ten Arab League states, all of which are reported: Jordan (n = 299), Morocco (254), Egypt (253), Yemen (252), Tunisia (251), Kuwait (129), Qatar (119), Lebanon (103), Iraq (101) and Saudi Arabia (100), N = 1,861. Samples are non-probability samples; scores describe respondents, not national populations.

Scoring

The raw country files were aligned to the questionnaire column by column by matching each column against the response set the questionnaire documents. 188 items are scored, 120 on the access measure and 68 on the experience measure. Each item is rescaled to 0 to 100 in the direction of access or positive experience, with the direction taken item by item from its response options. Do not know, not applicable and any value outside the documented set are missing; nothing is imputed. A respondent measure score is the mean of the items answered (at least two, or one for short batteries). A state domain score is the mean of its two measures; the index is the unweighted mean of the eleven domains; the access–experience gap is access minus experience.

In eight states some four-point items were administered on five-point scales and are rescaled on the scale used. Receipt of government or non-governmental assistance counts as access to services, following the source instrument.

Limitations

(i) Non-probability samples of 100 to 299 per state. (ii) Cross-sectional design. (iii) Item response between 52 per cent (Morocco) and 96 per cent (Tunisia); non-response is not random. (iv) Cultural differences in the expression of satisfaction affect the experience measure. (v) Iraq and Yemen were affected by conflict during fieldwork. (vi) In four files, respondents share identical answers on all 188 scored items with at least one other respondent while differing on unscored fields. The number of distinct answer patterns is 7 of 251 in Tunisia, 22 of 101 in Iraq, 41 of 100 in Saudi Arabia and 66 of 119 in Qatar. Removing the duplicated patterns changes the index by 0.2 points or less for Tunisia, Iraq and Saudi Arabia and lowers Qatar from 53.4 to 52.0; the position of Tunisia cannot be tested in this way. Scores are reported as the data give them. (vii) Twelve Arab League states are not covered. (viii) Some access scores (digital use and safety in Saudi Arabia and Qatar) are out of line with other evidence and are read at item level before policy use. (ix) The data do not measure administrative capacity or service delivery; all administrative explanations are inferences.

Representativeness and how to read the results

The samples are not representative. The A-SCOPE MENA samples were not drawn by probability methods from a defined sampling frame. The probability that any resident was selected is unknown, no design or post-stratification weights are applied, and the composition of each sample was not controlled to match the population by age, sex, region, urban or rural residence, education, employment or nationality. Samples range from 100 to 299 respondents per state. The scores therefore describe the people who were surveyed. They are not estimates for the national populations of the ten states, and they cannot be generalised to those populations.

Consequences for the reading of results. (i) Because selection probabilities are unknown, the usual measures of sampling error, standard errors, confidence intervals and significance tests, cannot be computed in a meaningful way, and none is reported. (ii) Differences between states may reflect differences in who was surveyed as much as differences in conditions or in public administration. A state whose sample includes more educated, urban or employed respondents will tend to score higher on several domains for that reason alone. (iii) Small differences carry no interpretive weight: Jordan and Morocco share a score of 54.4, and Qatar (53.4) and Egypt (53.3) differ by a tenth of a point. Rankings are indicative orderings of the samples, not league tables of states. (iv) Comparisons within a state, between domains and between the access and experience tracks, are less exposed to sample composition than comparisons between states, because both measures are answered by the same respondents; they remain affected by it.

How the results should be used. The index, the typology and the domain analyses are exploratory and descriptive. They identify patterns, above all the divergence between access and experience, that merit explanation and testing. They should be read as hypotheses about where conversion from provision to experience may be failing, not as measurements of national conditions or of government performance. They should not be used to set policy targets, to allocate resources, to evaluate or rank governments, or as a substitute for official statistics. Any citation of a score should carry this qualification.

The next wave. Future work of the observatory will focus on representative surveys. The next wave is designed around probability samples drawn from defined national frames, stratified by region and by urban and rural residence and, where relevant, by nationality; sample sizes sufficient to support estimates for the main population groups; survey weights, published design effects and confidence intervals for every score; standardised fieldwork protocols with quality controls, including checks for duplicated records; and extended coverage of Arab League states in repeated waves. Until such data are available, the present results are a first description of access and experience in ten samples, and a basis for the questions a representative survey should answer.

Citation

Ben Brik, A. (2026). From Provision to Experience: A Public Administration Analysis of Access to Services, Resources and Opportunities in the Arab States. Arab Access and Experience Index (AAEI) 2026. مرصد الإدارة, Administration Observatory in the Arab Region.

Data: A-SCOPE MENA: Arab Access and Experience Dataset, 2026. Ben Brik, A. and Taylor Brown, C.

Annex B. Data tables

§anC§Annex C. Survey questions by domain

Leisure and community participation

What the survey asks: access. Presence of community groups, clubs and organisations, of leisure and sports facilities; membership of groups; unpaid help given to others; frequency of leisure activities.

What the survey asks: experience. Views on the range of opportunities to take part, to volunteer and to use leisure time; satisfaction with leisure activities.

Digital access and use

What the survey asks: access. Internet use at home or elsewhere; household access to a computer and a mobile telephone; use of AI tools; use of the internet for essential information and social media; experience of hacking or blocking.

What the survey asks: experience. Satisfaction with internet access, views on opportunities to go online and on the range of opportunities available.

Housing

What the survey asks: access. Availability of suitable housing at an affordable price in the preferred area; a self-contained dwelling.

What the survey asks: experience. Feelings about the accommodation, the preference to stay in the area, views on opportunities to find suitable housing and on the range available.

Safety and policing

What the survey asks: access. Walking alone in the area after dark; victimisation by crime or assault in the past year.

What the survey asks: experience. Feeling safe after dark and in the area; satisfaction with public and personal safety; the expected likelihood of police protection, of abuse of power and of prosecution of officers.

Work, income and finance

What the survey asks: access. Employment status; arrears on rent or mortgage; ability to borrow a small sum; a bank near the home and its use for saving or credit.

What the survey asks: experience. Feelings about the current job or about not working, how well the household is managing, ease of covering housing costs, views on opportunities to find work and to increase income, and feelings about personal and household finances.

Education and training

What the survey asks: access. Qualifications held; enrolment in a course in the past year; adult learning and job-related training; expected future learning.

What the survey asks: experience. Views on the availability of educational opportunities, feelings about the range available and about their own education and training.

Health and care

What the survey asks: access. Self-rated health; limitation of work or daily activity by physical health.

What the survey asks: experience. Mood over the past four weeks; feelings about physical and mental health; views on opportunities to improve health and on the range available.

Family and social relationships

What the survey asks: access. Contact with parents, adult children, children and other relatives by visit, telephone and online; visits with friends and neighbours; going out.

What the survey asks: experience. Satisfaction with contact and relationships with family, with friendships and with opportunities to make friends and to meet people; feeling part of the community.

Civic participation and voice

What the survey asks: access. Civic events and organisations near the home and attendance or membership; perceived freedoms of expression, organisation, assembly, media and internet; opportunities to influence government decisions and having done so.

What the survey asks: experience. Views on opportunities to attend civic events, to join organisations and to influence government; feelings about these opportunities; expected accountability of officials and influence of criminal organisations.

Environmental conditions

What the survey asks: access. Having been affected by natural disasters or pollution in the past five years, six months and three months; preparedness for future disasters.

What the survey asks: experience. Views on the actions taken to recover from disasters and to deal with pollution, and feelings about the range of actions taken.

Service provision and assistance

What the survey asks: access. Eligibility for and receipt of government social assistance and assistance from non-governmental or charitable organisations; eligibility for and receipt of legal aid.

What the survey asks: experience. Views on the assistance and legal aid received and on the range of opportunities to obtain them; the expected likelihood of obtaining social assistance and legal aid without a bribe or informal payment.

References

• Ben Brik, A. and Brown, C. T. (2025). Critical review of conceptualisation and measurement of social inclusion: directions for conceptual clarity. Social Policy and Society, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746425000302
• Brik, A. B. and Brown, C. T. (2024). Global trends in social inclusion and social inclusion policy: a systematic review and research agenda. Social Policy and Society, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1017/S147474642400054X
• Brown, C. T. and Brik, A. B. (2024). Welfare regime typologies: the six worlds of social inclusion. International Journal of Community and Social Development. https://doi.org/10.1017/ics.2024.14
• Ben Brik, A. and Taylor Brown, C. (2025). A-SCOPE MENA: adapting the Social and Community Opportunities Profile for the Arab world. Methodological paper, available on request.
• Huxley, P. et al. (2012). Development of a social inclusion index to capture subjective and objective life domains (Phase II): psychometric development study. Health Technology Assessment, 16(1), 1–248. https://doi.org/10.3310/hta16010