The Arab Gulf States and Reform in the Middle East

The Arab Gulf States and Reform in the Middle East
Author: Y. Guzansky
Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781137467829

This analysis seeks to analyse the main trends in Gulf security in light of the changes in the regional and international arena, while examining the relationship between external and internal threats, which are intertwined in the Gulf security agenda.

Political Change in the Arab Gulf States

Political Change in the Arab Gulf States
Author: Mary Ann Tétreault
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Pub
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781588267528

Explores the politics influencing the volatile situation in the Middle East, as well as specific measures devised by regimes in power to adjust to the challenges of the current environment.

The Arab Gulf States and Reform in the Middle East

The Arab Gulf States and Reform in the Middle East
Author: Y. Guzansky
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137467835

This analysis seeks to analyse the main trends in Gulf security in light of the changes in the regional and international arena, while examining the relationship between external and internal threats, which are intertwined in the Gulf security agenda.

Sectarian Politics in the Gulf

Sectarian Politics in the Gulf
Author: Frederic M. Wehrey
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2013-12-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231536100

One of Foreign Policy's Best Five Books of 2013, chosen by Marc Lynch of The Middle East Channel Beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and concluding with the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings, Frederic M. Wehrey investigates the roots of the Shi'a-Sunni divide now dominating the Persian Gulf's political landscape. Focusing on three Gulf states affected most by sectarian tensions—Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait—Wehrey identifies the factors that have exacerbated or tempered sectarianism, including domestic political institutions, the media, clerical establishments, and the contagion effect of external regional events, such as the Iraq war, the 2006 Lebanon conflict, the Arab uprisings, and Syria's civil war. In addition to his analysis, Wehrey builds a historical narrative of Shi'a activism in the Arab Gulf since 2003, linking regional events to the development of local Shi'a strategies and attitudes toward citizenship, political reform, and transnational identity. He finds that, while the Gulf Shi'a were inspired by their coreligionists in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, they ultimately pursued greater rights through a nonsectarian, nationalist approach. He also discovers that sectarianism in the region has largely been the product of the institutional weaknesses of Gulf states, leading to excessive alarm by entrenched Sunni elites and calculated attempts by regimes to discredit Shi'a political actors as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or Lebanese Hizballah. Wehrey conducts interviews with nearly every major Shi'a leader, opinion shaper, and activist in the Gulf Arab states, as well as prominent Sunni voices, and consults diverse Arabic-language sources.

Money, Markets, and Monarchies

Money, Markets, and Monarchies
Author: Adam Hanieh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2018-09-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108429149

An original and empirically grounded analysis of the Gulf monarchies and their role in shaping the political economy of the Middle East.

Oil and the political economy in the Middle East

Oil and the political economy in the Middle East
Author: Martin Beck
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2021-08-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526149087

The downhill slide in the global price of crude oil, which started mid-2014, had major repercussions across the Middle East for net oil exporters, as well as importers closely connected to the oil-producing countries from the Gulf. Following the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, the oil price decline represented a second major shock for the region in the early twenty-first century – one that has continued to impose constraints, but also provided opportunities. Offering the first comprehensive analysis of the Middle Eastern political economy in response to the 2014 oil price decline, this book connects oil market dynamics with an understanding of socio-political changes. Inspired by rentierism, the contributors present original studies on Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The studies reveal a large diversity of country-specific policy adjustment strategies: from the migrant workers in the Arab Gulf, who lost out in the post-2014 period but were incapable of repelling burdensome adjustment policies, to Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, who have never been able to fulfil the expectation that they could benefit from the 2014 oil price decline. With timely contributions on the COVID-19-induced oil price crash in 2020, this collection signifies that rentierism still prevails with regard to both empirical dynamics in the Middle East and academic discussions on its political economy.

Sectarian Gulf

Sectarian Gulf
Author: Toby Matthiesen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-07-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780804785730

As popular uprisings spread across the Middle East, popular wisdom often held that the Gulf States would remain beyond the fray. In Sectarian Gulf, Toby Matthiesen paints a very different picture, offering the first assessment of the Arab Spring across the region. With first-hand accounts of events in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, Matthiesen tells the story of the early protests, and illuminates how the regimes quickly suppressed these movements. Pitting citizen against citizen, the regimes have warned of an increasing threat from the Shia population. Relations between the Gulf regimes and their Shia citizens have soured to levels as bad as 1979, following the Iranian revolution. Since the crackdown on protesters in Bahrain in mid-March 2011, the "Shia threat" has again become the catchall answer to demands for democratic reform and accountability. While this strategy has ensured regime survival in the short term, Matthiesen warns of the dire consequences this will have—for the social fabric of the Gulf States, for the rise of transnational Islamist networks, and for the future of the Middle East.

Desert Kingdoms to Global Powers

Desert Kingdoms to Global Powers
Author: Rory Miller
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2016-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300222165

An expert in Arab Gulf politics offers a revealing analysis of the region’s stunning rise to global power and the challenges it confronts today. Once just sleepy desert sheikdoms, the Arab Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait now exert unprecedented influence on international affairs—the result of their almost unimaginable riches in oil and gas. In this accessible study, Gulf politics expert Rory Miller examines the achievements of these countries since the 1973 global oil crisis. He also investigates how the shrewd Arab Gulf rulers who have overcome crisis after crisis meet the unpredictable future. The Arab Gulf region has become a global hub for travel, tourism, sports, culture, trade, and finance. But can the autocratic regimes maintain stability at home and influence abroad as they deal with the demands of social and democratic reform? Miller considers an array of factors—Islamism, terrorism, the Arab Spring, volatile oil prices, global power dynamics, and others—to assess the region’s future possibilities.

Archive Wars

Archive Wars
Author: Rosie Bsheer
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2020-09-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1503612589

A study of the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s efforts to construct and disseminate a historical narrative to legitimize its rule. The production of history is premised on the selective erasure of certain pasts and the artifacts that stand witness to them. From the elision of archival documents to the demolition of sacred and secular spaces, each act of destruction is also an act of state building. Following the 1991 Gulf War, political elites in Saudi Arabia pursued these dual projects of historical commemoration and state formation with greater fervor to enforce their postwar vision for state, nation, and economy. Seeing Islamist movements as the leading threat to state power, they sought to de-center religion from educational, cultural, and spatial policies. With this book, Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularization of the postwar Saudi state and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in Riyadh and Mecca. The elites’ project was rife with ironies: in Riyadh, they employed world-renowned experts to fashion an imagined history, while at the same time in Mecca they were overseeing the obliteration of a thousand-year-old topography and its replacement with commercial megaprojects. Archive Wars shows how the Saudi state’s response to the challenges of the Gulf War served to historicize a national space, territorialize a national history, and ultimately refract both through new modes of capital accumulation. Praise for Archive Wars “An instant classic. With incredible insight, creativity, and courage, Rosie Bsheer peels away the political and institutional barriers that have so long mystified others seeking to understand Saudi Arabia. Bsheer tells us remarkable new things about the exercise and meaning of power in today’s Saudi Arabia.” —Toby Jones, Rutgers University, author of Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia “There are now two distinct eras in the writing of Saudi Arabian history: before Rosie Bsheer’s Archive Wars and after.” —Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania, author of Oilcraft “Archive Wars explores with conceptual brilliance and historical aplomb the various forms of historical erasure central not just to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia but to all modern states. In a finely-grained analysis, Rosie Bsheer rethinks the significance of archives, historicism, capital accumulation, and the remaking of the built environment. A must-read for all historians concerned with the materiality of modern state formation.” —Omnia El Shakry, University of California, Davis, author of The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt

The Political Economy of Arab Gulf States

The Political Economy of Arab Gulf States
Author: Kristian Ulrichsen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Arabian Peninsula
ISBN: 9780857939876

This insightful research collection examines the internal and external transformation of the Arab Gulf states and their repositioning within the global order. It explores the interlocking challenges of transition toward post-rentier structures of governance and assesses the domestic, regional and global implications. A multi-level approach begins with sections on domestic political and economic reform and the reformulation of domestic agendas to reflect new issues such as climate-change. Subsequent sections cover the evolution of regional security agendas, new trends in foreign policy and the Arab Gulf states' rapid emergence as global actors and provide a frank portrayal of this dynamic region.