Abstract
This book set out to provide a framework for analyzing the political economy of a developing state with a small population relative to a large expatriate workforce, governed by a federation of tribal, hereditary rulers in a region rife with sectarian and resource-based conflict. It offers an institutional approach that is common in the literature examining cases of economic and political development, but focuses on the informal institutions that regulate elite behavior in policymaking. One of the key goals of the book is to normalize the Gulf and the predicament of oil-rich Arab Gulf states, to view these states with an appreciation for their means: how they govern, where their political institutions originate, how these institutions structure and limit dissent and how the state has transformed over time. The result is an analysis that is interested in traditional forms of authority, particularly variations of tribal rule, but not a focus on a concept of monarchy or authoritarianism. It is not intended to be apologetic for repressive mechanisms of rule; rather the idea has been to see the state for what it has achieved, and to acknowledge the great diversity of its social foundations and its sources of conflict, both domestic and international.
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Notes
See F. Gregory Gause III, “Kings for All Seasons: How the Middle East’s Monarchies Survived the Arab Spring”, Brookings Institute. Brookings Doha Center Analysis Paper, Number 8, September 2013. In contrast, see Christopher Davidson (2012) After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies. London: Hurst.
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2006) The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
See the debate on comparing outcomes and processes across regions from the post-Socialist literature, for example Philippe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl (1994) “The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists and Consolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?”, Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 1, Spring, pp. 173–185.
Also see Valerie Bunce (1995) “Should Transitologists Be Grounded?”, Slavic Review, Vol. 54, No. 1, Spring, pp. 11–127.
Dani Rodrik (2012) The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: Norton.
Phillippe Schmitter and Terri Lynn Karl (1991) “What Democracy Is…and Is Not”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 2, No. 3, Summer, pp. 75–88.
Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub and Fernando Limongi (2000) Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950–1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carles Boix and Susan Carol Stokes (2003) “Endogenous Democratization”, World Politics, Vol. 55, No. 4, pp. 517–549
Collier, Paul (2000) “Doing Well Out of War: An Economic Perspective”, in M. Berdal and D. Malone (eds), Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
See Boix and Stokes (2003); also Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (2006) The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
On the scholarship on revolution, see as examples De Tocqueville, A. (1900) Democracy in America (Vol. 1). Colonial Press;
Skocpol, T. (1979) States and Social Revolutions (Vol. 29). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;
Pincus, S. C. (2007) “Rethinking Revolutions”, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, pp. 397–415;
Tilly, C. (1973) “Does Modernization Breed Revolution?”, Comparative Politics, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 425–447;
and lastly, Huntington, S. P. (1991) “Democracy’s Third Wave”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 12–34.
See Rolf Schwarz (2012) War and State Building in the Middle East. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Charles Tilly (1985) “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”, in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 169–187.
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© 2014 Karen E. Young
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Young, K.E. (2014). Towards a New Understanding of Emirati and Gulf Politics. In: The Political Economy of Energy, Finance and Security in the United Arab Emirates. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137021977_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137021977_6
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