After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (3 page)

A few problems remain, however, with proving the direct connection between rentierism and the survival of traditional political systems. As Michael Ross noted in his 2001 article ‘Does Oil Hinder Democracy?’, the Middle East was a particularly difficult region on which to test the theory, given that most Arab governments at that time could be considered authoritarian, regardless of their natural resources or rent-based structures.
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Nevertheless, Ross demonstrated that a ‘taxation effect’ did exist in the hydrocarbon-rich states, most notably the Gulf monarchies, whereby governments derived such large revenues from oil and gas sales that they became unlikely to tax their population heavily, if at all; in turn the public would be less likely to demand representation or accountability from their rulers.
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Similarly, Ross illustrated a ‘spending effect’ in rentier states, whereby wealthy governments could pay for extensive patronage projects to enhance the reputation of rulers, and—through the generous funding of quasi-civil society bodies—could engender a ‘group formation effect’, weakening the appeal of poorly funded, unlicensed and genuine civil society bodies.
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Indeed, in young states such as the Gulf monarchies, where a tradition of civil society organisation was noticeable by its absence, it was noted that governments relied primarily on largesse rather than repression to block the formation of powerful social capital.

With hydrocarbon reserves declining in several Gulf monarchies, especially since the 1990s, and with the ability of governments to keep spending or expanding the public sector being challenged, another problem loomed for the rentierism assumption. Nonetheless, the ‘new rentierism’ described in my 2005 book
The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival
, tried to offer an explanation. Dubai—the second largest of the UAE’s constituent emirates—had run out of sizeable oil rents some time
before, and was thus rapidly diversifying its economic base into tourism, export-processing zones, and real estate opportunities for foreign investors. All three activities were kick-started by the government, which fostered a more liberal investment environment and then distributed hitherto worthless tracts of desert land to powerful indigenous families. In turn these families were able to develop or rent out their land to expatriates, thus reaping rewards from a feudal-capitalist system while still maintaining a certain separation from the wealth creation process.
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Similarly in Bahrain and Oman, which were also low on hydrocarbon reserves, recent analyses have demonstrated that new, land-related activities managed to shift at least some of their national populations from oil-financed rentier expectations to this post-oil, private sector rentierism. Other research has also revealed how all six Gulf monarchies—even those with very sizeable hydrocarbon reserves—have kept reinvigorating an old sponsorship practice, the
kafala
system.
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With most businesses being required by law to have a local partner, this has effectively allowed Gulf nationals to market themselves as sponsors to industrious foreign entrepreneurs.
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Thus even the most minor of Gulf national families have often had the opportunity to transform themselves into ‘mini rentiers’ courtesy of their nationality and regardless of their closeness to ruling families or access to land. Writing in 2011, Matthew Gray’s article ‘A Theory of Late Rentierism in the Arab States of the Gulf’ pushed some of these ideas a little further forward, arguing that ‘late rentier’ states have had to become much more entrepreneurial and responsive to markets, even if they remain undemocratic, and have had to open up to globalisation while at the same time keeping strong protectionist elements.
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But as central as political economy is in understanding the survival of traditional monarchy on the Arabian Peninsula, several other explanations are worth considering also. These have mostly focused on the region’s political culture and are particularly useful for grasping the subtler differences between the six states beyond their self-evident economic and demographic disparities. Especially plausible is the view that some of the most resilient traditional polities in the developing world have been those that have successfully kept reviving and reinventing traditional sources of legitimacy—including cults of personality, tribal heritage, and religion—while simultaneously co-opting and controlling modernising forces such as education and communications wherever possible. In this revised approach to modernisation theory, the most durable regimes are therefore
those that approach modernising forces as an opportunity rather than as a threat, and find ways of harnessing rather than suppressing them. Published in 1978, Michael Hudson’s
Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy
provides an early Middle East-focused example. Although still arguing that no Arab regime could attain lasting legitimacy without implementing full participatory democracy, Hudson acknowledged that several Arab states, especially the Gulf monarchies, appeared to have gained considerable legitimacy from their populations, often by using a range of resources, including personalities and religion. Applying his ‘mosaic model’, he claimed that these regimes had been able to maintain and perhaps even enhance traditional loyalties, despite a period of intense modernisation.
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Writing more recently on the Qatar case, Allen Fromherz puts this well: ‘[the state] should be a boiling stew of problems brought about by the conflict between tradition and modernity, but it is not… Many political scientists, at one time predicting its fall, now predict a long term future… The old political system is usually the first to go after the forces of modernity and tradition have clashed. Yet Qatar remains a monarchy…’
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The Gulf monarchies have been particularly skilled at grafting seemingly modern political institutions onto essentially traditional powerbases. Over the past few decades a plethora of ministries, government departments, and other authorities have been created as the size of the state has grown. In some cases consultative councils and even parliaments have even been set up. But for the most part these have remained extremely limited, often being dominated by staff or members who have been autocratically appointed, and with the institutions they represent enjoying only limited powers compared to those of the ruling families. They have nevertheless provided a veneer of credibility and modernity for the regimes, not just to appease international critics, but also for domestic consumption. And as Hisham Sharabi argued in his 1992 study,
Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society
, such strategies have allowed regimes to move away from a total reliance on inherited patriarchal authority to a system in which it can be reintroduced and maintained in an apparently modern state.
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These strategies can also be connected back to Max Weber’s original tripartite classification of authority, first presented in his 1919 lecture ‘Politics as a Vocation’. Weber argued that polities would eventually mature from relying on the charismatic, authority of one patriarch and
his family, to regimes based on traditional, often feudal authority, before finally progressing to states governed by legal-rational authority where powers were vested in offices rather than office-holders and where the rule of law could be upheld by an independent judiciary.
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In this light, the hybrid, ‘neo-patriarchal’ governments that have emerged in the Gulf seem to have allowed the monarchies to arrest or stall Weber’s process somewhere between the second and third stages, while also continuing to rely on the initial stage of authority. Writing in 2002, Daniel Brumberg makes a direct connection between such neo-patriarchy and the Gulf monarchies in his article ‘The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy’. On discussing Kuwait, which unlike its neighbours had long been experimenting with an elected parliament, he contended that ‘…the mixtures of guided pluralism, controlled elections, and selective repression… is not just a survival strategy… but rather a type of political system whose institutions, rules, and logic defy any linear model of democratisation’.
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And of Bahrain and Qatar, which at that time had not yet followed Kuwait’s lead, he argued that ‘…political eclecticism has benefits that rulers are unlikely to forgo’ and predicted, with uncanny accuracy, that these regimes ‘…would soon join the ranks of Arab states dwelling in the gray zone of liberalised autocracy’.
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Linking together all of these political economy and political culture explanations, and perhaps providing the best all-round understanding of the resilience of traditional monarchy have been the various attempts to describe the multi-dimensional, socioeconomic contracts that seemingly exist between the Gulf’s ruling families and their citizens. First applied in the European context, most notably by British and French writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the concept of a ‘social contract’ was used as an intellectual device to explain the most appropriate relationship between governments and individual citizens. Although Hobbes advocated absolute monarchy as the ideal form of authority, while Locke and Rousseau advocated ‘natural rights’ and the need for collective sovereignty in the name of the ‘general will’ of the people, all three were nonetheless agreed on the need for governments to forge agreements with their citizens by guaranteeing certain privileges and protection in exchange for political consent.
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Best applied to the Middle East context by Mehran Kamrava in
The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War
, first published in 2005, the Hobbesian social contract is rebranded a ‘ruling bargain’ for the Arab world, where people
choose to remain politically acquiescent in return for sufficient stability and services from their governments.
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Writing in 2008 and 2009 in
Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success
and
Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond
, I examined two different constituent emirates of the UAE—one scarce in oil wealth and one abundant—through the prism of Kamrava’s ruling bargain. Although arguing that government-led distribution of rentier wealth and opportunities to its citizens was an important source of legitimacy for rulers, I contended that there were several other, non-economic sources of legitimacy for the UAE’s rulers, including cults of personality, tribal heritage, religion, and seemingly modern government institutions. In fact, both books described many of the other sources that a revised modernisation or neo-patriarchy approach would expect to identify. By revealing the full spectrum of legitimacy sources available, it was also demonstrated that each Gulf monarchy’s ruling bargain will differ, depending on its unique socioeconomic or historical circumstances. In some, especially those with high economic resources and small populations, it was reasoned that distributed wealth would remain the chief pillar of the system, while in others non-economic legitimacy sources would take precedence. And in those monarchies with rapidly declining or improving economic resources, a certain dynamism would likely be observed, as the relative weighting of the different legitimacy sources would be modified in order to reflect the changing reality and maintain the regimes’ resilience. Nevertheless in all cases it was emphasised that the Gulf monarchies’ governments, even the poorest, have to keep up the appearance of being distributors of wealth rather than extractors in order for their ruling bargains to function.
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Moreover, as others have argued, any attempt to collect income tax would significantly undermine the mutual consent that underpins the social contracts.
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In these earlier books I also stressed the centrality of citizenship and the promotion of national identity in the Gulf monarchies’ ruling bargains, as many of the services and privileges associated with citizenship can only really be sustained if the national populations remain distinct, aloof, and in some cases compact. Often ignored, or in some cases misrepresented as a threat rather than as an opportunity for regimes of the region, the role of the millions of expatriates who work in the Persian Gulf—and who now make up the majority of residents in all of the Gulf monarchies’ major cities—was also discussed. Both books argued that as
long as their remuneration and other benefits remained higher than in their country of origin, and as long as regimes kept blocking any path to naturalisation, then expatriates would remain mere labour migrants: primarily interested in safe and stable short-term wealth creation before eventually returning home. Thus, they would have no interest in altering the domestic political status quo, and if anything the more influential, wealthy, and skilled expatriates in the Gulf monarchies would become another important supportive or at least silent constituency of the traditional monarchies.
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Further explanations

Two other explanations for the survival of Gulf monarchies—and more broadly the survival of monarchy in the Arab world—have circulated over the past fifteen years. Both have been popular and thus also warrant attention. But given that they have often downplayed economic factors and have focused primarily on distinct historical, cultural, or familial circumstances associated with the Arab world that are now rapidly changing, it is likely they will soon fall out of favour. The most nuanced and sophisticated of these further explanations is that monarchical resilience is mostly due to the internal strength of the ruling families themselves. Published in 1999, Michael Herb’s
All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies
argued that the evolution of collective action mechanisms and ‘bandwagoning’ techniques within the contemporary ruling families have reduced some of the divisiveness and factionalism which historically plagued the region’s monarchies for much of the last century.