A great deal of existing scholarship on the Gulf states concerns means in which hydrocarbon wealth has shaped political dynamics. Such analysis, however, fails to take into account the centuries-old importance of tribal actors in policymaking. This paper will examine the means in which tribes have become clients of rentier regimes as well as the extent to which they maintain their status as independent actors by looking specifically at the Kuwaiti case. Kuwait is in some ways an anomaly – a wealthy rentier state with a vocal parliament containing political blocs ranging from Salafis to secular liberals. In such an environment, where electoral politics are the centre of political life, tribes have managed to maintain their political standing through informal institutions like diwaniyat and (technically illegal) tribal primaries in which tribes determine which candidates they will support in parliamentary elections. Kuwaiti tribes have thus adjusted to their political climate, maintaining cohesion in a system which has historically fostered ideological, rather than clan, identification. In response, the government has tried to mitigate tribes’ political power in recent years by cracking down on previously outlawed tribal primaries and by redrawing electoral districts to limit tribal influence. Nonetheless, tribes have persisted as influential political actors in Kuwait, as well as elsewhere in the Gulf. The Kuwaiti case, exhibiting relatively open political system, provides the most transparent case for the examination of how oil reinforces existing societal divisions, rather than washing them away with rent money. We anticipate that similar processes take place in other states in the region, yet in a less institutionalised and clearly observable way. While existing literature has documented the government’s co-optation of the Kuwaiti merchant elite with the advent of oil wealth, tribes have largely been excluded from discussion about patronage in oil wealthy states. This paper, then, will trace the degree to which Kuwait’s powerful tribes have been courted by the state or have been allowed to maintain autonomy from it. In our analysis, we also assess the extent of influence held by independent political movements, in particular of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi strands, in tribal areas, as well as the degree to which such groups operate as homogeneous political actors.