This paper looks at the cases of pro-Palestine groups in the Arab Gulf states and traces the impact of various levels and strategies of repression on the identities, objectives, and trajectories of these groups. Pro-Palestine groups in particular are important to consider in the context, as one of the few arenas in Gulf civil society which is allowed to function to a large extent. How regimes treat such groups is often a yardstick for determining levels of repression overall. Using ethnographic methods, the paper will show how these groups have evolved under fluctuating levels of repression. In environments with less repression, pro-Palestine groups have been able to shift ideologically, and explore new ideas and demands –in particular demands for democracy. Alternatively, time periods of increased repression - often tied to regional factors - radicalize members, but severely impact the efficacy of the group overall. The paper looks specifically at the cases of Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar, and the pro-Palestine activism therein.

This paper explores the modern history of the construction of welfare states in the Gulf Arab States during the mid-twentieth century. Combining oral history with archival work across US, British, and Arab sources, the study argues that mobilization by political and social movements locally and regionally during the period of 1950 to 1975, in conjunction with the developmentalist outlooks of particular government technocrats, were the prime factors that led to the construction of the extensive welfare states in the Gulf Arab States. Taking a transnational approach that looks at political mobilization and technocrat-led social reforms across Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman, the paper argues that the states' attempts to contain these movements and the wider regional revolutionary current pushed regional governments towards providing social welfare services that have become known as some of the most extensive education, healthcare, and social security programs in the world. Crucially, however, the paper details how states relentlessly focused on limiting and outlawing any form of collective organization, imposing a direct individualized relationship between the person versus state and capital, rather than any form of group mobilization. Thus, the emergent welfare state, the economic privileges of citizenship, as well as the severe limitations on formal collective associations were a product of political and labour mobilizations at the national and regional level and the states' reaction to contain these movements.

To what extent can states in the Gulf utilize propaganda to boost citizens’ evaluations of government policies? In the past few years, the Gulf monarchies have redoubled their efforts to censor critics and flood public discourse with pro-government messaging. However, due to constraints on conducting research inside many of these countries, it has been difficult to assess the effectiveness of these efforts. Despite repression of public criticism, we hypothesize that citizens can still accurately assess government policy performance by gathering information through personal observation and social networks. In this article, we assess whether highlighting the successes of a well-known labor-market policy in Saudi Arabia – either in securing jobs for Saudis or holding employers to account – meaningfully alters citizens’ views. Utilizing an original survey experiment covering three regions of Saudi Arabia, we find that neither framing has a substantial effect on citizens’ assessments of Nitaqat. However, lower incomes, lack of a college degree, and being from outside the capital city of Riyadh (i.e. locations where jobs growth for Saudis has been slower) were all associated with more skeptical assessments of Nitaqat. This in turn suggests clear limits on the ability of the state to compensate for policy failures through propaganda.

Societies in oil and gas-rich states are typically understood as politically quiescent, coopted by state largesse and repressed by a well-funded security apparatus. In the context of the post-Arab Spring ‘counter-revolution’, the Gulf Cooperation Council states have emphasised a repressive response to societal activism, curtailing access to public space, arresting dissidents, and cracking down on public displays of discontent. Yet although the de-mobilising effect of repression has dominated research on the ‘repression effect’ in the Gulf, the wider literature on repression and opposition has been less conclusive. This paper examines the relationship between oil, repression, and political mobilisation in the contemporary Gulf, drawing from interviews with reformers in Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, as well as tracing of online activities, published manifestos, and opinion pieces published in local newspapers from 2010-2020. The paper widens its consideration of political activity to include micro-mobilisations and those that occur in private, rather than public spaces. In so doing, the paper traces how Gulf reformers move between different types of activism – including formal participation in elected bodies (where these exist), street demonstrations, online social media campaigns, advocacy via the majlis/diwaniyya system, underground networking, and exile activism – in response to the state use of repression. Findings demonstrate the importance of understanding the ‘repression effect’ as dynamic and impacted by intervening variables. Repression did demonstrate the capacity to decrease street demonstrations (forced demobilisation) by greatly increasing the cost of political action. However, reformers did not necessarily cease opposition activity entirely but rather temporarily shifted to other, less costly, forms of political action. Simultaneously, and as has been previously found in Iraq, West Germany, Russia, and other cases, repression also functioned as a mobilising influence, if groups with a collective identity are specifically targeted or if the individual adheres to an ideology that encourages challenges to state authority. In these cases, even when the state’s power appears overwhelming, citizens sensed that the cost of ceasing political activism was higher than the repressive cost of political action – especially for those whose family members have been personally targeted. By moving between different forms of political activity – and by considering repression as simultaneously mobilising as well as demobilising opposition depending on intervening variables – opposition actors may be more adaptable to coercive governance tactics than we think they are, even if widespread street demonstrations cease following a crackdown.