Five years on since the Arab uprisings, the oil-rich Gulf Arab states have proven to be resilient to the unprecedented protests that swept the region. In keeping with the authoritarian durability thesis, Michael Ross (2001) attribute regime survival to a combination of repression effect, spending effect and group-formation effect. While the use of coercive power remains largely intact across the MENA region, there has been little research on the use of soft power and nation branding strategies in authoritarian regimes in the post-Arab spring. This study attempts to fill this gap by looking at the intersection of nation branding, regime stability, and cultural and business tourism in Bahrain after the Arab uprisings in 2011. Rooted in Nye’s theory of soft power in international relations, Szondi (2008) defines nation branding as the economic, political, and social self-promotion with the aim of enhancing and creating national reputation at home and abroad. By focusing on the interplay between business and cultural tourism, I contend that Bahrain’s state-sponsored nation branding agenda targets both domestic and international audiences through the use of more subtle means of power and influence, namely through global marketing strategies, museums, heritage sites, public spaces, and the hosting and sponsoring of public events. Nation branding and soft power strategies are pivotal for Bahrain due to the dwindling oil reserves relative to its GCC counterparts, and the volatility of longstanding socio-political issues. Pushing the debate beyond the dominant discourse of political realism, I argue that Bahrain has been using soft power as a medium for creating a public narrative centered on the ruling family’s legitimacy as founders of modern Bahrain while projecting a national image as a regional financial hub. While the preliminary findings suggest that nation-branding has no direct effect on averting geopolitical and geoeconomic risks, the prevalent use of soft power implies that 1) nation branding and efforts to promote economic development are critical to maintaining a public front of political resilience; 2) nation branding has implications for promoting nationalism and public diplomacy; 3) soft power, beyond shaping foreign policy objectives, is linked to enhancing national image both domestically and internationally. Observations are drawn from official documents and press statements released by the government, business and cultural tourism advertisements, interviews with stakeholders, and visits to public spaces: museums, heritage sites, and highway murals.

Europe and the United States' aid donation practices have been widely documented within the literature over the past decades. Yet, comparable scholarship on Gulf donorship remains sparse despite the fact that Gulf countries contribute the greatest percentage of aid in relation to their respective Gross National Incomes (GNI). It is critical to address this gap in the literature in at least two important ways: First, Gulf countries' donation practices within the scope of refugee relief given the rising numbers of displaced within the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region and globally. Second, how modes of relief and donations may vary between Gulf states must be accounted for given previous scholarship’s tendency to focus on Gulf assistance from the regional level. This paper begins to explore these themes through an examination of Kuwait's and the UAE’s donation practices to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) since the onset of the Syrian refugee crisis. Drawing upon UN Data, this paper finds that Kuwait and the UAE contribute to UNHCR in significantly different ways despite relatively similar demographic, economic and political profiles. Second, the UAE’s and Kuwait’s traditional "state" actors also contribute to UNHCR through non-state affiliated means or in the form of non-monetary support more extensively at certain times and in particular places. Third, UNHCR’s current operations within Kuwait and the UAE seem to link to how, why, and where Kuwait and the UAE donate—and describe their donation behavior—beyond their borders. Examining Gulf donations only in terms of state actors and monetary transactions at the regional level may in turn skew understandings and explanations of how donation patterns and behavior shape refugee relief practices on the ground. Scholarship must revisit Gulf “state” versus “non-state” actors’ donation roles to assess how their increasing fusion and overlap is transforming relationships, norms, and definitions of "refugee relief” globally.

Rentier state theory (RST) has long maintained that oil and gas-rich states are vulnerable to the fluctuations of international markets, even those states that have diversified their wealth into sovereign wealth funds. Yet extant literature offers little insight into their vulnerability to international political pressures, short of violent conflict and foreign invasion. This paper argues that rentier states are far less politically insulated than typically assumed. It takes an in-depth case study of Bahrain, with comparative analysis to the rest of the Arab states of the Gulf, all assumedly archetypal ‘rentier states’. Drawing from over 120 personal interviews conducted across the Gulf region and among exiled communities in the UK, the paper traces the emergence of an internationalised opposition in Bahrain, and how this opposition places political pressure on the state even as RST emphasises state autonomy. In so doing, opposition can, to an extent, compensate for their weaker domestic position vis-à-vis the state and also ensure a greater (though still limited) level of protection for domestic dissidents. The existence of an internationalized opposition community, formed largely of political exiles from previous uprisings and their extended families, helps to sustain these international advocacy networks, and allows them to continue to influence Bahraini state-society relations even where they have not returned home for decades. What this means, from a theoretical perspective, is that opposition may have domestic roots, but it acts internationally. This is not a relationship typically captured within RST works, yet the use of international advocacy networks has been an important element of Bahraini state-society relations since 2011 and is also relevant to state-society relations in other Gulf rentier states with active exiled oppositions, particularly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This dynamic is particularly important where the state has repressive relations with groups in society, or otherwise where the ability of societal groups to press for reform is limited in the domestic sphere. The role of transnational opposition built from exiled communities also generates interesting implications for RST: it highlights the importance not only of transnational variables but also a dynamic understanding of state-society relations, where repression against previous incidents of unrest may result in the formation of an opposition in exile over time. In terms of an evaluation of RST, most critically, greater appreciation of how opposition regularly interacts with and acts through the international sphere needs to be integrated into the theoretical literature on the ‘rentier state’.

As the war in Yemen has been largely eclipsed in world attention by other wars in the region, the Yemeni power constellations on the ground and regionally have dramatically changed. Officially proclaiming to aim at restoring Yemeni unity, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf partners have committed war efforts not only to liberate the central and southern part of Yemen from Huthi-Salih advance, but also to build a “national” army to the southerners. Popular Committees, local militias joined together to form the Southern Resistance have been equipped and trained by Emirati forces. Meanwhile in other parts of wartime Yemen, old foes have returned to fight for power, namely Ali Muhsin al-Ahmar, the former right hand of erstwhile president Ali Abdullah Salih who during the course of the 2011 uprising turned against him and whom the Huthis sent to exile after capturing Sana’a. In the current war situation, Ali Muhsin fights alongside the Saudi coalition against Huthi-Salih forces. Still, he can hardly be counted as an ally of president AbdRabbuh Mansur Hadi, whose power base inside the country anyhow remains disputed. While the fighting goes to its second year, it is time to focus on the new power constellations that the war has proliferated. Among these, the Southern question is the most progressed one with a seemingly clear plan to establish a new state with the provisional name “Republic of South Arabia.” In the South, where the war has been experienced as the “second North-South war,” there hardly is a way back to Sana’a rule. Still, some of the regions in the South, namely Hadhramaut and al-Mahra, have also negotiated with neighbouring countries in seeking solutions to the state crisis in Yemen. In my paper, I explore the various conceptions of the state in Yemen, divided by generation, region and approaches to modernity. My paper is based on long-time ethnographic fieldwork first in the PDRY, and following Yemeni unity, in the current Republic of Yemen, and on archival and online sources.