Societal support is critical to the perpetuation of the ‘rentier bargain’ – referring to the exchange of wealth derived from oil and gas exportation for political quiescence – in the Arab states of the Gulf. The emergence of pro-government ‘counter-protests’ in response to local incarnations of the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011 ostensibly supports this narrative, demonstrating the rentier state’s ability to mobilize loyalists when its political authority is threatened. Yet how reliable are these groups in terms of political support for the state? Are they likely to remain pro-government actors, or have they demonstrated a tendency to shift between loyalty and opposition over time – and if the latter, why has the ‘rentier bargain’ failed to cement their political support? Despite its importance, there has been very little investigation of the complexity of political loyalty within rentier state theory (RST), the dominant literature on state-society relations in the petroleum-rich Gulf states. This paper presents a detailed crucial case study of a group of youth participants in pro-government counter-protests in early 2011, who later formed a political society with clear reformist ambitions. Specifically, the paper examines the political activities of the Bahraini youth group, the al-Fateh Youth Coalition (FYC), which splintered from a broader pro-government Sunni group in 2012, to reveal the complex nature of ‘loyalist’ political activism in Bahrain. The FYC, the paper argues, simultaneously reinforces, and challenges state authority. That is: the FYC has strongly rejected Bahrain’s Shiite opposition societies, which they view as loyal to Iran, and in doing so benefit the state, which can portray popular unrest as a societal conflict between Sunni and Shiite groups. At the same time, the FYC make wide-ranging demands for political reforms that would significantly alter the state-society relationship, suggesting they are also willing to challenge state authority. Drawing from in-depth interviews with members of the FYC and other Bahraini loyalist and opposition political societies conducted from 2013-2016, the paper questions assumptions of state autonomy prevalent in RST. By tracing the shift from loyalty to reform among members of the FYC, the paper highlights the importance of sub-national inequalities in rent distributions, sectarianism, and ideology in shaping political attitudes. Even the state’s most dedicated allies, the paper argues, maintain independent interests and place political constraints on the state, revealing the complex interaction between rents, loyalty, and autonomy that typifies the modern rent-rich states of the Gulf.

Traditional understandings of Gulf politics place members of tribes as critical supporters of ruling families, with the smaller Gulf states oftentimes referred to even as “bedouinocracies.” While tribes undoubtedly hold political capital inside of Gulf states, it remains to be seen to what extent they still act as clients of regimes or whether they are in fact independent, and potentially oppositional, actors. The fact that tribes influence policy-making and shape political systems has been documented in extant work. Therefore, while tribes certainly hold political capital inside the Gulf states, this paper will assess what factors – whether political interest, shared ideology, or economic concerns – determine the direction of this influence towards the opposition or regime support. The role of tribes, logically, varies by country, depending largely on political systems and networks of patronage in which they can participate. This paper will examine the degree to which tribes act as political parties, lobbyists, or state clients in the Kuwaiti, Qatari, and Emirati cases, as well as what factors determine the direction of tribal support. To that end, we will analyse electoral outcomes for the Kuwaiti legislature, Qatari municipal council, and Emirati consultative council to understand the extent to which certain major tribal groups take collective action through electoral campaigns. We will then use original data from fieldwork to assess the degree to which identification along tribal lines is self-conscious, as well whether it is considered a social or political alignment. Such research will enhance understanding about the extent to which tribes have changed in terms of (a) their willingness to participate in elected bodies, (b) their ability to hold sway over policy decisions in such bodies, and (c) their participation in political patronage networks inside the state. Due to the comparative nature of this study, we will come to a better understanding of how these small rentier states, which, at first glance, seem highly similar, house very different tribal dynamics. In addition, this study will debunk incorrect assumptions about political life in Gulf states and contribute to comparative work between the tribes in states of the Gulf and tribes elsewhere in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia is recognized as an important leader of the Islamic world. A sizeable literature has developed analyzing the evolution of its distinctive Salafi Unitarian creed, commonly known as Wahhabism, and the political use of state-supported clerics in both geostrategic competition and domestic legitimacy (Commins 2009, Hegghammer 2010,Lacroix 2011). Yet over the past decade, the smaller Gulf states of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have developed their own visions of political Islam and have similarly demonstrated considerable ambition to play an influential regional role. Lacking their own indigenous clerical establishment of the requisite heft, these states have instead played host to influential associations of Islamic scholars, the Doha-based International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS), and the Abu Dhabi-based Muslim Council of Elders (MCE) and associated peace-driven clerical initiatives. This paper will examine this novel injection of rentier wealth into the religious field by these two “extreme rentiers” and the challenge they pose to the more traditional state-based religious establishment of a “middling rentier” state, Saudi Arabia (Herb 2014). I will first examine the establishment of these two transnational associations of clerics, and characterize the role they have played in the complex arena of global Islamic thought and politics. I will argue that, although made up of non-state actors, these organizations have provided their host governments with important vehicles for influencing discourse and political positions of Islamic publics at a time of incredible political upheaval and political re-alignment: the IUMS championing the youth-driven political uprisings and injection of political Islam into post-revolution governments in Tunisia and Egypt, and the MCE backing the re-emergence of pro-state clerical positions in post-coup Egypt and countering political Salafism in its manifestations in jihadism and political sectarianism. At the same time, these two organizations have created difficulties for the loyalist clerics of Saudi Arabia, from two opposite orientations: the IUMS in injecting an independent political orientation at odds with Salafi quietism, and the MCE challenging some of the essential creedal tenets of Saudi Arabia’s Salafi Unitarianism. Theoretically, this study will highlight the difficulty of capturing today’s fluid, transnational Islamic politics in state-society based rentier models, as ideas, relationships, and rentier dollars reach beyond borders and challenge more ‘static’ rentier loyalty.

Work on ruling coalitions of the Gulf over the past two decades has produced two strands of theorizing on the role of business elites: either as a powerful coalition brought into being by state largess and able to impose sharp limits on or even direct state policy-making (Chaudhry, Hanieh) or as wholly dependent clients able to delay some change but incapable of initiating it on their own (Hertog). Drawing on material gathered this summer in discussions with business owners and economic advisers in Saudi Arabia, I draw on the work of Pete Moore to provide a framework the tradeoffs Gulf leaders face in dealing with the private sector - cultivating the kind of independent-minded "captains of industry" who can serve as partner to the state in economic reform risks granting such groups meaningful political leverage in bargaining over state policies. In some countries, such as Kuwait or Bahrain, institutionalized channels of influence grant organized business interests a good deal of political voice; in Saudi Arabia, however, the neglect of the private sector as an organized group has lead to policies that run roughshod over economic common sense even as they seek to avoid red-lines that might provoke a backlash from key stakeholders. My paper will highlight why we fail to see the development of a corporatist political economy - with state-sanctioned, institutionalized forums for bargaining between public officials and the private sector - across much of the Gulf despite the political and economic benefits of such a system emphasized by scholars of East Asian development.