Most Gulf-related research tends to focus on political economy or security / foreign policy. While these topics are undeniably of great importance, in particular to the international audience, analysis of the internal workings of the Gulf’s rentier states is equally significant both in the broader academic understanding of these states and in the formation of appropriate and effective policies toward them. Bearing that in mind, this paper will examine the role of tribes in Qatar and the UAE, arguing that participation in tribal politics in fact is a form of involvement in civil society and local politics more broadly. The small Gulf states have often been described as “tribes with flags.” While this description is frequently used, it is rarely explained – in particular with regard to these least studied states of the Arabian Peninsula. Many researchers defer to rentier state theory to describe such states, claiming that wealthy Gulf states do not experience meaningful domestic political life. This paper will contest that characterization, using past Arabic and English studies of tribalism in the Middle East generally and in the Gulf states specifically, in addition to extensive fieldwork undertaken by the author in 2013-2014 in Qatar and the UAE. This paper will examine the role of tribes as members of civil society, for the first time granting these traditional groups agency as modern political actors. It will also answer critical questions about the nature of tribal politics in states often described as “apolitical.” Do tribes hinder or advance popular participation in government through uninstitutionalized means? Has the strength of tribes prevented the growth of independent political parties in such states? In what ways does the political role of tribes change our understanding of the small states of the Gulf? The study will also examine how two very different GCC governments, the Qatari and the Emirati, have handled tribalism, and its enduring political influence, in their domestic government policies. The paper will contribute to the advancement of understanding of the internal politics of the Gulf, in particular going beyond the traditional rentier framework by granting political agency to internal actors of such states.

What role does the legislature play in an authoritarian, rentier state? Is such a legislature a cooption mechanism, intended to administer patronage? Or is it a meaningful tool of the opposition? The creation of Kuwait’s National Assembly (KNA) in 1962 was a landmark decision that led to the establishment of a hybrid regime which combines a hereditary executive with an elected legislature. Despite the existence of several studies that examine the creation of and development of the national assembly overtime, very few systematically have examined its internal dynamics. In this paper I will explore the internal dynamics of the KNA by examining the assembly’s roll call votes for the 13th legislative session. Such an examination will unveil the socioecoonmic and political dimensions along which members of the KNA cluster. These dimensions are crucial in as much as they reveal which issues the representatives privilege and whether the representatives’ priorities are influenced by these issues. Understanding the factors that influence the voting patterns of representatives in the KNA is crucial for determining whether they are motivated by ideological programs or issue-based constituent pressure. The paper aims to contribute to the burgeoning literature on legislatures in authoritarian regimes by exploring how a legislature in an authoritarian, rentier state operates, and what purpose it serves. In other words, the balance between policy concessions and patronage distribution in the assembly will be tested using the roll call analysis. Moreover, the consequences of the internal dynamics and voting patterns of the assembly on economic development and political stability will be explored, in order to demonstrate how the peculiar characteristics of hybrid structures of Kuwait’s political system leads to terminal disequilibria - in contrast to most institutionalized authoritarian regimes.

With the beginning of oil exploitation in Kuwait in the mid-20th century, the old city was bound to an inevitable urbanization process used as a tool for absorbing surplus wealth generated from the oil industry. The old souks were demolished due to an infrastructural renewal plan created by the British firm Minoprio, Spencely, and McFarlane in 1951. For a decade, spatial production was centered on expansion beyond the ancient walls and complete refurbishment and commercialization of the center. However, following the birth of nation (1961) and the establishment of a municipal body (1962), new markets—often called ‘souks’—were created. Envisioned by a newly founded local planning board functioning under the aegis of a technocratic rule, the new ‘souks’ endeavored to bring back physiognomies of the traditional souks lost to foreign modern development. The board sought to index a new national image whose contours were a product of indigenous and regional forms and modernist aesthetics. As this study traces the evolution of modern souks in Kuwait in the last fifty years informed by the political and economic developments, it suggests that the architectural discourse of the last two decades greatly overlaps with treatises put by Kuwaiti municipal members in the 1960s in its way to promote commercial projects that bring back local identity as they embrace the global. Unlike the 1960s though—when marketplaces were a collaborative production between private investors and a newly formed state with a nationalized economy—the developments of the 1990s were generated within the framework of a neoliberal economy and a new national commitment to Islamic solidarity and conservative social mores that arose in 1991 after Kuwait’s liberation from the Iraqi invasion and the establishment of the Islamic Constitutional Movement. Spatial production thus became more excessively imitational claiming to derive its forms from the pre-industrial linear market structures. I argue that the 1960s’ nationalism has shifted to what may be called exhibitionist nationalism. A traditionalist, caricaturist, and spectacular architecture has been employed since 1990 to disguise supreme forms of globalization and a rigorously consumer market. This is the foreseeable result of the growing participation of national economic actors in global markets. While new souk-like malls seem to be private developments independent of the state, many are in fact owned by the ruling class—a global economic elite which, while dictating national politics, performs meticulous spatial calculations in its incessant attempt to increase its wealth.

This paper asks the question: Has higher educational reform empowered national citizens and emboldened them to participate in the construction of the knowledge economy? All of the GCC countries have attempted to change their higher education system to improve the educational outcomes of university and college graduates. Western institutions have been invited to establish branch campuses, regulations have been changed to permit the establishment of private institutions; rulers have aggressively attempted to restructure the educational practices of public universities; expatriate students have been allowed to pursue college degrees offered by the new universities and colleges of the regions; and English has become a much more important part of tertiary education. All of these reforms have been made in reaction to what was perceived as the poor performance of the state university systems constructed after independence. The critique is that these institutions have become too bureaucratic and failed to promote the sort of critical thinking that would allow national citizens to join the dynamic private sectors being established in many of the region’s cities. At the same time, these changes have led critics to argue that by de-emphasizing the use of Arabic and imposing Western educational standards that some national citizens are further alienated from the economic life of their country. This paper adopts a comparative perspective in three ways. First, it contrasts the different models of educational reform in the region and argues that these different approaches will have different effects on the national population. Second, the paper notes that the national population is not a homogeneous block. Higher educational reform has been linked to educational reform at the secondary and primary school level that has tended to promote the establishment of non-public language schools to which more wealthy national citizens send their students. Thus higher educational reform might empower some national citizens while dis-empowering others. Third, the paper argues that higher educational reform cannot by itself change the labor market behavior of employers and employees without a change in economic incentives. This suggests that the opening of higher education to expatriate residents might further disadvantage national citizens.

The centrality of the Kuwaiti male guestrooms (sing. diwaniyya; pl. diwaniyyat or dawaween) to the livelihood of its citizens is unquestionable; these parlors are simultaneously markers of success, places of sociability, and the very sites that can personalize the distributive apparatuses of the rentier state. Yet, on April 6, 2008, visiting and hosting was disrupted for an unknown number of dawaween across every district in Kuwait City as the Committee to Remove Irregularities on State Property launched its campaign to raze those guestrooms that it deemed to be in violation of the Public Property Law. Although this prospect had been vehemently debated in the National Assembly before its eventual dissolution, what was referred to in local parlance as the “diwaniyya demolitions” proceeded amidst passionate popular scrutiny as municipality teams dismantled thousands of these establishments built without censure for decades on government land. By November of 2010, it was estimated that 13,000 dawaween had been destroyed, and this sum only includes those guestrooms officially razed by the municipality and not the ones voluntarily removed by owners who elected to avoid the whole spectacle altogether. The objective of this paper is to analyze the consequences and repercussions that have ensued in the wake of this unprecedented display of executive authority in Kuwait. Presumably, the casualties of this enforcement include the immeasurable elements of the civic framework: dispossessed hosts stripped of their guests, clients bereft of patronage, as well as political aspirants and current officeholders deprived of an essential channel between themselves and the general populace. In the words of one woman who was asked about the impacts of these removals: “Where will these people meet now? Are they supposed to meet in the streets?” The first section of this presentation will provide a general overview of the dawaween in Kuwait City to contextualize the impact of these demolitions within the broader societal fabric of the country. Next, an introduction to the Public Property Law and its unexpected implementation will be presented to show the debates that surrounded the law and why it became such a contentious issue in the early months of 2008. Finally, the last segment will explore the implications of the Public Property Law, with particular attention given to how it brought to light Kuwaiti hadhar conceptions that this whole episode was just another example of their badu neighbors engaging in civil disobedience.