In his book on European reactions to regime change in Napoleonic France, Richard Rosecrance wrote that, after war, regime change is the most alarming event for state system with the potential of provoking radical reactions form neighbouring states. But, what if the political elite of the new regime is ideologically compatible, at least theoretically, with the ruling regimes in neighbouring regional powers? Saudi Arabia has expressed its hostility towards the overthrow of Mubarak since the beginning of the Egyptian uprising. Since the early 1980s, Riyadh and Egypt have built an axis that weighed on regional affairs. Yet, one may argue that the fall of Mubarak haven’t stripped Riyadh of its leverage in relations with Cairo. Saudi Arabia could gain momentum with the empowerment of political Islam in Egypt. This may indeed be the case if we add the dire need for Saudi financial assistance and the perseverance of key elements from Egypt’s old regime. In addition, the political empowerment of Islamists in Egypt may comfort the Saudi regime’s legitimacy at home. However, the paper argues that the toppling of Mubarak is rather a double-edged change for Saudi Arabia, especially if put within the wider matrix of regional international relations. The impact of Egypt’s new Islamist political elite on relations with Saudi Arabia is disputed by many factors among which: the complex history of Saudi Arabia’s transnational relations with Egyptian Islamist movements, Saudi-Egyptian historical regional powers rivalry, Egyptian authorities’ current crackdown on foreign funding to NGOs, the delay of Saudi Arabia’s financial assistance to Egypt, part of public opinion’s mounting hostility towards Saudi Arabia’s stance from the revolution, in addition to Egypt’s positions on regional files especially Iran, Qatar’s rising star, Palestine and the “Arab Spring”. This paper builds upon an in-depth study of Egyptian-Saudi relations in the framework of a PhD dissertation. The suggested outline includes a review of bilateral state relations before and after the revolution. It then explores Saudi Arabia’s relations with various Islamist movements in Egypt. The paper has two main contributions: (1) to examine how state relations on the official level interact with transnational flows between these two regional powers; (2) to explore the potential of a new Egyptian-Saudi rivalry based on the same reference, Islamism.

One of the most important but least understood consequences of the Arab Spring was the burgeoning strategic and economic partnership between the Gulf Cooperation Council states (GCC) and Malaysia. Starting in late 2010 and extending throughout 2011, Gulf and Malaysian leaders frequently visited each other’s countries, announced massive investments in Malaysia and initiatives to strengthen political and military ties. Strikingly, when Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak visited Bahrain in March 2011, he promised to deploy Malaysian soldiers if Manama requested assistance in restoring stability to the island. The bilateral relationship reflected important shifts in the Middle East and the broader Islamic World in 2010 and 2011. GCC nations sought new international partners after the fall of longtime allies in Egypt and Tunisia, uprisings erupted in Bahrain and Oman, and Washington openly clashed with Saudi leaders over the Arab Spring. Gulf governments also sought to limit Tehran’s influence in Southeast Asia, where there are nearly 100,000 Iranians living in Malaysia alone. They also hoped to take advantage of Malaysia’s geostrategic position in the heart of Asia and adjacent to the rapidly growing economy of the Muslim world’s largest state, Indonesia. By contrast, Malaysian officials hoped that the GCC would provide funds to balance China’s growing economic influence and to offset declining trade and investment from Europe and America. Tens of thousands of Gulf nationals now visit Malaysia annually and transform Kuala Lumpur’s Bukit Bintang neighborhood into a “Khaliji” quarter during the summer months. Their presence reflects longstanding cultural ties between Malaysians and Gulf and other Arabs: 60% of Malaysia is Muslim, many Malaysians study in the Arab world, generations of Malaysians have intermarried with Meccans, and the governor of Malaysia’s largest state, Sarawak, is Syrian. In addition, Kuala Lumpur expected that the GCC would help its “movement of global moderates” and campaign to use wasatiyyah (moderation) to combat extremism. The paper would draw on the author’s knowledge of Arabic and Bahasa Malaysian sources along with the author’s experience in the Gulf and in Southeast Asia. It would also include recent interviews with leading political personalities in Malaysia and the Gulf. It would build as well on the author’s recent publications on historical ties between the Gulf and Southeast Asian Muslims. Ultimately, the paper aims to provides a unique perspective on how a defining moment in the Middle East–the Arab Spring–shaped the Gulf’s politics and its ties with Asia.

This paper will examine the changing position of the six Gulf States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) in South-South relations in the four decades following full independence. It combines historical analysis with the study of emergent geopolitical and trans-regional trends that shaped the differing phases of enmeshment in South-South frameworks. The paper begins by describing the ostensible paradox between the Gulf States’ integration into Western political and security spheres of influence in the 1960s and 1970s and the beginnings of the trans-national interconnections binding them to other developing nations in this period. This initially occurred through the provision of overseas development assistance and the patronage of international Islamic organisations and inter-regional economic and social development banks. These initiatives transmitted the Gulf States’ ‘soft power’ and new-found financial leverage onto the international stage, and the paper analyses the motivations and objectives behind their rise. These growing trans-regional linkages later became intermeshed with highly-accelerated globalizing processes in the 1980s and 1990s. Contemporaneously, the end of the Cold War facilitated the normalization of relations with China and post-communist states that transitioned to market economies. In the 2000s, the Gulf States emerged as significant regional and global actors. Their rise both deepened their role in South-South frameworks and occurred in tandem with shifting dynamics that rebalanced power relations across the world. Recent cooperative patterns, both material and discursive, provide a clear indication of the lenses through which GCC policymakers and their ruling elites view the Global South. These recent patterns, which still complement existing political and security relationships with the United States and European countries, are typical of the multi-layered approach that the Gulf States construct, as they balance domestic considerations against regional and international issues. The paper mixes the diachronic with the thematic as it addresses the practical consequences of the Gulf States’ interaction in South-South frameworks. These consequences include changed patterns in trade and investment flows, modification of provisions for developmental assistance to, and diplomatic mediation in, conflict-affected environments. These changes also anticipate further modifications in international relations and global governance that increasingly refract power through multiple nodes of influence. Collectively, these changes reveal a quantitative and qualitative strengthening of networks that bind the Gulf States to the Global South, and that operate bilaterally at the national and multilateral-institutional levels. These shifting patterns hold important implications for unprecedented transitions in the current global order.

Scholars often study revolution and democratization in single countries, only haltingly observing the influence of international or regional factors, exogenous shocks, or transnational identities and interactions. Episodes of revolutionary contagion such as the collapse of communist regimes across Eastern Europe in 1989 and the uprisings against authoritarian regimes across much of the Arab World in 2011 demand closer attention to regional context and transnational dynamics, however, as revolutionary protest movements are rapidly emulated across neighboring countries. Individual country cases during such episodes of contagion do not stand alone, as the emergence and dynamics of each movement is influenced by its neighbors. This paper examines the relationships between cases in instances of regional revolutionary contagion, looking, first, at the systematic differences that can be expected between outcomes – related particularly with the relative timing with which uprisings occur – and, second, at common factors which nonetheless bind the uprisings in a given region together, exerting a similar though not determinative influence on outcomes. Comparing patterns of revolution and transition in 1989 and 2011, the author argues that there are often important and systematic differences between the states in which early and late uprisings occur during periods of regional revolutionary contagion. The societies that are the first to revolt (e.g. Poland, Tunisia) generally are able to achieve their goals with the least violence and transform their countries through the most constitutional and orderly processes. The countries in which revolutions are ignited later by the sparks from neighboring uprisings (e.g. Romania, Syria) are often the ones in which opposition is the least organized, the state is the most oppressive, and the revolution itself, as a result, unfolds with the most violence and chaos. In such settings, reforms can prove more difficult and democratic consolidation less orderly. While the paper’s findings concerning intra-regional variation could suggest a gloomy forecast for some of the Arab Awakening states, the author points to the ultimate relative success of the 1989 revolutions – even the more difficult ones – and concludes by suggesting factors unique to episodes of regional contagion that can influence all states in the revolutionary regions, tying transitional outcomes more closely together than analyses of country-level factors might lead one to expect. Shared identity, mutual oversight (and competition), and strong leadership by regional organizations can all play important and helpful roles in guiding post-revolutionary transitions.