Christopher Davidson - After the Sheikhs - The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

Instead, the most acute threat to the Gulf monarchies in the early 1970s was deemed to be some sort of sweeping socialist or Communist revolution, likely supported by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the People’s Republic of China. In 1962 restive tribes in Dhofar — the southern province of Oman — had formed a liberation front, which by 1968 had already adopted a Marxist-Leninist stance and had openly begun to receive Soviet and especially Chinese support in a bid to overthrow the British-backed sultan of Muscat. [6] 6. See Calabrese, John, ‘From Flyswatters to Silkworms: The Evolution of China’s Role in West Asia’, Asian Survey , No. 30, 1990. Referring to Said bin Taimur Al-Said. Furthermore, the following year a Marxist-Leninist wing of the South Yemen-based liberation front [7] 7. The National Liberation Front. had seized power, eventually forming a Soviet, Chinese, and Cubanbacked People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen — right on the southern flank of Saudi Arabia.

Understandably, much of the scholarship devoted to the region at the time reflected these circumstances, often discussing the likelihood of further Marxist-Leninist rebellions spreading throughout the Arabian Peninsula. [8] 8. For a good overview see Ismael, Tareq Y., The Communist Movement in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 2005). After all, the Dhofar Liberation Front had renamed itself the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf, and was only finally defeated in 1975 following a series of British-backed counterattacks on behalf of the beleaguered Omani ruling family. [9] 9. Ladwig, Walter C., ‘Supporting Allies in Counterinsurgency: Britain and the Dhofar Rebellion’, Small Wars and Insurgencies , Vol. 19, No. 1, 2008, p. 73. Britain’s actions in Oman during this period were fictionalised by Ranulph Fiennes in his 1991 novel. See Fiennes, Ranulph, The Feather Men (London: Bloomsbury, 1991). Published in 1974, Fred Halliday’s Arabia Without Sultans was based on extensive fieldwork in Dhofar during the early 1970s and remains one of the best perspectives on this period. Focusing heavily on Oman’s underdevelopment and the disenfranchisement of various tribes under the yoke of a traditional monarch supported by an imperial power, the book is vividly optimistic about the prospects of successful armed insurrection in the region. Although not explicitly attacking capitalist structures, Halliday nonetheless painted a grim picture of continuing misery and the deepening exploitation of the region’s indigenous population. He argued strongly that increased social conflict was going to be the major impetus for political change in the Gulf monarchies. [10] 10. See Halliday, Fred, Arabia without Sultans (London: Saqi, 1974); Halliday, Fred, ‘Arabia Without Sultans Revisited’, Middle East Report , Vol. 27, No. 204, 1997.

But while Dhofar-like Marxist-Leninist rebellions were perceived as acute, short-term threats to the Gulf monarchies by some area specialists, those focusing on other parts of the Middle East were boldly claiming that longer term, intangible ‘modernising forces’ were also likely to lead to significant shifts in the political and social order, and eventually the demise of traditional ruling systems. Writing in 1958, Daniel Lerner had already predicted in his Passing of Traditional Society: The Modernizing of the Middle East that most of the region’s societies would pass through a series of distinct phases, beginning with urbanisation, proceeding through literacy and mass communication, and then eventually leading to political participation. [11] 11. Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (New York: The Free Press, 1958); Sigelman, Lee, ‘Lerner’s Model of Modernization: A Reanalysis’, Journal of Developing Areas , Vol. 8, July 1974, p. 525. By the early 1960s many more scholars had put forward similar arguments for other parts of the developing world, all essentially claiming that a combination of more modern social settings, especially cities, combined with new, modern technologies — especially relating to communications — would inevitably lead to the formation of some sort of educated, conscious, and better-connected middle class, which in turn would become increasingly unwilling to be governed by primitive, non-participatory political structures. Seymour Martin Lipset, for example, in his 1959 article ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy’ and a volume that appeared the following year, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics , had asserted that the wealthier a nation became, and the more its population was exposed to modernising forces, then the better was its chances of sustaining democratic institutions. [12] 12. Lipset, Seymour Martin, ‘Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy’, The American Political Science Review , Vol. 53, No. 1, 1959; Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960). Similarly, the following year Karl Deutsch packaged these forces and processes under his ‘theory of social mobilisation’, stressing both their cumulative impact and their inevitable or extremely likely capacity to transform political behaviour. [13] 13. Deutsch, Karl, ‘Social Mobilization and Political Development’, American Political Science Review , Vol. 55, No. 3, 1961.

Published in 1968, Samuel Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies took ‘modernisation theory’ to a higher level. Questioning the smooth predictability of such political changes, he argued that incumbent regimes would resist strongly, often by developing short-term containment strategies, and possibly by resorting to violence. Nevertheless he still subscribed to the inevitability of new, modern social groupings eventually dispensing with traditional polities. And in one particularly celebrated chapter—‘The King’s Dilemma’—he even singled out traditional monarchs, stating that they would soon have to grapple with the dilemma of either suppressing modernising forces and thus facing mass rebellion, or instead allowing modernisation to occur and thus risk ceding absolute powers to a mobilised middle class. [14] 14. Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 140–142. On the latter scenario, his claim that ‘…the monarchical parent is eventually devoured by its modern progeny’ [15] 15. Ibid., p. 169. seemed particularly relevant for the Gulf monarchies, even if they were not explicitly mentioned, as at that time all were on the cusp of accelerating socio-economic development. Oil revenues were beginning to flow to fledgling governments, populations were being urbanised as oil boom opportunities abounded in fast-expanding cities, literacy rates were increasing as more and more schools were being established, and mass communications was arriving in the region for the first time in the form of newspapers, transistor radios, and television. Thus, while Huntington would have also probably predicted an ‘Arabia without sultans’, he would have likely foreseen the demands for political change being led by a restless, newly-created middle class, rather than by Halliday’s exploited and insurgent proletariat.

As the years and decades went by, it soon became apparent that both sets of predictions were wrong, at least with reference to the Gulf monarchies. Although at first glance seeming to have adopted capitalist modes of production, the Gulf economies never really spawned a proletariat — or at least not one that was interested in overthrowing the classes above it. Equally, although an urban, educated, and mass communications-literate population was undoubtedly emerging in the Persian Gulf — as per Lerner and Lipsets’ expectations — it hardly compared with the middle classes of more developed democratic states and nor did it seem keen to press for the kind of greater political participation that Deutsch and Huntington would have expected. This ongoing apathy, or political demobilisation, and the concomitant endurance of traditional monarchies on the Arabian Peninsula, can largely be explained by the region’s unusual political economy, specifically the rent-based nature of the economic and political systems that emerged in all six monarchies following their first significant oil exports.