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

But as central as political economy is in understanding the survival of traditional monarchy on the Arabian Peninsula, several other explanations are worth considering also. These have mostly focused on the region’s political culture and are particularly useful for grasping the subtler differences between the six states beyond their self-evident economic and demographic disparities. Especially plausible is the view that some of the most resilient traditional polities in the developing world have been those that have successfully kept reviving and reinventing traditional sources of legitimacy — including cults of personality, tribal heritage, and religion — while simultaneously co-opting and controlling modernising forces such as education and communications wherever possible. In this revised approach to modernisation theory, the most durable regimes are therefore those that approach modernising forces as an opportunity rather than as a threat, and find ways of harnessing rather than suppressing them. Published in 1978, Michael Hudson’s Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy provides an early Middle East-focused example. Although still arguing that no Arab regime could attain lasting legitimacy without implementing full participatory democracy, Hudson acknowledged that several Arab states, especially the Gulf monarchies, appeared to have gained considerable legitimacy from their populations, often by using a range of resources, including personalities and religion. Applying his ‘mosaic model’, he claimed that these regimes had been able to maintain and perhaps even enhance traditional loyalties, despite a period of intense modernisation. [29] 29. See Hudson, Michael, Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). Writing more recently on the Qatar case, Allen Fromherz puts this well: ‘[the state] should be a boiling stew of problems brought about by the conflict between tradition and modernity, but it is not… Many political scientists, at one time predicting its fall, now predict a long term future… The old political system is usually the first to go after the forces of modernity and tradition have clashed. Yet Qatar remains a monarchy…’ [30] 30. Fromherz, Allen J., Qatar: A Modern History (London: IB Tauris, 2012), p. 5.

The Gulf monarchies have been particularly skilled at grafting seemingly modern political institutions onto essentially traditional powerbases. Over the past few decades a plethora of ministries, government departments, and other authorities have been created as the size of the state has grown. In some cases consultative councils and even parliaments have even been set up. But for the most part these have remained extremely limited, often being dominated by staff or members who have been autocratically appointed, and with the institutions they represent enjoying only limited powers compared to those of the ruling families. They have nevertheless provided a veneer of credibility and modernity for the regimes, not just to appease international critics, but also for domestic consumption. And as Hisham Sharabi argued in his 1992 study, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society , such strategies have allowed regimes to move away from a total reliance on inherited patriarchal authority to a system in which it can be re-introduced and maintained in an apparently modern state. [31] 31. Sharabi, Hisham, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

These strategies can also be connected back to Max Weber’s original tripartite classification of authority, first presented in his 1919 lecture ‘Politics as a Vocation’. Weber argued that polities would eventually mature from relying on the charismatic, authority of one patriarch and his family, to regimes based on traditional, often feudal authority, before finally progressing to states governed by legal-rational authority where powers were vested in offices rather than office-holders and where the rule of law could be upheld by an independent judiciary. [32] 32. Weber, Max, ‘Politics as a Vocation ( Politik als Beruf )’ (Munich: 1919). An essay originating from a lecture delivered to the Free Students Union of Munich University in January 1919. In this light, the hybrid, ‘neo-patriarchal’ governments that have emerged in the Gulf seem to have allowed the monarchies to arrest or stall Weber’s process somewhere between the second and third stages, while also continuing to rely on the initial stage of authority. Writing in 2002, Daniel Brumberg makes a direct connection between such neo-patriarchy and the Gulf monarchies in his article ‘The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy’. On discussing Kuwait, which unlike its neighbours had long been experimenting with an elected parliament, he contended that ‘…the mixtures of guided pluralism, controlled elections, and selective repression… is not just a survival strategy… but rather a type of political system whose institutions, rules, and logic defy any linear model of democratisation’. [33] 33. Brumberg, Daniel, ‘The Trap of Liberalized Autocracy’, Journal of Democracy , Vol. 13, No. 4, 2002, p. 56. And of Bahrain and Qatar, which at that time had not yet followed Kuwait’s lead, he argued that ‘…political eclecticism has benefits that rulers are unlikely to forgo’ and predicted, with uncanny accuracy, that these regimes ‘…would soon join the ranks of Arab states dwelling in the gray zone of liberalised autocracy’. [34] 34. Ibid., p. 57.

Linking together all of these political economy and political culture explanations, and perhaps providing the best all-round understanding of the resilience of traditional monarchy have been the various attempts to describe the multi-dimensional, socio-economic contracts that seemingly exist between the Gulf’s ruling families and their citizens. First applied in the European context, most notably by British and French writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the concept of a ‘social contract’ was used as an intellectual device to explain the most appropriate relationship between governments and individual citizens. Although Hobbes advocated absolute monarchy as the ideal form of authority, while Locke and Rousseau advocated ‘natural rights’ and the need for collective sovereignty in the name of the ‘general will’ of the people, all three were nonetheless agreed on the need for governments to forge agreements with their citizens by guaranteeing certain privileges and protection in exchange for political consent. [35] 35. See Hobbes, Thomas, The Leviathan (1660); Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government (1689); Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right (1762). Best applied to the Middle East context by Mehran Kamrava in The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War , first published in 2005, the Hobbesian social contract is rebranded a ‘ruling bargain’ for the Arab world, where people choose to remain politically acquiescent in return for sufficient stability and services from their governments. [36] 36. Kamrava, Mehran, The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005).

Writing in 2008 and 2009 in Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success and Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond , I examined two different constituent emirates of the UAE — one scarce in oil wealth and one abundant — through the prism of Kamrava’s ruling bargain. Although arguing that government-led distribution of rentier wealth and opportunities to its citizens was an important source of legitimacy for rulers, I contended that there were several other, non-economic sources of legitimacy for the UAE’s rulers, including cults of personality, tribal heritage, religion, and seemingly modern government institutions. In fact, both books described many of the other sources that a revised modernisation or neo-patriarchy approach would expect to identify. By revealing the full spectrum of legitimacy sources available, it was also demonstrated that each Gulf monarchy’s ruling bargain will differ, depending on its unique socio-economic or historical circumstances. In some, especially those with high economic resources and small populations, it was reasoned that distributed wealth would remain the chief pillar of the system, while in others non-economic legitimacy sources would take precedence. And in those monarchies with rapidly declining or improving economic resources, a certain dynamism would likely be observed, as the relative weighting of the different legitimacy sources would be modified in order to reflect the changing reality and maintain the regimes’ resilience. Nevertheless in all cases it was emphasised that the Gulf monarchies’ governments, even the poorest, have to keep up the appearance of being distributors of wealth rather than extractors in order for their ruling bargains to function. [37] 37. For discussions of the Dubai and Abu Dhabi ruling bargains see Davidson, Christopher M., Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (London: Hurst, 2008), chapter 5; Davidson, Christopher M., Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond (London: Hurst, 2009), chapter 6. Moreover, as others have argued, any attempt to collect income tax would significantly undermine the mutual consent that underpins the social contracts. [38] 38. See for example Spooner, Lysander. ‘No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority’ (1867). In this essay Spooner argues that a genuine social contract cannot include government actions such as taxation because the collection of tax would require the government to initiate force against anyone unwilling to pay.