The entire Gulf is passing through a transitional phase. The member-states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are witnessing change in varying degrees. The change has become too evident from the 1960s. It was oil, more than any other factor, which was responsible for a rapid transition. Control over oil production and marketing have led to the strengthening of governmental role as owner and distributor of oil income. The regions tribal society is being transformed into a modern society. Political modernization is a recent phenomenon if the nature and extent of structural and informal transformations are taken into account. Three broadly defined phases of political change can be discerned in the Arabian Peninsula: the traditional, the neo-traditional, and the modernizing or post-traditional. The modernizing phase was initiated by radical policies of socio-economic development, including the necessary restructuring of replacement of regimes and a redefinition or expansion of the scope and role of the state. However, the pace and direction of change is not clear enough. The coming few decades are crucial in this regard.

How are authority and influence accumulated and wielded across the six Gulf states? Mixing theoretical and empirical insights, and utilising both historical and contemporary examples, this book offers a comparative analysis of military, political, economic and religious power in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as well as of the power of narrative. While many volumes examine each of these states individually, Centers of Power in the Arab Gulf States assesses the Arabian Peninsula as a whole, filling a significant gap in the literature. It surveys the myriad factors which have influenced the emergence of these states, societies and political economies, which have become increasingly assertive actors in today's global order. Exploring domestic, regional and transnational pressures, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen sheds light on the varying concepts of power and authority, the different forms they take, the ways they are projected, and the practical constraints on their exercise. From whom does power derive? Is it something different from influence and ambition? Is decision-making top-down or bottom-up, or a mixture of both? From bureaucrats to scholars, and from royals to opposition figures, Coates Ulrichsen uncovers the power relations shaping the Gulf today.

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the various dimensions of the relationship between the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council, and highlights how relations are yet to reach their full potential. Despite both parties sharing a number of common interests, including trade, energy, climate change, security and cultural cooperation, the multilateral cooperation framework remains limited, with most engagement taking place bilaterally, between individual European and GCC countries. The book reassesses the potential and prospects for the EU’s engagement with GCC countries based on the recalibration and reconciliation of both parties’ national and regional interests. Taking a thematic approach, each of the three sections of the book examines a key dimension of the relationship, its current status and its path forward.

This book examines the political, economic and social transformation of the six member-states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the ways in which these states are both shaping, and being reshaped by, the processes of globalisation. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the volume combines thematic chapters focusing on issues such as globalisation, nationalism and identity, political thinking, and economic diversification and redistributive policymaking with empirical chapters studying specific aspects of reform and change: the emergence of governing markets the rise of Sovereign Wealth Funds Islamic Finance the relationship between energy and sustainability trends in foreign aid donorship, strategic and foreign policy formulation. Contributions from experts in the field provide cutting-edge snapshots of a region in flux and collectively offer a roadmap of its repositioning in the global order, examining the interaction between global processes and internal dynamics of change and resistance that inject new dimensions into debates over the loci of local and global transformations and the manner in which each plays off the other. Situating the Gulf States firmly within their global twenty-first century context, this book will hold particular appeal to theorists of globalisation as well as to scholars of comparative politics, international political economy and area studies.

This book, first published in 1986, examines the literature on administration, human resources and development in the Arab world. It emphasizes contemporary societies and their internal dynamics, the least known and most critical aspects of Arabic studies.

First published in 1990. This book grew out of a dissertation written during 1983-86 and is an analysis of the social policies needed to facilitate women's entry into the labour force. Pushing the need and recognition that it is essential now for Gulf women to move beyond their domestic activities by taking an active role and by providing leadership to ensure that they have access to the opportunities and benefits of economic development. The tables presented here are entirely new in the sense that data were selected from 1941-81 censuses. Other statistics were drawn from different sources reflecting developments during the 1980s.