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A NATION OF BUREAUCRATS: POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION IN KUWAIT AND THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2009

Extract

Not long ago, two safe generalizations could be made about the Gulf monarchies: ruling families dominated their politics, and oil dominated their economies. In recent years that has begun to change. In Kuwait the parliament challenges the political predominance of the ruling family. Meanwhile, Dubai and, increasingly, the other emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have made real progress in diversifying their economies away from oil—at least until the recent economic crisis. Yet political liberalization and economic diversification have not gone hand in hand: Kuwait's economy remains dependent on oil, and the United Arab Emirates remains resolutely authoritarian. This is no accident. Kuwait's high level of political participation encourages its dependence on oil while the UAE's economic diversification requires a lack of political participation by citizens. The reasons for this are specific to the peculiar political economy of these labor markets: in these richest of rentier-states, there is little need for the class compromise between capitalists and workers on which capitalist democracy usually rests.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

NOTES

Author's note: Funding for research in the Gulf was provided by the Fulbright program. I received helpful comments from many friends and colleagues, including Steffen Hertog, Ellen Lust-Okar, and Mary Ann Tétreault.

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