After The Sheikhs

Product Description

The Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia & its five smaller neighbours: the United Arab Emirates Kuwait Qatar Oman & Bahrain) have long been governed by highly autocratic & seemingly anachronistic regimes. Yet despite bloody conflicts on their doorsteps fast-growing populations & powerful modernising & globalising forces impacting on their largely conservative societies they have demonstrated remarkable resilience. Obituaries for these traditional monarchies have frequently been penned but even now these absolutist almost medieval entities still appear to pose the same conundrum as before: in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring & the fall of incumbent presidents in Egypt Tunisia & Libya the apparently steadfast Gulf monarchies have at first glance re-affirmed their status as the Middle Easts only real bastions of stability. In this book however noted Gulf expert Christopher Davidson contends that the collapse of these kings emirs & sultans is going to happen & was always going to. While the revolutionary movements in North Africa Syria & Yemen will undeniably serve as important if indirect catalysts for the coming upheaval many of the same socio-economic pressures that were building up in the Arab republics are now also very much present in the Gulf monarchies. It is now no longer a matter of if but when the Wests steadfast allies fall. This is a bold claim to make but Davidson who accurately forecast the economic turmoil that afflicted Dubai in 2009 has an enviable record in diagnosing social & political changes afoot in the region.