Building a Regime-Type Framework

As a first step in trying to understand the nature and impact of the changes taking place in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, this chapter considers what ‘type’ of regimes their rulers (or rather de facto rulers) now represent. Firstly, it establishes the scholarly consensus on the political systems underpinning the Gulf monarchies, namely their ‘sheikhly authority’ (based on some form of elite consultation and Islamic legitimacy), and their hydrocarbon-financed and social contract-based ‘rentier’ structures (in which citizens generally accept wealth distributions in exchange for their political acquiescence). Secondly, it makes the argument that MBS and MBZ’s regimes have taken a more autocratic-authoritarian turn--moving away from their predecessors’ sheikhly-rentierism--and hypothesizes that their highly personalistic and seemingly more arbitrary decision-making processes might represent some form of contemporary sultanism. In this context, it also makes clear that the other four Gulf monarchies do not appear to have taken the same path, and have mostly retained their historic consultative elements.