Free After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies by Christopher Davidson

AFTER THE SHEIKHS
     
    ‘It is almost forty years since the publication of Fred Halliday’s landmark book Arabia Without Sultans . Now, in the wake of the Arab spring, another young British academic has written an important account of prospects for the Gulf region … Orientalist special pleading doesn’t get a look in. This is an unsentimental story of hard-nosed political calculation, conspicuous consumption, opaque budgets and sovereign wealth funds.’
Ian Black, The Guardian
    ‘What is the secret of the Gulf monarchies’ survival? There are numerous reasons. The support of Western powers, oil wealth and an effective secret police are among them. But in this exceptionally argued book, Christopher Davidson concentrates on the prime reason: the Gulf monarchies enjoy considerable legitimacy from their populations. … This fine-tuned monarchical resilience, Davidson argues, cannot be sustained for much longer. Immense internal pressures are building up and the pressure-cooker is about to explode. Davidson marshals an impressive array of evidence.’
Ziauddin Sardar, The Independent
    ‘Britain and the US are uncritical friends of the hereditary Gulf rulers; but what if they are likely to collapse, as Christopher Davidson convincingly predicts? It would be folly to ignore the writing on the wall for these insatiably greedy elites; Davidson’s warning should be on the desk of every Foreign Office Minister.’
Lord Avebury, vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Human Rights Group
    ‘Davidson argues that the Gulf regimes will be gone—at least in their current form—within the next two to five years. This audacious prediction should not be lightly dismissed. The dynamics he analyses and the facts he has gathered, based on long-term observation of the region, provide tantalising clues that profound change may indeed be at close hand.’
Dirk Vandewalle, Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth College
    ‘ After the Sheikhs is a book of tremendous value. It applies a rigorously constructed theoretical framework to a rich array of empirical data in order to assess the long-term survivability of some of the world’s last authoritarian holdouts. For anyone interested in understanding the post-2011 Middle East, this is essential reading.’
Mehran Kamrava, Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University, Qatar
    ‘At a time when the Gulf Kingdoms arrogantly boast of having avoided the fate of their neighbours in the revolutions of the Arab Spring, this book provides a convincing counter-narrative and a powerful warning to rulers who treat their countries as personal fiefdoms.’
Waleed Abu Alkair, head of Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia
    ‘This book must be read by every Western policymaker betting on the status quo in the GCC, by every pro-democracy activist struggling to realise Davidson’s predicted outcome, and by every GCC citizen dreaming of a better future but made to fear the worst if change was to come.’
Ala’a Shehabi, writer, pro-democracy activist, founder, Bahrain Watch

AFTER THE SHEIKHS
The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies
CHRISTOPHER M. DAVIDSON

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    I began researching and writing After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies in summer 2009 from the confines of my temporary office at Kyoto University. The original idea for the book, however, occurred to me back in 2002, when I was still writing up my PhD. Intrigued by several frank and discreet discussions when living in the UAE’s northernmost emirate of Ra’s al-Khaimah, I was determined to burrow beneath the hype and gauge the true extent of loyalty to traditional monarchies in such states, especially in communities with less favourable economic circumstances. Since then, much has changed in the region, with oil price shocks, credit crunches, property bubbles, terror campaigns, rampant sectarianism, and of course full blown revolutions on its