On April 22, a Kuwaiti judge announced that opposition figure Musallam al-Barrak would be released on bail, prompting cheers from his supporters packing the court. Barrak's refusal to hand himself over to the authorities last week to serve a five-year sentence for criticizing the emir symbolized the intensifying resistance to autocracy in the oil-rich state.
More...
In the wake of Barrak's sentencing, thousands of Kuwaitis took to the streets in solidarity, sporadic clashes broke out with security forces, and dozens of key activists recited his controversial speech. The stage now seems set for a long summer of confrontations between large sections of Kuwait's emboldened citizenry and an entrenched, traditional monarchy that has abandoned its democratic pretensions and is pressing ahead with police state strategies.
The contrast between now and summer 2012, when the British edition of my book After the Sheikhs went to press, could not be starker. Back then, there was little, if any, mainstream discussion outside the Middle East itself of the prospect of serious political unrest in the Gulf monarchies. Academics and policy wonks, at least in the monarchies' Western allies, had for the most part set these states apart as somehow exceptional and aloof from the Arab Spring movements sweeping the region.
This position was both predictable and understandable. Using a mixture of carrots and sticks, the poorer Gulf monarchies had managed to contain most of the protests that had spilled onto their streets in the immediate aftermath of the revolutions in North Africa. Meanwhile, the wealthier monarchies seemingly remained in command of largely apolitical, well-heeled societies with little if anything in common with those dwelling in the angry tenements of Tunis, Cairo, or Tripoli.
Since then, however, much has changed. By winter 2012, Western media had begun carrying articles foreshadowing either monarchical collapse -- or at least some serious impending turbulence. Reports on protests, trials, growing poverty, and cyberspace activism in the Gulf states became commonplace -- even leading U.S. think tanks broached the topic of "Revolution in Riyadh."
The international commentariat seemed to have finally become aware of the rising discontent among large swathes of Gulf nationals, and better plugged into regional grassroots campaigns and emerging opposition groups. The world was starting to pay attention to the struggle between the people of the region and their increasingly authoritarian and reactionary elites.
This current, unprecedented international interest in Gulf politics -- and the possibility of a "Gulf Spring" -- is in many ways due to the hundreds of headline-grabbing incidents that have taken place in the region over the past six months. Almost without exception, these stories have provided compelling evidence in support of the central thesis of the book: namely, that traditional monarchy as a legitimate regime type in the region is soon going to reach the end of its lifespan.
Most of the Gulf states are now caught between unsustainable wealth distribution mechanisms and increasingly powerful "super modernizing forces" that can no longer be controlled or co-opted by elites. The former dynamic continues to manifest itself in widening wealth gaps and increasing real unemployment, despite ramped up public spending programs and urgent public sector job creation schemes. These counter-revolutionary "rentier outlays" are likely to keep spiraling -- the International Monetary Fund has already predicted that even the wealthiest of the monarchies will run budget deficits within a few years. And in the poorer states, where this strategy is now increasingly inapplicable, street protests keep growing and regimes have had little option but to openly crack down on dissidents.
As for "super modernizing forces," notably including social media, a veritable battle in cyberspace has now begun. New legislation has been introduced, or is about to be introduced, in all six monarchies, with the aim of tightly policing online dissent and meting out heavy punishments to all would-be critics. But this strategy seems as unsustainable as sky-high public spending: Several of these states now have the highest social media usage rates in the world -- massive online political discussions have made Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube the region's new de facto parliament.
SUBJECTS:
