Conclusion – Repositioning the Gulf: The GCC in the Twenty-First Century Global Political Economy

The global trend of shifting geo-economic power from industrialized nations to rising powers is mirrored by political economy transformations in the Gulf. These changes have brought the region to the forefront of international economic debates, extending discussion of the Gulf in the global economy from that limited to petroleum supply and price to include financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, foreign direct investment and overseas development assistance. If anything can be concluded from the last decade, it is that there has been a visible transformation in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. While scholars may neither agree on the source nor the direction of this change; that transformation has occurred is undeniable. Although rentierism and patrimonialism continues to persist, mounting evidence suggests that even these factors may slowly be evolving. The rapid push to development, which largely began across the region in the 1970s, has continued, with attention now given to diversification away from oil and the strengthening of the private sector. Examining the shifting geo-economic power of the Gulf, this book interrogates the evolving nature of the Gulf rentier state and the new mechanisms it utilizes to persist under conditions of possibly declining oil supplies, unpredictable oil prices, rising national unemployment, globalization and neoliberalism. This chapter explores whether this shift signals greater impending political change or the continuance of pragmatic adaptability to internal and external environments. Do the pressures of globalisation and neoliberalism imply the continued reduction of state power and sovereignty, or do the Gulf states face a future reflecting a past embedded in patrimonialism and authoritarianism? Divided into two sections, this chapter examines this question in light of the insights garnered from the collected essays in this volume. The first section focuses on structural changes in the domestic, regional and international political economy and the second examines the challenges confronting the GCC states in the twenty-first century global political economy. It ultimately suggests that the mechanisms and processes of development utilized throughout the GCC, while growing out of the structures of the past, are gradually shifting to account for the changing structures of the global economy coupled with domestic political and environmental constraints.