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This book is both a history and contemporary analysis. Charting the main turnpoints as the growth of cities, trade routes, the petroleum industry and growth of the authoritarian state the author argues that central bureaucratic control is limiting growth. He describes the state as governed by the interests of the ruling family who continue to block opportunities for social mobility. He is also critical of the lack of a broad, productive base in the economy, the export of capital and its effect on investment in local resources, as well as the technological dependence on the West.

The struggle to delineate the boundaries of south-eastern Arabia can claim to be one of the longest running diplomatic disputes of the twentieth century, which has echoes to this day. This study, by the foremost authority on the subject, is an exhaustive one, based on thorough research in the relevant archives and direct experience of the dispute. As such it will be the standard reference work on this question for all who have an interest in the Gulf Arab states, their territorial origins and its effects on their increasing role in regional and world affairs.

Long a taboo topic, as well as one that has alarmed outside powers, sectarian conflict in the Middle East is on the rise. The contributors to this book examine sectarian politics in the Persian Gulf, including the GCC states, Yemen, Iran and Iraq, and consider the origins and con- sequences of sectarianism broadly construed, as it affects ethnic, tribal and religious groups. They also present a theoretical and comparative framework for understanding sectarianism, as well as country-specific chapters based on recent research in the area. Key issues that are scrutinised include the nature of sectarianism, how identity moves from a passive to an active state, and the mechanisms that trigger conflict. The strategies of governments such as rentier economies and the 'invention' of partisan national histories that encourage or manage sectarian differences are also highlighted, as is the role of outside powers in fostering sectarian strife. The volume also seeks to clarify whether movements such as the Islamic revival or the Arab Spring obscure the continued salience of religious and ethnic cleavages.

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The article offers a revisionist account of how the modern Saudi state emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Differing with structuralist “rentier-state” accounts, I contend that individual agency has been very important in shaping the Saudi bureaucracy as oil money gave unique, although temporary, autonomy to princely elites to organize the state around their personal interests. Emerging institutions functioned as power tokens, leading to a fragmented administrative setup in which ministries serve as “fiefdoms” and bureaucratic capacities vary strongly from one institution to another. Through state growth and the “locking in” of distributional commitments, the autonomy of princely elites to redesign the state has strongly declined over time, meaning that many early institutional decisions have permanently impacted the shape and capacities of today's Saudi state. Vis-agrave;-vis rentier theory, I demonstrate that regime autonomy is not constant over time and that the quality of institutions is historically contingent and not determined by oil, which merely enlarges the menu of institutional choices available to rentier-state elites.

This article analyzes the origins and significance of cooperation among ideologically diverse forces in Yemen's Joint Meeting Parties. In response to studies that posit a causal relationship between political inclusion and political moderation, I argue that forging those interpersonal and conceptual relationships that initiated and bound together actors from traditionally opposed parties, such as the Yemeni Reform Gathering and the Yemeni Socialist Party, has been as much a result of marginalization as inclusion. Further, cooperation in this case cannot be attributed solely to changing structural relations but has also required changes in thinking by key individuals. They have developed and justified new strategies to account for changes in political practices, often facing down opposition from other forces within their own parties that are intent on maintaining old strategies.

In November 2005, the secretary generals of Yemen's largest Islamist party, the Reform Gathering (al-Tajammuʿ al-Yamani li-l-Islah, hereafter Islah); of the Socialist Party (YSP) that ruled the south prior to unification; of the Popular Nasirist Unity Organization; and of a small party consisting largely of liberal Zaydi intellectuals, the Union of Popular Forces (UPF), announced the publication of “The Program of the Joint Meeting for Political and National Reform,” in a joint press conference. The conservative Zaydi Party, al-Haqq, also signed the document. In July 2006, these same five parties upped the ante of their alliance by nominating Faysal bin Shamlan, a former oil minister and independent member of parliament, to oppose President ʿAli ʿAbdullah Salih in the 2006 election. The composition of the oppositional alliance that has come to be known as the Joint Meeting Parties (Ahzab al-Liqaء al-Mushtarak [JMP]) is particularly surprising when one considers that since unification in 1990 the ruling General People's Conference (GPC) and President Salih have sought to pit the JMP's two main parties—the YSP and Islah—against each other through a process of allying with or bolstering one at the expense of the other. As recently as 1994, these two parties were literally killing each other in Yemen's war of succession.

There are two established ways of recounting the emergence of the modern Gulf oil monarchies. The social scientific explanation describes anonymous structural forces, the “resource curse” of the “rentier state,” and how these have shaped politics and markets with their inexorable logic. The other narrative, of the popular history variety, offers romantic, personalized accounts of desert shaykhs, their whims, and the sudden riches of their families (complemented, in some less benevolent accounts, by tales of monumental corruption).

This book is both a history and contemporary analysis. Charting the main turnpoints as the growth of cities, trade routes, the petroleum industry and growth of the authoritarian state the author argues that central bureaucratic control is limiting growth. He describes the state as governed by the interests of the ruling family who continue to block opportunities for social mobility. He is also critical of the lack of a broad, productive base in the economy, the export of capital and its effect on investment in local resources, as well as the technological dependence on the West.