The paper recounts the history of Saudi Arabia's first national oil company, Petromin, which was originally supposed to take the place of foreign-owned Aramco. As a result of Petromin's inefficiency and personal rivalries among the Saudi elite, however, Petromin was progressively relegated to...

As there is very little recent research on the private sector’s role in reforms in the GCC, the proposed paper is to some extent a general overview of the issue which will by necessity be broad and survey-like. In its second half, however, it will also develop a specific and new political...

Gaps in labour rights and labour prices between nationals and migrant workers are the main causes explaining the low participation of GCC citizens in the region’s private labour markets. Past policies of “Gulfization” have not directly addressed these structural constraints but have rather...

Saudi Arabia is often treated as an exceptional case by both political scientists and regional specialists. This is true in many regards, but both communities seem to overlook the fact that the nature of the kingdom as an »outlier« makes the testing and comparison of broader hypotheses of...

Unpacking the Saudi state : oil fiefdoms and their clients -- Oil fiefdoms in flux : the new Saudi state in the 1950s -- The emerging bureaucratic order under Faisal -- The 1970s boom : bloating the state and clientelizing society -- The Foreign Investment Act : lost between fiefdoms -- Eluding...

Although most Arab countries remain authoritarian, many have undergone a restructuring of state-society relations. Lower- and middle-class interest groups have lost ground, while big business has benefited in terms of its integration into policy-making and the opening-up of economic sectors that...