Kinship, State Formation and Governance in the Arab Gulf States

• Connects the construction of kinship identity to state-level political outcomes
• Emphasises the importance of pre-state conditions to post-state building politics
• Assesses kinship politics in the royal family, state ministries, parliaments, local governing institutions and interpersonal interactions
• Offers a comparison of tribal politics and the impact on governance in Kuwait, Oman and Qatar
• Employs empirical data and 52 interviews with former government officials, tribal leaders, civil society activists and students

Tribe-state relations are a foundational element of authoritarian bargains in the Middle East, and in particular in the Gulf States. However, the structures of governance built upon that foundation exhibit wide differences. What explains this variation in the salience of kinship authority? Through a case comparison of Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, shows that variation in tribal access to limited resources before state building can account for these differences. Its conclusions are based on seven months of archival research and interviews in Arabic and English, and reveal new details about state formation on the Arabian Peninsula.