Publication

This paper explores the reasons why the six Gulf monarchies - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain - experienced different degrees of protest during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. In particular, it looks at why Bahrain experienced mass protests while the other monarchies did not. The author argues that the reason lies in the varying size of monarchs' ruling coalitions on the eve of the uprisings. Furthermore, he maintains that the size of a monarch’s ruling coalition was heavily influenced by each monarchy’s history of foreign power interference in internal affairs.