Michael Herb is an accomplished scholar of the Gulf Arab states and his new book appeals to the growing academic and policy interest in the sub-region. Conducting research in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states presents challenges: state surveillance, lack of transparency in government decision-making, including access to basic demographic and economic data, and the cultural aversion to discussing political matters publicly. Herb makes an important move forward in the field by applying both methodological discipline and standard concepts of comparative politics to his cases.

Herb's central research puzzle is to explain, as he sees it, the dramatic difference between Kuwait's embrace of political representation and the other GCC states' balance of more authoritarian structures and, to varying degrees, resource rich economies. His argument is that Kuwait's political system, with its constitution and National Assembly, enables more political participation than its Gulf neighbors, while also creating some path dependent economic effects that stymie diversification from resource rents. The causal variable, what accounts for Kuwait’s political openness, is the territorial sovereignty threat posed by Iraq. As in any comparative politics challenge, the first effort must be to clearly define the concepts.

Herb’s concepts include rentierism, political participation and democratization. He divides rentierism in the GCC states into two tiers, middling (Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia) and extreme (Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar). The way he defines his concepts impacts his case selection. His division is based on a definition of rentierism as resource revenues divided by population, or resource abundance. Resource dependence posits the value of natural resource exports divided by gross domestic product. The latter, Herb argues, skews cases in which a political outcome may also be caused by non-resource poverty (p. 11). By choosing to measure resource abundance and its political effects, Herb focuses on Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This selection is somewhat problematic as Saudi Arabia has the largest economy and population in the sub-region by far, and by distinguishing and dividing the GCC, a small universe, we may miss some comparative opportunity, particularly in excluding Qatar which is arguably more similar in size and structure to Kuwait. Furthermore, dismissing Bahrain, a most similar case on the basis of parliamentary institutions, because of its sectarian make-up (and conflict) is confusing, especially if the causal story is about institutional origin, design and permeability to exogenous forces.

The prevailing view on rentier states is, as Herb comments, “monotonic”: more resource abundance leads to less political participation and more authoritarianism (p. 190). Herb sees Kuwait as a demonstration of the “multiple causal pathways through which rents can affect political outcomes” (p. 17). One of the key pathways concerns the way the state shares wealth through public employment, often at the expense of economic diversification. However, here the UAE is the exceptional case, with its embrace of non-oil revenue in the emirate of Dubai. One problem with the case selection is that the idiosyncrasies of Dubai, and the federal structure of the UAE which historically has encouraged emirate independence in military, immigration and foreign investment and development policies, may not be representative of the universe of extreme rentiers. Herb relies on Dubai as his example of diversification, yet the constitutional division of resources (and presence of oil) within the UAE make Abu Dhabi (or Qatar) a better sub-case for comparison.

Herb challenges the rentier thesis by demonstrating the possibility of more open politics in the GCC states with an intervening variable, an external threat to sovereignty, which he sees as having mediated national authoritarian politics at two critical junctures in Kuwaiti history, 1961 and 1990. This is an explanation about the path dependent effects of institutional origins and (authoritarian) weakness, as the ruling family bends to the constitutional provision of the National Assembly. Later in Chapter 6, Herb extends this causal intervention to explain why the National Assembly, made up of religiously conservative, middle class public employees, works to prevent economic diversification through tourism (un-Islamic), foreign investment (prone to corruption), and streamlining the state (fear of unemployment). For Herb, political openness leads to economic stalemate.

Herb’s definition of political participation and democratization becomes central to his argument. He defines democratization as “achieved when parties in the parliament, rather than the monarch or the ruling family, appoint the prime minister and form the government” (p. 46). This is a fairly narrow definition, bolstering the claim that Kuwait is significantly different from its GCC peer universe. Some Gulf scholars may not be convinced, especially of Herb’s optimism that “Kuwait is perceptively moving in a democratic direction” (p. 191).

In organization, the book’s introduction situates the conflict of resource economies and class politics in the broader rentier literature. The first chapter is a broad survey of labor markets in the GCC, a topic linked closely with Gulf States’ security and national identity projects. The second chapter posits why the Kuwaiti case is exceptional among its GCC peers in its domestic political institutions. Herb does not fully engage the syncretic and time sensitive nature of the institutional origins of GCC states. The Gulf Arab state formed in collaboration and often from external imposition or fear. The formation of the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar (intended to be one state of nine emirates, not three parallel states) on the eve of British withdrawal from the region in 1970 cannot be underestimated. Nor can the shared sense of external threat of Iran. Furthermore, Herb’s reading of the history of accession of the leading ruling family of the UAE federation, the Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, as one of consensus undermines over a century of tribal warfare in the emirates, and the legacy of state-building through conquest, especially through marriage in the lives and bodies of women, (e.g. see Andrea Rugh, The Political Culture of Leadership in the UAE [2007] and Karen Young, The Political Economy of the UAE: Between the Majilis and the Market [2014]).

The third chapter compares the institutional origins and patterns of state formation of the Gulf summarizing four competing explanations in the literature. Herb’s reading of U.S. Gulf relations and democratic diffusion is also tricky. He argues that the Kuwaiti ruling family, the Al-Sabah, temper their authoritarian control as it “would create problems” with the U.S. (p. 103). This does not seem to have happened between the U.S. and Bahrain (also a non-NATO ally), despite its human rights record. The fourth chapter is the case study of the UAE, which relies heavily on a depiction of Dubai as dominant in the federation.

The fifth chapter is a rich portrayal of Kuwaiti domestic politics, reflecting Herb’s command of the case. Herb finds that too much democracy may explain why Kuwait has not diversified its economy, to the point of weakening state capacity (p. 143). His discussion of the failure of land reform is compelling. The chapter hints at fertile ground where new work might examine sources of trust, the role of religion in political identity (particularly the legislative role of the Brotherhood), and innovation in public-private investment models in Gulf economies.

The last two chapters work to undermine the logic of the resource curse, generating new questions as well. Herb seeks to create a model for rentier political economy, a way to understand under what conditions labor markets are bifurcated and political participation has economic effects. He hypothesizes that extreme rentierism and weak representation produce an imbalanced labor market and better economic diversification. Stronger representation and extreme rentierism create less economic diversification and less severe demographic imbalance. The argument holds less well with his middle rentier cases. Further, it tells us little about the other aspects of state decision-making, especially foreign policy.

Herb has set a standard for comparative politics research in the GCC and this book will undoubtedly serve as a model for further investigation.