Date: Saturday, 23 October 2010
Gulf Development Forum founding member Professor Abdulkhleq Abdullah has just published a paper titled “Contemporary Socio-Political Issues of the Arab Gulf Moment“. This paper introduces the Gulf moment in contemporary Arab history and examines some of the key internal socio-political issues that are at the forefront of the intellectual and academic debate in the Arab Gulf States (AGS). The central questions addressed in this paper revolve around whether much of the new thinking is in essence old thinking. What accounts for the suppressed demand for political reform? How did the business-friendly UAE model manage recently to outshine the more politically mature Kuwait model of development? What are the gains and the pains of going global, and have the AGS transcended their chronic dependence on oil and witnessed the end of the rentier state structure and mentality? The paper concludes that the way the AGS handle these pertinent questions will not only determine the future direction of the Gulf moment but ultimately decide the AGS’s ability to reshape the geo-economics and geo-politics of the region, and to set in motion a process for the Gulfanization of the Arab world.