At the beginning of January 1921, a special service was held in the cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City, with Orthodox and Episcopal clergy offering prayers in six languages – Hungarian, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Serbian and English – for the restoration of Hagia Sophia as a Christian sanctuary (Figures 9.1, 9.2). The enormous church was filled to capacity for the service, with hundreds of would-be worshippers turned away at the doors. News reports highlighted the exotic character of the gathering, noting that each of the twelve representatives of the many branches of the ‘Ancient Church of the East’ was ‘dressed in the brilliant vestments of his church, which included scarlet, purple, pale blue, gold, dark red, and pure white robes spangled elaborately with silver’. Similar services were held simultaneously in Washington, St. Louis, Detroit, Newark, Philadelphia and Chicago, all authorised by the Episcopal Church as part of its planned reconciliation with the Greek Orthodox Church.

Since the 1970s, the security landscape of the Gulf has been shaped by a series of transformative events, including the Iranian Revolution, the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, the US invasion of Iraq and shifting global energy dynamics. More recently, factors such as the rise of non-state actors, geopolitical rivalries, economic volatility, and the COVID-19 pandemic have further complicated the regional security calculus. These developments have profoundly influenced the threat perceptions and strategic priorities of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, reinforcing the region’s centrality in broader Middle Eastern security debates.

This chapter examines the evolution of Gulf security by engaging with classical debates, updating key conceptual frameworks, and categorising threats into external, internal, and ‘intermestic’ dimensions. By applying these analytical lenses, the chapter explores the most pressing contemporary security challenges facing the GCC, offering a comprehensive assessment of the shifting regional order and its implications for both policy-makers and scholars of security and regional studies.

The governance of politics, the economy and security has evolved in the Gulf States since independence. State formation describes the process by which states have grown in capacity and resources for the governance of different public policy areas: security, economic welfare and political representation. Theoretical approaches to state formation propose to look at war-making and resource mobilisation as drivers of this. However, war-making has in the Middle East often destroyed states, rather than helped build them. Moreover, rulers of the Gulf States have benefited from abundant revenues from oil and gas that have allowed them to govern without the need to mobilise domestic revenues. The specific governance model that has emerged is described as a rentier state bargain. Rulers are expected to ensure security, provide welfare and allow for representation of their citizens. This chapter describes the evolution of these processes in the Gulf States, including how certain societal groups have been central in state formation. The chapter also discusses expectations for a social contract beyond the rentier bargain.

This chapter examines the foreign policies of the Gulf states, including members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Iraq and Iran. It systematically evaluates three primary contextual dimensions that exert influence on the formulation of foreign policy within the Gulf region, namely the domestic, regional and international arenas. Furthermore, this chapter delves into the application of key international relations theories, including realism, neorealism, liberalism and constructivism, as frameworks for explaining the external behaviour of Gulf states. While realist and neorealist perspectives offer valuable insights into the Gulf states’ behaviour, particularly regarding threat perceptions and power dynamics, alternative theoretical paradigms offer different analyses that contribute to our understanding of Gulf politics. Since their inception, the Gulf states adopted diverse strategies aimed at ensuring their survival, including strategic hedging, omni-balancing and bandwagoning. Therefore, this chapter explains the evolution of Gulf states’ foreign policies, tracing their progress from the reliance on external powers, mainly the US, to having greater autonomy and confidence in the pursuit of their own interests.

Although oil is not the only potential source of rent from the rest of the world for contemporary states, it is by far the most important. The increase in oil prices post 1970 facilitated the emergence of rentier states, especially, but not exclusively, in the Gulf region, hugely increasing the volume of the rent at their disposal. This allowed consolidation of political regimes which otherwise would probably not have survived, and gave power holders an unprecedented degree of autonomy from their societies. The chapter then explains how the rentier state needs to engage in large-scale public expenditure to circulate the rent domestically, nurture a private sector and promote economic development along a peculiar model of its own. In order to counter the phenomenon known in economics as the ‘Dutch Disease’, the Gulf states have opened their doors to massive temporary immigration of foreign workers, creating a very peculiar labour market structure which has ended up damaging the opportunities for productive employment available to nationals, especially the young. This model must now be overcome, but while some states are in a position to remain rentiers, thanks to large accumulation of financial resources, others face an eroding oil rent and the need to increase domestic taxation to pay for their ever-increasing expenditure. Increasing reliance on taxation of nationals is inevitably coupled with increasing demand for accountability, which will eventually need to be accommodated through political reform.

This chapter examines the profound impact of the Arab uprisings on the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)). While initially perceived as distant from the epicentre of the unrest, these countries underwent significant economic, political and security transformations as a result of it. It describes key events initiated by the Tunisian revolution, emphasising the interconnectedness of the Gulf region with the wider Arab uprisings. Furthermore, it explores the economic and socio-political conditions in the GCC countries that shaped their responses to the uprisings, particularly in the context of the challenges posed by the oil-based developmental model. In terms of implications, it dwells on the growing polarisation and intra-GCC rifts, particularly the conflict between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, on the one hand, and Qatar, on the other, between 2017 and 2021, jeopardising regional integration. The Arab uprisings revealed the vulnerabilities of the GCC countries’ status quo, leading to a reassessment of their political and economic trajectory both from the domestic and the external relations points of view.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was created in 1981 as a sub-regional Arab integration project amid regional turmoil and security challenges to the newly independent oil-rich Gulf monarchies: the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The GCC was created as an exclusive club between the traditional Arab Gulf monarchies that share historical ties, similar social and cultural background, common characteristics and similar systems. The founding Charter spells out its objective as to effect coordination, integration and interconnection between member states in all fields in order to achieve unity between them. These objectives were wide-ranging and ambitious but did not reflect on its rather basic organisational structure and traditional decision-making process. The integration process and its international cooperation were delayed due to historical antagonisms, dynastic rivalries, territorial disputes and sovereignty issues, which caused friction, and mistrust, which hindered its cohesion and development. Nevertheless, the GCC stands to be one of the most successful Arab regional projects and has been able to show some noticeable success and measurable achievements especially in economic and security spheres, and to withstand many internal and external challenges.

The Gulf region is a distinct sub-system of the wider Middle East, including the resource-rich states of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Iran, and commands enduring relevance within the international system. This is the first textbook to provide a focused, comprehensive introduction to Gulf politics, specifically tailored for undergraduate students and newcomers to the subject. It explores the region’s political landscape, covering key topics such as state formation, oil and rentierism, regime types, religion and politics, foreign policy and migration. Blending historical context with contemporary analysis, chapters by leading scholars examine the role of oil wealth, tribal structures, regional integration and merchant elites in state-building, as well as the region’s strategic importance in global politics. An ideal core text for university courses on the Gulf and GCC, An Introduction to Gulf Politics is essential for understanding the complexities of power, governance and influence in one of the world’s most dynamic regions.

This chapter explores key historical dynamics in the Gulf up to the 1970s, when the region finally achieved independence from foreign political control. It examines the world of the Gulf Arabs and their connections across the waters to Iran and the wider Indian Ocean. It considers the Iranian view of the Gulf and the competing Persian/Arab perspectives on the region’s historical identity, symbolised by the ongoing dispute over the region’s very name. It surveys the Gulf’s pre-oil economy, including its heavy dependency on India. It examines the origins of the pre-oil shaikhdoms and emirates that now form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It highlights the key aspects and episodes of British and Ottoman imperial involvement in the Gulf. It considers the impact of Iranian nationalism during the Pahlavi dynasty and the Arab response to it, including the rise of Arab nationalism in the 1950s and 1960s. It ends with an explanation of how a once-integrated region became fragmented into three separate socio-economic zones after the 1970s: the GCC states, Iran and Iraq.

Religion shapes Gulf politics in different ways depending on the country under consideration but also the shifting socio-historical circumstances at the domestic and the regional levels. Religion has been used as a tool of state-building by Saudi Arabia. Alternatively, it has also been used by Islamist movements for the contestation of established regimes. In societies that are diverse religiously, sectarian divides between various currents of Islam have been politicised more often than not. Religion has also been an important element of the international soft power of Gulf states. In the twenty-first century, Gulf states have promoted ‘moderate Islam’ as a way to counter Islamist movements and to consolidate their international standing.