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Intro -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Building a Regime-Type Framework -- 1.1 Scholarly Consensus: Lessons Learned -- 1.2 A New Era: An Autocratic-Authoritarian Turn? -- 1.3 Towards a Hypothesis: From Sheikhs to…Sultanism? -- 2. Research Methods and Data Collection -- 2.1 Research Tasks and Hypothesis-Testing: A Systematic Study -- 2.2 Methodological Challenges: Navigating the Fields of Power -- 2.3 Methodological Opportunities: Circumventing the Fields of Power -- 2.4 Methodological Opportunities: Primary Data Prospects -- 2.5 Methodological Opportunities: Primary Data Gathering -- 3. Sultanism: State of the Art -- 3.1 Classical Sultanism: Oriental Origins -- 3.2 Contemporary Sultanism: An Emerging Concept -- 3.3 Contemporary Sultanism: Neo-Sultanism as an Ideal Type -- 3.4 Contemporary Sultanism: A Middle Eastern Deficit? -- 3.5 Contemporary Sultanism: An International Empirical Category -- 3.6 State of the Art: Back to the Middle East? -- 4. Routes to Power: The Rise of MBS and MBZ -- 4.1 Immediate Circumstances: Ambitious Princes, Dynastic Advantages -- 4.2 Wider Determinants: Charisma and Youth -- 4.3 Wider Determinants: Economic Crises, Fresh Approaches -- 4.4 Wider Determinants: Repairing Reputations -- 4.5 Wider Determinants: Mentor-Mentee Relations and the Trump Factor -- 5. Establishing Control: Political Patronage Networks -- 5.1 Inner Circles: Close Relatives -- 5.2 Inner Circles: Technocrats and Gatekeepers -- 5.3 Heads of State: Special Circumstances -- 5.4 Outer Circles: Senior Ruling Family Members -- 5.5 Outer Circles: Other Ruling Family Members -- 6. Establishing Control: Economic Affairs -- 6.1 Economic Institutions: Inner Circle Control -- 6.2 The UAE's Federal Dimension: Abu Dhabi's Economic Supremacy -- 6.3 Big Business: Anti-Corruption and 'Shakedowns'.

The brief euphoria that followed the Arab Spring' of 2011 quickly gave way to religious politics, sectarian war, bloody counter-revolutions and the most brutal incarnations of Islamic extremism ever seen. In the aftermath, people around the world once more lamented the Middle East's apparently permanent inability to build functioning modern states. However, the reality is that this turn of events fits firmly into a centuries-old pattern of uprisings and reactions involving not only the region's elites and their opponents but also the interests of foreign powers and their clients. Middle East expert Christopher M. Davidson makes the devastating argument that the primary blame for the failure of the Arab Spring and the rise of Islamic extremists, including al-Qaeda and Islamic State, must rest with successive US and UK governments.

"Noted Gulf expert Christopher Davidson contends that the collapse of these kings, emirs, and sultans is going to happen, and was always going to"--

"Noted Gulf expert Christopher Davidson contends that the collapse of these kings, emirs, and sultans is going to happen, and was always going to"--

After situating the post-2011 Libyan conflict in its proper historical context and identifying the patterns behind the numerous earlier attempts to remove Qadhafi from power, this article then draws heavily on extensive, accessible new evidence to demonstrate how the 2011 'Arab Spring' phenomenon was soon manipulated by external actors so as to provide diplomatic cover for the calculated dismantling of a Libyan regime that had remained largely resistant to the opening up of its economy to Western investment and could still count on a significant domestic support base. Furthermore, it is shown that by this stage the Libyan regime had not only failed to establish itself as a reliable partner in the US' long-running 'War on Terror', but had actually emerged as one of the strongest voices opposing the expansion of NATO and US military power onto the African continent. Within this evidence-based framework, the article also reveals how the Western powers' regime change agenda in Libya in 2011 was to a great extent shielded from public scrutiny, with some of the most significant and visible roles being assigned to key regional Arab allies. In this sense, mindful of the ongoing domestic backlash to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and wary of further international criticism of their Middle East policies, the Western powers this time made sure to orchestrate better a web of compliant Arab proxies that could effectively provide most of the financing and on-the-ground logistical and intelligence support for those Libyans that were willing to oppose the regime, even if they were in a minority, and even if their 'Arab Spring' or 'pro-democracy' credentials were difficult to verify.

"In just two years the economic development of the United Arab Emirates' second wealthiest and historically most autonomous emirate of Dubai went from being an exemplar of post-oil diversification for the region to being a warning on the perils of relying on foreign direct investment and credit-fuelled growth. This article argues that Dubai's current economic slowdown is a direct consequence of the new sectors that were introduced in the 1990s, the speed with which they were developed in the 2000s, and the debts that were incurred in the process." (author's abstract)