Lse Middle East Centre Podcasts

Speakers: Courtney Freer, Toby Doge, LSE Middle East Centre; Stéphane Lacroix, Sciences Po, Paris; John Jenkins, Policy Exchange, London. Scholars of Middle Eastern politics have long overlooked the role played by political Islam in domestic politics of the wealthy monarchical states of the Arabian Gulf, so-called 'rentier states'. While rentier state theory assumes that citizens of such states will form opposition blocs only when their stake in rent income is threatened, this book demonstrates that ideology, rather than rent, has motivated the formation of independent Islamist movements in the wealthiest states of the region, specifically, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The book therefore argues that Brotherhood movements have managed to use the links between the social (i.e. informal personal networks) and political (i.e. government institutions) to gain influence in policymaking in such states. Using contemporary history and original empirical research, Courtney Freer updates tradition