Group Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf

Justin Gengler

Description

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The oil-producing states of the Arab Gulf are said to sink or swim on their capacity for political appeasement through economic redistribution. Yet, during the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring, in Bahrain and all across the Arab Gulf, ordinary citizens showed an unexpected enthusiasm for political protest directed against governments widely assumed to have co-opted their support with oil revenues. Justin Gengler draws on the first-ever mass political survey in Bahrain to demonstrate that neither is the state willing to offer all citizens the same bargain, nor are all citizens willing to accept it. Instead, shared social and religious identities offer a viable basis for mass political coordination. Challenging the prevailing rentier interpretation of political life in the Gulf states, Gengler offers new empirical evidence and a new conceptual framework for understanding the attitudes of ordinary citizens.

Introduction: Mountain of Smoke: Bahrain, the First Post-Oil State
1. Group-based Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf
2. Al-Fātih wa al-Maftūh: The Case of Sunni-Shi'i Relations in Bahrain
3. Religion and Politics in Bahrain
4. Surveying Bahrain
5. Rentier Theory and Rentier Reality
6. Political Diversification in the Age of Regime Insecurity
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Middle Est
• Middle Eastern
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• Bahréin
• Bahrain
• Arab's Gulf
• History of the Middle East
• General officer
• Middle East
• World
• General
• Research
• Bahreïn

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 08 juin 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253016867
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

GROUP CONFLICT AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN BAHRAIN AND THE ARAB GULF
INDIANA SERIES IN MIDDLE EAST STUDIES Mark Tessler, general editor
GROUP CONFLICT AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN BAHRAIN AND THE ARAB GULF
Rethinking the Rentier State
Justin Gengler
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Justin J. Gengler
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-253-01674-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01680-5 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-253-01686-7 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
To our carefree days in Arabia Felix
The Battle of Karbala still rages between the two sides in the present and in the future. It is being held within the soul, at home, and in all areas of life and society. People will remain divided and they are either in the Hussain camp or in the Yazid camp. So, choose your camp.
-Ashura banner in Manama, 2006. Quote attributed to Sh. Isa Qasim.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction : Bahrain, the First Post-Oil State
1 Group-Based Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf
2 Al-F ti wa al-Maft : The Case of Sunni-Shi i Relations in Bahrain
3 Religion and Politics in Bahrain
4 Surveying Bahrain
5 Rentier Theory and Rentier Reality
6 Political Diversification in the Age of Regime Insecurity
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
E VEN BEFORE MY untimely departure from Yemen following the cancellation of the Fulbright program there for security reasons, Mark Tessler had suggested Bahrain as an auspicious candidate for the sort of mass attitude study I hoped to conduct on the topic of group conflict. And when it became clear after some eighteen months of waiting and setback that the project would not be so easily done after all, he continued to offer encouragement and practical advice-to say nothing of his prompt submission of many a fellowship recommendation-that helped ultimately to see the thing through.
The newly-retired Michael Schechter has been for nearly a decade a constant mentor and friend. More recently, since I began working on the manuscript for this book, he has served the helpful purpose of motivator, with his periodic messages asking how many chapters I have still to write and revise. His advice about the selection of appropriate fonts for this volume, on the other hand, was not solicited. David DiPasquale sensitized me to the need for recognizing the real-world policy implications of medieval Islamic political philosophy, and to the usefulness of the new social media as vehicles for information exchange and informed public debate.
My beautiful wife Julia, whom I met in Yemen and later joined in Bahrain, was there to share the ups and downs of my Bahrain field research. Her companionship and persistent optimism helped lighten a process that was otherwise not rarely frustrating. She also provided the final bit of inspiration needed to put an end to the fieldwork once and for all, with the timely delivery of our first child, Maryam, joined more recently by David. Similar thanks are in order for my family who, despite not quite understanding my desire to spend years in Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere in a far-flung and seemingly volatile part of the world, were nonetheless steady in their support, and in their much-appreciated willingness to temporarily adopt a cat and a houseful of orchids.
My field research in Bahrain was made possible only through the help of many dedicated, invaluable individuals most of whom, unfortunately, cannot be named here. First among these are my Bahraini interviewers, who braved the heat of the summer, the suspicions and repeated rejections of their fellow citizens, and all for a bizarre survey being conducted by some guy from a university in Michigan. I hope they will take pride in the results of their considerable efforts presented herein. Special thanks go to N. Y. and H., who bore more than their fair shares of this labor and, in the latter case, gave appreciated advice and assistance that went well beyond his role as interviewer. Also indispensable was the regular support of the Public Affairs Office at U.S. Embassy Manama, who helped broker meetings with elusive Bahraini politicians. Finally, I thank the (now former) Bahrain Center for Studies and Research for its sponsorship of my Fulbright fellowship and its many trips to the immigration office to revalidate my entry visa.
Yet my field research in Bahrain also could not have occurred without the preliminary aid of many excellent Arabic instructors at the Yemen Language Center in Sana a, or indeed without the country of Yemen more generally, home to the friendliest, funniest, and most welcoming people I know, never shy to strike up an unsolicited conversation with an odd-looking foreigner. I thank in particular the ever-entertaining Abd al-Qawi al-Muqaddasi and Abd al-Karim al-Akwa, whose love for Arabic Monopoly and televised professional women s tennis, respectively, served to improve my language skills far more than did any classroom sessions.
Numerous organizations provided the financial support to enable all of the above, contributions for which I express my sincere thanks. A Critical Language Fellowship from the U.S. State Department first brought me to the Middle East and showed me how bad my second-year college Arabic really was. For most of the next two years I was able to improve it through a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, an IIE Fulbright Critical Language Enhancement Award, and a David L. Boren Graduate Fellowship. Additional funding for research in Yemen came from an Individual Fellowship from the University of Michigan s International Institute, and a Graduate Student Research Grant from Rackham Graduate School. Support for my field research in Bahrain came from an IIE Fulbright Fellowship; a second Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant; and a Thesis Grant from the Department of Political Science. A Boren Graduate Fellowship enabled me to continue my Arabic instruction while in Bahrain, and the Rackham Graduate School afforded generous financial assistance upon my return from the field. Finally, I am thankful for the continued support of the Social and Economic Survey Research Institute at Qatar University, which has enabled and encouraged the completion of this book, as well as my helpful and perceptive editors at the Indiana University Press, Rebecca Tolan and Sarah Jacobi.
GROUP CONFLICT AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN BAHRAIN AND THE ARAB GULF
Introduction
Bahrain, the First Post-Oil State
T HE PERSIAN GULF kingdom of Bahrain is commonly cited as the Arab world s first post-oil economy, both in the sense of its being the place of the first discovery of commercial quantities of oil in the region, and also the first to have effectively run out. The former meaning is now largely a point of trivia, the 1932 find by Standard Oil of California (now Chevron) long overshadowed by the far more massive oil and gas reserves subsequently located and exploited in nearby Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and most recently Qatar. Yet, implicit in this designation also is something more than historical fact: the idea that, as first discoverer, Bahrain also was the first representative of a certain class of nation, whose members would in the ensuing decades assume a previously unimaginable global significance. This new political genus was, of course, the oil-or rentier-state, kept afloat not through a productive workforce and sound economic management, but by the grace of God (or, less glamorously, by the chance geological distribution of dead plants and animals). Commercial oil had existed for some seventy years prior to its discovery at Bahrain s Jabal al-Dukhan, but the building around it of an entire polity was an experiment never before witnessed.
The other half of Bahrain s designation as the first post-oil economy therefore connotes similarly both a factual statement and a cautionary lesson in societal organization and sustainability. Production from Bahrain s Awali oil field peaked in 1970 at 76,640 barrels per day, and at the time of its nationalization in 1980 was already in sharp decline. Despite a temporary offset from higher oil prices in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was clear that the site of Bahrain s first oil well would soon live up to its Arabic name: Mountain of Smoke. When civil war struck Lebanon in 1975, Bahrain seized the chance to diversify away from resource reliance, Manama rapidly replacing Beirut as the financial hub of the Middle East. By 2003, oil output was down 51 percent to a mere 37,550 barrels per day, 1 while a jump in immigration and naturalization to sustain the petroleum and banking industries had augmented the island s population threefold over the same period, from around 215,000 residents in 1971 to more than 650,000 in 2001. In less than ten years that number would again double, with Bahrain s demographic balance tippin