From Sheikhs to Sultanism: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. By Christopher M. Davidson.

• Author: Alshateri, Albadr S.S.

American Diplomacy

November 1, 2021

www.americandiplomacy.org

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From Sheikhs to Sultanism: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. By Christopher M. Davidson

Oxford University Press, June 2021

ISBN13: 978-0197586488

ISBN10: 0197586481

507 pages

Whither Saudi Arabia and the UAE?

Christopher M. Davidson, a prolific author, wrote a book in 2015 titled After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies, in which he divined the future demise of the Gulf sheikhdoms within five years. Six years on and that prophecy has not panned out. On the contrary, the Gulf States look much stronger and persistent than when he made his prediction. By his own reckoning, Saudi Arabia and the UAE "now indisputably serve as major components of the global economy and are increasingly influential members of international organizations. There is an urgent need to recognize that major ruptures in the structural logic of their regimes could well end up having a direct impact--for better or worse--on policies, economies, and individual livelihoods all around the world." The newly acquired status by the two states is the subject of his 2021 book, From Sheikhs to Sultanism: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Davidson argues that "notwithstanding formal continuities there appear to have been recent and possibly interconnected shifts deep inside the political systems of these two states", i.e., Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The political change the author discerns is one of high personalistic and arbitrary rule. An exhausting effort at reaching a nuanced concept notwithstanding, the author lands on an "ultra-autocratic, twenty-first century strain of 'sultanism,' a concept that "may have emerged (or be in the process of emerging) in Saudi Arabia and the UAE."

Sultanism is a Weberian concept that is somehow imprecise. Traditional authority and sultanism are on a continuum: We simply do not understand when a traditional authority ends and when sultanic rule starts. Second, traditional authority itself contains a high level of discretionary powers. It is part of the tradition that rulers will have discretionary power in discharging their duties. Sultanism, in Weber's view, exists when rulers develop "administration and military force which are purely personal instrument of" his.

Modern economy and bureaucracy, make it nearly impossible to have a pure form of sultanism. States are becoming more and more complex, and the...