Abstract
The discovery of oil in the early 20th century had a dramatic effect on the formation and destruction of political coalitions and state institutions in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. In particular, it fundamentally restructured the relationship between the rulers of the Gulf’s sheikhdoms and the merchants, the business elite of that era, shifting political power away from the merchants and into the hands of the rulers and ruling families. In the process, oil dramatically restructured politics and economics, creating new alliances and institutions that would continue to shape politics into the 21st century. The details of this initial arrangement in Kuwait and Qatar are developed in Crystal (1995).
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Crystal, J. (2018). Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Kuwait and Qatar. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2894
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