The rule of law and political liberalization in the Arab Gulf

Abstract

One can find examples of, as well as points of divergence in, the way that Arab Gulf societies have avoided the pitfalls of connecting global ideals and historical practice around the rule of law to reformist politics. The unique combination present in Doha, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi of limited conflictive historical encounters between Western legal domination and shari‘a, the dearth of strong legal establishment development, and the logic of hyperglobalization, have united to make Qatar and the UAE possible laboratories for contemporary globalist legal hybridization. Such hybridization contains the potential for particular legal norms and structures that are congruent with both international law and local historical practice. When this happens, the politically liberalizing potential of law can be realized.

Yet the global and regional environments in which Gulf societies find themselves are far from easy. The inequalities left in hyperglobalization’s wake are alarming, while the pressures for rapid political reform unleashed through-out the Arab world are mounting. There is some evidence that Gulf rulers after 2011 may be pulling back on reforms that increase the linkage of legal ideals and institutions to political accountability.55 One might hope, nonetheless, that these rulers might draw the opposite conclusion from regional events about the need for both law and open politics.