The UAE after the Arab Spring: Strategy for Survival

Examines the policies of the UAE leadership before and after the Arab Spring that allowed for regime survival and legitimacy

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 31 October 2024
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

The Gulf monarchies, particularly the UAE, have managed to avoid the upheavals and challenges of the Arab uprisings, despite being located in a region characterized by regional unrest. This book seeks to examine how the UAE has managed to survive these waves of regional unrest and offers a more nuanced approach to understanding the pillars of regime legitimacy upon which the UAE now rests. The book departs from attributing regime survival to rentier state theory and instead offers a more nuanced approach to understanding the pillars of regime legitimacy upon which the UAE now rests. Written by an Emirati author who understands the internal dynamics of the country, the book examines the state's proactive foreign policy and the changing domestic and regional environment influencing its decisions. The book argues that the UAE leadership encouraged a new national identity to evolve amid the pressures of modernity, particularly at a time when young Emiratis had access to information beyond government control via social media. This has also led to a shift away from a country based on a rentier economy to a situation where the citizens take more initiative, learn more skills, and increasingly enter the private sector to help the country prosper. This has given rise to a new Emirati identity that is politically conservative, economically neo-liberal, and socially liberal. In providing an analysis of the policies of the UAE leadership before and after the Arab Spring, this book is a vital contribution to the literature on Emirati domestic and foreign policy and points to where the country might be headed.

Weight: 348g
Dimension: 233 x 155 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780755648078