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Part One
Tourism development and the Gulf Cooperation Council region
1 Theoretical approaches to the political economy of tourism in the GCC states
Matthew Gray
This chapter examines some key theoretical approaches from the sub-field of political economy which can be utilized to explain the tourism dynamics of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – and the context in which tourism occurs. It argues that three main approaches, each developed for wider explanatory usage, are valuable in this regard: rentier state theory; (‘new’) state capitalism; and arguments about the nexus between national branding and political economy. These are outlined and explored as approaches that frame and explain the political economy of tourism in the GCC states. What follows, after some brief contextual discussion, is an explanation of the contribution that each of these approaches potentially makes towards explaining Gulf tourism. This paper does not propose one of these approaches over all others, although it biases rentier arguments in explaining the highest-level dynamics of Gulf state-society relations, including by briefly diverging into a discussion about the rentier characteristics inherent in tourism itself. Ultimately, a conglomeration of all three approaches forms the ideal framework through which to understand the political economy of tourism in the GCC states. As the conclusion notes, however, research into Gulf tourism is in its infancy. Therefore, more work is needed concerning the more nuanced and opaque aspects of both tourism and the political economy dynamics in these states, particularly to refine political economy approaches to tourism.
Theorizing the political economy of Gulf tourism: approaches, assumptions and caveats
Before examining the best theoretical approaches to the political economy of Gulf tourism, three points should be noted. These confirm the distinctiveness of the GCC states’ tourism sectors and economic profiles, and imply an extremely limited potential for cross-regional comparative studies involving the GCC states. They begin laying the foundation for the more overarching argument that, while the expansion of tourism in these states appears to be driven by neoliberalism, it is, in fact, very different, almost the opposite; a product of the rentier, state capitalist structures of the small but wealthy GCC states.
The first issue is that of the nature of tourism in these states. All six have tourism sectors of some importance, albeit varying in their economic significance, but lost in any statistical comparison is the marked variation in the nature and profiles of the tourists they variously receive. In Saudi Arabia, for example, arrivals are overwhelmingly pilgrims on the Hajj and Umrah (see Chapter 13), who are on specific-purpose visas yet may also engage in tourism-like activities. Saudi Arabia also has a substantial domestic tourism sector (see Chapter 7), catering to nationals and expatriates. In contrast, Bahrain receives large numbers of tourists from other GCC states, especially short-term visitors from Saudi Arabia who cross the causeway to Bahrain (see Chapter 5); thus, the absolute tourist number for Bahrain is a more impressive figure than, say, the total tourist nights one. Kuwait also receives some Saudis, and prior to the 1990 invasion it used to host large numbers of Iraqis, but in many respects Kuwait has been slow to encourage tourism and has struggled to attract high-value arrivals in large numbers (see Chapter 6). The country receives many business and some stopover visitors, but its high costs, less dynamic national airline and proximity to Iraq probably deter many leisure tourists. All these cases are a reminder that a range of variables differentiate GCC tourism sectors from each other and from leisure tourism sectors elsewhere, even where their tourism industries are large, valuable or otherwise important.
A second point to note about GCC tourism is that its relation to the international tourism industry, and to globalization broadly, is very different to the rest of the world. It is widely accepted that tourists are commonly motivated by a search for cultural ‘authenticity’ (Silver 1993), and yet, at least in an economic sense, tourism experiences are deliberately constructed and artificial, not authentic. Accordingly, the experiences of tourists ‘in’ the Middle East are a construct driven by economic incentives and reinforced by fabricated, managed experiences and interactions (Daher 2007: 3–11). This is amplified by the increasing commodification of tourism (Shaw and Williams 1994: 97–105) globally, and no less in GCC states than elsewhere. Yet, the GCC region mostly lacks the mass tourism found in more established destinations, despite the fact that its economies are closely interconnected with globalization or, at least, selected components of it; especially its economic features.
Therefore, in seeking to expand tourism, the GCC states have permitted greater and further commodification and homogenization of it, even though they have sought an exclusive or up-market niche within the international tourism industry. The hyper-luxuriousness, cosmopolitanism and use of historical symbols in emerging centres such as Dubai (Hazbun 2008: 205–225) are examples of tourism commodification and the artificial construction of visitors’ experience. Many observers, even scholars specializing in the region, assume that the imagery and commodification of tourism, leisure and even public space are the product of neoliberalism (for example, Kanna 2011: 135–143, 166–170, 200–202). The GCC economies are linked to and shaped by the global economic system, certainly, and have introduced specific reforms in response to it, as other authors note (such as Hanieh 2011). Compared to much of the world, however, GCC political economies have, quite unusually, commodified tourism not for reasons of neoliberal-driven mass tourism marketization, but for the very different goal of controlling tourism and organizing it within the region’s (albeit entrepreneurial and profit-minded) state capitalist, regime-managed political economies.
The third point to make is on the approaches to the political economy of tourism in the GCC states and the issues they raise. First, no matter how central the disciplinary or sub-disciplinary approach used, the interdisciplinarity of tourism impacts the nature of scholarship on it. In the past, fields such as geography and anthropology have produced more tourism scholarship than political science, but from different, often more microcosmic, angles than political science usually adopts. Furthermore, tourism studies has long suffered from a contest common in the social sciences, wherein some scholars want it to become more quantitative and ‘scientific’, while others want it to be more qualitative and critical (Cooper 2003: 2–4). This is related to the complaint by some scholars that tourism studies is hamstrung by a positivist tradition. Valid or not, such comments are worth noting, given how many studies examine tourism in relative isolation or are reductionist in their analyses (Cooper 2003: 1–4). Approaches to political economy, too, are as contested as those of tourism studies. To some, political economy suggests a critical counter-approach to economic issues; to others, it should offer progressive arguments about the politics of economics, as several arguments imply (e.g. Payne 2006: 1–10). Still others treat it as a more neutral term, seeking to capture and explain the actors, forces and dynamics that create a linkage between the economic and the political, in the process touching on a diverse range of topics such as economic policymaking, development debates, the socio-political structures in which economic activity takes place and how economic and political outcomes each, in turn, impact the other. This latter approach is the more common in Middle Eastern studies, even though much area studies scholarship concerns a radical or progressivist approach. Key recent texts have, arguably, been closer to this more neutral approach (such as, among many, Held and Coates Ulrichsen 2012; Hertog et al. 2013; Kamrava 2012), and this is also the intent in this chapter.
A final point concerns the uniqueness of the Gulf states and the scopes and limitations that this presents in drawing on work elsewhere, or engaging in cross-regional comparative studies, especially to inform discussions about both political economy and tourism. The GCC states stand out in the Middle East by virtue of their comparative wealth, mostly from oil and gas exports, and the distinct impacts that this has had on, among other variables, their political structures, their economic importance within and beyond the Middle East and their selective, state-led globalization (Lawson 2012: 13–38). This is, arguably, why the Gulf is a bastion of powerful, sometimes autocratic monarchies, but also why these monarchies remain not only durable but for the most part stable, even popular. This is why the region appears to be engaging in ambitious economic liberalization, even though it is actually pursuing far more modest reforms that will support and enrich its novel, relatively efficient, entrepreneurial form of state capitalism (see Gray 2011: 18–36). It is also why the GCC states’ politics is dominated by middle-class concerns, why there is a strange concomitance of the global and the local in its public spaces and political economy profiles and, yet, also why social, religious and historical variations in these states have created notable differences in their approaches to both political and economic change (Abdulla 2012: 109–119). They are all energy-driven economies, all changing in important economic and social respects, all linking increasingly to the forces of globalization and all trying to expand tourism, but they are not all the same as each other, either in the finer details of their political economies or in the profiles and potential of their tourism industries.
Tourism and rentierism in the GCC states
One of the most common theoretical frameworks with which the GCC states are analyzed is ‘rentier state theory’ (RST) and its variants. RST, at its core, argues that ‘rents’, which are externally derived and usually concern unproductively earned income from natural resources or other assets innate or inherent to an economy, have an impact on the state-society relationship. Specifically, rents make states ‘allocative’ rather than ‘extractive’, the former distributing externally earned income to society and the latter imposing taxes on economic activity and then redistributing those funds. As a result, an extractive (taxing) state must make a bargain with society, perhaps a democratic one, or at least a deal on how taxes will be redistributed. The allocative or rentier state needs to do no such thing. Once it has co-opted (or, put crudely, ‘bought off’) society, the state becomes autonomous from society while also having the means at hand for an expansive state repressive capacity. It needs no bargains with society, the argument goes, usually not even an economic or development policy (Luciani 1990: 71–72, 76). The early literature on RST by Mahdavy (1970), Beblawi (1987) and Luciani (1990), among others, all argued along these lines.
Such arguments had, and retain to this day, considerable validity, but they were also simplistic. They explained the absence of democracy in basic, some would say reductionist, terms, and usually claimed or assumed that the autonomy of the state was virtually absolute. The theory is also broadly applicable, yet insufficiently analytical, for the case of the GCC states over the past 20–25 years. A more sophisticated approach to rentierism treats it as a dynamic rather than a structural explanation for a political economy. The idea of the GCC states as ‘late’ or ‘late-stage’ rentier states is based on this less ambitious approach to rentierism (Gray 2011). It acknowledges that the state is never fully autonomous from society: rentier regimes normally maintain ties with the elites most crucial to their survival, be they merchants, clerics, tribal leaders or others. Moreover, the post-2010 Arab uprisings have reinforced to Gulf leaders the need for an even wider responsiveness to society at large (Peel and Blas 2011). Certainly, this does not mean a democratic bargain is required. Rents always allow a state more repressive and co-optive means than it otherwise would possess. At best, however, these states have partial autonomy from society, but still need a basic level of legitimacy or toleration by society. They must respond effectively to the changes brought by globalization, in which case responsiveness also means addressing unemployment and other socio-economic pressures. They ...
