Kuwait and Al-Sabah

Rivka Azoulay is a postdoctoral fellow at Sciences Po Paris, France, where she is working on a project to reform the social safety net system in Kuwait.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Authoritarian regimes and the crucial role of the periphery

Part I: When the past holds a mirror to the present: traditional politics and the pre-oil authority system of the Al-Sabah (1716-1938)
I: Deconstructing the dominant Sunna hadar narrative
II: Communal segregation and stratification in pre-oil Kuwait: hadar, Shi’a and the early-settled tribes
III. Changes in the authority system: Mubarak Al-Sabah, colonialism and alliances with non-core elites
IV. The crystallization of alliances with non-core elites: the 1938 Majlis movement

Part II. Oil and the consolidation of a tribal authoritarian shaykhdom: Ruler-ruled relations 1961-1990
I: External threat consolidates inter-elite power-sharing (musharaka)
II: External threat consolidates inter-elite power-sharing (musharaka)
III: The rise of new middle-class elites and the decline of the hadar elites
IV: Socio-political change within Kuwait’s Shi’a population
V. Competitive authoritarians: parliamentary life (1961-1990)

Part III. New forces of globalization and the rise of the tribal periphery in Kuwait (1990-2014)
I: The birth of a tribal opposition
II. Beyond tribalism: social dimensions of a broader middle-class struggle
III. Splits in the regime’s ‘asabiyya: royal infighting and succession
IV. Limits of political patronage vis-à-vis non-core elites (2011-2014)

Conclusion
Bibliography