The Democratization process in the Gulf cooperation council countries

This paper analyses why the Gulf monarachies have largely persisted with the family-based structures in decision making and why this once successful structure is increasingly under pressure for democratic reform. The traditional monarchies had provent effective during the first generation of development. They have developed " rentier bliss", economies of abundance funded by oil revenues, which allow traditional institutions controlled by small elite to manage a society and an economy that finds itself increasingly necessary to compete and thus change according to the ebb and flow of the market forces. How have the small GCC monarchies not faced implosion, to be crushed from outside pressures emanating from global free-market economics as they have moved towar high standards of consumption during a second or third generation of independence? Current pressures are brought externally as well as internally, and accelerated by communication technologies, to institutionalize democratic reform. The strides toward greater democratic reform during the 1990s are noted for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait.