Authoritarian Bargaining and Economic Sabotage in the Arabian Gulf.

Abstract

This dissertation explores bargaining dynamics and distributive conflict across the Arabian Gulf. Welfare outcomes vary widely for marginalized groups in the region, motivating a simple but previously unexplored question: why provide benefits to the marginalized? Few autocrats today rely exclusively, or even principally, on repression to survive. Beyond more traditional coercive measures, autocrats use various distributive goods and policy concessions to coopt elites and build mass support. Some autocrats even go so far as to provide targeted benefits to religious minorities, disenfranchised migrants and other marginalized groups. This targeting is inexplicable for existing theory, which suggests that authoritarian rule is predicated on the exclusion of such groups. Having been systematically marginalized, we should not expect these otherwise repressed groups to receive targeted benefits. In explaining this puzzling behavior, my dissertation explores the role of marginalized groups in the Arabian Gulf, offering a formal theory of authoritarian bargaining under the threat of sabotage. All autocrats must solicit the support of various groups in society. Whether purchased or coerced, this support does not come cheap, making autocrats dependent on constant production and growth. When marginalized groups are critical to such production, they have the capacity to threaten costly economic sabotage. This threat provides these groups with a potential bargaining power that is simply nonexistent in traditional theories of authoritarianism. My model generates a series of testable implications, predicting when sabotage occurs and the conditions under which marginalized groups should receive targeted goods and services. To test these hypotheses, I draw on extensive fieldwork, surveys and spatial data from the Gulf. In the first empirical paper, I focus on the regime-level and consider how Qatar has responded to such pressures. I show how the regime has largely prevented sabotage through distributive policies and spatial planning. The second empirical paper then considers the micro-level, exploring bargaining between firms and migrants. All told, contracts and credible exit options appear to provide even the most vulnerable workers a means of protection within authoritarian states.