Refining the Common Good
Oil, Islam and Politics in Gulf Monarchies

This study examines how Arab Gulf monarchies harness both oil revenues and Islamic doctrine to achieve their political goals.

Miriam R. Lowi (Author)

9781009463317, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 November 2024

228 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'A significant contribution to political science, Middle Eastern studies, and political economy. Lowi's integration of Islamic ethics with rentier state dynamics offers a fresh perspective on the interplay between religion and resources in governance. By comparing four GCC states, she balances depth and breadth, highlighting both shared strategies and contextual differences. Her rigorous analysis, based on interviews, primary sources, and interdisciplinary scholarship, ensures empirical robustness. This book is essential reading for scholars, policymakers, and students interested in Gulf politics, religion, and inequality.' Chaoqun Lian, China International Strategy Review

How has Islam as a set of beliefs and practices shaped the allocation of oil revenues in Arab Gulf monarchies? In turn, how has oil wealth impacted the role of Islamic doctrine in politics? Refining the Common Good explores the relationship between Islamic norms and the circulation of oil wealth in Gulf monarchies. The study demonstrates how both oil (revenues) and Islam (as doctrine) are manipulated as tools of state power, and how religious norms are refined for the sake of achieving narrow secular interests. Miriam R. Lowi examines different institutionalized practices financed by hydrocarbon revenues and sanctioned, either implicitly or explicitly, by Islam, and uses evidence from Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia to show how these practices are infused with political purpose. The dynamic relationship between oil wealth and Islamic doctrine is exploited to contribute to the management and control of society, and the consolidation of dynastic autocracy.

1. Oil and Islam in the Gulf
2. Islamic norms, interpretations, applications
3. The state and the political economy of distribution
4. Society responds
5. Imported labor: building/appeasing the nation
6. Charity as politics 'writ small'
7. Islamic banking and finance: a political economy of accumulation
8. Reflections on Islam and politics in the oil era.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]