GCC

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are major oil and natural gas producing countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council. The six GCC countries fall in the top 25 countries of carbon dioxide emissions per capita and are perceived as the main actors blocking international climate change negotiations. The aim of this article is to discuss from a policy perspective the capacities of the GCC states to switch toward an ecological modernization of their energy sectors. At the beginning of the paper, I analyze the benefits of transforming oil wealth into funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency. After this, I discuss obstacles to such a transformation process based on the rentier states theory. Finally, I investigate governance of the GCC on all levels (international, regional, and local). The article shows that the GCC countries have recently adopted a more pro-active approach toward ecological modernization. This reorientation has not yet resulted in the development of consistent strategies and policies, however. The concluding assumption based on the concept of policy transfer is that pioneering projects such as Masdar City and innovative regulation like the green building code in Dubai will spread within the GCC.

The Gulf countries are largely dependent on exporting oil and natural gas for their national budgets. They mainly use domestic fossil fuels for their domestic energy supply. In spite of favorable geographic conditions, especially for solar energy, renewable energies are still a niche application. Abu Dhabi, besides Dubai, the most important emirate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has now started a process of ‘‘transforming oil wealth into renewable energy leadership,’’ and has set the long-term goal of a ‘‘transition from a 20th Century, carbon-based economy into a 21st Century sustainable economy.’’ This article is a case study about ‘‘Masdar City,’’ a planned carbon-neutral town in Abu Dhabi. The article describes the key characteristics of Masdar City, analyses the drivers behind the project, identifies the main actors for its implementation, and seeks obstacles to creation and development as well as the policy behind Masdar City. Finally, a first judgment of possible diffusion effects of the project is done.

There has been an unmistakable confluence of authoritarian restitution with the re-adoption of neoliberal economic measures in post-2013 Egypt. However, unlike earlier neoliberal restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s, both processes of political and economic restructuring happened against a crisis-ridden neoliberal global order. How have both phenomena been related? This article argues that authoritarian restitution in Egypt allowed the country's re-insertion into the neoliberal global order in a time of prolonged and multifaceted crises, both domestically and globally. Sustained repression of the opposition and civil society became the primary condition for accessing badly-needed borrowing from IFIs and international bond markets, on relatively favorable terms for the regime (lower rates) and foreign investors (lower risks). The process has been multi-scalar where domestic developments were relatively autonomous yet deeply interrelated with regional and global actors, dynamics and flows with a considerable overlap and interpenetration between geopolitics and economics.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify and study the key issues and challenges facing e-government development from an integrative perspective, and to provide strategies and policy recommendations to address them in a broad and holistic way.
Design/methodology/approach – To achieve a comprehensive understanding of the key issues in e-government development, the authors took an integrative approach built on several existing theories and research. The authors conducted an empirical case study of Dubai. The data collection methods included documentary research; reviewing the major websites of Dubai government entities; and interviewing 22 e-government stakeholders.
Findings – The authors have identified a variety of important issues and challenges facing e-government development in Dubai. Of them, they focus on language issues on websites, e-integration, uptake of e-government services and the digital divide, and quality of Dubai e-government websites and e-services. Practical implications – Given that Dubai was ranked the number one eCity in the Arab World and the eighteenth in the world in e-government implementation, this insightful case study has wider implications. It contributes to abetter understanding of the key issues in e-government development in the Arab nations. The broad and holistic strategies developed through this study address the root causes of the issues, which could help governments not only in Dubai but also in other countries in their policy making.
Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first integrative and empirical study that explores the key issues and challenges in e-government development through studying e-government experiences of Dubai from both supply and demand perspectives.
Keywords E-government, Citizens, An integrative approach, Case study, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Paper type Research paper
E-government, Citizens, An integrative approach, Case study, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The role of an intuitive cognitive style in project planning may be more complex than prior studies have allowed for. Therefore, we used a
model of the role of environment in intuition and the relationships between intuition, reflexivity, and project outcomes (measured as project success
and speed of completion) in order to examine how environment influences intuition; and whether reflexivity mediates the link between intuition
and project outcomes. Our field study incorporates responses from 450 managers representing 410 projects from firms located in the United Arab
Emirates. The regression analysis suggests that competition uncertainty and environmental complexity are determinants of intuition; intuition
promotes team reflexivity and this in turn enhances project outcomes. These results show that the intuitive approach in planning projects and team
reflexivity are complementary foundations for improving different aspects of project performance and, therefore, that models of intuition in project
management should incorporate the effects of reflexivity.

Purpose-Various research studies have been carried out to study Chief Executive Officers' (CEOs') transformational leadership in driving organizational performance and success. Evidence shows that few studies were carried out on CEO transformational leadership and top management team (TMT) performance in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Thus, this study aims to provide a unique contribution and the first of its kind to examine the CEO leadership-TMT performance link across GCC countries. Design/methodology/approach-In this study, the researchers approached 500 employees and 30 CEOs working in 30 different organizations operating in the GCC countries. The firms were selected conveniently from different industries located in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. The researchers used the PASW (SPSS) program to analyze the data. Findings-The findings show that psychological empowerment has no significant role in moderating the transformational leadership-TMT performance relationship. Internal support for innovation plays a significant role in mediating the relationship between transformational leadership and TMT performance. Research limitations/implications-The present study has not examined the behavioral aspects of CEO followers. Future research may study behavioral characteristics of the entire TMT. Originality/value-This study contributes to body of research that identifies CEO transactional leadership as perceived by the followers was found to be more important in predicting TMT performance than transformational leadership in the context of organizations located in GCC countries. Managerial implications and future research areas are further discussed.

Widespread disappointment with compliance auditing in supply chains has led to a search for new governance solutions in global industries. Recent scholarship on labour standards in supply chains emphasises the need for complementarity between public and private forms of governance, and the importance of local contexts in shaping compliance outcomes. This paper, in contrast, argues that the distinction between public and private governance belies the complex interaction of regulatory forms and industry dynamics in global production networks. It develops this argument via an analysis of the International Labour Organisation Better Work programme, which, over the last decade, has metamorphosed from a country-specific monitoring programme into a unique model of hybrid governance that has been implemented in a half dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Drawing from field research conducted on Nicaragua’s Better Work programme, it examines the achievements and limitations of hybrid governance, and proposes that these can best be understood when the global value chain for apparel is seen as a transnational field within which relational struggles between different stakeholders at the global and national levels shape the political contexts within which particular governance solutions are pursued.

This article studies the production of a power grid across six Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, known as ‘the backbone,’
which has been conceptualized as an answer to power outages. First
it analyzes how experts working with and around the GCC Interconnection
Authority (GCCIA) advance claims to a regional territorial
imagination. Second, it shows that the construction of the grid not
only indicates a shift in the material arrangement of wires and substations,
but also necessitates new understandings of transparency
and a new formula for the electricity price, facilitating the cutting of
government subsidies along with additional price increases. Third, it
interrogates how electricity is consumed in the region. Policy-makers
expected that electricity price increases would lead to lower rates of
consumption. Yet after price hikes were instituted, analysts reported
how they had no impact. Users behaved in ways that the grid’s engineers
did not anticipate. Overall the article shows how various actors
conduct ‘boundary work,’ that is, how they set limits between the
political, the financial and the technical while producing the backbone.
The article explores how this boundary work helps stabilize
a particular sociotechnical imaginary of energy security in the GCC,
masking anxieties associated with a future beyond oil.

This article examines a new phenomenon in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) referred to as specialized cities (SC). These cities, in addition to being new towns, implement innovations in selected policy areas. This article goes beyond describing the spread of SC to answering a broader question: what motivates a GCC country to adopt such policy innovation? After a quantitative overview of the phenomenon, three cases have been selected to cover three main policy areas: energy, health care, and education, in Abu Dhabi Masdar City, Dubai Healthcare City, and Qatar Education City. A preliminary analysis of each of the cases is followed by a comparative approach that aims at discovering similarities and differences, as well as developing the basis for a preliminary analytical model that explains the driving factors behind these innovations. The country adoption of a policy innovation and its diffusion are mainly the results of geographical proximity and similarity, as these proximate countries tend to have similar economic aspects and common social problems that lead to similar policy action effects. Regional competition and positive reputational mechanisms are also particularly strong determinants for diffusion. The findings suggest that in the GCC region a diffusion of the phenomena is occurring, rather than that of a specific type of SC.

This article investigates why the small Middle Eastern country Qatar is investing so heavily in the sport sector. The country is hosting prestigious sporting events such as the Asian Games, the handball and the football World Cup, promotes elite sport success by local and naturalized athletes and invests in famous sport clubs abroad. The article analyses how sport is used as a domestic policy tool, for example to develop a healthy society and to attract white-collar expats from abroad. Sport is also used as a foreign policy tool to build relations with as many countries and people in the world as possible to gain soft power and for national security reasons.

This paper explores the extent to which the hypothesis of a ‘human rights trend’ in the six Gulf Arab States is valid. In order to do this, firstly, it examines these States’ attitude to international human rights instruments. Secondly, drawing from their ‘Visions’ for the future, it identifies examples of reforms, local policies and ‘best practices’. The paper draws from various examples, focusing however on Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The paper makes two main submissions. It submits that there is indeed a ‘shift’ towards a model of better human rights compliance, yet this trend is detectable in these States’ local policies, and not in their international commitments. The paper concludes that in order to achieve sustainable economic growth and meaningful collaboration with other States at the global level, it is in the interest of those States’ and their future generations to take human rights seriously.

Here, we examine the challenges to democratization in Bahrain, with a particular focus on how the recent 2011 Uprising has resulted in a deepening of authoritarianism. It is argued that the recent unrest has brought into sharp relief the absence of “quality” democracy in Bahrain, and that any form of democratic transition is dependent on the will of a conservative Al Khalifa-Saudi nexus. While the pro-democracy movement may have prompted minor concessions on the part of the government, the extent of the popular mobilization triggered the Al Khalifa regime’s authoritarian reflex, and they have reacted to throttle the Uprising by putting in place legislative, ideological, and political barriers to reform, which points not only to a current de-democratization, but also a lack of future democratization. In addition to arguing for the post-2011 undoing of democracy in Bahrain, this paper also points to two major barriers to future democratization; (1) a conservative, post-Independence Al Khalifa-Saudi coalition assisted by large military resources (2) protracted communal tension brought about by the government’s instrumentalization of sectarianism

Purpose Women entrepreneurship is the fundamental carter of economic development. This study aims to identify the dynamics that encourage entrepreneurial attitudes among women in MENA countries. More precisely, it required to scrutinize the role of the government, role models, the entrepreneurial training and women's demographic characteristics in encouraging women to embrace entrepreneurship. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on primary data, where data were gathered from a sample of 300 women from MENA countries through a self-administered questionnaire and were subjected to one-way ANOVA tests. Different statistical tools were used to draw some valued conclusions from the gathered data. The study reveals that women entrepreneurs acknowledge the role played by the government, entrepreneurship training, role models and demographic variables in encouraging them to embrace entrepreneurship. Findings The government and the entrepreneurial training were found to be the greatest variables encouraging women to embrace entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the low overall mean exhibited that most women do not believe that these bodies have played their role satisfactorily. Whereas the ANOVA results reveal that age and work experience were not important dynamics behind encouraging women to embrace entrepreneurship. Research limitations/implications Data were collected from a sample of 300 women entrepreneurs with a simple random sampling technique from the following MENA countries: Oman, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. It is too difficult to approach the women respondents and then collect data from them especially in MENA countries; hence the sample is small and limited. Practical implications However, such studies are still in the minority, and, with few exceptions, most have been published in the niche. The study finds imperative for policymakers to go beyond measures that aim to address the challenges that individual women entrepreneurs face and to study the institutional framework affecting women entrepreneurship in relationship to motivations and resources. Additional care is desired to compel the environment and context to eliminate barriers to women entrepreneurship at source. The government should play a

This study examines the relationship between financial risk and performance of Gulf Cooperation Council Islamic banks and the relative importance of the most common types of risk. The study covers 11 of the 47 Islamic banks of the Gulf Cooperation Council region from 2000 to 2012, based on the availability of data. Data were obtained from the Bankscope database. For bank performance, the two most common measures, ROA and ROE, were alternatively used and for risk measures. Four types of financial risk were used, namely credit risk, liquidity risk, operational risk, and capital risk. Regression analysis indicate there exists a significant negative relationship between the Gulf Cooperation Council Islamic banks' performance, capital risk and operational risk. The results also confirm a significant negative relationship between Gulf Cooperation Council Islamic banks' performance. Furthermore, the results indicate that the most important type of risk is capital risk, followed by operational risk.

Bahrain’s Royal Family, the Al Khalifa, has long pursued a strategy of divide and rule in order to prevent the emergence of cross-opposition coalitions, while exacerbating the country’s sectarian divide has become a critical means of ensuring regime survival. This article examines the country’s twentieth century imperial and post-independence history through the framework of divide and rule theory, providing crucial context for current events in Bahrain. It demonstrates how a divide and rule strategy is structurally embedded within the ruling family’s mode of governance, and reveals how it continues to be employed as an effective means of maintaining absolute monarchy in Bahrain.

Keywords: Bahrain, Arab Spring, Gulf Cooperation Council, divide and rule, sectarianism

After independence, the GCC countries relied heavily on foreign workers from fellow Arabs countries. Thus, remittances flowed from GCC to other countries in MENA. In the 1980s-1990s labor source switched to South Asia; so did the flow of remittances. This paper examines the consequences of the shift in the source of labor by econometrically testing the existence of structural breaks in the flow of remittances in the MENA region. The change in the direction of remittance flows deprived several MENA labor exporters of large sums of foreign exchange, adding significant economic, social and political hardships on non-GCC MENA countries.

The role of human resource management function is at the crossroad, and on the one hand it is facing the crisis whereas there also exists an unprecedented opportunity to redefine and refocus the HRM function to leverage its credibility in organization. In Oman, HRM is in its infancy and there is a need to strengthen its discourse and learning. The present paper attempts to understand the dynamics of HRM in Oman and evaluates various HRM models which have evolved over a period of time. It is difficult to prescribe a HRM model without analyzing the regional and socio-contextual factors inherent in Oman and neither convergence nor pure divergence provides a solution to this end.

There is a shift occurring within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in which new regional leaders are emerging, buoyed by a decade of unprecedented wealth generation from the 2000s commodi- ties boom and increased foreign investment. Specifically, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have emerged as activist states in their interest and willingness to intervene both militarily and financially in the politics of neighbouring Arab states. Contrary to their collective and individual foreign policies of the last 40 years, the GCC states have intervened in each other’s domestic poli- tics and in the domestic politics and revolutions of the wider Middle East and North Africa region. While Saudi Arabia enjoyed a period of dominance among its Gulf Arab neighbours for many years, even occasionally threatening the borders of Qatar and the UAE, the prevailing policy of Gulf states has been non-interference and support for Arab leaders, as a principle of religion and politics. In essence, the evolving nature of interventionism in the GCC is moving away from Saudi dominance towards the emergence of new actors willing to engage in the region and on the international stage. We can trace this policy shift through the simultaneous yet separate evolution of domestic, regional and international political economy. This paper argues that shifts in leadership at the national levels have coincided with larger trends in the regional and international economy which have enabled different, yet both assertive, interventionist foreign policies to emerge from Qatar and the UAE. The result is a moment of financial and military interventionism unprecedented in Arab Gulf politics.

This article demonstrates the growing adaptability of Chinese foreign policy to Gulf states’ expectations around issues that implicate them directly or are relevant (such as relations with the US, and the wars in Yemen and Syria). Gulf states reacted positively because China’s approach incrementally integrated local demands in its strategizing, especially by finding common ground with Gulf states despite their own differences; China has done so while not being tied to a “hegemonic idea” (i.e. it is not trying to control or define Gulf politics). China’s incrementalist and non-hegemonic regional approach significantly increased Gulf states’ acceptance of its interventions, adapted to Gulf states’ expectations, and, crucially, has been altering what these states expect of major powers in general. The article concludes by proposing that unfolding Gulf politics in light of the June 2017 GCC crisis is very likely to present China with multiple opportunities to demonstrate the adroitness of its strategic choices vis-à-vis the region.

In recent years, the trade volume between China and the six GCC countries has risen substantially, and with these commercial relations, China has become a major economic partner for the GCC.  This article analyzes the economics of China-GCC economic interdependence.  It begins with an analysis of the features of the political economic relationship, focusing on energy, trade, investment, and infrastructure and construction contracts.  It then discusses the process of formalizing these relationships through the ongoing negotiation of the China-GCC Free Trade Agreement.  It then examines how this economic relationship can intensify through GCC cooperation in China's Belt and Road Initiative.

In this "GCC States' Land Investments Abroad: The Case of Ethiopia" CIRS Summary Report, Benjamin Shepherd (link is external) uses data generated from fieldwork in Ethiopia to evaluate the country as a potential long-term source of agricultural staples for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states as part of their national food security strategies. Part of the larger CIRS research initiative on "Food Security and Food Sovereignty in the Middle East," the report identifies the risks and well as the opportunities of investing in the agricultural sector of Ethiopia.

There are sound opportunities for GCC countries to use investment in developing country agriculture as part of their long-term food security policy mix, as long as those investments are approached in a careful, constructive, and regulated way. To this end, some recommendations are made in this report for further research and for GCC state policymakers to re-think national food security policies.

This work is written by Mari Luomi.
This paper analyzes Qatar’s present and future challenges relating to natural resources and environmental sustainability through the concept of “natural sustainability,” which is defined as the use of natural resources in a way that ensures prosperity for humans and the environment, presently and in the future. By doing so, it proposes an alternative standpoint on sustainable development. The paper asks three broad questions: How is the relationship between development, economy, and the environment understood by different actors in Qatar? What implications do these different views have for planning and definition of desired outcomes in the areas of natural resource use and environmental sustainability? What can a more environment-centered focus contribute toward solving the existing unsustainabilities of development in Qatar and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)? By refocusing attention from the economy and growth to the environment and its limits; and from technology and efficiency to institutions, people, and resourcefulness, Qatar and the GCC states might be able to avoid an impending collapse stemming from their fast exacerbating natural unsustainability.

Many scholars have contributed to ongoing debates about the competition between the dollar and the euro for global monetary dominance. Few have added as much value as Miguel Otero-Iglesias with his systematic and original survey of the views of financial elites in major emerging market economies. Where conventional interpretations emphasize material "reality," Otero-Iglesias's ideational analysis clearly demonstrates how important it is to consider as well how "reality" is perceived and framed by key actors. The euro may be structurally weak, limiting its "hard" power. But at the cognitive level of "soft" power, Otero-Iglesias suggests, Europe's money poses a significant challenge to America's greenback. This is an argument to be taken seriously.

Benjamin J. Cohen, Louis G. Lancaster Professor of International Political Economy University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

Grid computing has made substantial advances during the last decade. Grid middleware such as globus has contributed greatly in making this possible. There are, however, significant barriers to the adoption of grid computing in other fields, most notably day-to-day user computing environments. We will demonstrate in this paper that this is primarily due to the limitations of the existing grid middleware which does not take into account the needs of everyday scientific and business users. In this paper we will formally advocate a grid operating system and propose an architecture to migrate grid computing into a grid operating system which we believe would help remove most of the technical barriers to the adoption of grid computing and make it relevant to the day-to-day user. We believe this proposed transition to a grid operating system will drive more pervasive grid computing research and application development and deployment in future

This article analyses the Gulf Arab states’ changing posture toward Israel since the June 1967 War. Fifty years on, the ‘three no’s’ of Khartoum have been replaced by the Saudi-coordinated Arab Peace Initiative, which offers Israel normalization in return for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Furthermore, the meaning of ‘normalization’ has been re-defined over the years in accordance with the changing geopolitical circumstances. Mutually beneficial ties between Israel and the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have grown up in proportion to their shared interests and shared threat perceptions. In the period from the 1967 War to the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, the Gulf Arab states, for the most part, boycotted Israel in line with pan-Arab requirements. While Iranian propaganda during the Khomeini era (1979–1989) depicted Gulf Arab rulers as lackeys of Zionism and imperialism, GCC–Israel ties were anathema. In the 1990s, the GCC lent cautious support to the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, and two of its members, Oman and Qatar, expanded trade relations with Israel in defiance of Arab and Gulf norms. The emergence of the Saudi–Iranian regional cold war after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 gave rise to unprecedented levels of tacit security and intelligence cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Olympic Games is passing through a new phase on the planet. The sport has reformed around the world especially in the Arabic-speaking Gulf countries. The local culture, religion and natural environment are the driving forces which are shaping the behaviour of the society. Nowadays, the consumption and sharing of sports information is through the medium of the latest technology like the tools of social media. The youth belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries use sports as a medium to communicate via social media. This paper used the situational analysis to describe the challenges of six communication channels for promoting the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Agenda 2020 for the GCC countries based on the SWOT, PESTLE and CATWOE methodologies. The results showed that the geographical area has huge potential to promote high performance and values of sport for future generations of athletes using the Youth Olympic Games as a seasonal door. However, an improvement from the perspective of consumer behaviour is necessary to generate youth engagement through National Olympic Committees (NOCs) during Summer and Winter Olympic Games with a heavy focus on the challenges for the new generation through social media. The recommendation points were that bilingual youth athletes (speaking Arabic and English) should be the new voice of the Olympic Movement in the GCC countries. To achieve Agenda 2020 goals, such action can engage the GCC youth generation with the Olympic Movement, including foreigners that live 1 Corresponding author. AUE-COBA-Dubai Academic City, Block 6-7, 2nd floor, Office 7238-Dubai,

China's involvement with the Gulf monarchies has been built upon an economic foundation. With the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) this has expanded, as the Gulf monarchies see cooperation with China through MSRI projects as a means of advancing economic development programs necessary to move beyond single-resource rentier economies and relationships with external powers as a means of ensuring their security in an unstable region. This has important implications for the shape of the MSRI as a whole, and how it fits together with the larger BRI. China's BRI/MSRI success with participating states will be a matter of matching their specific domestic needs and strategic considerations with Chinese perceptions of the relative importance of those states.

Most studies of regionalism in the Middle East fail to distinguish among divergent types of regional formations, and make little effort to chart the developmental trajectory that regionalist projects display over time. This paper lays out a typology that can be used to elucidate crucial differences across regional formations in the contemporary Arab world, and also to highlight significant changes in the kind and level of governance that take place in any particular regionalist experiment. The utility of the framework is demonstrated through an analysis of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This regional formation has undergone two major transformations since it took shape in 1981, and at the present time exhibits a substantially different form of economic regionalism from the one it boasted three decades ago. Four alternative explanations for shifts from one form of GCC regionalism to another are outlined as an invitation to further investigation.

This article is a pioneering theoretical work as an approach from the perspective of combination of social media characteristics and wisdom of crowds. The aim of this article is to conceptualize the social media channels in terms of their characteristics and to discuss the correlation between social media choices and culture. This paper contributes to social media marketing theory by developing a conceptual approach that explains and offers implications pertaining to the relationship between different social media channels in the age of social media. To do this, the relevant literature has been thoroughly reviewed, and exploratory research method has been used. The study also aims to visualize the effect of cultural differences as aligned with the study of Edward Hall (1967) and Gert Hoftstede (1984). Cultural factors exert a broad and deep influence on social media choices. Arab countries are categorized as high-context culture according to Hall's dimensions. The social media reports, Arab Social Media, conducted by Dubai School of Government of the years from 2013, 2013 and 2017 were analyzed. The limited availability of the literature done on the region has limited the scope and analysis of the research. The paper concludes that social media has certain characteristics that interrelate with each other and culture has a moderation effect on the choices.

Institutionalization in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states is proceeding within the financial sector in many ways as a result of economic growth, rather than as a precursor or foundation of economic growth. This paper gives an overview of the archi- tecture of financial governance in the GCC states, situating financial governance in the context of domestic state-building, global capital flows and energy markets. The paper argues that demand for new financial services often originates in the global business and finance communities, while domestic financial institutions dominated by state and ruling family interests may prefer less diversity and range (and requisite regulation). When GCC states do regulate markets, they are able to move quickly, which often priv- ileges state priorities over market depth and diversification. As Gulf states create new economic institutions to govern their markets, they are also creating a framework that enables broader political goals of financial and economic statecraft.

Transformation in the demographic profile of the global workforce has brought in new challenges, especially
with reference to the global expatriate workforce. For regions like the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries,
which heavily depend on expatriate workforce in the private sector, further research on demographic factors of
expatriates is imperative as these factors significantly influence expatriate adjustment in a foreign location. The
beginning segment of this paper presents major factors which have influenced demographic profile of the global
workforce, followed by discussion on the growth of the expatriate population in the GCC countries. The paper further
presents findings of a survey conducted to explore the demographic profile of a niche expatriate segment of Indian
higher education teachers working in the GCC countries. The findings of the survey are also compared with other
research on the demographic profile of expatriates. This paper concludes with suggestions for further research on the
demographic profile of expatriate workers in the GCC countries.

The European currency union with the EURO as its common currency is the most persistent and largest monetary union to date. At the beginning, it has attracted a lot of attention to the concept of monetary unions; yet, it has recently signaled a lot of warnings around the concept that requires careful studying prior to any duplication attempt. This paper aims at identifying potential currency unions in the MENA region based on interest rates' similarity as one of the aspects that affect a monetary union's success. To assess their sustainability, the optimal interest rates (Taylor rates) of the members of each potential union is estimated and used to calculate a stress level index. The sample used in this study consists of eleven countries where Taylor rates were calculated using data from 1998 to 2008. The stress test results provide a clear result: Two monetary sub-unions, namely the Saudi Arabia-Kuwait union and the Mashreq union (Jordan, Egypt and Syria), are found to have relatively low stress levels and high benefits from a common currency. In contrast, a large MENA union would suffer from very high stress levels and only modest advantages of a common currency.

Deepak Unnikrishnan’s debut text, Temporary People, attempts to explore certain vulnerabilities and anxieties of transience that accompany emigrants to the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, where citizenship is not an option. By representing one of the largest Gulf diaspora in contemporary history—the Keralan emigrants or pravasis—as spectral figures and as absence-presences that signal a non-present presence in the Gulf, Unnikrishnan’s book attempts to retrieve and register their occulted histories on the Gulf landscape. In particular, this article explores how, by creating a Keralan Gulf-pravasi spectre, Unnikrishnan critically engages with a more varied version of Gulf diasporic experience and, therefore, a more complex definition of emigration itself.