Oil Monarchies.

F. Gregory Gause III is a well-respected expert of Islam and the Middle East. I've heard from Marc Lynch that he's even given whole lectures in Arabic, which is no easy task even for world-renown scholars in the field. Oil Monarchies has been sitting on my shelf since I bought it for "U.S. Policy in the Gulf" class as one of many mandatory readings, but was never assigned any pages. The overarching idea of the book is that the U.S. has a vested interest and legitimate stakes in Gulf stability and needs to understand the domestic and security challenges to effectively deal with regional actors. Moreover, most change cannot come without, but instead needs to come from within--but slight prodding by the U.S. might not hurt. Gause explicitly opposes an isolationist strategic posture yet fails to explain what he instead wants to U.S. grand strategy to be.

The book in many ways is a long encyclopedia article, with many chapters cut-and-dry. The chapter headings are divided into effect of oil on politics, representational participation development, foreign/defense policies, current challenges, and American foreign policy. It may be best described as a very basic introduction with a plethora of evidence and statistical information. It's also outdated, addressing Gulf history only up till the aftermath of the Gulf War and a little into the Clinton presidency. This is a significant fault because a lot of regional analysis had to deal with Iraq and its counterbalancing of Iran, what threat Saddam posed to Iraq's neighbors, and the like. But since the Iraq War, these concerns are largely dissipated and replaced with other issues in Iraq.

Gause's take on representational participation development is a lot more optimistic than most people are today, since at the time of writing many of these parliamentary and consultative councils were relatively new with a lot of hype, but now most have stagnated and failed to show much fruit. Not a book I would recommend, although the chapter on the effect of oil on politics is a good comprehensive view. Within the chapter is one of the more original arguments in the book, whereby he argues that the traditional nature of Gulf politics is a construct and the centralization of government power through oil wealth has curbed the traditional influence of tribalism and Islam. I wouldn't be surprised if the Council on Foreign Relations puts out a new edition.