On the evening of Monday 14 September 2026, the ACRPS Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies Unit hosted Amna Abdulla Sadiq, Assistant Professor of Gulf Studies at Qatar University, in the first instalment in its monthly lecture series for the 2026-2027 academic year. The lecture, moderated by researcher at the unit Alanoud Al-Khalifa, was titled “The Arabian Gulf as a Unified Space: From Neighbouring States to the Gulf Cooperation Council”.
Sadiq opened her lecture by presenting the position of regional research in Gulf Studies, proposing a shift from viewing the region as a fixed geographical container toward understanding it as a living, regenerative regional trajectory. The fusion of national identities into a Gulf identity, she argued, is a dynamic process that does not always tend toward integration but may bring about fragmentation in certain socioeconomic spheres. Sadiq highlighted a state of discontent toward the course of Gulf institutional integration as represented by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), formed in 1981, which is often characterized as inert and ineffective. Sadiq described this discontent as an extensive downturn within the institution which is accompanied by a general sense that the region has the potential, under the right circumstances, to take on an effective and independent trajectory.
In this context, Sadiq posed three questions. First, what is the source of this potential despite the decades that have passed since the GCC’s establishment? Second, what has prevented it from developing into a regional reality? Third, what are the drivers of the GCC’s potential? The speaker employed a diverse array of sources in addressing these questions, including newspapers, local publications, research, as well as private and government archives.
Sadiq defined “regional integration” by recourse to the concept put forth by American political scientist Joseph Nye in 1968, which treats regional action as a trajectory for combining various parts within a single framework, or to foster interdependence therein. This trajectory takes three main forms: economic integration through transnational economic activity; social integration based on a transnational society; and political integration through interwoven relations of interdependence.
The process of regional integration comprises two related elements: the blending of parts into a larger whole, and some degree of exchange, cooperation, and interdependence between those constituent parts. Sadiq contended that the significance of research on this process lies in the proposition that the roots of the GCC derive in part from the popular sense of belonging to a shared space and body of water.
Sadiq traced the historical trajectories that led to the formation of this space, illustrating a socioeconomic trajectory that preceded the rise of the modern state and another trajectory in the form of networks of commerce and pearl diving. Sadiq showed that a two-way process of reciprocal feedback, between commerce and pearling, helped establish transnational socioeconomic relations. These networks collapsed after the Second World War with the emergence of cultured pearls, precipitating a standstill in the Gulf’s traditional economy and a reduction in interdependence. Following the discovery of oil, transnational relations reorganized themselves in accordance with the rise of nation-states, and regional non-governmental projects designed to reconstruct the transnational economy began to emerge. The most prominent of these was the Federation of Gulf Chambers, the first framework for the region’s merchants. Its semi-official inauguration came in 1969 at the invitation of Bahrain, with the participation of several Gulf emirates. In 1976 it expanded into an economic development forum through the involvement of the Kuwaiti and Saudi chambers. The Federation of Gulf Chambers was officially announced in 1979, though Iraq would withdraw in 1990. Sadiq argued that the same trajectory applies to the banks and joint companies that emerged in the region prior to the GCC’s formation and sought to rebuild the transnational economy.
Another form of interdependence, Sadiq explained, is the transnational administrative system established by Britain on the classical imperial-colonial model, whereby it outlined the Gulf as an administrative region reflecting some conception of the regional space. Britain would subsequently impose a particular vision for the shape of the region.
In mid-1939, newspapers, especially in Arabic, began to speak of a British federal project in the Gulf encompassing Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. This conception would later transform into the proposed nine-member Federation of Arab Emirates in 1968, coinciding with the announcement of the British withdrawal. But this organization was less a unifying effort than it was a tool in service of British interests. After the withdrawal, the region’s formation proceeded according to an externally directed process – whether through international relations and the broader international community, or foreign research centres that viewed the Gulf as an administrative or strategic framework to be controlled. Sadiq also discussed Iraqi interest in the Gulf emirates during the 1970s: Iraq viewed them as a bulwark against Iranian expansion and the attempted imposition of Iranian identity on the Gulf.
The third dimension of the regional formation of the Gulf is the role of the cultural elites who articulated an early conception of the Gulf as a cohesive society and shared space. This conception prompted discussions of the Gulf as a potential source of identity and transnational ties.
Liberation movements – whether formed to bring an end to the British presence or in pursuit of other sociopolitical aims – played a part in producing a transnational society. Despite their ideological commitments, these movements preserved the interconnectedness of the people of the region. Cultural elites repositioned themselves after the discovery of oil toward the idea of “Gulf society” by way of university research centres, publishing houses, and civil society institutions.
In contrast to these bottom-up trajectories, a well-defined institutional trajectory emerged that would lay the initial groundwork for the GCC’s establishment. Sadiq observed that early notions of Gulf unity issued from the experience of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which granted the region’s states negotiating power in the oil market. As a result, a Kuwaiti initiative was launched in response to the following question: if the Gulf states have negotiating power in the oil market, what is to stop them from developing negotiating power in import markets and establishing a free trade region unburdened by the restrictions of hard currency? This initiative, having won the support of the region’s cultural elites, later evolved into something more similar to the idea of the European Union.
Sadiq drew attention to a parallel Omani initiative launched in 1976 at a foreign ministers’ summit called by Sultan Qaboos. Though this meeting made little progress at the time, subsequent Gulf foreign ministers’ summits would culminate in the announcement of the GCC’s establishment.
Prior discussions of the establishment, Sadiq showed, have fixated on determining the most appropriate course: does economic integration lead to political integration, or must integration begin in the sphere of politics? Kuwait took a position that prioritized the economy, whilst Oman concentrated on forming a security architecture. The Saudi view was predicated on the principle of “everything belongs to everyone”, and its lack of attachment to any particular objective aligned it more closely with the views of many governments of the day. Sadiq explained that the Gulf states were making a great leap at the time: development projects and government institutions were still under construction, and each state had yet to crystallize its relationship with society. What these states needed was an adaptable framework for cooperation – not an institutional structure to impose stringent constraints. The Kuwaiti proposal eventually found relative success: the economic treaty was the first agreement the GCC would ratify.
After the GCC was formed, publications were circulated to explicate the reasons for its establishment to the intelligentsia as well as the masses. These efforts were at pains to present the GCC as a natural development in the history of the region, as the format nearest to the aspirations of the people, and as something expected of its member states at that time. However, Sadiq shows that a review of newspapers, reports, and interviews concerning reactions to the GCC’s founding reveal that segments of the cultural elite were apprehensive and uneasy about this new Gulf organization.
Sadiq concluded that there is a paradox in the separation of two regional trajectories that have yet to intersect: one social, economic, and cultural trajectory from the bottom up, and another official institutional trajectory from the top down. Policies are rarely crafted to be in agreement with current realities in the region, rather than in line with idealized perceptions. As a result, these two parallel trajectories have never fully intersected in the process of regional cooperation and consensus.
In answer to the lecture’s central question, Sadiq reaffirmed the regional potential, driven by historically embedded social, economic, and administrative factors, that lies within the Gulf. But this capacity remains unable to develop into official, effective regional action, which explains the enduring gap between the region’s available capacities and the realities of institutional integration in the Gulf.
