The Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia and its five smaller neighbours: the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain) have long been governed by highly autocratic and seemingly anachronistic regimes. Yet despite bloody conflicts on their doorsteps, fast-growing populations, and powerful modernising and globalising forces impacting on their largely conservative societies, they have demonstrated remarkable resilience.
Obituaries for these traditional monarchies have frequently been penned, but even now these absolutist, almost medieval, entities still appear to pose the same conundrum as before: in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring and the fall of incumbent 
presidents in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, the apparently steadfast Gulf monarchies have, at first glance, re-affirmed their status as the Middle East’s only real bastions of stability. In this book, however, noted Gulf expert Christopher Davidson contends that the collapse of these kings, emirs, and sultans is going to happen, at least in their present form, and was always going to. While the revolutionary movements in North Africa, Syria, and Yemen will undeniably serve as important, if indirect, catalysts for the coming upheaval, many of the 
same socio-economic pressures that were building up in the Arab republics are now also very much present in the Gulf monarchies. It is now no longer a matter of if but when the West’s steadfast allies fall. This is a bold claim to make but Davidson, who accurately forecast the economic turmoil that afflicted Dubai in 2009, has an enviable record in diagnosing social and political changes afoot in the region.
Publishers’ websites: Oxford University Press; Hurst & Co.
Translated versions: Arabic (full electronic download here); Farsi
Reviews and features:
Foreign Policy Association – Most Significant Books of the Year (2013)
Oxford University Press Blog – Five Academic Books that Changed the World
The Guardian – review
The Independent – review
The Economist – review
Tribune Magazine – review
Huffington Post – review
Bloomberg – review
International Affairs – review
Arabian Humanities – review
Middle Eastern Studies – review
Contemporary Arab Affairs – review
H-Net – review
Heythrop Journal – review
El-Badil News – review (Arabic)
Al-Akhbar – review (Arabic)
Ettelaat – review (Farsi)
Foreign Policy – excerpt
Foreign Affairs – excerpt
Project on Middle East Political Science – author interview (video)
Oxford Union – author presentation (video)
George Washington University – author lecture (video)
BBC Hard Talk – author interview (video)
Ceasefire Magazine – author interview
New Left Project – author interview
Bahrain Mirror – author interview
Bahrain Mirror – author interview (Arabic)
Bahrain Mirror – interview with the translators (Arabic)
Bahrain Mirror – English translation of updated introduction to Arabic edition
Al-Mayadeen – ما بعد الشيوخ: تحوّلات ديمقراطية في دول الخليج؟
Shabab al-Nil – ما بعد الشيوخ: قراءة في مستقبل أنظمة الكفيل بدول الخليج
Bahrain Mirror – مقدمة الطبعة العربية من كتاب “ما بعد الشيوخ: الانهيار المقبل للممالك الخليجية
Bahrain Mirror – مركز “أوال” للدراسات والتوثيق يترجم الكتاب الشهير “ما بعد الشيوخ: الانهيار المقبل للممالك الخليجية” للبروفيسور كريستوفر ديفيدسون
Syrian Telegraph – كريستوفر ديفيدسون : انهيار قادم لأنظمة الخليج وملوكها هو مسألة وقت فقط
Express Tribune Pakistan – Sales of e-book version of After the Sheikhs soaring
Sudan Vision – Christopher Davidson and the Black Swan
The Page 99 Test – After the Sheikhs