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PE presention - Coggle Diagram

- - - - This is an important first test for his thoery, Fukuyama lays out clearly that an ideological challenge to liberalism will need to be universal. This test will form the first part of the test of the China Model/Authoritian Capitlaism, by looking at whether it does present a universal option for governance.
- - - - Throughout history Bahrain has faced continous oppositon movements with Arab nationalist, socialist, Islamist, liberal, sectarian and labour movements all campaigning for political change (Gengler, 2015). Meanwhile, even in a political enviroemnt deeply hostile to Shi'a political power, the opposition, reformist, Islamist al-Wefaq managed to get 17 seats in both the 2006 and 2010 elections (Gengler, 2015 and IPU, 2010)
        
        Bahrain's opposition is not about the economic pie so much as debates around history and government, al-Wefaq argue that while economic improvements might dampen support for reform there would remain political demands (Gengler, 2015).
        
        Bahrain's oppositon can not solely be explained by sectarianism either, there are non-Islamist and cross sectarian movements in Bahrain. Leftist, pan-Arab movements, such as Waad, have been active in the country and have focused on the failure of democratic reforms that have been promised (Moritz, 2018, pp56/57). Bahrain also has exiled secular opposition groups such as Salam DHR (https://salam-dhr.org/about/) who are focused solely on political rights.
      - Oman's oppositon has been less political, but it has not been apolitical. The protests in Sohar in 2011 were rooted in economic frustrations with early demands focused on jobs, inflation and corruption (this is not a fully materialist demand) (Valeri, 2015, p8), however, other protests across the country supported some political reforms (Worrall, 2012, pp104-106) with demands for greater press freedoms and a more powerful parliament.
  - - - This means that if they are successful in preventing the emergance of substainal non-materialist oppositon then thye provide the best supporting case for the China model's success as they are able to maintian the model with reduced oil rents.
    - - Maybe mention ease of researching opposition movements. Lots of the political analysis of the Gulf has focused on rentierism and less so on opposition, but because both countries had the Arab Springs and a history of oppsoiton there is more studies of their oppsotion.
      - Maybe because they both have a history of opposition and political activism.
- - - - Therefore the only countries that have fully embraced the China model of authoritarian capitalism is the Gulf.
- - - - However, others have questioned whether the idea is not simply an alternative method of development, but a longer-running project that will contest Western capitalism (Dervis, 2019, pp79-80 and Ambrosio, 2012, p385). In this perspective, the China model is an alternative political system to liberalism and could act as an ideology that topples the end of history.
      - Within broad category of the China Model, there are different ways of pursuing politics and economics just as there are clear variations between Western/Northern European liberalism and American Liberalism. The Dubai Model goes to challenge Zhoa's claim that the China Model is not fully one of authoritarianism and capitalism (2011) with this model being supported by an economically active state and an open economy to create a system of state capitalism (Hvidt, 2020).
- - - - In the 1980s oil and gas production accounted for around 60% of the GCC's GDP and while this has dropped substially since then as a % of governemnt revenue it remains expectionally high with the lowest rate being in the UAE at 38% and bar the UAE and Saudi oil rents make up over 80% of government revenue (Diwan, 2027).
        
        As a region the Gulf is unoique in just how resource intensive they are with only 12 countries in the world having resource rents of over $2,000 (Luciani, G and Moerenhout, 2020, p333) and every GCC state having an fuel rents per national of over $10,000 (Diwan, 2027).
        
        These oil rents have been important in building the Gulf's high functioing state owned businesses which acts as pockets of effiency (Hertog, 2022, p121) and enabled the state to enage in large scale investments (Makdisi, 2022, p29) with these investments providing a simialr value to the GDP as investments in Germany (Diwan, 2027).
        
        This presents the success of these states as not universal and therefore not a challenge to liberalism within Fukuyama's own frame. While authoritarian capitalism has created prosperous societies in the Gulf, this success has been rooted in vast resource wealth which is nearly unique to the Gulf. Even if the Gulf is able to diversify, the extent to which this would present the China Model as universal is limited as the development of dynamic market economies would have been suported by unique fiscal space created by the large revenue provided by the state via oil.
        
        However, should diversification sucede and other countries emerge as successful examples of the China Model then this would create a stronger case for the model's universality.