Search results
traditional sectarian, tribal and family assabiya to create cores of trusted followers around the leader similar to royal families in the monarchies. (3) In their search for legitimisation, state elites made use of sub- and supra-state identities to make up for thin popular identifications with the state itself. In the monarchies patriarchal loyalties and Islam were the favoured formula; in the republics Pan-Arabism, the official ideology, was buttressed by the exploitation of sub-state loyalties, whether it was Tikriti solidarity in Iraq or that of
, foreign policy decisions are taken consensually by the King and senior princes of the royal family, producing caution and continuity in policy, deeply reflective of Saudi Arabia’s character as a status quo power. The muted competition which exists within the royal family also encourages a risk-averse attempt to appease – ‘bandwagon’ between – conflicting pressures from the West and the Arab world. Thus, the preferences of the ‘Suderi Seven’ – notably King Fahd, Defence Minster Prince Sultan and Interior Minister Prince Nayef – for a Western alliance and Western
or are Gulf-based, oil-linked or banking firms. Rent and indirect taxation such as import duties relieve most states of dependency on the bourgeoisie for tax revenues, which might give the latter the leverage to demand a share of power, and business is often quite dependent on the state (for contracts, licenses, etc.). Business lacks the institutionalised access and clout it enjoys in developed capitalist states: in the authoritarian republics, the military and bureaucracy and in the monarchies, royal families dominate foreign policy making. In more liberal states
UK would host an African Investment Summit in 2019 and that the UK seeks to become the largest G7 investor in Africa by 2022. Senior members of the British Royal Family also increased their footfall in Africa in 2018, with the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall visiting Gambia, Ghana and Nigeria; the Duke of Cambridge going to Tanzania, Kenya and Namibia, and the Duke of Sussex to Zambia. Overall though, despite these high-profile engagements, core political interest in Africa has actually declined. The party
phones belonging to celebrities, members of the royal family and teenage murder victim Milly Dowler, Cameron’s absence was attacked by both Conservative and opposition politicians. Journalists later reflected that Cameron seemed to have a gift for being out of the country – specifically in Africa – at just the wrong moment, referencing his 2007 trip to Rwanda as a case in point (Ashcroft and Oakeshott, 2015 ; Watt, 2011 ). Nevertheless, though the 2011 tour was cut from four days to two, with visits to Rwanda and newly independent South Sudan dropped from the agenda