The United Arab Emirate's (UAE) economic diversification efforts, both positive and negative, actual and proposed, should be used as a model for the other Gulf Cooperation Council (Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE) members. A majority of the GCC countries rely heavily on oil and have underdeveloped non-oil sectors, the exception is the United Arab Emirates. The UAE began diversifying its economy long ago, and though oil is still the backbone of its economy, the non-oil sector is starting to successfully take shape. The other GCC members should use the UAE's economic program as a model so economic stability will not falter when the oil reserves are depleted.

Cette thèse s’attache à déconstruire, à localiser et à inscrire dans des dynamiques politiques locales d’abord, régionales et internationales ensuite, la perception qui s’est faite jour à compter du milieu des années 2000, que « le Golfe », espace aux contours rarement définis, serait devenu le lieu d’un développement culturel de très grande ampleur. Cette nouvelle image internationale des principautés arabes du golfe Persique, éloignée de leur association traditionnelle aux hydrocarbures et à la guerre, repose sur deux phénomènes distincts, voire opposés : la formation d’un marché de l’art arabe et iranien basé à Dubai qui se fait le reflet de la formation de nouvelles bourgeoisies dans les grands pays voisins, et la multiplication des annonces de musées à forte visibilité internationale au Qatar et à Abou Dabi qui ont pour cible prioritaire un public européen. Les musées sont l’objet principal de cette étude, le marché son objet secondaire. En croisant l’histoire et la science politique, une typologie binaire des musées golfiens et l’évolution du rapport de force entre les trois grandes composantes sociales des populations nationales des principautés depuis les années 1960, il apparaît que le musée, cette institution d’origine européenne qui sous sa forme moderne est apparue au XVIIIe siècle et qui compte au nombre des premières formes d’espaces publics, est dans les principautés arabes du golfe Persique un outil de renforcement de l’autoritarisme. Ce rôle qui est le sien depuis le temps de sa genèse dans les années 1960, s’est accentué au Qatar et à Abou Dabi depuis la Guerre du Golfe de 1990-1991. / This doctoral thesis aims at deconstructing, spatializing and inscribing in local and then international political dynamics the new perception emerging in the West that presents « the Gulf », a region whose boundaries are rarely defined, as the place for a large scale cultural development. This new international image of the Arab principalities of the Persian Gulf, that no longer reduces them to oil and war, but associates their names to culture, relies on two different phenomenons : the birth of an Arab and Iranian art market based in Dubai that reflects the formation of new elites in the neighbouring regional powers on the one hand, and the rise of a new type of museums targeting a European audience first, characterized by their international visibility, in Qatar and in Abu Dhabi on the other. The museums are the main object of this research, the art market its secondary one. By mixing political science and history, a binary typology of the museums and the evolution of the balance of power between the three main social components of the national communities in the Arab principalities since the 1960, the museum, this institution of European origin born in its modern form in the 18th century as one of the earliest forms of public spaces, appears as a tool for the consolidation of authoritarianism. This role that the museums has been playing since the 1960s, when the regional importation of this cultural model started, has even increased in Qatar and in Abu Dhabi since the end of the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Since that period, the new museums are actively taking part to the political marginalization of the national bureaucracy.

In this thesis I focus on Emirates Airlines, in particular by identifying key factors that led to the acquisition of the current position in the global aviation market. Till the foundation of Emirates Airlines the aviation industry in this region practically did not exist, and therefore it was not too interesting market in general. Using the research of case study at the thesis, I first examined how and why the airline was founded and subsequently described the uniqueness of this particular case. Partial aims are to answer the research questions and confirm or refute the initial hypothesis. In conclusion, I summarized all the key factors and assess their uniqueness and potential limitations when applied to similar cases in the aviation sector.

The demand for cooling and air-conditioning of building is increasingly ever growing. This increase is mostly due to population and economic growth in developing countries, and also desire for a higher quality of thermal comfort. Increase in the use of conventional cooling systems results in larger carbon footprint and more greenhouse gases considering their higher electricity consumption, and it occasionally creates peaks in electricity demand from power supply grid. Solar energy as a renewable energy source is an alternative to drive the cooling machines since the cooling load is generally high when solar radiation is high. This thesis examines the performance of PV/T solar collector manufactured by Solarus company in a solar cooling system for an office building in Dubai, New Delhi, Los Angeles and Cape Town. The study is carried out by analyzing climate data and the requirements for thermal comfort in office buildings. Cooling systems strongly depend on weather conditions and local climate. Cooling load of buildings depend on many parameters such as ambient temperature, indoor comfort temperature, solar gain to the building and internal gains including; number of occupant and electrical devices. The simulations were carried out by selecting a suitable thermally driven chiller and modeling it with PV/T solar collector in Polysun software. Fractional primary energy saving and solar fraction were introduced as key figures of the project to evaluate the performance of cooling system. Several parametric studies and simulations were determined according to PV/T aperture area and hot water storage tank volume. The fractional primary energy saving analysis revealed that thermally driven chillers, particularly adsorption chillers are not suitable to be utilizing in small size of solar cooling systems in hot and tropic climates such as Dubai and New Delhi. Adsorption chillers require more thermal energy to meet the cooling load in hot and dry climates. The adsorption chillers operate in their full capacity and in higher coefficient of performance when they run in a moderate climate since they can properly reject the exhaust heat. The simulation results also indicated that PV/T solar collector have higher efficiency in warmer climates, however it requires a larger size of PV/T collectors to supply the thermally driven chillers for providing cooling in hot climates. Therefore using an electrical chiller as backup gives much better results in terms of primary energy savings, since PV/T electrical production also can be used for backup electrical chiller in a net metering mechanism.

The goal of this thesis is to identify the main political and economic implications of Dubai’s debt crisis and subsequent bailout by her wealthier and more powerful sister emirate Abu Dhabi. This paper examines the implications of the bailout of Dubai on two levels: Dubai’s relationship with Abu Dhabi and Dubai’s relationship with the international investment community. The paper first provides a brief background on Dubai, one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and discusses Dubai’s key characteristics that helped give Dubai her nickname Dubai Inc. – an opportune location, the Al-Maktoum ruling family, and state-led entrepreneurship. It then discusses Dubai’s historically competitive relationship with Abu Dhabi and Dubai’s push to diversify economically away from oil. The paper outlines two key economic developments – the rise of Dubai’s real estate and tourism sectors and the creation of Dubai’s government-related enterprises (GREs), which helped finance the real estate bubble. This thesis suggests that Abu Dhabi now holds unquestionable power over Dubai and can control Dubai’s GREs and their subsidiaries such as Dubai World. This paper also argues that the international investment community will demand increased transparency and higher standards of corporate governance of Dubai’s businesses in light of the entrenched poor practices that the bailout exposed within the tiny-city state's GREs and companies. / text

Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister, announced in January 1968 that the British government would withdraw from the Persian Gulf by the end of 1971. For Britain, the decision indicated a re-prioritization of British global defense obligations. For the rulers of the Arab emirates of the Persian Gulf, Wilson‘s announcement signaled an end of British military protection, and the beginning of a process of negotiations that culminated in the establishment of the United Arab Emirates on December 3, 1971. An examination of the process by which the individual Persian Gulf states became a sovereign federation presents an opportunity to examine the roles of nationalism and anti-imperialism played in the establishment of the Union. This work demonstrates that Arab rulers in the Persian Gulf strove to establish their new state with close ties to Great Britain, which provided technical, military, and administrative assistance to the emirates, while also publicly embracing the popular ideologies of anti-imperialism and Arab socialism, which dominated the political discourse in the Arab world through most of the twentieth century. viii This dissertation draws on primary source materials from British and American government archives, speeches and government publications from the Arab Emirates, memoirs and a wide variety of secondary sources. These materials provide the basis for understanding the state-building process of the United Arab Emirates in the areas of pre-withdrawal development, the decision to withdraw, the problems of establishing a federal constitution, and the problems posed by the need for security in the post-withdrawal Persian Gulf. / text

La majorité de la littérature académique sur les théories de développement économique se fonde sur l’analyse des d’Etats-nations. Or, après avoir pratiquement disparu jusqu’aux années 1960, les cités-états se manifestent à nouveau comme des exemples de succès de prospérité économique. Contrairement à l’antiquité et la renaissance, pendant lesquelles les cités-états les plus connus d’un point de vue économique se situaient en Europe, les cités-états modernes se situent notamment en Asie et au Moyen-Orient. Le but de cette recherche sera d’explorer, d’analyser, et de conceptualiser les facteurs clés de succès économique des cités-états contemporaines à l’exemple de Hong Kong, Singapour, Abu Dhabi et Dubaï pour arriver à un modèle de développement économique spécifique aux cités-états. Après une étude de cas comparative, il faut d’abord souligner le fait qu’une conceptualisation de la stratégie de développement des cités-états nécessite une prise en compte des facteurs non-économiques, notamment des facteurs historiques, géographiques, ainsi que politiques. Suite à l’analyse de ces facteurs, nous pouvons regrouper les principales caractéristiques en quatre catégories, notamment la création d’une identité corporative, la flexibilité de la main d’œuvre, l’intégration régionale-internationale, ainsi que l’utilisation des outils de city branding à des buts relatifs au développement de la cité-état. En regroupant les différentes similarités entre les stratégies de développement des cités-états étudiés, nous pouvons donc estimer que les cités-états globales adoptent une stratégie de globalisation où, contrairement à ce que l’on pourrait penser, une forte intervention de l’état coexiste avec des mesures de libéralisation économique. / City-states have thrived in the antiquity and the renaissance period as exemplified by the city-states of Athens, Venice or Hamburg. In modern times, city-states have widely disappeared until the 1960s, when city-states and city-state structures in Asia and the Middle East have re-emerged and proven to become considered as examples of successful economic development and prosperity. The aim of this research paper was to explore, analyze and conceptualize the main factors of economic development in Singapore, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Findings suggest that in order to analyze the economic development strategy in a comprehensive way, non-economic factors (namely historical factors, geographical factors, and political factors) need to be taken into consideration. Based on the analysis of the different factors, we can identify a common strategy based on four major characteristics: the creation of a corporative identity, labor flexibility, regional-international embeddedness, and the utilization of city branding tools for development-related purposes. This strategic development model for global city-states can be referred to as an integrated globalization strategy and implies that contrary to what we may see in the literature on the development strategies of nation-states, state intervention in city-states not only co-exists with but reinforces the globalization and economic liberalization process. In other words, the decision-makers in global city-states do not passively bear the consequences of globalization but actively use globalization as a tool for economic development, thus justifying and reinforcing the legitimacy of their intervention.

This study explores the socio-economic development path of the former Trucial State of Dubai, now an economic powerhouse within the Federal State of the United Arab Emirates. This thesis emanated out of the researcher’s need to understand the development trajectory of Dubai from the perspective of a development discourse, as literature and debates on the city’s developmental trajectory have generally focused on micro-and macro-economic variables and a sectoral emphasis without considering the total and complex development matrix. The author proposes a rentier, developmental and competition (RDC) Model as a basis for understanding the state-led social and economic development of the Emirate of Dubai. Empirically, the study examines a whole raft of home-grown social and economic development policies that fall exclusively within the domain of the Dubai Strategic Plans (DSPs). Conceptually, the thesis argues that although the Dubai Inc model has successfully changed the socio-economic landscape of the Emirate, nevertheless, a soft underbelly of the model displays the exploitative nature of unbridled free market capitalism. Methodologically, triangulation backed up the qualitative research methodology by utilising a mixed-methods approach to enhance the richness of the research. Specific data collection methods used included in-depth semi-structured interviews and non-participative observation, supported by documentation analyses of relevant documents. The research findings unambiguously demonstrated that the socio-economic transformation of Dubai, between 1998 and 2008, was a result of the aforementioned hybrid model, which this thesis uses as its theoretical framework. The conclusion drawn from the study is that there is no one path to development; the Government of Dubai is cognisant of that and has thus used the capacity of the state to transform the once impoverished and marginalised sheikhdom into a ‘commodified’ city-corporate entity. / Development Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Developmental Studies)

This study explores the socio-economic development path of the former Trucial State of Dubai, now an economic powerhouse within the Federal State of the United Arab Emirates. This thesis emanated out of the researcher’s need to understand the development trajectory of Dubai from the perspective of a development discourse, as literature and debates on the city’s developmental trajectory have generally focused on micro-and macro-economic variables and a sectoral emphasis without considering the total and complex development matrix. The author proposes a rentier, developmental and competition (RDC) Model as a basis for understanding the state-led social and economic development of the Emirate of Dubai. Empirically, the study examines a whole raft of home-grown social and economic development policies that fall exclusively within the domain of the Dubai Strategic Plans (DSPs). Conceptually, the thesis argues that although the Dubai Inc model has successfully changed the socio-economic landscape of the Emirate, nevertheless, a soft underbelly of the model displays the exploitative nature of unbridled free market capitalism. Methodologically, triangulation backed up the qualitative research methodology by utilising a mixed-methods approach to enhance the richness of the research. Specific data collection methods used included in-depth semi-structured interviews and non-participative observation, supported by documentation analyses of relevant documents. The research findings unambiguously demonstrated that the socio-economic transformation of Dubai, between 1998 and 2008, was a result of the aforementioned hybrid model, which this thesis uses as its theoretical framework. The conclusion drawn from the study is that there is no one path to development; the Government of Dubai is cognisant of that and has thus used the capacity of the state to transform the once impoverished and marginalised sheikhdom into a ‘commodified’ city-corporate entity. / Development Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Developmental Studies)

Under de senaste decennierna har turismen i världen ökat kraftigt, inte minst i Sverige. Turistindustrin står inför många utmaningar och då konkurrensen ökar och avstånden krymper mellan olika länder och världsdelar är det viktigt att beakta de kulturella skillnader som finns och vad vi bör känna till om dessa skillnader när det gäller turism. Kunskapen om dessa skillnader kan vara avgörande vid marknadsföring och inrättandet av nya resmål. Turister från Mellanöstern är sällsynta i Sverige och vi vill med denna uppsats ta reda på om dessa kulturella och religiösa skillnader kan vara hinder för turism från dessa länder samt andra motiv hos dessa medborgares när de reser, samt om det finns eventuella andra motiv dom kan vara orsaken till den dåliga besöksstatistiken i Sverige. Mellan länderna i Mellanöstern finns det stora ekonomiska skillnader och denna studie har därför fokuserats på de potentiella turister som kan finnas i Gulf Cooperation Council-länderna (GCC), där uppsatsen vidare avgränsats till Dubai som ingår i Förenade Arabemiraten ”United Arab Emirates, UAE” och till Qatar. Sverige anses vara ett land som turister från UAE och Qatar borde vilja besöka, då vi har ett motsatsförhållande i klimatet, med en behaglig sommartemperatur och gröna landskap sommartid. Trots detta är antalet turister från dessa länder lågt och det borde finnas möjligheter att öka antalet turister till Sverige. Denna bakgrund har lett uppsatsens författare till problemformuleringen: vilka motiv resenärer har när de skall resa, då de potentiella turisternas ekonomi, lagar och kulturella värderingar som råder i UAE och Qatar skiljer sig väsentligt från samhället i Sverige? Med utgångspunkt i motiv- och kulturteorier är uppsatsens övergripande syfte att undersöka turisters resemotiv från UAE och Qatar, samt att belysa några kulturella faktorer som kan påverka dessa turisters val av destination. – Vad motiverar turister från UAE och Qatar, när de bokar sina resor till en destination? – Vilka skillnader finns det i de olika kulturerna mellan UAE, Qatar och Sverige som kan övervinnas och möjliggöra ett större utbyte av turister? – Vilken lärdom kan Sveriges turistnäring dra från detta? Uppsatsen grundar sig på en kvalitativ- och kvantitativ metod. Den kvalitativa datainsamlingen har skett med hjälp av personliga intervjuer med medborgare från UAE och Qatar, samt intervjuer med lokala aktörer och aktörer från Sverige. Den kvantitativa datainsamlingen består av enkäter som delats ut till medborgare i UAE och Qatar. För att stärka uppsatsens primärdata har sekundärdata i form av hemsidor, litteratur och vetenskapliga artiklar använts. Slutsatserna av studien är: både motivation och kultur har stor påverkan på turisters val av resmål. Kunskap/okunskap om resmålet när det gäller kultur, religion och en mängd olika krav som kommer ur detta är viktiga att beakta för att lyckas locka turister från dessa länder.