Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab Gulf

I understand that this may be off topic for those who are interested only in Bahraini politics, but I have a new (co-authored) article in Foreign Policy's Mideast Channel about civil society and democratization in the Arab Gulf, based on new survey data from Qatar. Its main argument is that in the rent-based regimes of the region, where citizens (and organizations) are linked to the state through far-reaching clientelistic networks, the standing notion that civil society tends to lead toward more democracy (or, more specifically, more democratic-oriented citizens) turns out not to be the case.