Despite their commonalities, the Arab Gulf States have started economic
diversification from different settings and against different political
backgrounds. This book applies a multi-method approach including
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) to highlight their heterogeneous
economic development trajectories and to compare them to other major oil
exporters. From a political economy perspective, it demonstrates how
neoclassical economic theory fails to grasp the underlying mechanisms of
their development. The research design of this study is tailored to
small and medium-sized samples with special characteristics. As such, it
offers new opportunities for comparative studies not only of this region
but also of other specific samples of countries from a wider perspective
of heterodox economics.