State formation ends with the state but begins with the society. In the colonised Middle East, Western states shaped the mediation of power, choosing leaders and creating the bureaucratic blueprints for states. The mixed success of these projects – from the colonial perspective – has been highly instructive for scholars of state formation, political economy, and authoritarianism. In some cases, it has led some to question whether these polities are states at all. Egyptian diplomat Tahseen Bashir famously quipped that they were nothing more than ‘tribes with flags’. Though the concept is quickly dismissed by many contemporary scholars of the region, there is no clear counter-concept. If these states are not tribes with flags, what are they? How do tribes interact with state bureaucracies, and why does this interaction vary across states?

The inability to answer these questions satisfactorily is a result of research which has centred the politics of colonial actors rather than those of the societies they colonised. Scholars explain the strong role of tribes in the Arab Gulf states as a function of the state capacity of national governments and their ability to co-opt these groups, often following a surge in revenue from the sale of oil. Such an explanation is not entirely misguided, as states themselves are clearly a key element in state formation. However, our focus on the state has elided the complex and sophisticated power dynamics that pre-date it. The discovery of oil in the region was a critical juncture of Gulf politics but not a clean break from the ways societies in the region managed their affairs in the past. In order to understand the states that emerged from this period, we must first stop writing the societies of the Arab Gulf states out of their own politics.

Tribes, clans, bands and other kinship hierarchies affect the distribution of access to power and resources in states. Whether in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, or elsewhere, these hierarchies play an integral role in state– society relations. Despite their prevalence, however, few analyses in political science take on the question of where kinship hierarchies fit into the ecosystem of state–society relations. Further complicating things, the placement of kinship hierarchies differs in meaningful ways from case to case.