The Section
Politics.
Politics, Souk Weekly style. Power, palaces, parliaments, and the people quietly rearranging the furniture while everyone else is watching the front door.
The Summer Cabinet Retreat Has Become a Working File, Not a Photo Opportunity
The regional summer retreat used to be covered through arrivals and group photographs. The real story now sits in the delivery files that follow everyone back to the office.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 4
The Regional Press Conference Has Become a Building, Not an Event
Why the staging, the seating chart, and the side rooms now do more diplomatic work than the answers from the podium.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 4
The Municipal Council Is Where the Region's Actual Politics Lives
Everyone watches the cabinet. The interesting fights, the real careers, and the durable policy shifts are happening one floor below.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
Saudi Arabia Is Buying the Future, One Consultancy Report at a Time
If the future arrived in a slide deck, the Kingdom would already be living in it. The actual schedule is more flexible.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 3
The Annual Budget Speech Has Quietly Become Performance Art
Why a document that used to be read for numbers is now consumed, in this region, mostly for the staging.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 3
The Quiet Power of the Third Cousin
Why every Gulf cabinet has a man at the back of the room whose business card does not match the importance of his phone calls.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
The Cabinet Reshuffle Is, Mostly, a Language Event
Why the most consequential thing about the latest reshuffle was not who got what portfolio, but what the new portfolio was called.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
Anti-Corruption Units Are Hiring. The Listings Are More Telling Than the Mandates.
What you can read off a job description, when you read it properly.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsJun 3
Every Country Now Has a Ministry of the Future. The Future Is Underwhelmed.
Inside the global rush to bureaucratise the long term, and the suspicion that the long term has noticed.
By Lena Holloway
PoliticsDec 2
One Market, Six Flags: The Long Road to a Gulf Single Market
The idea of a unified Gulf economy with seamless trade, shared rules and even a common currency has been pursued for decades with halting results.
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsSep 29
Talking Instead of Fighting: The Gulf's De-Escalation Turn
After years of rivalry and proxy conflict, a pragmatic logic of mending fences has taken hold across the region's diplomacy.
By Lena Holloway