Rethinking GCC Regionalism: Interdependence, Shared Challenges and Cooperation in the Gulf
People and businesses across the Gulf depend on connections that cross national borders: food supplies, energy networks, shipping routes, investment, workers and digital services. However, cooperation varies widely across these areas. This workshop asks why Gulf states cooperate successfully on some shared challenges but struggle to do so on others. Focusing on the six GCC states, it examines who depends on whom, how these relationships are g ...
Abstract
People and businesses across the Gulf depend on connections that cross national borders: food supplies, energy networks, shipping routes, investment, workers and digital services. However, cooperation varies widely across these areas. This workshop asks why Gulf states cooperate successfully on some shared challenges but struggle to do so on others. Focusing on the six GCC states, it examines who depends on whom, how these relationships are governed, and what happens when cooperation is tested. Iran, Iraq, Yemen and external partners are included where they are important to understanding a particular Gulf relationship. The workshop examines GCC cooperation on its own terms rather than against a model of political union. It asks what different arrangements achieve in practice, whose needs they serve, and how they can become more reliable.
Description and Rationale
Regional cooperation matters most when people need it to work. Keeping essential goods moving, maintaining reliable energy supplies, protecting digital services and enabling trade and mobility all involve relationships that cross national borders. The GCC provides an established setting for cooperation, but Gulf economies and societies are also connected through businesses, workers, investment, infrastructure, and relationships with partners outside the region. These connections do not always follow the same political or institutional boundaries. Research on Gulf political economy and regionalism has shown both the depth of these connections and the limits of formal integration (Hanieh 2018; Alotaibi 2026a, 2026b). Comparative regionalism provides a useful way to understand this variation. Regional cooperation does not have to follow a single path towards political union. Physical connections, trade, common rules and joint decisions can develop at different speeds and in different combinations. An electricity connection, for example, does not by itself create a functioning regional market, while a focused agreement may solve a shared problem without requiring deeper political integration (De Lombaerde et al. 2011; De Lombaerde 2024).
This workshop therefore focuses on what cooperation actually does. It asks how relationships among states, firms, infrastructure and communities are governed, who carries responsibility, and what happens when normal arrangements come under pressure. It also considers dependence and vulnerability. Being an important hub does not automatically give an actor power, and depending on a connection does not necessarily create vulnerability if alternatives are readily available (Farrell and Newman 2019).
The workshop builds on UNU-CRIS research on comparative and differentiated regionalism and its planned evolution into UNU Regions. It will deepen the study of GCC regionalism while connecting Gulf experience to wider debates about how regions cooperate. Recent GRM workshops have examined infrastructure connectivity, economic competition, and hybrid threats. This workshop brings these questions together around a simpler problem: Why does cooperation work in some areas of Gulf life but remain difficult in others?
