governance.
16 pieces filed under governance
The Gulf's New City-States
Gulf cities are becoming brands and powers in their own right, competing across borders and beyond them
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 30
The Region's New Ministries of the Future
Gulf states have invented ministries for happiness, tolerance and the future, and the experiment is more serious than the jokes suggest
By Diego Arroyo
PoliticsJun 28
The Municipal Council Is the Last Place Real Politics Still Happens
Why the genuine bargaining over roads, permits, and water happens far below the national stage
By Mira Faraj
PoliticsJun 28
The Committee Meeting Has Become a Form of Governance Theatre
Why the region runs on committees, and how the ritual of the meeting can replace the decision it is meant to produce
By Diego Arroyo
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
BusinessJun 4
The Second Cousin in the Family Business Is the Most Underrated Asset in the Region
Why the regional family conglomerate's quietest performer is the relative who never asked for a board seat and now runs a quarter of the cash flow.
By Sara Qureshi
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
TechnologyJun 3
An Arabic-First Language Model Just Quietly Stopped Being Worse
Inside the recent improvements in the local language-model ecosystem, and why the gap to the global frontier closed faster than nearly anyone predicted.
By Priya Chen
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
OpinionJun 3
Stop Calling It a Vision
Why the word has lost the meaning the strategy decks need it to carry, and what to use instead.
By Diego Arroyo
WorldJun 3
The Embassy Iftar Is the Most Underestimated Instrument of Regional Foreign Policy
Why a single carefully assembled guest list, served on a single carefully assembled plate, can do more strategic work in three hours than a year of communiques.
By Lena Holloway