The Constitutionalization of an Arab Monarchy: Institutions and Tradition in Oman

Abstract

Although perhaps the least known among the Gulf Cooperation Council member states, Oman possesses religious, geographical, and human particularities that clearly distinguish its immediate neighbors. Its political history—marked by an institutional continuity maintained, despite occasional fluctuations, since the early Hijri era—further differentiates the country from its counterparts in Peninsular Arabia, whose state formations are rooted into a far more recent past. Precisely, this article examines the historical and political evolution of the present Sultanate of Oman, as well as its more recent constitutional developments. In doing so, it highlights how these distinctive features—and, in particular, the legal and religious heritage of its dominant Ibadi sect—have decisively shaped the emergence of one of the region’s most open political systems.