It had been the primary aim of this study to investigate whether the GCC states have made any progress in developing their non-oil economies and to what extent the individual countries were successful or not. The analyses furthermore investigated the factors, and as a background, the theories that might explain the failure or success of single countries. In doing so, my analysis found that special attention was paid to the role of natural resource dependence and abundance for this process. Furthermore, one major idea behind this study was to also open up new methodological perspectives for the analysis of groups of economies with special distinctive features.

With regard to the first question, the GCC countries show heterogeneous success stories when it comes to economic diversification. They have all made some progress, even if none of them reached independence from its oil- and gas sectors. It is, to be sure, unclear how such independence should look at a time when oil and gas are still available, produced and sold at a relatively high price.

The more successful “diversifiers” are Bahrain, Dubai, and Oman. The rather “modest” diversifiers are Qatar and Abu Dhabi, while Saudi Arabia and especially Kuwait obviously faced huge difficulties during the period under scrutiny. These are the results of the admittedly very simplified calculations of average non-oil growth, which nevertheless conform to expert assessments in the qualitative literature, and results obtained from sectoral data. (al-Kuwari 2013) Given the huge data problems this was not a matter of course, and my data on non-oil growth rates as well as common data on resource dependence (natural resource rents as a percentage of GDP or total government income) have to be interpreted with caution. The rentier multiplier effect is probably very strong and not included in such calculations.

The factors which seemed to be important in the case studies turned out to be decisive in the comparative fsQCA analyses, although not always in the regressions. The regressions only resulted in the importance of investments, initial GDP, fertility rates, and institutions. Investments were also important in the fsQCA analyses. While the variable had to be changed into “good investment behavior” (investcapita), it was very close to being both a necessary and sufficient solution, and as such this should be kept in mind. Interestingly, only Bahrain, Dubai and Oman decided to invest most of their rents locally.