Machine summary:
In his book, All in the Family, Michael Herb, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University, provides the most thought-provoking work on Middle Eastern monarchies since rentier state theory became fashionable.
His basic thesis is that the key to the survival, persistence, and resilience of monarchies in the Middle East is the willingness and ability of the ruling families to saturate the most important positions in the state apparatus.
Case studies are used to illustrate both monarchical models: dynastic (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman) and nondynastic (Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Jordan, and Afghanistan - usually excluded from studies on the Middle East).
In Chapters 7 and 8, Herb turns to nondynastic monarchies in which individual rulers enjoy substantially more power at the cost of stability due to the lack of family support inside the state apparatus.
In the concluding chapters, "Dynastic Monarchism and the Resistance of Hereditary Rule" and "The Theory of the Rentier State and Constitutional Monarchy in the Middle East," Herb restates his argument, summarizes its support, and proposes additional evidence for his argument that did not fit in the preceding chapters.
One of the most important issues for Herb, and in fact for the study of Gulf politics in general, is the rentier state model--the idea that dissent can be bought off with oil revenues.
Additionally, Herb maintains that the dynastic monarchies emerged with the petro-state: "Thus dynastic monarchism occurs in its full-fledged form only in oil-rich countries" (p.