Joseph A. Kéchichian

Joseph Kéchichian
Born (1954-03-15) March 15, 1954
Beirut, Lebanon
Fields Middle Eastern studies, Persian Gulf studies
Institutions University of Virginia, RAND Corporation, UCLA, Stanford University, Middle East Institute
Alma mater University of Virginia
Known for Power and Succession in Arab Monarchies, Succession in Saudi Arabia

Joseph Albert Kéchichian (French pronunciation: ​[Keʃiʃian], born March 15, 1954) is a political scientist and Senior Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS), in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the CEO of Kéchichian & Associates, LLC, a consulting partnership that provides analysis on the, Persian Gulf region, specializing in the domestic and regional concerns of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Yemen; and a Senior Writer with the Dubai-based English-language news daily Gulf News. He served as the Honorary Consul of the Sultanate of Oman in Los Angeles, California from 2006 to 2011.

Biography

Kéchichian received his doctorate in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1985, where he also taught (1986-1988), and assumed the assistant deanship in international studies (1988-1989). In the summer of 1989, he was a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University (under the U.S. State Department Title VIII Program). Between 1990 and 1996, he labored at the Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation as an Associate Political Scientist, and was a lecturer at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

Between 1998 and 2001, Kéchichian was a fellow at UCLA’s Gustav E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies, where he held a Smith Richardson Foundation grant (1998-1999) to compose Succession in Saudi Arabia (New York: Palgrave [2001]) and Beirut and London: Dar Al Saqi, 2002, 2003 [2nd ed] (for the Arabic translation)]. He published Political Participation and Stability in the Sultanate of Oman, Dubai: Gulf Research Center, 2005, Oman and the World: The Emergence of an Independent Foreign Policy (Santa Monica: RAND [1995]), and edited A Century in Thirty Years: Shaykh Zayed and the United Arab Emirates (Washington, D.C.: The Middle East Policy Council [2000]), as well as Iran, Iraq, and the Arab Gulf States (New York: Palgrave [2001]). In 2003, he co-authored, with R. Hrair Dekmejian at USC, The Just Prince: A Manual of Leadership (London: Saqi Books), which includes a full translation of the Sulwan al-Muta` by Muhammad Ibn Zafar al-Siqilli.

In 2008, he published two studies, Power and Succession in Arab Monarchies (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, and Beirut: Riyad al-Rayyes Books, 2012—in 2 volumes for the Arabic translation]), and Faysal: Saudi Arabia’s King for All Seasons Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida and Beirut: Dar al-‘Arabiyyah lil-Mawsu‘at, 2012]. His newest book is Legal and Political Reforms in Sa‘udi Arabia, published by Routledge in December 2012, and he has just completed a companion volume to Faysal on ‘Iffat Al Thunayan: An Arabian Queen (London: Sussex Academic Press, 2015).

Kéchichian is a frequent participant in conferences throughout the world and delivers frequent lectures to leading think-tanks and political institutions. He is also a regular interviewee on radio and television programs, appeared on The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour during and since the War for Kuwait to comment on developments in the Gulf crises, and is a on Al Jazeera English programs as well as various BBC programs. The National Public Radio affiliate in Chicago, USA, WBEZ, airs his commentaries on a regular basis as well. Kéchichian is fluent in Arabic, Armenian, English, French, Italian, Turkish, and Persian.

He is of Armenian descent.

Works

“The Enduring Saudi Oil Power,” in Robert E. Looney, ed, Handbook of Oil Politics, London and New York: Routledge, 2012, pp. 284-294.


Editor

References

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