At first sight, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) seems to be a least likely
candidate for a regional organization (RO) prescribing and promoting (good)
governance in its member states: It consists of authoritarian monarchies and
is a strong proponent of the principles of national sovereignty and non-
interference. This paper, however, shows that the GCC does engage in
governance transfer. Reacting to a crisis of legitimacy, the rulers of the GCC
states have resorted to governance transfer as a strategy of legit-imation. In
certain policy fields they prescribe and promote good governance standards to
suggest to their respective citizenry as well as to external investors that
they are actively trying to tackle their governance problems in these fields.
Governance transfer by the GCC can be conceptualized as an institutional
choice by the rulers of the GCC states which is supposed to ensure their
regimes’ survival in times of a crisis of legiti-macy
