Governing the Third Sector in the Gulf: A Systematic Review of Emergence, Capacity, and Policy Dynamics in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Oman

ABSTRACT

The third sector has emerged as an increasingly important actor in governance, social development, and public service delivery across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), yet scholarly understanding of its evolution, institutional capacity, and policy role remains fragmented and uneven. This study presents a PRISMA‐guided systematic review of 348 peer‐reviewed studies examining the third sector in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Sultanate of Oman, with the aim of assessing the state of knowledge, identifying dominant research trends, and highlighting key gaps in the literature. The findings reveal significant growth in academic attention between 2006 and 2022, particularly in response to governance reforms and national development agendas, but also demonstrate a pronounced geographical imbalance, with Saudi Arabia accounting for 63% of studies, followed by Kuwait (15%), Oman (7%), and Qatar (6%). Despite the expanding body of scholarship, existing research remains dominated by descriptive and organizational analyses, while questions related to governance outcomes, policy influence, regulatory environments, organizational sustainability, and state–third sector relations remain underexplored. The review further identifies recurring methodological limitations, including fragmented case‐based approaches, uneven geographical coverage, limited comparative research, sampling constraints, and a continued reliance on Western theoretical frameworks that insufficiently capture the distinctive characteristics of GCC governance systems. The study argues that future research should move beyond descriptive mapping toward contextually grounded theory‐building and employ more rigorous comparative, longitudinal, and mixed‐methods designs to better understand the contribution of third sector organizations to governance, public value creation, and national development objectives. By synthesizing existing scholarship and identifying critical conceptual, empirical, and methodological gaps, the review advances a comprehensive research agenda for the study of the third sector in the Gulf and contributes to broader debates on governance and development in state‐led and non‐Western contexts.