“Since December 2010, the wave of uprisings and protests across the Middle East has brought about spectacular changes in the region's authoritarian republics, but has largely overtaken its monarchies autocratic” (Yom and Gause, p. 1). The most interesting aspect of this transnational movement of revolts is the way in which it “has largely bypassed autocratic monarchies”. In this article I will focus on how the Arab Spring affected two of these autocratic monarchies: the State of Qatar and the Kingdom of Bahrain. The Bahraini public, motivated and frustrated by the way things were going, took to the streets in mass protest in February 2011 (Freedom House, Countries at a Crossroads, p. 1). Because this could potentially weaken the existing government, as was the case in Egypt and Tunisia, Bahrain's autocratic government saw the protests as a threat to its power and legitimacy and met the protesters with a brutal crackdown and further repression politics. These protests and the resulting violence, however, did not occur in Qatar. So why did the Arab Spring affect the internal stability of the oil-producing constitutional monarchy of the Kingdom of Bahrain, but not that of the oil-producing constitutional monarchy of the State of Qatar? Internal stability here is defined as “the absence of large-scale violence in a country” (Nathan). Energy-rich countries that have recently transitioned from absolute to constitutional monarchies are more likely to suffer from internal instability if two things happen. First, that profits from energy resources have declined and are unequally distributed among its citizens compared to other policies of sectarian-based economic discrimination. Secondly, in the case of the religious minority monarchy that holds the political majority... at the center of the map... e.g. Department of State. Office for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. 2013 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Bahrain. Np, February 27, 2014. Web. March 19, 2014. U.S. Department of State. Office for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. 2013 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - Qatar. Np, February 27, 2014. Web. March 19, 2014. .Yom, Sean L., and F. Gregory Gause. “Resilient Royals: How Arab Monarchies Resist.” Journal of Democracy 23.4 (2012): 74-88. MUSE project. Network. 04 March 2014. .Zunes, Stephen. "Bahrain's Arrested Revolution." Arabic Studies Quarterly 35.2 (2013): 149-64. JSTOR. Network. 04 March. 2014. .