This paper discusses the pathways to the knowledge economy taken by two countries with abundant fossil-fuel reserves, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The shift towards a knowledge economy involves a rethinking of the relationships between education, science, learning, production and service delivery. It also involves collectively defined visions or long-term perspectives, a change of economic narratives and governance arrangements. Notwithstanding a dynamic body of research on the knowledge economy suggesting that, its effectiveness in enabling transformation depends on how well it adapts to the socio-spatial and institutional contexts, countries often chase models that have achieved success elsewhere. Against these copycat strategies, in this paper we critically reflect on the Saudi and Qatar’s aspirations in steering their economic development in the direction of production and services based on knowledge. This is justified because international consultancy takes the lead in preparing and strategizing such aspirations. These firms sell the same pathway to economic transition to multiple countries. We specifically question how appropriate or realistic are the strategies intended to support a transition to the knowledge economy in these two long-standing theocratic monarchies. The novelty of this study is that we do this through the lens of spatial embeddedness and evolutionary governance theory. We conclude by sketching a practice-oriented agenda intended to support policymakers working within similar cultural contexts, to strategize knowledge-economy transitions embedded in both, local communities and governance settings.

本文讨论了拥有丰富化石燃料储备的两个国家沙特阿拉伯和卡塔尔采取的知识经济路径。向知识经济的转变涉及对教育，科学，学习，生产和服务提供之间关系的重新思考。它还涉及集体定义的远景或长远观点，经济叙述的变化和治理安排。尽管有大量关于知识经济的研究表明，其对转型的有效性取决于其对社会空间和制度环境的适应程度，但各国通常会追求在其他地方获得成功的模式。反对这些模仿策略，在本文中，我们批判性地反映了沙特和卡塔尔在基于知识的生产和服务方向上引导其经济发展的愿望。这是有道理的，因为国际咨询公司率先准备并制定了这些愿望。这些公司为向多个国家的经济转型提供了相同的途径。我们特别质疑，在这两个长期存在的神权君主专制国家中，旨在支持向知识经济过渡的策略是否合适或切合实际。这项研究的新颖之处在于，我们是通过空间嵌入性和进化治理理论的角度来做到这一点的。最后，我们草拟了一个以实践为导向的议程，旨在支持在类似文化背景下工作的政策制定者，