The ‘Law of the Land’ Has Been Replaced

Atossa Araxia Abrahamian's book, The Hidden Globe, was excerpted in The Atlantic.

The Dubai International Financial Center is home to thousands of companies from around the world. Some of them have organic connections to the emirate; others are merely taking advantage of the center’s business-friendly rules and regulations around tax, immigration, and labor. A third group of businesses have chosen the DIFC not for the office space, or the taxes, but as a home base for legal disputes alone. In the event of a lawsuit, the DIFC is where they want to have their day in court.

That’s because Dubai’s financial center is not governed by Dubai—at least, not in the way most of us understand governance. The enclave is a special economic zone overseen by a board appointed by the city-state’s ruler, with its own bespoke laws drawn up for the benefit of its clients.

The DIFC is also a shimmering shopping center with three hotels, luxury apartment towers, high-end restaurants, clothing stores, spas, beauty salons, and art galleries. There’s even a mosque, open 24/7. The 110-acre compound sits in the shadow of the Gate, a gigantic rectangular structure inspired by the Arc de Triomphe. The Gate looks like the Parisian monument—had the French only chosen to commemorate their war dead with millions of gray Legos. But when you walk through it, you enter a microcosm of a world where we may someday all live. This is a world where boundaries are drawn not just around nations but around people and companies and wealth—a world with new kinds of states and new kinds of laws. Dubai is a test case for where they will take us.