Brunei is likely to remain an autocratic state in the forecast period. The sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin, remains at the centre of government, and he has given no indication that he will honour his past pledge to introduce partial democratisation soon. The political scene therefore appears completely static. The sultan has sent signals of a political liberalisation of sorts, by appointing an ethnic-Chinese minister in 2005 and selecting a female minister in May 2010, but these kinds of apparent liberalisation still skirt around the central issue of democratisation. The sultan is able to signal a move away from an ethnic-Malay, religiously conservative polity in these ways, but these signals are tokenistic in the absence of popular participation in government. Interestingly, a cabinet reorganisation in early 2010 institutionalised regular five-yearly reshuffles, as originally announced in 2005, but it did not involve the deletion of the names of the sultan, his son or his brother from the cabinet list. The sultan is his own prime minister, defence minister and finance minister, and other portfolios are held by members of the royal family. The five-yearly reshuffle process itself underlines the political time-warp in Brunei, as most other countries keep their senior government positions under regular review.

There is therefore little reason to expect meaningful political reform in 2011-12. The political scene, such as it is, will consist of royal visits to hospitals and other public places, peppered with worthy-sounding but essentially meaningless speeches. Long-standing promises to introduce a partial democratisation of the Legislative Council (Legco) have apparently been put on the back burner. Legco, which is mainly appointed, with a few indirectly elected members, will continue to meet for only a few days each year.

In the long term democratisation may be contemplated, as Brunei's oil and gas wealth will not last forever and the ruling family needs to prepare for a time when the state cannot continue to provide the current panoply of benefits that it makes available to the population without levying income tax. At the moment, all Bruneians benefit from the country's oil wealth, albeit not equally. Oil and gas revenue funds public-sector jobs, education and healthcare, and the energy sector is the ultimate source of the ruling family's wealth.

Although the sultanate is politically stable, this stability may be more fragile than it seems, as it is built on oil wealth that will not last. Consequently, the government has a couple of decades in which to attempt to build a larger private sector to protect the country's prosperity when hydrocarbon reserves are exhausted. Despite the stagnant state of politics in the sultanate, there are a number of wild cards that could affect political life. Brunei is a conservative Muslim country, but still needs to guard against extremism, given that Islam in nearby Indonesia has seen the development of a radical and even terrorist fringe in the past decade. Unemployment is low in Brunei, but as public-sector largesse is reduced issues such as migration into the territory from neighbouring countries could become more politically charged.