Urbanization, mass public education, the presence of numerous foreign workers, and access to new media are all effecting rapid change in Saudi values and mores. While Saudi society has changed profoundly, however, political processes have not. The political elite has come to include more and more bureaucrats and technocrats, while the real power continues in the hands of the royal dynasty. To counter this, in 1992 King Fahd issued a decree entitled "A Basic System of Government." This created a quasi constitution and an advisery body to provide a forum for public debate for citizens not belonging to the royal family.
The new laws also changed the process used to select the heir to the throne, established a right to privacy, and prohibited infringements of human rights without cause. However, the monarch retained ultimate power, including the authority to dismiss the advisery council at his will. These changes, although modest, have combined with continued economic growth to help the regime maintain its base of popular support in spite of the challenges posed by the uncertain political environment in the Middle East. The continued threat from Iraq, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union, which diminished Saudi Arabia as a strategic location of defense against communism, compromised the stability of the region.
While King Fahd and his government needed the support of the United States and other Western powers, the Saudi monarchy also needed to retain its Muslim identity and the support of its staunchly Muslim population. This meant that the Saudis had to be careful in balancing leadership in the Muslim and Arab worlds with policies that would maintain good relations with the West. With the intensification of the conflict between the Israelis
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And the Palestinians after September, 2000, the emergence of the American-led war on mainly Muslim terrorists after September, 2001, and the growing possibility of an American invasion of Iraq in the summer and fall of 2002, keeping this balance became increasingly difficult.
By early years of the twenty-first century, the Saudi monarchy had come under international, regional, and domestic pressures that threatened its future. Saudi Arabia's international influence was based on two main factors: its position as the world's leading producer of oil and site of the largest oil reserves, and its importance as the home of Islam's holiest shrines. Much of the international support for the monarchy, particularly from western countries, was due to the view of developed, oil-consuming nations that the dynasty of Saud maintained political stability and a steady, dependable flow of oil. At the same time, these developed nations also generally had ideological commitments to constitutional, elected, representative governments. These commitments were incompatible with the hereditary monarchy of the Saudis.
Among other Middle Eastern nations, Saudi Arabia's attempts to maintain close ties to the west and to maintain an international image of itself as a moderating influence in the region created suspicions. On matters such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraqi compliance with United Nations weapons inspectors, the Saudis needed to keep a delicate balance that would alienate neither the Western, oil-consuming nations nor the other countries in the region. This balance was complicated by the fact that a large part of the regional legitimacy of the Saudis was due to their status as guardians of Mecca and the other holy places of Arabia. Suggestions that the monarchy was falling short of religious purity therefore struck at the heart of the regime's legitimacy.
Within the country, the Saudi royal family's monopoly on political power, and the family's possession of a disproportionate share of the nation's wealth, created opposition. In the context of Saudi society, this opposition took a chiefly religious form. Islamists asked whether the royal family earned its position by sufficient adherence to the faith of Islam. To satisfy potential domestic critics, the Saudi royal family had to uphold Islamic law and enforce extremely conservative measures in the society regarding matters such as religious conformity and the rights of women. These kinds of measures often outraged opinion in western countries and were often insufficient to stem the growth of radical Islam within the country.
The issue of succession was a major domestic problem for the Saudis. The monarchy had never developed a consistent principle, such as primogeniture or inheritance of the oldest son, for passing power from one generation to the next. By 2002, King Fahd was eighty-three years old and had suffered a stroke. Crown Prince Abdullah, who was running the day-to-day affairs of the government, was generally believed to be next in line for the throne, but this depended on the agreement of the royal family and there was some opposition to Abdullah, who was a comparatively youthful seventy-nine in 2002. The very size of the Saudi royal family and its deep roots in the society suggested that some version of the monarchy would probably remain into the indefinite future, but it was unclear whether a king would eventually emerge who would ally himself with radical Muslim forces, move the country toward a relatively democratic constitutional monarchy, or maintain some version of self-serving dynastic concentration of power.
Lela Phillips Updated by the Editors
World History
