One of the potential virtues of an edited volume is a feeling of temporary release from convention, which can be liberating for contributors and readers alike. There is often more room for experimentation and creativity in the space between tightly written journal articles and longer-term book projects. The volume under review is a case in point. It brings together some of the best-known scholars on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and provides them with the freedom to contribute to our understanding of the kingdom as they think best. As a result, it cannot be said to have a central or overarching argument. The main contribution is broadly empirical, not theoretical. The volume is thus an important and much-needed effort to enrich our knowledge of a country that remains relatively closed and underresearched, despite its regional and geostrategic prominence.
In this regard, the volume can be seen as a valuable follow-up to earlier work, particularly the oft-cited Saudi Arabia in the Balance, edited by Paul Aarts and Gerd Nonneman (2005). Indeed, in some ways, it reads like a sequel, in which many of the same authors expand on their research and offer new insights. But Saudi Arabia in Transition is different for at least two reasons. First, it is less rooted in political science, and thus more interdisciplinary. Second, it capitalizes to a greater degree on the relative opening of the country to foreign researchers since 2000, particularly by incorporating more evidence from the authors’ own archival or field research. Thus, the newer work aims to both broaden and update knowledge about Saudi Arabia, and it certainly succeeds in doing so.
Several chapters are of significant descriptive value and will be excellent resources for scholars as well as anyone interested in simply learning more about the country. Descriptive work is too often downgraded in political science, yet it is essential. This is particularly the case in a country like Saudi Arabia, where much remains hidden from view. Thus, Nabile Mouline’s chapter offers a rich description and analysis of the workings of the Committee of Senior Scholars, the most important of the official religious-political institutions in Saudi Arabia, which for many years was relatively opaque to outsiders. For their descriptive value alone, the chapters on political Islam, including those by David Commins, Stéphane Lacroix, Saud Al-Sarhan, and Thomas Hegghammer, are all standouts.
In addition, although the chapters are not tied into a unifying theoretical agenda, many do engage with questions of broad interest. For example, F. Gregory Gause questions theories of oil and politics, investigating why Saudi Arabia can be seen as an “exception” to the rentier model. He offers an unusual international relations take on the question. Lacroix draws from social movement theory, arguing that Islamist networks offer an underappreciated structural basis for political mobilization in a country often assumed to lack such foundations. Amélie Le Renard situates her chapter in a larger tradition of research on how the ordinary can become political, as in the work of James Scott and Diane Singerman. Her ethnographic material illustrates how young Saudi women, when they go to shopping malls, are not simply “going to the mall” but are experiencing malls as places of relative freedom in the public sphere. Apparently high levels of Saudi consumerism and materialism, often ridiculed by comedians and the media (as in Vanity Fair’s April 2015 exposé, “The Saudi Princess and the Multi-Million Dollar Shopping Spree”), may thus acquire new and more nuanced layers of meaning.
Other contributors pursue broad questions but from refreshingly unconventional perspectives. Bernard Haykel, for example, examines oil but moves away from the typical political economy approach, embracing a more interpretive style that recalls the work of Timothy Mitchell (e.g., Carbon Democracy, 2011). He probes how oil is invoked in Saudi political discourses. Toby Jones’s chapter may be the most innovative in the context of work on Saudi Arabia, which often revolves around oil and Islam. As he observes, “Although unintended, the focus on Islam has had the effect of narrowing the ways we think about politics and power in Saudi Arabia” (p. 34). Thus, Jones shows how science and technology have contributed to the formation and maintenance of the Saudi state as much as, if not more than, Islam per se.
The two chapters by Abdulaziz H. Al Fahad are notable for their unusual methodological approach, particularly the use of biography and poetry. One, for example, examines the decline of the Bedouin moral order through the lens of a poet, recalling how Georgi Derluguian, in Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus (2005), used the life story of an individual to shed light on the decline of the Soviet order. In the poetry quoted, there are striking examples of condemnation of the new and oil-fueled bureaucratic regime, such as: “For a salaried shaykh is not a legitimate shaykh” (p. 258). Al Fahad’s other chapter examines why Saudi Arabia, despite the apparent success of the modern bureaucratic state, has seen a boom in the production of tribal genealogies.
Steffen Hertog’s chapter best illustrates how the volume capitalizes on more fine-grained data. Using subnational data by region, Hertog questions the conventional wisdom that the Saudi regime has deliberately impoverished the formerly powerful Hijaz, the western region, for political reasons. Indeed, the truly disadvantaged region was neither the Hijaz nor the Eastern Province, where there is a strong Shiite community, but rather the South, closest to Yemen. Thus, “At no time … was the Hijaz completely sidelined, as some Hijazi local patriots would make us believe” (p. 107). The findings are a good reminder to be skeptical about the claims of nationalists, particularly when data are scarce.
Some may fault the loose structure and lack of a common theoretical purpose. Indeed, with greater openness in the kingdom, one hopes for more sustained and integrated work on Saudi Arabia that would shed light on some topics that are left out of this volume. For example, readers looking for insights into the question of succession, particularly given the recent coronation of King Salman, may be disappointed; there are no chapters on the workings of the ruling family along the lines of Michael Herb’s research (e.g. All in the Family, 1999). Likewise, foreign policy receives little attention, although readers are likely to have many questions about the kingdom’s role in Yemen and its evolving response to the U.S.—Iran deal.
As with Saudi Arabia in the Balance, there are references to the country being “on the cusp” or “on the verge” of dramatic change, but the chapters themselves present that case more cautiously, and often point to the regime’s successful maintenance of the status quo. For example, given the centrality of women to the legitimizing myths of the Saudi-led state, Madawi Al-Rasheed is doubtful that Saudi Arabian women will be gaining equal rights anytime soon. Giacomo Luciani proposes that the kingdom take on a greater role in the international oil market, but acknowledges that this is a “tall order” (p. 93). Nevertheless, in the introduction and afterword, the editors make tantalizing references to some remarkable facts that may indeed lead to dramatic change. For example, they note that more than 100,000 young Saudis are currently studying abroad and will be returning soon (p. 6). Saudi Arabia is also said to have the highest Internet penetration in the Arab Middle East, with citizens who are among the world’s heaviest users of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook (p. 334). But no chapters address these potential engines of change, perhaps because of the paucity of research on them, even though the Arab Spring has taught us, if nothing else, not to underestimate them. In addition to its rich empirical contributions and insights, then, Saudi Arabia in Transition may draw much-needed attention to such fast-moving trends in the kingdom.
