Which Saudi for the Saudis? Interpreting the National Narrative in Saudi Arabia

The past few decades have fueled concerns that authoritarian leaders (would-be or actual) can cement their hold on power through appeals to national identity—legitimating their rule in the eyes of many, marginalizing opponents as “traitors to the nation.” While concurring on the rise of authoritarian legitimation in the guise of nationalism, we argue that the mechanism of nationalist legitimation remains ill understood, limiting the explanations to state strategies of all-powerful autocrats. Authoritarian rulers might directly inculcate national attachment through educational institutions and state media outlets, while repress opposing narratives. Yet reproducing ideas of “the nation” among a wider audience frequently requires—or at least benefits from—the nationalist practices of intermediaries aligned with yet nominally independent of the regime itself: columnists, artists, intellectuals and now social-media “influencers.” We demonstrate that authoritarian nationalist legitimation is a form of multi-level negotitation between the leadership and various groups of supporters rather than a mere top-down narrative. We contend that nationalist legitimation is successful if the regime succeeds to secure buy-in from loyal supporters by giving them space to manoeuvre (for instance, to police the public discourse) even though their performative practices nevertheless act to de-emphasize certain elite themes, challenge others, and advance their own importance to the overall national project. We demonstrate our argument in the context of contemporary Saudi Arabia, where Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has monopolized political power amid pursuit of a broader socio-economic transformation of the Kingdom and its population, presenting an opportunity to analyze the change of legitimation strategies in the making. We manually coded more than 300 pages of Arabic text of sources pertaining to the political elite, newspaper columnists and Twitter influencers, published between 2016 and 2018. Even as official speeches and press releases outline clear characteristics of the once and future Saudi nation, distinct nationalist discourses circulate among major newspaper columnists and Twitter influencers—both avowed outward supporters of Saudi leaders. Hence although elite rhetoric holds sway in matters of foreign policy, and seemingly appropriates existing opposition to Islamist groups at home and abroad, both pro-regime constituencies remain stubbornly resistant to advancing official advocacy of economic “self-reliance” and relatively open immigration policies. We provide further evidence that these contradictions resonate with the wider Saudi public, and have constrained aspects of the Crown Prince’s ambitious political agenda.