Targeting the Political Collective: A New Approach to Explore Collegialism and Personalization in Authoritarian Regimes (Saudi Arabia as A Case Study)

In studies of authoritarianism, scholars often categorize countries into different regimes based on the nature of the ruling group, such as one-party systems, military governments, and monarchies. According to this typology, the ruling groups are respectively considered political collectives in different regimes. However, in fact, the composition of the political collective is usually heterogeneous. Studies targeted the political collective as a specific group with internal coherence, such as the military elites or a party, would lose credibility since they downgraded the complexity of the authoritarian regime and neglected its political collective’s diversity. As a result, studies based on that typology cannot exhaustively reflect the dynamics of power-sharing and personalization in authoritarian regimes. This paper will propose a new approach to target the political collective in authoritarian regimes comprehensively. It will take Saudi Arabia as a case to exemplify the diversity and volatility of the authoritarian collective. The changes of the political collective laid the foundation to analyze the regime’s shift from a power-sharing collegial rule to a centralized personal rule. The mentioned typology of authoritarian regimes categorizes the ruling group based on modern institutions and visible political organizations, such as parties and the military. Nevertheless, Weberian theories noted that even in traditional patrimonialism, the leader could not control everything. Informal conventions and religious doctrines accepted by the collective are confining her arbitrary personal wills. Thus, this paper proposes interpreting the authoritarian political collective along two dimensions: the modern-traditional dichotomy and formal-informal norms. In Saudi Arabia, the political collective presents diverse forms. The modern formal groups include the established institutions of the Council of Ministers and the al-Shura Council, as well as organized groups with internal coherence, such as the Armed Forces and the National Guard. The traditional formal collective can be targeted as traditional institutions, such as the Allegiance Council and the Council of Senior Ulama, as well as traditional political bodies, including clans within the Al Saud House and the Wahhabi elites. Furthermore, political orders in Saudi Arabia are maintained by a set of informal norms, namely consensuses within the elite. That includes the succession line of the Crown, the regime’s commitment to Wahhabi legitimacy, and the pattern of attribution of the kingdom’s oil revenue. Under its founder, King Ibn Saud, the regime was highly personalist. However, his legitimacy relied on the Wahhabi ulama’s endorsement. Following his death, the regime transitioned toward a dynastic monarchy characterized by collegial rule. This “collegial” era was solidified by “Faysal’s Order” since 1964. For decades, the kingdom operated under a system where the King shared power with senior princes. Power was distributed among “institutional fiefdoms” and family clans. During this period, succession followed a horizontal line among brothers, maintained by an informal consensus that prevented any single clan from monopolizing power. Since 2017, King Salman has broken the long-standing family consensus by arbitrarily changing the succession line to favor his son, MBS. MBS further moved away from traditional reliance on the Wahhabi ulama, instead embracing social liberalization and economic privatization.