SAUDI ARABIA’S ELECTORAL POLITICS IN THE MAKING
SAUDI ARABIA’S ELECTORAL POLITICS IN THE MAKING

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to provide an analytical overview of Saudi experiments with electoral politics in the context of a wider reform movement promoted by King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. The 2004 municipal elections and the dominant subject of voting rights for women are used as illustrations of some of the issues that demonstrate the complexities of these processes. The article traces the limited experience of elections in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from the foundation of the state in 1924 to the present. It examines the prerogatives of the various bodies formed by respective Saudi rulers as ways and means of introducing a degree of popular participation in the Kingdom at the municipal level. Various reform programmes formulated by Saudi kings are analysed and evaluated. The author suggests that until the 1990s there was an unspoken compact between the Saudi population and the rulers: leave the Al-Saud rule unchallenged and they would take care of all of the citizens’ needs. This compact held until the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent stationing of thousands of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. An Islamic resurgence among Saudis, especially those who fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, fueled anti-American sentiment and opposition to the royal family’s decision to allow American troops into the country, considered holy ground by Muslim fundamentalists. For a brief moment during and just after the 1991 Gulf war, Saudis found a measure of freedom to question and demand more participation in running the country’s affairs. The royal family promised that reforms would come if the population accepted the presence of US troops during the crisis. Yet the only reform steps that materialized were the 1992 establishment of the Majlis Ash-Shura Council or Shura Council (a consultative body appointed by the government to advice on legislation) and the enactment of the Basic Law of Government (similar in nature to a constitution). The concept and extent of reform became recognized as a legitimate question of contention in Saudi Arabia in 2003. The author analyses in detail the emergence and framework of the small reform movement that became the stimulus for evolutionary political reforms and the authorities’ response to it. Next he examines the expansion of political participation that subsequently followed spelling out and evaluating legal provisions for the 2004 municipal elections, their conduct and results. The article pays particular attention to the issue of women’s electoral rights. The article concludes that the most important of the reform measures – the initiation of the National Dialogues sessions and the staging of partial elections to municipal councils in 2004 – have had a significant impact on the socio-economic discourse in the Kingdom and led to other extremely important reform initiatives. Of these the granting of voting rights to women in 2015 is the latest example of King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud attempts to cautiously shift Saudi society and its political practices towards those existing in the rest of the world. The list of his other initiatives is perhaps less spectacular but in the social and political context of Saudi Arabia they are almost revolutionary. Thus for example in 2010 the King pushed through the sweeping legal reforms and codification of Saudi law needed to meet World Trade Organization and human rights standards. He also decreed that only members of the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars were authorized to issue fatwas in a bid to halt religious rulings that embarrass the country. Only time will tell whether the cautious reforms, including the introduction of the embryonic electoral process recently introduced In Saudi Arabia, represent a viable way forward. In the current context of the country’s socio-political development such initiatives represent a strategic measure to ease societal frustration and to prepare and educate its citizens for perhaps more profound changes to come.

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