Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy whose power rests on three pillars: a ruling family numbering roughly 15,000 members, the world's largest conventional oil reserves, and custodianship of Islam's two holiest sites. No elected legislature exists. The state budget, foreign policy, and legal system operate at the discretion of the monarch and a small circle of senior royals. Since 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has consolidated power to a degree unprecedented even by Saudi standards, remaking the kingdom's social contract while tightening political control. Yet beneath this structure, older traditions of tribal solidarity, Islamic endowments, and communal consultation point toward patterns of mutual obligation that predate the modern state.

Power structures

Saudi Arabia is governed as an absolute monarchy by the Al Saud dynasty, which has ruled in various forms since the 18th century. The current state was founded in 1932 by Abdulaziz ibn Saud, and succession has passed through his sons and grandsons since. The king is Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and commander of the armed forces; since 2022 the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has served as Prime Minister. There are no national elections, no legal political parties, and no independent judiciary.^[1]

The Al Saud family comprises an estimated 15,000 members, with several thousand holding positions across government, the military, regional governorships, and state-linked businesses. Historically, power was distributed among competing princely factions — a form of intra-family balance. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) disrupted this pattern decisively. In November 2017, he detained over 200 princes, ministers, and businessmen at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh in what was framed as an anti-corruption campaign, extracting an estimated $100 billion in settlements. The effect was to centralise decision-making in a single individual to a degree the kingdom had not seen before.^[2]

The Consultative Assembly (Majlis al-Shura), established in 1993, consists of 150 members appointed by the king. It may propose legislation and review policy, but has no binding legislative power, no authority over the budget, and no capacity to hold ministers accountable. It functions as an advisory body, not a check on executive authority.

The religious establishment — historically rooted in the Wahhabi tradition of Sunni Islam — has been a structural pillar of Saudi governance since the original 18th-century pact between Muhammad ibn Saud and the cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The clerical class provided religious legitimacy for the ruling family in exchange for control over social and moral regulation. Under MBS, this arrangement has shifted: the religious police (mutawa) have been stripped of arrest powers, entertainment venues and cinemas have opened, and the clerical establishment has been brought under tighter royal supervision — not eliminated, but subordinated.

Megaprojects serve as both economic strategy and political consolidation. NEOM, a planned city on the Red Sea coast with an estimated cost of $500 billion, and its linear component The Line, are personally associated with MBS. These projects concentrate enormous capital allocation decisions in the crown prince's office, reinforcing his position as the indispensable architect of the kingdom's future.^[3]

Institutional capture

Saudi Aramco is the world's most profitable company, reporting revenue of approximately $400 billion annually and net income regularly exceeding $100 billion. Despite a partial IPO in 2019 (1.7% of shares listed on the Tadawul exchange), the Saudi government retains overwhelming control. Aramco functions as the financial engine of the state: oil revenue accounts for roughly 60-70% of total government revenue, and petroleum exports constitute approximately 75% of export earnings.^[4]

The Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, has grown to over $900 billion in assets under management. Under MBS's chairmanship, PIF has become the primary vehicle for economic diversification — investing in technology (stakes in Uber, Lucid Motors, and other companies), sports (LIV Golf, Newcastle United FC), entertainment, and domestic megaprojects. PIF's investment decisions are not subject to parliamentary oversight or public audit, concentrating extraordinary economic power in a body answerable to one person.^[5]

Saudi Arabia is the de facto leader of OPEC+ and exercises outsized influence over global oil prices through its unique capacity to raise or cut production rapidly. This gives the kingdom geopolitical leverage disproportionate to its population of roughly 36 million. The relationship between oil pricing decisions and domestic political needs — including maintaining social spending to ensure stability — makes OPEC+ coordination a tool of regime maintenance as much as economic policy.

The economy's dependence on hydrocarbon revenue creates a structural vulnerability that Vision 2030 seeks to address. However, diversification efforts remain heavily dependent on state-directed investment through PIF, raising the question of whether the kingdom is diversifying its economy or simply expanding the scope of centrally controlled capital allocation.

Housing and cost of living

Saudi Arabia has undergone rapid urbanisation, with over 85% of the population now living in cities — principally Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dammam. Vision 2030 set a target of increasing homeownership from approximately 47% in 2016 to 70% by 2030, and the government reports substantial progress, reaching roughly 63% by 2023 through subsidised mortgage programmes and housing development initiatives.^[6]

The megaproject strategy — NEOM, The Line, Jeddah Tower, the Red Sea tourism developments — absorbs enormous capital that might otherwise address ordinary housing needs. Construction costs for these projects flow primarily to international contractors and the migrant labour force, with limited multiplier effects for Saudi nationals outside the professional class.

The kafala (sponsorship) system, which ties migrant workers' legal status to their employer, governs the roughly 13 million foreign workers who make up over a third of the population and the vast majority of the private-sector labour force. Despite reforms announced in 2021 allowing some workers to change employers, structural power asymmetries remain: workers' housing, wages, and ability to leave the country depend on employer cooperation, creating conditions that human rights organisations have documented as forced labour in construction, domestic work, and service sectors.^[7]

The introduction of Value Added Tax (5% in 2018, raised to 15% in 2020) and the reduction of energy and water subsidies have increased cost-of-living pressures for ordinary Saudi households, representing a significant shift in the social contract that historically exchanged political quiescence for state-provided economic comfort.

Environmental pressures

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest exporter of crude oil and among the highest per-capita carbon emitters globally — approximately 18 tonnes of CO2 per person annually, roughly three times the global average. The kingdom's economy, infrastructure, and geopolitical position are built on fossil fuel extraction, and Saudi negotiators have consistently worked within UNFCCC processes to slow commitments to phase out fossil fuels.^[8]

Water scarcity is an existential challenge. Saudi Arabia has virtually no permanent rivers or lakes. Over 90% of drinking water comes from desalination — an energy-intensive process that itself contributes to emissions. The kingdom operates the world's largest desalination capacity. Fossil aquifers, principally the Saq and Tabuk formations, have been drawn down for decades of agricultural irrigation, with no meaningful natural recharge on human timescales.

Desertification is advancing across the Arabian Peninsula, driven by overgrazing, aquifer depletion, and rising temperatures. Climate projections indicate that parts of the Gulf region may become physiologically uninhabitable during peak summer months by mid-century, with wet-bulb temperatures exceeding the threshold for human survival outdoors.^[9]

The Saudi Green Initiative (2021) and the broader Middle East Green Initiative set targets of planting 10 billion trees in the region and reaching net-zero emissions by 2060. These commitments sit in tension with plans to maintain or expand oil production capacity and the kingdom's active role in weakening international climate agreements. Whether the stated timeline is compatible with continued fossil fuel export at current volumes remains an open structural question.

Cooperative and mutual aid traditions

Saudi society retains strong traditions of tribal solidarity, expressed through the Arabic concept of asabiyyah — a sense of group cohesion and mutual obligation rooted in kinship and shared identity. The 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun identified asabiyyah as the fundamental force driving political formation and decline in Arab societies. In contemporary Saudi Arabia, tribal networks continue to operate as informal systems of economic support, dispute resolution, and political mediation, even as urbanisation weakens their structural basis.^[10]

The waqf (Islamic endowment) represents a centuries-old institution of collective resource management. Waqf properties — land, buildings, and other assets dedicated in perpetuity to charitable or communal purposes — historically funded mosques, schools, hospitals, water systems, and support for the poor. Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Awqaf oversees substantial waqf holdings, though the institution has been progressively brought under state control rather than remaining a genuinely independent form of community wealth.

Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, mandates the annual redistribution of 2.5% of accumulated wealth to specified categories of recipients, including the poor and indebted. In Saudi Arabia, zakat collection is administered by the state, creating a structured (if state-controlled) mechanism of wealth redistribution that predates and operates independently of Western welfare-state models.

The traditional majlis — a gathering space where community members meet with leaders to present grievances, seek mediation, and discuss communal affairs — has deep roots in Arabian culture. While the institution has been largely subsumed into formal governance structures, informal majlis gatherings persist as spaces of social consultation, particularly in tribal and rural communities.

Political language

Vision 2030

The kingdom's comprehensive modernisation programme, announced in 2016 and personally associated with MBS. Functions simultaneously as economic strategy, social liberalisation framework, and political brand — making support for the crown prince and support for modernisation structurally indistinguishable.

Entertainment Authority

Established in 2016 to develop a domestic entertainment sector — concerts, cinemas, cultural events — previously prohibited under religious regulations. Frames social liberalisation as a state-granted privilege rather than an inherent right.

Saudization / Nitaqat

Labour nationalisation policies requiring private-sector employers to meet quotas of Saudi employees. Addresses structural unemployment among Saudi nationals (especially youth) but operates within a system where the state — not market dynamics — determines workforce composition.

Kafala

The sponsorship system binding migrant workers to individual employers, governing residency, employment, and exit from the country. Officially reformed in 2021, structurally persistent in practice.

Mutawa

The religious police (Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice), whose enforcement powers were dramatically curtailed after 2016. Their reduction signals the recalibration of religious authority, not its elimination.

Guardian system

The male guardianship framework requiring women to obtain permission from a male relative for travel, marriage, and certain legal transactions. Reforms since 2019 have loosened requirements — women can now obtain passports and travel independently — but the underlying legal architecture of male authority remains partially intact.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques

The king's official title, referencing stewardship of Mecca and Medina. Functions as a claim to religious legitimacy that transcends national borders and positions the Saudi monarch as a figure of pan-Islamic authority.

Unique structural features

Saudi Arabia's custodianship of Mecca and Medina — hosting about 1.8 million Hajj pilgrims (2024) and over 10 million Umrah visitors annually — gives the kingdom a structural role in global Islam that no other state holds. This provides both legitimacy and leverage: the ability to grant or restrict access to the holiest sites in Islam is a form of soft power without equivalent.^[11]

The petrodollar system — the practice of pricing oil exports in US dollars, established through a 1974 agreement between the Saudi and US governments — has been a structural pillar of both the global financial system and the Saudi-American strategic relationship. Saudi purchases of US Treasury bonds and weapons systems recycle oil revenue into the American economy, creating mutual dependency. Recent Saudi interest in accepting other currencies for oil trades signals potential structural shifts in this arrangement.

Saudi Arabia's capacity to influence global oil prices — by adjusting production volumes within OPEC+ — gives a country of 36 million people outsized influence over the global economy. Production cuts can raise prices to fund domestic spending; production surges can undercut rival producers. This price-setting power is a geopolitical tool as much as an economic one.

The lifting of the ban on women driving in June 2018 — one of the most visible social reforms under MBS — illustrates the dynamics of top-down liberalisation. Women's rights activists who had campaigned for the right to drive for decades were arrested before and after the ban was lifted, ensuring the reform was attributed to royal initiative rather than civil society pressure. Male guardianship reforms followed a similar pattern: genuine expansion of women's legal capacity, delivered as a gift from the state rather than a response to rights claims.

Legal and constitutional context

Saudi Arabia's Basic Law of Governance, issued by royal decree in 1992, declares the Quran and the Sunnah (prophetic traditions) to be the constitution of the state. There is no codified constitution in the Western sense, no bill of rights, and no constitutional court. The Basic Law establishes the king's authority, defines the structure of government, and affirms Islamic law (Sharia) as the foundation of the legal system.^[12]

Until recent reforms, Saudi Arabia had no codified penal code — criminal sentencing was left to individual judges' interpretation of Sharia principles, producing significant inconsistency. A codified personal status law was introduced in 2022, and efforts toward codifying other areas of law are underway, representing a structural shift from judicial discretion toward statutory predictability. However, the judiciary remains appointed by and answerable to the king, with no structural independence.

The court system includes general courts, criminal courts, and specialised tribunals — including the Specialised Criminal Court (SCC), established in 2008 ostensibly for terrorism cases. The SCC has been used extensively to prosecute human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and dissidents, with sentences ranging from lengthy imprisonment to death. Freedom of assembly, association, and expression have no legal protection, and the 2017 anti-terrorism law defines terrorism broadly enough to encompass peaceful dissent.

Capital punishment is applied for offences including murder, drug trafficking, terrorism, and apostasy. Saudi Arabia consistently ranks among the countries with the highest execution rates globally. The legal system permits corporal punishment including flogging, though its use has reportedly declined. Family law remains governed by Sharia principles, with inheritance, marriage, and custody rules reflecting gender-differentiated rights.