What's in a Coalition? Conceptualizing Authoritarian Rule in Saudi Arabia

• In Event: Remodeling Authoritarianism: Conceptual Approaches with Empirical Foundations

Abstract

What is an authoritarian “coalition”? In adapting coalitional language to theorizing authoritarian rule (i.e. Riker 1962 vs. Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), much existing work implicitly assumes that the building blocks of coalitions are either individuals within a ruling clique or social groups endowed with resources useful to the regime's survival (or its overthrow)—typically theorizing the role of one at the expense of the other. Accordingly, various “coalitional” approaches to authoritarian rule—whether “winning” (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2004), “ruling” (Svolik 2009, 2012) or “broad”/“narrow” (Smith 2005, Brownlee 2007) coalitions—talk past each other by conflating claims about the effect of personalization or power-sharing on regime behavior with those about the role of various forms of group-based support for (or opposition to) incumbent regimes within authoritarian politics. In this paper, I demonstrate the advantages of drawing a sharp conceptual distinction between a) leadership coalitions that reflect the interpersonal dynamics that sustain and constrain individual rulers at the pinnacle of regime power (drawing on Tullock 1987: 17-34) and b) regime coalitions that reflect anticipated sources of critical mass or elite support for the political system writ large (drawing on Pepinsky 2008: 456). This theoretical framework emphasizes interdependencies between key regime figures and social constituencies, generating testable hypotheses about the role of ideas and uncertainty in driving autocrats’ decisioning as well as the relationship between the personalization of power and authoritarian policymaking.

To demonstrate the utility of this framework, I drawn on a diverse range of data sources to illuminate otherwise opaque processes of policymaking within two longstanding authoritarian regimes: efforts at labor-market reforms in the Arab Gulf monarchy of Saudi Arabia. Due to the country’s path-dependent reliance on expatriate labor, Saudi monarchs have struggled to navigate between efforts to steer more jobs to their own citizens and concerns that increased labor costs will upset relations with well-connected business communities (Herb 2014). I identity the leadership coalitions surrounding Saudi rulers as well as the regime coalitions they sought by triangulating among private archives (including leaked U.S. diplomatic cables), official speeches, nominally independent commentary in state-regulated media, consultancy reports and extensive fieldwork allows me to identify the major social constituencies catered to by regime policymaking (or feared as a potential source of instability). Public opinion data from the Arab Barometer sheds light on policy preferences among these social constituencies, while a review of official regulations and labor-market statistics provides a reliable measure of the extent to which regime policymaking favored either un(der)employed citizens or private-sector employers.

Careful process-tracing of labor-market reforms within these two countries from 2000-2020 calls into question the existing assumptions of the literature and provides a basis for new theorizing. First, in contrast to depictions of regime leadership as effectively hostage to fixed regime coalitions (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003: 89; Brownlee 2007: 35 Yom 2015: 38), I demonstrate that factions within the Saudi monarchy sought to actively cater to new social constituencies in the expectation that this would reinforce their regimes’ hold on power. Second, in contrast to the idea that a “winning” authoritarian coalition is ex ante knowable (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003: 51; Svolik 2012: 5-6), I emphasize the uncertainty autocrats face in determining how best to secure their rule. The region-wide uprisings of the Arab Spring, for example, newly encouraged elite collective action to generate more jobs for citizens barely a year after the monarchy had abandoned such efforts as politically unnecessary. Finally, in contrast to suggestions in selectorate theory that mass constituencies benefit in direct proportion to their representation within leadership coalitions (see Gallagher & Hanson 2015: 380-381), I demonstrate that Saudi efforts to cater to the unemployed through labor-market policy have endured despite a narrowing leadership coalition: the personalization of power around Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. These findings encourage a greater focus on the ways that authoritarian elites simultaneously navigate the halls of power governance of diverse societies.

Author

• Andrew Leber, Tulane University