The political economy of the Arab World and particularly the Gulf States is a central theme in contemporary Middle Eastern Studies. For many years the concept of the ‚rentier state‘ was deemed sufficient to explain the political, economic, and social cleavages in those states that are blessed with one of the largest stocks of oil and gas resources worldwide. By doing so, it was possible to explain certain political and economic deficits, but the concept fell short of explaining the internal dynamics, the stability and longevity of those authoritarian regimes. The ‚rentier state debate‘ – as Steffen Hertog1 correctly argues – lacks empirical analysis of the causal mechanisms on any but the most general level (p. 2). Thus it is a bit odd to note that the scholarly debate has only recently begun to move beyond the ‚rentier state paradigm‘ in order to have a closer look at how formal and informal mechanisms of governance in the Gulf States interact and shape the respective political systems.

This limitation of the ‚rentier state concept‘ serves as a starting point for Hertog’s book on Saudi Arabia, in which he offers a thorough insight in the internal dynamics of the Saudi state since the beginning of the oil-boom in the 1950s. Hertog’s leitmotif is the argument that oil is an important but not fully sufficient variable to explain the Saudi state, its power structures, and policy-making patterns. He argues convincingly: „To explain why […] some reforms work while others do not requires that we ‚unpack‘ the state. We need to understand its structure and its relations to society on the meso-level of specific organizations and social groups as well as the micro-level of individual clients.“ (p. 4) The author’s research is based on extended field work in Saudi Arabia. On the one hand he relies on expertise gathered as a ‚participant observer‘ during his work as a consultant in the Saudi public sector and, on the other hand, he conducted more than 120 interviews during numerous field trips in the years after.

The structure of the book corresponds with his argument. At the outset, he depicts the state of the art and his own theoretical and conceptual frame of analysis (chapter 1). Part I (chapter 2 to 4) of the book deals with the history of the Saudi state: Chapter 2 hereby focuses on the metamorphosis of the Saudi state and the development of various ‚fiefdoms‘ for material patronage in the 1950s that are crucial for his main argument. In chapter 3 he shows how this mode of governance consolidated in a more formalized bureaucracy under King Faisal (1964-1975). He argues that ‚segmented clientelism‘ became a defining feature of the Saudi political economy and expanded into all parts of the Saudi society since the 1970s (chapter 4). In the following chapters (i.e. chapters 5-7), Hertog presents three case studies (attraction of foreign direct investment, nationalization of the Saudi labour market, and WTO accession). These chapters form the more distinct analytical part II of the book and give his hypothesis empirical evidence. Eventually he concludes (chapter 8) with a summary of his findings including some tentative hypotheses for the future debate on state-society relations in developing countries and how his analytical concept may contribute to the study of other countries in the neighbourhood and beyond. Last but not least, this is supplemented by a discussion of his findings in the context of the ‚rentier state debate‘.

Following Hertog the Saudi state is not a monolith, moreover a heterogeneous system of formal and informal, rent-based clientelism in which vertical links dominate. This „hierarchical, vertically divided hub-and-spoke system“ (pp. 10ff.) is held together by the Al Saud family on the very top (macro-level). But as Hertog elaborates throughout the book, Saudi politics follow the pattern of ‚segmented clientelism‘. That is to say patterns of clientelism dominate each level of policy making (he differentiates between macro-, meso-, and micro-level). These levels are segmented because of a parallel and strictly separate existence of institutions that emerged in the 1950s, a period in which the institutional design of the Saudi state took shape and autonomous ‚institutional fiefdoms‘ emerged. This distribution of bureaucratic power was determined by intra-family patrimonial politics that also strengthened the networks of clientelism, on which those fiefdoms have relied until the very present. In Hertog’s words the Saudi state builds „on a wide array of very different, parallel client bodies that have not been functionally integrated and in some cases constituted veritable worlds unto themselves […]“ (p. 249). Nonetheless, as Hertog emphasizes throughout the book, the segmented system of institutions provides not only room for inefficient, ill-defined administrative structures. It also allowed for the emergence of islands of efficiency with impressive administrative performance (such as the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, SAMA; pp. 56ff.).

Hertog’s concept of ‚segmented clientelism‘ offers a category that allows for a much more profound analysis than the concept of the ‚rentier state‘. Such a segmented system of institutions with hardly any horizontal interaction should then – so the underlying logic – provide stable and protected spaces for bureaucracies only accountable to the top. Yet, a thorough look at Saudi policy-making shows that individual agencies and institutions may dilute its implementation as the „Saudi system, although highly centralized and hierarchical, arguably contains numerous veto players“ (p. 31). This observation is not only an important contribution to the scholarly debate on state-society relations in Saudi Arabia. It is also of particular interest for the discussion of authoritarianism in the Middle East, as the feature of ‚veto players‘ outside the ruling elite has hardly been taken into account in studies on authoritarian systems so far (due to their presumed, more unitary nature).

To sum up, this highly recommendable book is destined to become a seminal work in offering a better understanding of governance in Saudi Arabia. With regard to the rather limited number of well-researched books on Saudi Arabia – due to the restricted opportunities to conduct field work – the added value of Hertog’s research stands out.

Note:
1 The author is – at the time of writing this book review – Kuwait Professor of Sciences Po in Paris and Lecturer in the School of Government and International Affairs at the University of Durham.