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InPrinces, Brokers, and Bureaucrats, the most thorough treatment of the political economy of Saudi Arabia to date, Steffen Hertog uncovers an untold history of how the elite rivalries and whims of half a century ago have shaped today's Saudi state and are reflected in its policies. Starting in the late 1990s, Saudi Arabia embarked on an ambitious reform campaign to remedy its long-term economic stagnation. The results have been puzzling for both area specialists and political economists: Saudi institutions have not failed across the board, as theorists of the \"rentier state\" would predict, nor have they achieved the all-encompassing modernization the regime has touted. Instead, the kingdom has witnessed a bewildering mélange of thorough failures and surprising successes. Hertog argues that it is traits peculiar to the Saudi state that make sense of its uneven capacities. Oil rents since World War II have shaped Saudi state institutions in ways that are far from uniform. Oil money has given regime elites unusual leeway for various institutional experiments in different parts of the state: in some cases creating massive rent-seeking networks deeply interwoven with local society; in others large but passive bureaucracies; in yet others insulated islands of remarkable efficiency. This process has fragmented the Saudi state into an uncoordinated set of vertically divided fiefdoms. Case studies of foreign investment reform, labor market nationalization and WTO accession reveal how this oil-funded apparatus enables swift and successful policy-making in some policy areas, but produces coordination and regulation failures in others.

Unpacking the Saudi state : oil fiefdoms and their clients -- Oil fiefdoms in flux : the new Saudi state in the 1950s -- The emerging bureaucratic order under Faisal -- The 1970s boom : bloating the state and clientelizing society -- The Foreign Investment Act : lost between fiefdoms -- Eluding the \"Saudization\" of labor markets -- The fragmented domestic negotiations over WTO adaptation -- Comparing the case studies, comparing Saudi Arabia

Amidst the vast landscapes of Saudi Arabia lies a rich tapestry of recreational pursuits, with hunting and camping at its core. However, a comprehensive understanding of the motivations and challenges associated with these traditional activities remains scant. The primary objective of this study was to explore the driving factors behind individuals' engagement in hunting and camping as recreational pursuits and to identify the challenges they encounter. Adopting a qualitative research design, 43 male participants, aged 20 to more than 50, were purposively selected and interviewed using a semi-structured format. The instrument encompassed two main sections: demographic details and four key interview questions. Thematic analysis was employed to interpret the data. Findings from this study illuminated a diverse array of motivations driving individuals towards hunting and camping activities in Saudi Arabia. These motivations span from cultural heritage, an escape from urbanization, adventure, and social bonding, to government promotions and spiritual connections. Conversely, participants face multifaceted challenges, including environmental unpredictability, bureaucratic complexities, technological intrusions, mental challenges, safety concerns, and financial constraints. Delving into these intricate dynamics, the study offers an enriched understanding of recreational motivations and their challenges in the Saudi context, bridging a notable academic gap and paving the way for future research and informed policy-making.

This article considers the emergence of informal brokers in the context of an increasingly formalized regime of transnational labour migration from Indonesia. Following the 1997 Asian economic crisis and the fall of the Suharto regime, there has been a dramatic increase in documented transnational migration to Malaysia at the expense of undocumented migration. In this process, a growing number of private agencies have come to control the increasingly deregulated market for migrant recruitment. These agencies, in turn, depend on informal brokers who recruit migrants in villages across Indonesia to work on palm oil plantations and as domestic servants in countries such as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. This article takes these informal brokers as a starting point for considering the current Indonesian migration regime, using ethnographic data from the island of Lombok. Along with offering a description of brokering practices, the article argues that the dual process of centralization of migration control and fragmentation of labour recruitment has created a space of mediation for individuals who can navigate bureaucratic process while embodying the ethical qualities that convince Indonesian villagers to become migrants.

This article proposes and tests an integrative model of multiple associations between power-influence sharing in decision making, work-related outcomes (WRO), and organizational culture in public sector organizations in Saudi Arabia. The analysis is based on a survey of public administrators (n = 390). To date, little research has successfully addressed these conceptual linkages, especially in public sector organizations. The structural equation model analyses show that participative practices are significant predicators of effective utilization of competence (knowledge, skill, and ability). This in turn has an impact on perceptions of WRO including information sharing, decision quality, predictability and acceptability of authorized decisions by employees, job satisfaction, and motivation. The results also suggest that elements of organizational culture have some impact on both decision making and perceived WRO. The study has profound implications for organization development and leadership, particularly in bureaucracies in transition. It is essential for public organizations to understand the importance of human capital utilization and complexity of adjusting decision processes, as well as organizational norms at various stages of capacity development.

M-government has gained increasing global attention in recent years, especially among developed countries, as a mechanism to reduce costs, increase effectiveness and improve public access to governmental services. The concept is increasingly being adopted in developing countries, however it faces different challenges and opportunities. This study explores the opportunities and challenges for the deployment of mobile government (M-government) services in Saudi Arabia. Collecting data from 77 semi-structured interviews, this study found that there are many opportunities for M-government in the country, requiring increasing awareness amongst the people about the government initiatives of mobile government services and promoting willingness to use these services. This study also highlights different barriers faced by M-government in Saudi Arabia, including issues of internet quality and speed, customization of services and data security and privacy as well as infrastructural challenges and bureaucratic attitude of government departments.

The role of Sufi networks in facilitating trans-imperial travel and the concomitant social and political connections associated with the pilgrimage to Mecca is often mentioned in the literature on Ottoman-Central Asian relations, yet very little is known about how these networks operated or the people who patronized them. This paper focuses on the Sultantepe Özbekler Tekkesi, a Naqshbandi lodge in Istanbul that was a primary locus of Ottoman state interactions with Central Asians and a major hub of Central Asian diasporic networks. It departs from an exclusive focus on the experiences of elites, to which much of the conventional historiography on Ottoman-Central Asian relations has confined itself, and examines the butchers and bakers, craftsmen and students who set out on the hajj to Mecca in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on sources from the private archive of this lodge, the paper reconstructs the experiences of a diverse range of remarkably mobile actors and explores the myriad ways in which this Ottoman-administered institution facilitated their travel to and from Mecca. Through its focus on the conduits and mediators, the structures and buildings—the actual sites—where connections were forged, the paper sheds light on the role that such state-administered Sufi lodges played in delivering on the paternalistic rhetoric and system of sultanic charity that was an integral part of late Ottoman politics and society.

There are two established ways of recounting the emergence of the modern Gulf oil monarchies. The social scientific explanation describes anonymous structural forces, the “resource curse” of the “rentier state,” and how these have shaped politics and markets with their inexorable logic. The other narrative, of the popular history variety, offers romantic, personalized accounts of desert shaykhs, their whims, and the sudden riches of their families (complemented, in some less benevolent accounts, by tales of monumental corruption).

In the decades following the First World War, countries such as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan used the creation of a modern army as an engine for wider processes of change. Such military-led state-building followed a precedent established in the previous century by Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. In these countries, military revolutions involving the introduction of new technologies and military tactics made essential broader transformations in tax, administrative and educational structures to finance the army and provide literate manpower. In Saudi Arabia, however, no such military revolution, dragging society in its wake, took place. Military expansion was funded not by domestic taxation but by oil royalties provided by a foreign concession, recruitment remained voluntary, avoiding the administrative centralization and bureaucratic rationality demanded by conscription, while both the integrative function of conscription and the emergence of a professional officer corps were sacrificed to the imperative of sustaining the tribal and family ascendancy of the al-Saud. Saudi Arabia entered the twenty-first century having experienced not military modernization but rather military modernization in reverse, the strength of tribal and family ties and patronage not weakened but rather embedded ever more deeply within a system of patrimonial rule.