Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

76
deliberate. They were spontaneous because they were incurred as byproducts of the
modernization process, that is the exposure of the population to the outside world due to
contact with expatriates and travel abroad. They were deliberate in the sense that they
emanated from direct state intervention in the form of national development, including
urban policies. Change necessitated the proliferation of news media and propaganda
emanating from other regimes, all having profound effects on the society. For example, in
1953 there were only two newspapers in the country, the official Um ul-Qura and Al
Madinah Almonaourah. By 1966, the country had a dozen daily newspapers and weekly
publications and television broadcasting was introduced in major cities despite explicit
resentment by the Ulama. In 1985 the number of publications rose to 68 daily, weekly and
monthly publications and by 1989, the number reached 73. 32
These spontaneous developments have been supplemented by government policies •
toward modernization. Historically, national modernization policies, points George
Lenczowski, "could vaguely fall into two categories: the first, whose main objective was
the techno-administrative and military strengthening of the state (such as the policies of
Mohammed Ali in Egypt, Selim HI and Mahmoud n in Turkey), the second, which aimed
at broader and deeper socio-political progress (such as the policies of the Young Turks or
the Persian Constitutionalists). The Saudi modernization model, Lenczowski contends,
straddles both categories, primarily fitting into the first one, with some practices belonging
to the second. "This is so because reforms have been launched within the existing
framework of political and religious legitimacy; no questions were encouraged regarding
the fundamentals of this framework." 33
The establishment of the Council of Minsters, in 1953, is considered the crucial step
toward modernization. The introduction of a regular state budget in 1952-53 constituted
the first attempt to separate the state treasury from the King's private purse. This step was
followed by the creation of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) in 1958, the
country's central bank, the Development Board, and in 1957, King Saud University in
Riyadh, the first learning and research institution with specializations in secular,
technological and scientific curriculum. The process of functional specialization of the
government departments rose to a crescendo in the 1960s. The state inaugurated the
Petroleum and Mineral Authority (Petromin), an agency devoted to the development of
subterranean resources of the country. The decade also witnessed the proliferation of