Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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The mushrooming of governmental institutions represented an attempt to cope
with the condition of 'rising expectations'. As the citizens hear of the
building of new schools and municipalities in neighboring towns and cities,
delegations would go to the capital and demand similar privileges. As a
result, limited and understaffed ministries of yesterday were giving way to
larger and more numerous ministries and bureaus. 40
The steady growth of the Saudi government bureaucracy and apparatus has been
accompanied by a process of weakening traditional and local power centers. In its efforts
to dissolve traditional, competing political factions of the traditional era, and instead of
building on the already established representative tribal system of the past and its cultural
heritage, the state forewent traditional nodes of authority, for examples, the city notables
and bedouin chiefs, as residual of tribal structures. The swearing of the King at the top of
the government echelon meant the dismantling of the strong traditional loyalty of the
population to the tribe and the extended family. This process has taken two forms. In the
case of towns, the process of weakening the traditional forms of authority can be discerned
in the diminishing powers of the old system of city "notables." Such a weakening has
paralleled the shift of authority to a central government and its branching bureaucracy at the
national level. Hence, the city and town notables, the bedouin sheikh, and provincial emirs
were denied active representative roles under the new nation-state. 41
The old system of
the quarter of the traditional Islamic city, which organized around the tribe and place of
origin and enjoyed semi-autonomous control by its residents, crumbled. It was supplanted
by a new system of central bureaucratic control and hierarchical administration.
The process of debasing city notables similarly occurred in the bedouin tribes. The
increasing centrality of the national government in the local affairs of the society has
undermined bedouins' loyalty to the tribe, a sacred relation for millinea. This development
was best evident in a study in which the authors state
Even among bedouins, we are told, the older tribal and sub-tribal allegiance
are being replaced by the idea that the center and the tribal head or his
subordinate is seen as the source of effective power and the place for
submitting petitions and bringing requests. Wealth has loosened the
connections between tribal leaders and the common man, and the rise of a
wealthy central government has, together with this, promoted a more direct
relationship between the people [at large] and [those at] the top 42
From the previous direct and autonomous control of the Saudi subjects, tribal
sheikhs, provincial emirs and city notables roles were reduced to that of consultation and