King Salman of Saudi Arabia issued a royal order on August 8, which allowed a government meeting to be convened in his absence and that of Prime Minister and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The meeting will probably be chaired by the most senior Cabinet member from amongst the descendants of King Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the founding father of the Saudi state as we realize it today.
The royal order is a politically significant event. Since Mohammed bin Salman was elevated to the position of crown prince in 2017 after which prime minister five years later, the administratively and politically critical positions of deputy crown prince and deputy prime minister have remained vacant.
The vacancies have made it difficult to discover the third most influential person in the Saudi decision-making structure and to take a position about possible candidates.
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The dynamics of decision-making in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have long been a complicated matter. King Saud, the eldest son and successor of Abdul Aziz, was forced to abdicate in 1964 after mutual agreement between the Saudi royal family and the religious elite.
His trying The centralization of power in the hands of his own sons, volatility in spending, and dangerous foreign policy actions forced Saud’s half-brother and heir to the throne, Faisal, to form a family coalition to confront him and take away him from power.
Faisal became king after Saud’s removal and introduced a new system of government in which power was distributed amongst the various sons of Abdul Aziz who had participated in his coup. The aim was to avoid the concentration of power in one subsection of the family.
This horizontal division of power has led to the creation of institutional culture of feudalismEach prince in charge of a government department or organisation treated it as his personal fiefdom and used it to extend his political influence by cultivating a network of patronage.
This steadily established a hierarchy of power inside the Saudi royal family. A gaggle of greater than 30 half-brothers emerged below the king and the crown prince, who were considered as future candidates to the throne of Saudi Arabia as a result of seniority, mother’s ancestry and the political significance of the institutional properties they control.
Against this backdrop, the appointment of Prince Fahd as Second Deputy Prime Minister (the Crown Prince is normally the First Deputy) of the Kingdom in 1967 was a significant event. At the time, there was no official position of Deputy Crown Prince and subsequently no formal entry into the line of succession.
But Fahd’s position as Minister of Interior, and the eldest of Abdul Aziz’s seven sons with Hussa Bint Ahmed Al Sudairi, he cemented his path to the throne. Fahd became king in 1982 following the death of his older half-brother and reigning king, Khalid.
This dynamic dictated the appointment of successive second deputy prime ministers. They were either part of a strong group of brothers, as was the case Sudairi sevenor were supported by the reigning king, influential family groups or held key positions.
An example is Prince Abdullah, who was appointed second deputy prime minister in 1975. Abdullah, who was one of Faisal’s allies in the coup against Saud, had commanded the Saudi National Guard since 1962. He also had maternity links to the powerful Shammar tribe, which in the past was a political enemy of the Saudi royal family.
Abdullah became king in 2005 after Fahd’s death, and nine years later appointed one other half-brother, Prince Muqrin, as deputy crown prince, thus initiating a new formal position in the royal line of succession. Like his predecessors, Muqrin held an influential position as head of intelligence – although his appointment was mainly as a result of his closeness to the king.
But when Abdullah died in 2015, the decades-old dynamic in which political positions became a means of competition between half-brothers and their allies modified completely. Salman took the throne and inside two years had REMOVED two more heirs to the throne and he promoted his own sonMohammed, for this position.
In the meantime, Salman and his son managed erase political influence powerful princes and royal factions through administrative changes and an anti-corruption campaign.
All the King’s Men
In this new system, power became the exclusive prerogative of the king and his son. This has transformed the position of the king of Saudi Arabia, from first amongst equals (primus inter pares) to supreme ruler (ultimum imperium).
However, the recent decision to permit Abd al-Aziz’s eldest descendants to chair Cabinet meetings provides us with a glimpse into the current hierarchy of royal power below the king and crown prince.
This the two oldest members of the royal family The cabinet, Prince Mansour bin Miteb and Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman (one of King Salman’s sons), are each significantly older than the crown prince himself. This means they’re unlikely to be future candidates for the position of deputy crown prince.
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So the real candidates are the five remaining young members of the royal family who hold key positions in the government. With the exception of Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman (who’s one of King Salman’s youngest sons), none of these cabinet members inherited their ministry directly or not directly from their fathers.
The hierarchy of power inside the royal family has modified. The personal relationship and closeness between a particular individual and the King and Crown Prince increasingly dictates their place in the hierarchy of the kingdom.