ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 covers how the interaction between Saudi regime survival strategies and foreign policy plays out in domestic politics. To do so, it traces opposition to the regime in the 1950s and 1960s, the Saud-Faisal succession struggle, and the ensuing state-building that took place through the evolving role of the religious establishment. It argues that the regime responded to the succession crisis between King Saud and Crown Prince Faisal by engaging in co-optation, consolidating its own ideological legitimacy, and solidifying the consensus-based familial rule known as dynasticism. The reason for this particular type of regime survival response stems from the nature of regional threats Saudi Arabia faced during the Nasserist period in the 1950s–1960s. The threat from secular, revolutionary pan-Arabism offered the opportunity for the Saudi regime to flexibly construct this difference while reinforcing its own legitimacy through the counter-ideology of pan-Islamism.
