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 Saudi Arabiaportal |
This is a list of political parties in the Saudi Arabia . Many, if not all, of the parties listed are illegal, as Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy with a government dominated by the royal family. [1] According to The Economist's 2010 Democracy Index, the Saudi government was the seventh most authoritarian regime from among the 167 countries rated. [2]
The politics of Saudi Arabia takes place in the context of a unitary absolute monarchy, along traditional Islamist lines, where the King is both the head of state and government. Decisions are, to a large extent, made on the basis of consultation among the King, the Council of Ministers, Islamic scholars, tribal leaders and other traditional elites of the society. Saudi government is authoritarian, although some analysts have characterized the government of Mohammed bin Salman as totalitarian. The Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Under his rule, he has centralized policymaking, purged competing political elites, and dismantled pre-existing power-sharing dynamics.
The economy of Saudi Arabia is the second-largest in the Middle East and the seventeenth-largest in the world. The Saudi economy is highly reliant on its petroleum sector. Oil accounts on average in recent years for approximately 40% of Saudi GDP and 75% of fiscal revenue, with substantial fluctuations depending on oil prices each year.
The politics of Tunisia takes place within the framework of a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic, with a president serving as head of state, prime minister as head of government, a unicameral legislature and a court system influenced by French civil law. Between 1956 and 2011, Tunisia operated as a de facto one-party state, with politics dominated by the secular Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) under former presidents Habib Bourguiba and then Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. However, in 2011 a national uprising led to the ousting of Ben Ali and the dismantling of the RCD, paving the way for a multi-party democracy. October 2014 saw the first democratic parliamentary elections since the 2011 revolution, resulting in a win by the secularist Nidaa Tounes party with 85 seats in the 217-member assembly.
Absolute monarchy is a form of monarchy in which the sovereign is the sole source of political power, unconstrained by constitutions, legislatures or other checks on their authority.
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about 2,150,000 km2 (830,000 sq mi), making it the fifth-largest country in Asia and the largest in the Middle East. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. The capital and largest city is Riyadh; other major cities include Jeddah and the two holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina. With a population of almost 32.2 million, Saudi Arabia is the fourth most populous country in the Arab world.
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, commonly known as Ben Ali or Ezzine, was a Tunisian politician who served as the second president of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. In that year, during the Tunisian revolution, he was overthrown and fled to Saudi Arabia.
Human rights in Saudi Arabia are a topic of concern and controversy. Known for its executions of political protesters and opponents, the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. An absolute monarchy under the House of Saud, the government is consistently ranked among the "worst of the worst" in Freedom House's annual survey of political and civil rights and was in 2023 ranked as the world's most authoritarian regime.
There exist a number of perspectives on the relationship of Islam and democracy among Islamic political theorists, the general Muslim public, and Western authors.
The state of Democracy in Middle East and North Africa can be comparatively assessed according to various definitions of democracy. According to The Economist Group's Democracy Index, Israel was 2023 the only democratic country in the region, qualified as a "flawed democracy". According to the V-Dem Democracy indices, the Middle Eastern and North African countries with the highest scores in 2024 are Israel, Tunisia and Iraq.
The Arab states of the Persian Gulf or the Arab Gulf states refers to a group of Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf. There are seven member states of the Arab League in the region: Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Yemen is bound to the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, based on history and culture.
The Democracy Index published by the Economist Group is an index measuring the quality of democracy across the world. This quantitative and comparative assessment is centrally concerned with democratic rights and democratic institutions. The methodology for assessing democracy used in this democracy index is according to Economist Intelligence Unit which is part of the Economist Group, a UK-based private company, which publishes the weekly newspaper The Economist. The index is based on 60 indicators grouped into five categories, measuring pluralism, civil liberties, and political culture. In addition to a numeric score and a ranking, the index categorizes each country into one of four regime types: full democracies, flawed democracies, hybrid regimes, and authoritarian regimes. The first Democracy Index report was published in 2006. Reports were published every two years until 2010 and annually thereafter. The index includes 167 countries and territories, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states. Other democracy indices with similar assessments of the state of democracy include V-Dem Democracy indices or Bertelsmann Transformation Index.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, providing forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis, such as monthly country reports, five-year country economic forecasts, country risk service reports, and industry reports. The EIU provides country, industry, and management analysis worldwide and incorporates the former Business International Corporation, a UK company acquired by its parent company in 1986. The EIU has its main offices in four cities—London, New York, Hong Kong and Dubai.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Saudi Arabia:
The following are international rankings of Saudi Arabia.
The Arab Spring or the First Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in Tunisia in response to corruption and economic stagnation. From Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries: Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. Rulers were deposed or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies. Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām!.
The Yemeni Congregation for Reform, frequently called al-Islah, is a Yemeni Sunni Islamist movement established in 1990 by Abdullah ibn Husayn al-Ahmar, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, with Ali Saleh's blessing. The first article of Islah basic law defines it as "a popular political organization that seeks reform of all aspects of life on the basis of Islamic principles and teachings".
The Umma Islamic Party is a political party in Saudi Arabia that was formed on 10 February 2011 in response to the Arab Spring. Formed by a collective of opposition members including Islamists and intellectuals, the party is pro-reform and demands representation and an end to absolute monarchy in the country. The party is run by a ten-member coordination committee and requested official recognition from the government as an official party. On 18 February 2011, most of the party co-founders were arrested by Saudi authorities. All except for Sheikh Abd al-ʽAziz al-Wuhaibi were released later in 2011, subject to travel and teaching bans, after agreeing in writing not to carry out "anti-government activity".
The legal system of Saudi Arabia is based on Sharia, Islamic law derived from the Quran and the Sunnah of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The sources of Sharia also include Islamic scholarly consensus developed after Muhammad's death. Its interpretation by judges in Saudi Arabia is influenced by the medieval texts of the literalist Hanbali school of Fiqh. Uniquely in the Muslim world, Sharia has been adopted by Saudi Arabia in an uncodified form. This, and the lack of judicial precedent, has resulted in considerable uncertainty in the scope and content of the country's laws. The government therefore announced its intention to codify Sharia in 2010, and, in 2018, a sourcebook of legal principles and precedents was published by the Saudi government. Sharia has also been supplemented by regulations issued by royal decree covering modern issues such as intellectual property and corporate law. Nevertheless, Sharia remains the primary source of law, especially in areas such as criminal, family, commercial and contract law, and the Qur'an and the Sunnah are declared to be the country's constitution. In the areas of land and energy law the extensive proprietorial rights of the Saudi state constitute a significant feature.
The international reactions to the Arab Spring have been disparate, including calls for expanded liberties and civil rights in many authoritarian countries of the Middle East and North Africa in late 2010 and 2011.
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