The Saudi succession system isn't really strange, but that doesn't mean it's functional

by Doctor Science

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo thinks Saudi succession is a strange, strange system (via slacktivist). As a reader of Marshall Hodgson's The Venture of Islam, I don't find it strange at all: the Saudi system is based on the usual Islamic succession principles, which are intended to focus on fairness and competence:

1. Fathers should not play favorites with their sons.

2. The holder of an office should be the most competent of the field of candidates.

3. The dead should not rule the living.

Principle 1 means that, under Islamic law, there should be no primogeniture. All sons should inherit equally; daughters don't inherit as much, but they *do* inherit and all daughters have an equal share. Indeed, even illegitimate or slave children have rights -- fathers aren't allowed to say some children count and others do not.

The point, as I understand it, is to make King Lear's approach impossible. The idea is to avoid manipulation and backbiting within the family, and to make sure every child has respect and support that can't be taken away.

Principle 2 means there are no regencies or child-kings under Islamic law. Rulership is never awarded to someone for being "next in line", for birth order alone. Ideally, the ruler should be not just a healthy adult male, but the most able of the group of qualified men. Ability is supposed to count much more than arbitrary luck.

Principle 3 means that a king doesn't get to appoint his successor. He may make a suggestion, he may even designate a Crown Prince -- but (in theory) that can be overlooked after his death.

I stayed up too late last night reading a recent paper on Primogeniture and autocratic survival in European monarchies. The authors, Andrej Kokkonen and Anders Sundell (Univ. of Gothenburg, Sweden) looked at every European monarch from 1000-1800 CE and correlated "type of succession" with "whether monarch left office due to natural causes, or was helped". They found that the latter risk "was several times higher in European monarchies not practicing primogeniture" (inheritance by eldest son). European monarchies became more stable over the centuries, and the spread of primogeniture could explain most of that.

Kokkonen & Sundell theorize that primogeniture is stabilizing because it makes succession very clear: there is only one Crown Prince, chosen by no human agency. Since the Crown Prince is a generation younger than the current monarch, he can afford to be patient. This means that the powerful people around the King (Prince/Emperor/President for Life/Supreme Leader) know exactly who to suck up to, to keep their positions in the next reign: they don't have to pick sides or take chances, they can expect business as usual to continue from one reign to the next.

Kokkonen & Sundell don't talk about one big disadvantage of primogeniture, which is that there's no quality control: the Crown Prince may not be competent, and may not even be an adult. It seems to me that primogeniture works[1] over the long term only in states where the monarch doesn't have to be particularly competent.

One traditional Islamic model of succession was "agnatic election": the ruler was chosen by election or a kind of bandwagon-consensus, from a pool of related male candidates -- the (many) sons or brothers of the previous ruler, usually. The idea is to get a ruler who has the competence to be a forceful leader from the get-go.

The Saudis have been mixing agnatic election with agnatic seniority. All the Kings so far have been sons of Abdulaziz or Ibn Saud, the first King. They've succeeded in order of age, but it's not automatic: many sons have been skipped over because they didn't have the support (or maybe desire) to be King.

I'm not really sure of the point of brother-to-brother succession. It means there isn't a generational jump from one ruler to the next: brothers are closer in age, and so perhaps in general outlook, than the father-to-son succession usual in Europe. In cultures (like Saudi Arabia, and in Islamicate tradition) where rulers have many wives, half-brothers can cover a broad range of ages -- Abdulaziz Ibn Saud had children over the course of 40 years, so the sons that ruled after him effectively belonged to several generations.

Now, though, the House of Saud is in a pickle. There are rumors that the new King, 79-year-old Salman, is in poor health. This would undercut one of the points of flexible succession, which is to start out with competent rulers -- but it may be true, if the succession guidelines were set up before his health deteriorated.

More worrying is that the current Crown Prince Muqrin is 69 years old and is the last available son of Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. After him, the family has to go to the next generation, which includes hundreds of grandsons. The first grandson to make the cut is Muhammad bin Nayef, currently Deputy Crown Prince (i.e. second in line). After that, the Allegiance Council is supposed to add grandsons to the succession based on "merit", not seniority.

"Merit", eh? That could in no way end poorly ...*Rains of Castamere starts to play* ...

Succession, by Wasily Kandinsky. "They speak of old blood and young stones."

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[1.] By "it works" I mean "there's no civil war" -- avoiding civil war is the most important function of *any* system of succession.

Comments

[wj]

The purpose of any system of succession is, as you say, to avoid civil war over the subject. And this is just as true in democracies as in monarchies. Which is why we a) have regularly scheduled elections, and b) have laid out in detail who gets office next is the President dies (or gets removed from office).

The problem with the Saudi "system" is that is has worked well during the current generation . . . but looks like a problem when the time comes to get to the next one. There might not be a civil war, or even a visible power struggle, the first time. But the pool of nominally eligible candidates in the next generation is so large that it will be almost impossible to simply keep going with a "concensus among the eligible males" approach. Just as you reach the point, with a village, where it gets big enough that you can't govern by concensus, the Saudi royals are getting too numerous to function without some kind of at least semi-formal election system. And they have no tradition which would help them figure out how to set one of those up.

And that's before you figure in the issue of their family's alliance with the Wahabist sect. With a small number of people, the clerics have had plenty of time to vet the next in line and apply an (informal, but real) veto if necessary. With hundreds of eligible males, that becomes a lot harder to do subtly . . . or even at all. But dropping the Wahabist alliance would be an even bigger leap into the unknown than the next generation will be.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

It's not really that complicated to set up "some kind of at least semi-formal election system", it's getting the losers to accept the result as valid where a "tradition of democracy" helps.

At least until your highest court decides that those
"laid out in detail" rules for how to deal with contested elections is just too darn confusing, and sticks an oar in. For the present circumstances only. Not for use as precedent. If you have an election lasting more than 48 days, please consult your doctor.

[wj]

It's not that complicated from our point of view. We, after all, are accustomed to elections in everything from national office to grammer schools classes. We grow up surrounded by them, and it would only be a matter of thrashing out the details.

But the Saudis are looking at terra incognita here. It's not just getting the losers to accept the results, although that would be a factor. It's also things like getting the winner to not feel inclined to punish anyone who contested the election, or supported someone who did. Because the latter is at least as good a way to generate a civil war as the former.

Or consider deciding who gets to count the ballots and deteermine the results. It's simply not something that they have dealt with in the past.

[DCA]

Well, I'm only halfway through Hodgson, but there already seem to have been a lot of succession wars, and the Ottoman empire (judging from Caroline Finkel's history) was awash with them. I suspect that getting an occasional dunderhead was, in the long run, a better deal.

[DCA]

Oh, and the link to the paper (which sounds very interesting) seems not to work.

[Doctor Science]

As you all say, getting the losers to accept the results as valid is the truly crucial part of any election system. It's no coincidence that the American Civil War started after an election -- you might think of it as a succession crisis.

It occurs to me that one of the great stabilizing forces in large-scale democratic or parliamentary elections is the existence of political parties. Parties have lifetimes that stretch across multiple elections (succession), and give the powerful people who cause trouble for monarchical successions a stable power base.

The other thing that makes large-scale elections a stable succession system is that election-successions are very frequent, compared to monarchical ones. Because they're frequent, each one is less of a shocking shift, and troublesome oligarchs can develop strategies to deal with them and keep in business.

[Doctor Science]

DCA:

arrgh, thank you. Link is up now: http://www.qog.pol.gu.se/digitalAssets/1367/1367572_2012_3_kokkonen_sundell.pdf

[Nigel]

I suspect that getting an occasional dunderhead was, in the long run, a better deal.

Better than that, getting the occasional dunderhead tended to loosen the power of the crown and aided the crawl towards democracy - it's no accident that Magna Carta and De Montfort's 'parliament' happened under crappy/weak kings.

Also tended to mitigate against costly wars of (attempted) conquest, which gave everyone some respite.

[wj]

Just a semi-related note. A lot of our views of how things work in Saudi Arabia are predicated on ignorance.

There is, for example, this story in today's Washington Post: Make no Mistake: Michelle Obama just made a bold political satement. Except that she didn't even do anything particularly noteworthy by going bare-headed . . . from a Saudi perspective.

We think of women in Saudi Arabia as having to go totally covered in public, except maybe for the eyes. Which is true, but only for Saudi women. Non-Saudi Muslim women are required to cover their hair, but routinely leave their faces bare. And non-Muslim women, while they wear long sleeves and long skirts, routinely go bare headed just as Mrs Obama did. It not only is not a bold statement, it is standard practice. (And I speak from experience, having seen it in Rihadh with my own eyes.)

In short, Saudi Arabia is wildly unlike anything we have experience here. But it is also seriously unlike what most of us think we know about it. Which makes understanding doubly difficuly.

[chris y]

The purpose of any system of succession is, as you say, to avoid civil war over the subject

In that case, I have to say that the Islamic principles listed above have a poor track record. No sooner was the Prophet dead than the Muslims split into two factions over the succession, which remain unreconciled to this day. And more or less all the great Muslim states, such as the Ottoman and Mughal empires, have featured civil war and fratricide as a regular part of their successions. I suppose it's some sort of achievement that Saudi Arabia hasn't yet followed their example.

[bobbyp]

I suppose it's some sort of achievement that Saudi Arabia hasn't yet followed their example.

True, but the succession has not always been a bed of roses (see King Saud to Faisal transition, for example). Another succession was instigated by assassination.

It is a relatively new country (founded 1932). Give them time.

[liberal japonicus]

Looking at the TPM piece, I think that the title and the content are a little mismatched. While the title talks about the 'strangeness' of the system, I think what the article tries to get at is that the system of succession is one that hasn't really kept up with changes in mortality/life span and health care.

It is interesting that Western monarchies have "adapted" by having fewer children. This serves to concentrate the sort of activities, the pomp of royalty so that it is either inobtrusive (cf royal families of European nations) or make it into a source of touristic revenue (cf the UK) (how Japan fits into this is rather interesting, and I'll have a shot at a post about that later)

Obviously, royalty mirrors the tendency of developed societies to be composed of families with fewer children, with resources concentrated on that smaller number. I imagine that this is the result of a large number of pressures. What seems to be the case with the Saudi Arabia is the presence of perhaps unparalleled wealth in the form of oil has allowed them to basically ignore the these pressures and what I think Marshall is suggesting is that there is going to be a reckoning.

[Doctor Science]

lj:

At least as important, I think, is that women of the House of Saud can (now) get some education, but they cannot use it. The only direction for their ambitions is to have powerful sons. Ideally, like Hassa bint Ahmed Al Sudairi, they can have multiple sons, and train them up to work together.

[Doctor Science]

As several of you have pointed out, many Muslim states have had a history of violent successions, often featuring fratricide. My understanding is that these struggles rarely became true civil wars: they didn't break the state apart.

The Ottomans, for instance, more often than not had violent conflict between half-brothers over the succession -- but the state itself kept going for 600 years. I was just reading a paper about succession among the Mamluks, and it was even *more* chaotic and violent -- yet the state endured.

AFAIK, in almost all cases Muslim successional violence was kept as close to the Palace as possible -- it didn't involve widespread fighting or collateral damage to the general population.

[liberal japonicus]

Doc, that's a good point, and I can't think of an analogue with any other royal families. Still thinking how that interacts with what I think is the inability to cope with modern day advances in medicine, but as a first pass, because they don't want to give women a place in succession, they are unable to make any other changes, which sets a lot of patterns in concrete.

[Scott P.]

A couple more systems worth mentioning:

The Roman Empire had a quasi-dynastic principle, but with the caveat that any man with sufficient support in the army and Senate could seize power and kill the current leader. Messy, but a way around the 'imbecile king' problem.

The Ottomans followed Islamic tradition in that there was not always a given successor, but with the twist that whoever _did_ get the job went about killing all his brothers and uncles to ensure there would be no question as to his authority.

[Countme-In]

To put a finer point on wj's experience in Riyahd, I'd like to agree with Ted Cruz's praise of Michelle Obama, minus Cruz's cynical, ignorant, bullsh*t, conservative agenda, for not wearing the headscarf the other day.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-michelle-obama-headscarf

I add my fulsome congratulations to Michelle Obama (she's role model for Saudi women and American women who work under Hobby Lobby Sharia imposed by conservative American sh*ts) for availing herself of whatever birth control methods her government health plan provides, including the morning-after pill, if in fact she does avail herself, and further tell the armed Mullah Cruz to shut his subhuman pig gob.

[dr ngo]

Note in passing: The principle of "most qualified among a group of heirs" is not just Islamic, but also existed among Buddhist kingships in traditional Southeast Asia - Siam/Thailand and Myanmar/Burma - as well, Europeans were often puzzled about it, if not indignant. They would, by *their* principles of primogeniture, decide that one particular candidate was the "legitimate heir" and that all his rivals were therefore "usurpers." (Interesting case - the prince who became King Mongkut [of "King and I" fame, but actually a far more serious and competent ruler] had a good claim to the throne when he was young, but rather than contest his older half-brother, he joined a monastery and stayed there for twenty years, reforming the Buddhist order and learning a lot about the world and the West which stood him in good stead when he eventually became king.)

But to the locals, this was normal, presumably for exactly the reasons suggested above - the ruler actually ruled, not simply reigned, and you therefore wanted someone who was in effect judged able by his peers. The study cited in the OP suggests that primogeniture helped explain stability, but I'd turn the relationship the other way around. You can only afford strict succession rules if you already have a state developed and stable enough to go on running without a real ruler. At that stage, you can afford to have (literal) idiots, e.g., in late Hapsburg Spain.

China, Vietnam, and Japan were more European-style in insisting on primogeniture, but in the first of these you also have as a cultural precept the right of rebellion (the "mandate of heaven" is seen in successful revolts against the throne) and in the last there's been a token monarch for centuries, since the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate at least.

The only thing "strange" is our assumption that there's just one right way to run a monarchy.