In the post 9/11 period, the Saʿudi state faced mounting pressure to appropriate the rhetoric of reform and introduce a series of reformist measures and promises, although none posed a serious challenge to the rule of the Al Saʿud. This involved the opening up of the public sphere to quasi independent civil society associations, limited municipal elections and a relatively free press. Reform of the royal house, aimed at dealing with possible future problematic succession to the throne, was also part of a general trend. The first part of this chapter deals with state-initiated reforms whose objective was to modernise authoritarian rule without risking the loss of too much power to the constituency.

Equally, Saʿudi society showed unprecedented social mobilisation and activism, triggered by increasing globalisation, the proliferation of the discourse on democratisation, human and minority rights, and demands for political participation. Locally, the shock of terrorist violence brought Saʿudi intellectuals face to face with the shortcomings of their religious, political and economic conditions, which were labelled breeding-grounds for the violence that erupted in the twenty-first century. Academics, religious scholars, lawyers, writers, journalists, women and minorities all demanded new forms of governance to replace the traditional authoritarian practices of coercion, surveillance, exclusion and patronage. The second part of this chapter discusses the mobilisation of Saʿudi society, which centred on new demands and aspirations different from those promoted by the Islamist contestation of the 1990s.