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Saudi Arabia likes to fly below the radar in its state-to-state diplomacy, and also in its transnational policies: the strong, direct role of the Saudi state and its elites in other societies and economies is often visible only to insiders.
This state of affairs is unfortunately mirrored in the literature about the kingdom: little is written about Saudi diplomacy, but the academy has produced next to nothing about its transnational linkages. Kingdom without Borders is therefore an important work: Madawi Al-Rasheed and her contributors set out systematically to analyse transnational influences emanating from the kingdom, focusing on both government-to-society and society-to-society linkages.
Saudi Arabia's global soft power, ideologically and economically, now surpasses that of any other Arab country, and this book illuminates many of its little-known facets. Al-Rasheed's substantial introduction describes the different types of transnational links the kingdom has created over the decades, and analyses their increasingly fragmented constituencies within the Saudi regime. In her account of the seemingly boundless ambition and "expansionism" of the regime, she may be overstating its aspirations and its capacity to take initiatives: in fact, Saudi leaders have often found themselves on the defensive, and at least until King Abdallah, Saudi elites have frequently - rightly or wrongly - felt cornered regionally and internationally. That said, many defensive moves on their part have resulted in important transnational interventions, which are usefully categorized. After relating the Saudi case to theoretical concepts of "transnationalism" and "cosmopolitanism", Al-Rasheed briefly alludes to the main driving forces of Saudi Arabia's transnationalism: massive wealth, sacred geography, and a quest for legitimacy.
Part I deals with transnational politics and opens with a chapter by Nelida Fuccaro discussing frontier formation on the eastern shores of the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Saudi state formation. She aptly analyses the interplay of new concepts of nationality and older primordial categories, accelerated and complicated by a British political agent in Bahrain who promoted the codification of citizenship and boundaries. The social account of the Najdi community in Bahrain as a kind of fifth column of...