The new corporatism in Saudi Arabia: limits of formal politics

In the last three years, Saudi watchers have been torn between arguing that either a lot or nothing at all has changed about Saudi politics. In a sense, both are true: on the one hand, not only has the language of permitted political contestation changed, but a number of political institutions have been reshaped quite substantially, or even created from scratch, with certain negotiations taking place in a format that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.