Saudi Arabia faces profound challenges to its economy and political system as a result of the slump in oil prices, which will test the skill of the country’s ruling elite unless oil revenues recover in the next two years. Despite frequent official statements over the last four decades about the need to diversify the economy away from dependence on petroleum, Saudi Arabia’s economic outlook remains bound up with the price of oil. Gross domestic product per capita almost doubled in real terms between 1968 and 1978 thanks to the surge in oil prices during the 1970s (“World Development Indicators,” World Bank, 2015). But it halved during the early 1980s thanks to the combination of falling prices and a declining export market share, and then […]