5. The Domestic-International Nexus of Authoritarian Public Diplomacy: Saudi Arabia in Focus

Since regime survival often hinges on the credibility authoritarian incumbents enjoy at home and abroad, authoritarian public diplomacy must operate at the interface of the domestic and the international. While the latter is not unique to autocracies, the conditions under which authoritarian public diplomacy unfolds and the methods it employs clearly distinguish it from the approaches of liberal democracies. Taking Saudi Arabia as its case study, the chapter proposes that the Kingdom’s traditional sources of regime legitimacy have experienced serious disruption with the launching of the ‘Saudi Vision 2030,’ prompting significant shifts in its established public diplomacy strategies to ward off both external and internal threats to regime stability. In a nutshell, the country’s efforts to promote ‘the new Saudi Arabia’ aim to bolster the Vision externally by, for instance, attracting international investment alongside rallying support for these comprehensive social and economic changes among key segments of the domestic populace.