The latter promised the Shia inclusion in a larger political project and thus they were seen as an antidote to sectarian discrimination against this minority. Members of the Shia Muslim minority in the Eastern Province played a special role in the labour movement and secular opposition groups.

They continued to be active clandestinely and gathered in various capitals in the region. After major strikes in 19 and a harsh crackdown, leftist activists moved underground and into exile. It outlines how migrant workers, teachers, students returning from abroad, and the emergence of a print culture filled with Arab nationalist and leftist ideas in the 1940s created the basis for widespread political mobilization in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. This article shows how ideas of Arab nationalism, socialism, and communism spread to the Arab Gulf states. The failure of the municipal elections contributed to the tense relationship between the Saudi centre and the peripheries, which culminated in the 1979 uprising in the Eastern Province. As such the municipal elections represent a failed attempt to co-opt local elites and to broaden the popular base of the centre in the periphery. Though these elections were limited in scope, marred by procedural flaws and ultimately failed on the institutional level, they nevertheless had a lasting impact on people in the Eastern Province―especially the Shia― and their subsequent political mobilisation outside state structures.

Grievances and political aspirations of the Saudi population were publicly voiced during these elections, which coincided with an emerging radical press and a labour movement at the ARAMCO oil company. The elections from 1954 to the early 1960s constituted important political arenas that have hitherto been overlooked in scholarship on Saudi Arabia. This article examines the introduction of municipal elections in Saudi Arabia during the reign of King Saʿud.

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