Two key factors led to major changes affecting their political presence and impacted their participation in politics after World War II. The first was the development of the intelligentsia class, which can be divided into two groups: the intelligentsia per se and the literati. Most of the leaders of the intelligentsia were non-asil, coming from the lower middle class. The diffusion of education and scholarships had a significant impact on the formation of this group and its social and cultural variety. From the 1940s onwards, most members of the intelligentsia were educated in Egypt, London and Bahrain, had Arab nationalist sympathies and formed the conduit between the old and the new social orders in Kuwait. Their education and skills afforded them access to the sheikhs without the merchants’ help. In this regard, the Arab Nationalists, who were part of the intelligentsia, had an obvious impact on Kuwait's internal and external affairs in the 1940s and 1950s. The intelligentsia's development empowered them with real influence from 1956 onwards, as a major rival to the sheikhs.

Secondly, the groups that had been loyal to the ruling family in the previous period (i.e. the Bedouins, who composed the guard of the sheikhs, the ‘Ajam and the villagers) were rewarded with jobs and financial grants, leading to a strengthening of their allegiance to the sheikhs. They benefited from their long-standing loyalty to the ruling family through land acquisition and employment in government institutions, particularly after 1946. Concomitantly, because of the oil discovery in 1938, as discussed further in this chapter, the other components of the balancing powers (pearl divers and lower and middle class hadar) shifted away from supporting the merchant class. As discussed earlier, the pearl industry, in which the majority of Kuwaitis worked, began to collapse in the 1930s. The 1938-1939 Legislative Council had looked after the divers’ interests by cancelling the diving tax. The Council also drafted The Diver's Code but they were unable to enforce it because of the collapse of the Majlis movement in 1939. In 1940, the ruler issued the same draft, which came into force that year. The state institutions expanded because of the new-found oil wealth, generating massive employment within the developing public administration.