[joosters]

It's impossible to do that without favouring one side or another. You could say that 'the people' did take the lead when choosing the rulers of Saudi Arabia or any other country. It just so happens that some people had more money / weapons / power than the others. Is there a way to make things fairer? Well, you could try taking the money / weapons / power from different groups, but then you're making a choice and favouring certain groups to the detriment of others.

[a-priori]

That's not how it happened at all. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as a unified state, can be traced to the Treaty of Darin of 1915 between the United Kingdom and Abdul-Aziz Al Saud (aka 'Ibn Saud'). In the treaty, the UK agreed to protect the sovereignty of the House of Saud, and in return Ibn Saud agreed not to attack British protectorates in the Middle East and to support Britain against the Ottoman Empire.

This treaty (and the subsequent Treaty of Jeddah in 1927) legitimized their control over their territory and allowed Ibn Saud to go on to create the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

The Arab people had no part in the creation of the Saudi state. It was created by conquest combined with the support of foreign powers (the United Kingdom).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Darin

[baltcode]

It won't happen overnight and it won't happen in all countries in the short term.

However, Al-Saud family was heavily financed and armed by the British during 1900 onwards. People's allegiences were divided among the Sharif of Mecca Hussain bin Ali, the House of Rashid, the Ottomans, and the Al Saud-Wahhabi alliance. It is not hard to imagine that these forces would have evolved in different ways during industrialization, post-Colonial and Cold War times.

Besides, there have been external forces at play to further or curtail the direction Saudi affairs are going in during the times of King Saud and King Faisal respectively. So it is not as if the people have necessarily chosen the kingdom system of Saudi Arabia while the West has installed democracies.

While not democratic, I think Sharif Hussain of Macca, the Ottomans, and to a lesser extent King Faisal of the Al-Saud would have moved things towards a more representative system. King Faisal's efforts brought women's education to Saudi Arabia and added a little (if only a trickle) to scientific education in some countries in Africa and Asia through student financial aid programs.

So there are various contradictory forces at play locally and globally and nothing stays constant.

[gotchange]

Yeah Faisal was relatively "progressive" compared to his peers in the royal family but his successor Khaled was relatively weak and Juhayman Al-Otaibi[1] incident in 1979 freaked the hell out of House of Saud and forced them to run back into the arms of the Wahabis for the fear of losing legitimacy and rule to those then ascending Islamic radicals with their more "puritanical" rhetoric.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Mosque_seizure