[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