ABSTRACT
It has been argued, in both policy circles and academic venues, that Arab monarchies are more conducive to liberalization and democratization than their republican counterparts.1 Michael Herb, who conveys this view most cogently, posits that
not only have many Middle Eastern monarchies survived, but some have even opened parliaments, suggesting that these regimes, once thought irredeemably anachronistic, might redeem themselves by making better progress toward democracy than the bulk of the region’s ostensibly more politically advanced republics.2
