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"The most dangerous moment for a bad government," the nineteenth-century French statesman and historian Alexis de Tocqueville observed, "is usually when it begins to reform itself." Reform, after all, implies that traditional norms and institutions may have already been discredited, but that alternative structures have yet to be firmly established.

Tocquevilleʹs classic example was the regime of Louis XVI, whose attempts at reform quickly led to the French Revolution and to his own execution in 1793. Another example is Mikhail Gorbachevʹs effort to reform the Soviet Union in the 1980s. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had collapsed and Gorbachev was out of power. Today, something similar could very well happen to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (widely known as MbS), as he takes steps to modernise his country.

Saudi Arabia has long maintained (relative) internal stability by spreading its enormous oil wealth among its subjects and by imposing on Saudi society fundamentalist Islamic doctrines based on the austere Wahhabist tradition.

From desert sheikhs to members of the world's moneyed elite

After the Kingdomʹs founding in 1932, many Saudis enjoyed unprecedentedly high standards of living, with hundreds of members of the Saudi royal family suddenly transformed from desert sheikhs into enormously rich members of the international moneyed elite. Various sons of the regimeʹs founder, Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, succeeded each other as rulers of a kingdom that, following Arab tradition, bore the name of its founding and ruling dynasty (another is the current Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan).

Moving away from Wahhabist repression and towards emancipation: at the end of September 2017, King Salman lifted the ban on female drivers. As of June 2018, Saudi women will be able to drive themselves. Furthermore, women are to be granted access to three sports stadia in the coming year. Most recently, the Saudi leadership has decided to allow cinemas to operate in the Kingdom – for the first time in more than 35 years

In recent years, however, the Saudi regime has had to worry about its future. Plummeting oil prices followed the 2011-2012 Arab Spring, which brought down rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and seriously challenged the al-Assad familyʹs rule in Syria. MbS, for his part, has gotten the message: Since being named Crown Prince in June 2017, he has introduced sweeping reforms to the Saudi system.

Some of MbSʹs actions have garnered favourable international press coverage, not least his decrees allowing women to drive and curtailing the power of the religious police, who have long enforced public dress codes.

Two-edged reforms

These are positive steps toward emancipating the Kingdom from the more oppressive elements of Wahhabism. So, too, are the crown princeʹs statements calling for more tolerance of Christian, Jewish, and other non-Muslim communities, as well as his strengthening of ties with Israel.

Still, other new policies could prove problematic. MbSʹs plan for diversifying the Saudi economy to reduce its dependence on oil is still on the drawing board.