Two factors have been crucial in shoring up the Arab world’s authoritarian
monarchies: One is the vast size and the great political power of
the royal family; the other is the relative absence of taxation. In sharp
contrast, by the nineteenth century in Western Europe’s monarchies, only
the crowned head (or a close relative acting as regent) held major state
office, and primogeniture was the accepted rule of succession. This cut
off any prospect of the intrafamily rivalries, feuds, and power struggles
that have so often troubled the large ruling clans of the Middle East and
North Africa, where the king or perhaps his extended family can choose
the successor and where royals have a group interest in blocking the rise
of a freely elected parliament that chooses the prime minister