Saudi Elections

Dan Drezner has a post with links and excerpts on the recent elections in Saudi Arabia. The general thrust of Dan's sources is that the election was a "setback" for Saudi reforms and, in particuar, for the "reform-minded" Crown Prince Abdullah because Islamists seem to have one. I think the people Dan is linking to an excerpting from are playing the role of Abdullah's useful idiots here.

Dan notes that it's hardly surprising to see Islamists winning in light of the fact that it was "only one region, and a conservative one at that" and that "the decision to exclude women from the vote probably didn't help the moderates much." I also would note that the decision to prohibit political parties was a boon to the Islamists since they have, in the mosques, an institutional network of support that's legal even in the absence of political parties. To make a long story short, Abdullah did everything possible to ensure that Islamists would win the election. He also managed to ensure that no matter what the result, he wouldn't lose any real power. Upshot -- articles in the western press calling him "reform-minded" and that build the case for him not to engage in further democratization since, as we just saw, Abdullah's earnest efforts at reform are counterproductive since they just bring Islamists to power. It's everything an absolute monarch could dream of in an election. He keeps absolute power, gets credit for being a reformer, and gets off the hook in terms of pressure to reform. Meanwhile the American media will continue to assist the House of Saud in its campaign to get al-Jazeera of the air so that it can be 100 percent insulated from criticism in the Arab media, too. Abdullah is a very clever man.