Culture : In Saudi Arabia, Democracy Comes in Royal Trappings : Any commoner may petition his prince. But times change, and many say that is not enough.

Each afternoon after midday prayers, Prince Mohammed ibn Fahd ibn Abdulaziz glides into the palace reception room and receives his guests. They are seated silently on stiff chairs around the perimeter of the huge hall, a few middle-class businessmen, several dozen aging Bedouin tribesmen, and lately, plenty of down-on-their-luck Kuwaiti refugees. One by one, they file up to confer with the prince in the age-old democracy of the desert, the prince’s majlis , or assembly.

“May God give you a long life,” begins one man, handing the prince a title document to his property, on which he has built a store that municipal officials now contend was constructed without a permit. The man explains the problem in hushed Arabic, straining toward the prince with a look of distraction.

“I took this by order of the king. I have documents from the king that this is my land, but the municipality does not allow me to build on this land,” the man complains.

“Did you have permission from the municipality to build this store?” the prince inquires.

“No,” he admits.

“How could you build without permission from the municipality?”

“I come to you to solve this problem.”

Later, a Syrian truck driver complains he’s being unfairly assessed damages for running into a misplaced light pole. A 48-year-old man asks for special permission to waive the army’s 40-year-old enlistment ceiling. A weathered-looking man with panic in his eyes says he has been charged with a crime committed by another man with the same name. And an elderly tribesman asks for permission to read a poem. “Hope for God to help you and assist you to stand ready for the defense of this country,” he begins.

“Now, I think, we have no time for a poem,” the prince apologizes. “But write it, and we will have it later.”

Saudi Arabia is at once the most modernized nation of the Arab world and a country barely half a century removed from its nomadic tribal roots. The majlis --King Fahd himself holds them twice a week, local governors such as Prince Mohammed convene one every day--survives as a bridge between the ancient law of the desert and modern-day statehood. It is a vestige of tribal democracy in a country where the king and his sons and brothers still rule absolutely, like the sheiks and emirs all over the Persian Gulf.

But the current crisis in tiny Kuwait and a move toward more political pluralism all over the Arab world have raised questions about how long the wealthy kingdoms and emirates of the gulf can hold out against pressures for reform both inside and outside the region.

Even in Saudi Arabia, whose monarchy is one of the most stable and popularly supported governments in the Middle East, the sudden threat of an Iraqi invasion last month prompted a disturbing new set of questions for a number of Saudis.

How, said some, did one of the richest countries in the world come to find itself virtually defenseless against an Iraqi invasion, with a total troop strength of only 65,000, compared to Iraq’s 1-million-strong army? Why had Saudi Arabia been giving billions to Iraq to build Saddam Hussein’s war machine? Why did Saudi newspapers wait more than four days to print any news of the invasion of Kuwait?

How was it, some said, that in a nation with an unusually large number of doctorate-holders, many of them educated abroad, none of them were permitted to write a letter to the editor critical of the king? Why are women, subject to strict Islamic codes of behavior, not permitted to register in hotels without their husbands or leave the country without their husbands’ permission?

“I would like to ask the women of America,” said a prominent Jidda businessman, “how can you defend a country where women aren’t allowed to drive?”

These questions, raised by a wide variety of academics, business leaders, journalists and religious leaders in a series of interviews in Dhahran, Jidda and Riyadh, are remarkable because they go far beyond King Fahd’s well-publicized concerns over possible opposition from religious leaders to the presence of American troops on Saudi soil. Many Saudis, it seems, are raising fundamental questions about Saudi citizens’ voice in basic, day-to-day decision-making.

“Some people asked me, ‘If we are going to fight, are we going to fight for a country, or to retain these people (the ruling Saud family) in power?’ ” said a prominent Saudi intellectual with ties to the ruling establishment. “People here want to have a say in their own affairs. The government should realize that people here are not against them, but they want reform. For the Saudis to survive, they should give in to democratization.”

In interviews, business leaders complain about needless government bureaucracy and the awarding of lucrative government contracts to companies in which members of the royal family have an interest. Cabinet ministers hold their jobs for years, even decades, some complain, regardless of the performance of their ministries. Some say the majlis provides access to government officials but no opportunity for raising fundamental issues.

“Even the Cabinet, they bring to the Cabinet the foolish things: ‘Appoint this man, do this, do that,’ I am sorry to say. The important things--never,” said a former senior government official who is still frequently invited to dinners with the king. “I’m invited,” he said, “but I can’t consult. They don’t want to hear it.”

Some Western analysts say the most visible threat to the Saudi regime is no longer religious fundamentalists or Shiite Muslim extremists but the Saudi middle class, accustomed to the ruling family’s largess during the oil boom years. With the downturn in oil prices of the mid-1980s, the middle class is suddenly facing mounting demands to take a more active role in the economy and to accept jobs that previously were performed by foreign workers.

“The Saudi economy has always been a fountain,” said one Western analyst. “But recently, there has been resentment by some of those who feel it’s now being dammed up at the top and only trickling down below. The top princes know this. Through the majlis, it comes up to them. But they haven’t really done anything about it.”

But the voices of dissent in Saudi Arabia speak of reform, not revolution, of an opening up of the political process, not an overthrow of the monarchy. Indeed, the Saud family has reigned without interruption for nearly 60 years at a time when monarchies in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and non-Arab Iran were collapsing, when the rest of the Arab world was teetering under the socialist Nasserite and Baathist movements and, in the 1980s, when radical Islamic fundamentalism developed.

“The Saudi system was tested in the past 40 years from completely different angles, and yet it survived,” a Saudi official said. “And now we’re confronted for the first time in history where we’re being directly threatened by a much stronger country, and we will survive this one, too.”

Most Saudis, even the strongest proponents of more openness, reject the idea of imposing Western notions of democracy on Saudi Arabia. It is a country whose tribal roots are still deeply embedded despite its rush toward modernization and where a democratically elected Parliament, many say, might be expected to comprise a roomful of tribal chiefs.

“In the West, there is a certain sense of what is political participation, and that is through parliaments or political parties. In this part of the world, in Saudi Arabia, that’s not the way political participation is perceived,” said a Saudi prince who, like most others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.

“First of all, what is the definition of democracy? If the definition of democracy is the rule of the majority, we have here better democracy, we have rule of the predominant majority . . . and the majority’s not always right.”

A young Saudi journalist from a wealthy merchant family described a conversation he had with fellow students when he was studying in the United States. “We were talking about one of our history courses, and one of them said, ‘Who’s Alexander Haig?’ I couldn’t believe it,” he recalls. “I don’t want democracy if democracy means these are the kinds of people who are going to decide my future.”

Bakr Abdullah Bakr, rector of the prestigious King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran and part of the king’s network of informal advisers, said the level of public participation in Saudi Arabia is “much broader than a lot of people think.”

“I would like to turn the tables and ask you how many Americans participated in the sending of American troops here,” he said.

“I don’t want to sit down and evaluate the American system of government and pass judgment on it, but I think the system of government that exists in the U.S. could be criticized, and effectively, as a matter of fact. . . . Maybe we have more restrictions on certain kinds of human activities in Saudi Arabia, and that is a price. But maybe the benefits outweigh the price.”

The benefits, Saudi officials say, include a system that takes care of Saudi citizens from birth until death, providing them with free health care, free public schooling, a free university education and no-interest housing loans. The country has among the most modern highway, airport and telephone systems in the world--most built in the last 20 years.

“What makes a government effective or not is whether it responds to input. Is there any relation between the government and the people it governs? Does the government reflect the values of the people it governs?” a Saudi government official asked. “The answer is yes.”

Saudi officials say decisions are reached through an elaborate process of consultation and consensus: meetings and contacts with a broad array of intellectuals, business and religious leaders followed by more consultations within the senior members of the royal family that ultimately produce not just a majority decision, but a unanimous one.

Proposals for more formal consultations have been tossed about and ultimately rejected in recent years. An elaborate headquarters for an official shura, or advisory council, was constructed in Riyadh in 1982 but still stands vacant.

Part of the effectiveness of the royal family’s network of informal contacts, Saudi officials say, stems from the Saud dynasty’s founder, King Ibn Saud, who married into nearly all of Saudi Arabia’s leading tribal families. More than 30 of his sons, representing virtually every segment of Saudi society, survive.

King Fahd, one of Ibn Saud’s sons, has over the years made personal contact with thousands of his subjects, but the list of Saudis who are likely to be consulted in the decision-making process is limited. “I can give you a list of 50 people, or maybe 100 people, and say these are the people who run Saudi Arabia, who make all the decisions,” said one official. “He knows who to call.”

In the end, Saudi officials say, the process of democracy is constrained by the fact that the Koran, the holy book of Islam, is also Saudi Arabia’s constitution. There is no room here for democratically inspired legislation that goes contrary to the tenets of Islam.

“This country bases its legitimacy on its commitment to Islam and the implementation of sharia (Islamic law),” said a member of the royal family. “It’s very hard to bring this to people. In Saudi Arabia, I can tell you one simple fact: Anything that is not allowed in Islam would not happen. Anything that is not objected to in Islam can happen.”

“We feel that in our religion we have a solution for all problems,” he said. “Islam deals with these things very clearly. The fact that some people in the West don’t understand that is no excuse to say this is not working, or this is not the right way. We definitely know the West better than it knows us.”

Saudi officials say they probably have the support of more than 80% of the population in enforcing a strict Islamic code of conduct throughout the nation that is not open to debate. Even those Saudis who chafe hardest under the restrictions admit that the support is there.

At the same time, they complain, King Fahd has bent too easily to the demands of religious fundamentalists because they form the basis of his own regime: It was Ibn Saud’s union with the strict, almost Calvinistic-style Wahhabi sect of Islam that launched the modern Saudi monarchy.

“I think Fahd finds it difficult to stand up to these guys. The trouble is, the more these guys gain power, the more they want, and that’s the name of the game--power,” said a prominent Riyadh businessman.

“We see this American troop deployment as a golden opportunity for Americans to push hard for substantial reforms,” he added. “I would say we’re not ready for democracy, so forget that, but a kind of glasnost, more personal freedom, more due process, more decentralization of the decision-making machinery, an effective consultative body and less corruption. . . . Looking at the long term, something has to give in. Reforms have to take place in order to perpetuate stability.”