In short: liberal democracy requires liberal elites to be present and not vastly outnumbered. Without this condition fulfilled what you get after a revolution is what you had before despotism: tribalism and sectarianism, permanent civil war and the likes.
Sure, we should definitely just give up and accept that there just aren't enough liberal elites in Saudi Arabia, so they won't ever be able to handle democracy. /sarcasm
It's an entirely Western colonist idea that poor people in developing countries can't handle democracy and therefore have to accept dictatorships (which just happen to align with Western interests).
> It's an entirely Western colonist idea that poor people in developing countries can't handle democracy and therefore have to accept dictatorships (which just happen to align with Western interests).
Look, no one is able to "handle democracy" before being prepared for this. Isn't this obvious? Even the Tsar Peter the Great, who wanted to modernize Russia, went and for a couple of years studied technical skills in Holland (IIRC - I may be wrong on all the details here...) instead of simply saying "let's make our shipyards modern! now!".
I never said that the societies in the Middle East can't ever do democracy. I just said that if they tried right now the results wouldn't be pretty. Give them another two or three decades of successive education and liberalization and they will be able to build a modern, well-functioning democracy overnight!
https://geopoliticsmadesuper.com/2016/04/20/why-saudi-arabia...
In short: liberal democracy requires liberal elites to be present and not vastly outnumbered. Without this condition fulfilled what you get after a revolution is what you had before despotism: tribalism and sectarianism, permanent civil war and the likes.