Look at this Western standard reference to change in Qatar: they treat the abdication of an absloute ruler in favor of his unelected son as evidnece of reform

"Other reasons may have prompted Hamad to resign. Now 61, he has long championed reform elsewhere in the Arab world, to the point of generously funding revolutions in Libya and Syria. But he stood out ever less comfortably for failing to practise at home what he preached abroad."  So according to this logic, the abdication by a head of a dynasty to his son is reform?