Careful reformers?
Depends on how you look these changes. To me, they are nothing but hollow changes that are made to appease the west or keep their own hold on power. The Al-Saud family aids global Islamic militancy and is the reason why militancy and Islam are so intertwined. Here is an excerpt from an Interview with Bernard Lewis, a prominent Muslim historian of the Jewish faith.
The development of oil made a tremendous difference in every respect, one of which I think is important and has not been generally mentioned. The kind of Islam that is represented by Osama bin Laden, this radical, extreme kind of Islam, did originate in Arabia and--as far back as the 18th century--and it would have remained in Arabia, had it not been for oil.
Let me explain what I mean. Imagine that some such group as the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nation or one of th--one of those were suddenly to come into the possession of unlimited wealth and use that money to set up schools and colleges all over the world, promoting their particular version of Christianity. Then you get an idea of what has happened to Islam as a result of the enormous wealth that oil has brought to some people in Saudi Arabia. It has enabled them to set up schools and colleges all over the Muslim world, teaching their brand of Islam, this kind of fanatical, extremist version of Islam which has thus acquired a--a scope, an expanse--an expansion which it could never otherwise have had. Without oil money, this kind of Islam would have remained a fringe group in a marginal country.
If you can't address the root causes, its not worth doing much else.