Since 1996, the Sultanate of Oman has had a bicameral parliament, the Council of Oman, which consists of an Upper House, the State Council, which is entirely appointed by the Sultan, and a Lower House, the Consultative Council, which is elected by universal suffrage every four years. The paper considers the parliament?s role in a country governed since 1970 by a monarch (Sultan Qaboos Al Said) who has succeeded in reconciling unprecedented economic and social development with the most elaborate personalization of power in the entire Arabian Peninsula.