Is Jordan Immune to the Arab Spring Uprisings? - events2013 - Events - Middle East Centre. Speaker: Dr Tariq Tell Chair: Professor Fawaz Gerges, LSE Wednesday 23 January 2013, 18.30 - 20.00, CLM 7.02, Clement House, LSE Follow on Twitter: #LSEjordan Dr Tell will provide context to contemporary politics in Jordan by examining the history of the emergence and consolidation of the modern state in Jordan under Ottoman, British, and Hashemite rule. He will explore how the sources of Hashemite social power in Jordan were forged and why they have proven more durable than those fashioned under more auspicious circumstances elsewhere in the Arab east. The talk will focus on the historical political economy of Trans-Jordan and the evolution of a militarized monarchical social pact that exchanged loyalty for economic security and bound the peasants and pastoralists of the East Bank to the throne. Listen to the podcast| Speaker Dr Tariq Tell is a political economist currently teaching at the Centre for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut.
Location.
A Rejoinder to the Response of Lama Abu Odeh: On Jordan, the Hashemite Regime, and the Current Mobilizations. [This article was written as a rejoinder to Lama Abu Odeh's response to the author's interview on the history of state formation in Jordan and regime-society relations in the context of the Arab uprisings. Click here to read Lama Abu Odeh's response, and click here to read the original interview with Tariq Tell.] Lama Abu Odeh begins her response to my two-part interview published in Jadaliyya by congratulating me for offering readers an analysis of Jordan’s socio-political “tapestry,” and of the “shifting trajectory of the country’s political economy,” that is “unsparing in it comprehensiveness and unyielding in its attention to detail.”
However, she then proceeds to distort the interview into something it most definitely is not: an attempt to portray the East Bank as some kind of bucolic Merrie Trans-Jordan, a communal idyll disrupted by the intrusion of outsiders in the form of exploitative aghrab. Furthermore, in Abu Odeh’s version of historical change, cities seem to count most.
Jordan - smoke, mirrors and election laws. ‘Confusing? That’s the point! The Government has upgraded “Divide and Conquer” to “Confuse and Conquer”’. On June 18, after interminable and at times explosive discussions, Jordan’s Lower House finally agreed on a new electoral law. The response was a mix of boycotts, celebrations, and overwhelming confusion.
The law raised the number of seats in Parliament to 140 from 120. Disgruntled objections immediately followed the passage of the law. In Jordan, unlike in many other Parliamentary democracies, electoral districts are represented by multiple seats in Parliament, yet voters are only allowed one vote on the district level. The way it accomplishes this is by diluting the vote. Taking into account tribal affiliations and extended family loyalties, candidates from organised political parties are easily overwhelmed, and they consequently struggle to have sufficient representation in Parliament. The new electoral law does no such thing. Dallying with Reform in a Divided Jordan. [The following is the latest from the International Crisis Group (ICG) on Jordan.]
Popular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East (IX): Dallying with Reform in a Divided Jordan Middle East Report No. 11812 March 2012 Something is brewing in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It is not so much that protests have been spreading since 2011; the country has experienced these before and so far they remain relatively small. The season of Arab uprisings neither engulfed Jordan nor entirely passed it by. In the past, it was relatively easy for the monarchy to play on a fault line that has come to define the Jordanian polity, that separating East Bankers from Palestinian Jordanians.
Today, however, it has become much trickier for the regime to contain the protests by dividing the protesters. The regime has responded in time-honoured fashion. So far, this mix of tactics arguably has worked. There is always the temptation for the regime to wait and to postpone. External Rents, Durable Authoritarianism, and Institutional Adaptation in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Analysis :: Political risks to watch in Jordan. AMMAN: Jordan's King Abdullah faces growing challenges ranging from protests fuelled by economic hardship and demands for reform to resistance within his tribal power base over political liberalisation that could weaken its influence. Jordan's defining faultline between its "East Bank" and Palestinian citizens also poses a long-term threat.
Having seen the uprisings sweeping the Arab world, Abdullah has tried to implement long-promised political reform, despite opposition from a security apparatus and bloated bureaucracy whose salaries eat up most of the $9 billion budget. The most far-reaching has been a package of constitutional amendments proposed last August to empower parliament and pave the way for the prime minister to emerge from a parliamentary majority instead of being picked by the king. Palestinians dominate business but are sharply under-represented in politics. The extra spending has pushed up the projected 2011 budget deficit to a forecast 6.2 percent of GDP.
Jordan - curators... Jordan's Balancing Act. When anti-monarchical revolution swept the Middle East in the 1950s, Jordan was one of the few populous Arab states to keep its king. King ‘Abdallah II, son of Hussein, the sole Hashemite royal to ride out the republican wave, has all the credentials to perform a similar balancing act. Aged 49, he has been in charge for a dozen years, unlike his father, who was just 17 and only a few months into his reign when the Egyptian potentate abdicated in 1952. And the son has grown accustomed to weathering storms on the borders, whether the Palestinian intifada to the west or the US invasion of Iraq to the east.
Why is it, then, that the Jordanian monarchy seems so alarmed amidst the revolution sweeping the Middle East today? Promises, Promises So far, ‘Abdallah’s response to the regional uproar has been to retreat inward. Bakhit’s first steps in office suggest a counter-reformation more than a liberalization. Initially, though, the appointment of Bakhit seems to have worked in restoring calm. The Flaws of Jordan’s Largest Terrorism Trial.
The trial of 150 Jordanians on charges of terrorism is the largest of its kind in Jordan’s recent history and shows exactly what is wrong with the State Security Court. The acts in question stem from an April 15 brawl among government supporters, opponents, and police in Zarqa’, an impoverished town northeast of Amman. Only members of the opposition face prosecution. The trial, taking place inside a corridor of Muwaqqar 2, Jordan’s maximum security prison in the desert east of Amman, is seriously flawed. It singles out Islamists on charges of terrorism and casts doubts on the kingdom’s path towards genuine political reform, its commitment to the rule of law, and its stated desire to protect the rights of freedom of expression and assembly.
Salafis had held several protests earlier in the year, all peaceful, to press for the release of jailed Salafis and for the application of Islamic law. None of the detainees were government supporters or members of the security forces. عربي. Jordan: a profit and loss statement. Jordan can neither join a list of winners benefiting from the "Arab spring" nor join a list of losers. It has incurred both profits and losses, even as its final statement of account is still being processed.
Most probably, this statement will not be finalized until a clear picture has emerged of the changes and transitions taking place in various Arab countries, especially Syria. When we speak of Jordan, we mean the Jordanian regime per se. Until around April of this year, the regime was on shaky ground due to losing key allies in Egypt and Tunisia. Strong revolutionary winds seemed to be sweeping Amman and the capital cities of other moderate Arab states. An express train of change seemed to be moving at high speed from one capital to another, uprooting ostensibly "well-established" regimes.
Then the "express train" parked for a long time at its Libya station, where it faced ferocious resistance by the regime and its forces.