Is the Jordanian Monarchy in Danger?

By Dr Sasser, Brandeis U

The Jordanian monarchy is going through one of its most difficult periods ever. The present crisis is certainly the most trying phase of King Abdullah’s reign, which began fourteen years ago upon the death of his father, King Hussein, in February 1999. But one should not rush with predictions of doom and gloom with respect to the Hashemites in Jordan. Too many have done so for decades past, only to be proven wrong time and again.

This Brief argues that the situation in Jordan, though tenuous, remains manageable, at least for the time being. The Arab Spring has emboldened the opposition by eroding the deterrent effect of the notorious “fear of government” (haybat al-sulta) in the Arab world in general and in Jordan in particular. For over two years, Jordan has experienced almost weekly demonstrations, led primarily by the Muslim Brethren but also by other less substantial opponents of the regime. They demand political reform and decry the pervasive corruption in the country, which they argue is the major cause for the depletion of the state’s resources and the steadily declining living standards of the masses. At the same time, while the demonstrations continuing for more than two years reflects the perseverance of the opposition and the depth of popular disaffection, it also indicates the staying power of the regime and the relative ineffectiveness of its fractious rivals.

Three constants have contributed to the extraordinary stability and longevity
of the Jordanian monarchy. First, Jordan is not a one-man show. Over the
years, a staunchly loyal and cohesive East Banker1 Jordanian political elite
has developed. Jordan is their political patrimony; they have no other, and
they will fight to defend it against all comers. In addition, the monarchy
as well as the East Banker elite are buttressed by a loyal and professional
security establishment, which is far more powerful than any coalition of potential domestic opponents. And finally, owing to the kingdom’s geopolitical centrality, the regime and the state have been constantly supported by an array of external allies, for whom the kingdom’s. destabilization would be a nightmare. Those regional and international powers have always been willing to assist in bailing out the regime in times of need.

The Arab monarchies, for the most part, are wealthy oil-producing states. Though Jordan is not one, the others who are—Saudi Arabia in particular—have a vested interest in the Hashemites’ survival. The fall of a neighboring monarchy would alarm them, especially in the midst of the revolutionary fervor inspired by the Arab Spring. Great powers, like Britain in the past and the United States today, have a similar interest in Jordanian stability, as does Israel across the river.

Consequently, of all the states in the Fertile Crescent established in the early 1920s, the Jordanian monarchy is the only regime that still remains in power.

The Monarchs’ Trade Union2
Monarchies in the Arab world have fared better than their republican
counterparts amidst the vicissitudes of the so-called Arab Spring. Some observers have argued that the strength of the monarchies lies in their wealth; while that is probably true for most of them, it is obviously not so in the case of Jordan. Others have noted that the authority of royal families, including Jordan’s, stems from their integral role in the nation-building and state formation processes of their respective countries.3

One of the more salient explanations for the stability of the monarchies—
especially in countries that have very strong tribal traditions, like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states—is the deep-rootedness of the dynastic principle itself. Hereditary succession has been an accepted, long-established practice for centuries in many parts of the Middle East, from the nomadic tribes to the Muslim caliphates and the Ottoman Sultanate.4
As for the Hashemites, their dynastic legitimacy is reinforced by their being regarded as descendants of the Prophet.

These, needless to say, are assets with regard to legitimacy; but they do not
guarantee immunity. After all, monarchies, including the Hashemites in Iraq,
were overthrown in rapid succession in the Middle East of the 1950s and 1960s.

But the military regimes that replaced them have generally been dismal failures. The ruling officers, lacking the ancestral authority of the monarchs, based their legitimacy on the promised attainment of power, prestige, and prosperity. They never delivered, and were subsequently faced in the Arab Spring with rebellions on the part of their disillusioned peoples.

The monarchs never promised their peoples messianic deliverance on a Nasserist or Ba’athi model. Rather, from Hussein in his early years to Abdullah at present, the Hashemites have offered nothing more ambitious than “securing a better life for all Jordanians (ta’min hayat afdal li-jami’ al-Urdunniyyin).” But by comparison with other regimes in the neighborhood they have actually delivered, as attested to daily by the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have been seeking refuge in the Jordanian haven. King Abdullah never misses an opportunity to remind his people of the blessings of Jordan’s stability—which they should be eager to preserve, he observes, if they hope to avoid the catastrophes suffered by their fellow Arabs. Heis “fully confident” that Jordanians are “enlightened enough to realize what stability and security” mean for “their future and the future of their children.”5

“It’s the Economy, Stupid”
That all being said, Jordan’s present difficulties should not be underestimated. Their origins are in the rumblings of economic discontent that began in Hussein’s time, long before the Arab Spring. As Abdullah observed, in an October 2011 interview in the Washington Post, “[t]
he Arab Spring didn’t start because of politics; it started because of economics—poverty and unemployment. . . . if people are going to get back on the streets, it is because of economic challenges, not political.”6

The complaints of corruption on the part of the regime’s opposition are undoubtedly justified. But the real problems regarding Jordan’s economy are structural. The economy has been in serious trouble since the late 1980s and was never particularly strong, with a population growth that was too rapid for a cash-strapped and resource barren economy. Recent price increases for food and fuel have made matters considerably worse for the average
Jordanian. The most aggressive riots in Jordan, not only since the advent of the Arab Spring but since the beginning of Abdullah’s reign, took place in mid-November 2012.

The government was pressed by the International Monetary Fund to make a much-delayed decision to slash subsidies for various oil derivatives, in exchange for aid for Jordan’s ailing economy.7

The cutback led to sharp increases in the prices of gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene, and cooking gas. But as the government explained, the lifting of
the subsidies was absolutely essential to keep the country running. To be able to pay salaries and pensions, to finance energy and food imports, and to maintain a reasonable level of social services, the authorities had no choice but to “replenish a depleted coffer.” But “the firm belief of most Jordanians [was] that mismanagement and corruption [were] mainly responsible for bankrupting the country,” and that therefore “looted money” should be recovered first, before the regime dug into “poor people’s pockets.”8

Spontaneous riots and demonstrations and clashes with the security forces rocked the country for four days in Amman and other towns, with repeated instances of violence, arson, and vandalism against state property and
banks. There were a number of fatalities on both sides, and dozens of police officers and protesters were injured before quiet was restored.9

Jordan’s economic woes have had serious political ramifications. For decades, regime stability rested on an unwritten social contract between the monarchy and the East Bankers, according to which the regime has enjoyed the unswerving loyalty of East Bankers in exchange for jobs and salaries and other forms of government largesse.

Since the “Black September” civil war of 1970 between the Jordanian armed forces and the PLO, there has been an institutionalized functional cleavage between original East Banker Jordanians and their less trusted compatriots of
Palestinian extraction: A process of Jordanization (ardanna) was initiated in the early 1970s whereby Palestinians were systematically removed from positions of influence in the government bureaucracy and the security establishment.

Ever since, East Bankers have held the bulk of government jobs and almost exclusively run the security services and the military, while Palestinians dominate the country’s private sector. Tensions between Palestinians and original Jordanians are high, as the former resent their exclusion from positions of political influence while the latter resent Palestinian affluence, which they increasingly feel has been gained unfairly at their expense.

As of the late 1980s, when Jordan sank into deep economic crisis, it has been urged by the IMF and the World Bank to engage in neo-liberal economic reforms—including the extensive privatization of state enterprises—designed to reduce government spending. These measures have mainly hurt the loyalist East Banker constituency—who, having lost government jobs, are forced into the swelling ranks of the unemployed and are generally in receipt of
ever-decreasing government support. At the same time, the privatization of state enterprises has tended to further enrich Palestinian entrepreneurs, generating a sense among East Bankers that the regime is not holding up its end of their historical bargain. In recent years, condemnation of the King has regularly been heard from within the inner sanctums of the East Banker elite.

Cracks in the Loyalist Edifice
An unprecedented crack has appeared in the edifice of the traditionally loyalist elite and among the rank and file of the regime’s tribal base. That King Abdullah is married to a Palestinian does not make matters any easier—and that his mother is English; that he spent much of his life growing up abroad, where he also received his education; that he speaks a less than flawless Arabic, with a trace of an accent; that he lacks that instinctive intimacy with the tribes that characterized his father; and that he is said to feel more comfortable in the company of foreigners have all contributed to his being viewed by many East Bankers as an outsider. Many tribesmen, who still insist on their loyalty to the monarchy, “flaunt their preference” for the king’s half-brother, Hamza (born in 1980), as an alternative
to Abdullah.104

The Arab Spring has given rise to a new group of locally based popular youth forces, located mainly in the provincial towns of the East Bank. Though they are referred to collectively as “Hirak” (or “movements”), they are really more an array of spontaneous groupings than an effectively organized countrywide network. It is the Muslim Brethren, with their mainly Palestinian base, that are the largest, best organized, and most consistent component of the opposition. Interestingly enough, in Jordan the opposition, Islamist and otherwise, for the most part has not called for the overthrow (iskat) of the
regime but only for reform (islah) leading to the formation of a truly constitutional monarchy, which would shift the center of power from the palace to a fully representative Parliament.

The Muslim Brethren in Jordan have traditionally exercised relative restraint in their relationship with the monarchy—reflecting very different rules of engagement vis-à-vis the regime than those that have characterized the Muslim Brethren in countries like Syria and Egypt.

In the heyday of revolutionary anti-monarchist Arabism, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Muslim Brethren and the Hashemites were actually allies against the secular, proSoviet radicals. The Brethren also stood by the regime in
its major domestic crises in 1957 against the Nasserists and in the 1970 civil war against the PLO. The Hashemites, as previously noted, even enjoy a measure of Islamist legitimacy as descendants of the Prophet; and despite all
of their differences the monarchy and the Brethren have no “blood account:” They have never engaged in violent conflict. And although the Brethren and the monarchy are definitely not on the same side of the fence these days,
they are not mortal enemies, either.

There have been exceptional moments, however, when protesters have seemingly crossed the line between reform and revolution. In September 2011, by just hissing, demonstrators left people guessing whether their collective “isss” was for “isss. . . lah” (reform) or “isss. . . kat” (overthrow).11 More definitively, in the November 2012 price-hike protests, the violence and vandalism were accompanied by angry chants explicitly calling for the
overthrow of the monarchy.12 These, however, were the exceptions that seemed to prove the rule.

Abdullah’s Reforms
As far as the opposition is concerned Abdullah’s reforms are just window dressing. On the surface they appear impressive: 42 amendments to the constitution,13 a new election law, and a commitment by the King to appoint
prime ministers only in consultation with the elected Parliament. In practice, however, these have meant very little. The constitutional amendments were rather minor and made no changes to the all-important section
dealing with the King’s prerogatives. According to the new election law, the number of seats in Parliament was increased from 120 to 150, of which the allotted women’s quota was increased from 12 to 15. Of those 150 seats, 27 (18 percent) were to be elected on the new basis of countrywide party lists, and the rest in accordance with the existing one-person-one-vote system whereby the candidates who received the most votes within the various constituencies were elected.

This was all a far cry from the demands of the opposition. They sought a far greater shift of authority from the monarchy to the Chamber of Deputies (the elected lower house of Parliament) and called for the selection of the prime minister not by royal appointment but by the Chamber, from the ranks of the majority party or coalition of parties in the Chamber. They also called for the direct election of the upper house, the Senate, which is now appointed by the King.

The Islamists, in particular, demanded a radically different election law—including, above all, the abolition of the one–person-one-vote system, which
was deliberately designed to hurt their chances at the polls. Allowing the voters to vote for only one of the candidates in multi-representative constituencies turned the elections into a much more clannish and tribal affair, at the expense of ideological parties like the Muslim Brethren. The Brethren could be expected to win far more seats if voters could vote for the number of representatives that each constituency sent to Parliament. If voters could vote for that number of candidates and not only for the
one candidate they most preferred, they would be able to vote both for the one who represented their particular clan or tribe and for a number of others who might reflect their ideological preferences.

In their quest for a more representative Parliament, the Brethren also demanded reform of the current gerrymandered seat distribution. The division of seats between districts now penalizes urban Palestinians, who
are underrepresented, at the expense of provincial and rural East Bankers, especially southerners, who are grossly over-represented.14 This favors the traditional stalwarts of the regime and discriminates against the Islamists’
political base. The Brethren also demand that half, not just 18 percent, of the seats be elected proportionately on the basis of countrywide lists, which would favor them as not only the most organized, but the only really countrywide, political party.5

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