What Happened to Protests in Jordan

In the wake of the “Arab Spring,” Jordan witnessed nine consecutive weeks of Friday protests as well as numerous sit-ins calling for political and economic reforms. But as NATO’s intervention in Libya deepened, civil society in Bahrain was brutalized, protests in Syria expanded, and struggles over the limits of regime change in Egypt and Tunisia continued, a tense calm eventually prevailed in Jordan. There are no more Friday protests. In fact, there are almost no more manifestations of contentious politics of any sort.

Protests in Jordan were different than those that took place in Bahrain, Egypt, and Tunisia or those that are currently taking place in Syria and Yemen. All these states, including Jordan, are governed by authoritarian systems of rule that offer little in the way of accountability and civil liberties as well as increasingly neoliberal economic policies that erode the ability of the average citizen to meet their basic needs. However, the number of citizens that took to the streets in Jordan stood relatively small in comparison to the mass numbers seen in other countries. Setting Jordan even further apart was the nature of the protesters’ demands, which centered on changes in the regime-appointed government and a diverse set of political and economic reforms. In other words, these mobilizations were never about regime change.

The Jordanian regime responded to the protests in a variety of ways. First, it allowed the protests to take place, in some instances going so far as to have police officers disperse water and juice to demonstrators. Second, the regime implemented several measures designed to offer short-term economic relief for the rising cost of living. These included the elimination of fuel taxes, easing hiring requirements within the public sector, subsidizing the price of basic foods at the military and civilian cooperatives, and a JD20 (approximately $30) increase in the monthly salary and pension payments for both civilian and military public sector employees and retirees. Finally, the regime acquiesced to what was perhaps the central demand of the protesters by sacking the cabinet of then Prime Minister Samir al-Rifa’i and appointing Ma’rouf al-Bakhit to take his place. The outgoing cabinet had been appointed in an attempt to bolster the legitimacy of the existing political system in the wake of the November 2010 parliamentary elections, which were marked by the boycott of the leading opposition party—the Islamic Action Front (IAF)—and various allegations of voting fraud and electoral gerrymandering. None of these measures, however, offered anything structurally different than was the case prior to the  emergence of protests, neither politically nor economically.

The dismissal of the government in Jordan is part and parcel of the existing repertoire of governance in Jordan. Nevertheless, the formation of al-Bakhit’s cabinet proved a turning point for the protests in Jordan. As the regime met the central demand around which protesters had initially mobilized, the task of defining more specifically what exactly political and economic reform would look like splintered the diverse forces that had previously come together. Beyond calling for the downfall of the al-Rifa’i cabinet there was little consensus about what reforms to call for let alone what reforms were necessary. Some were satisfied with the change in government and what measures had been taken thus far. Others, though skeptical, stated that the al-Bakhit government should be given a chance. The Islamic Action Front, the dominant opposition group, called for the right of the political party with the most seats in parliament to select the next prime minister, rather than the current practice of appointing someone to the position by royal decree. Still, others called for constitutional changes, most notably a return to the constitution of 1952, the amendments to which are viewed by some as the foundation for the current system of authoritarian rule. Despite consensus on the fact that political and economic reforms were necessary, little agreement was made on the institutional mechanism through which to tackle them. The only theme unifying these disparate voices for reform was an anti-corruption sentiment, which itself was subject to competing definitions. By late March, the mobilizations that started in January fizzled out.

It would be problematic to view the trajectory of this brief spate of contentious politics as simply the function of the dilemmas of consensus building and collective action. Rather, one must also consider what appears to have been a multi-pronged strategy by the regime within the context of Jordan's structural constraints to mass-based cross-sectoral anti-regime mobilization (the latter of which have been discussed here). Beyond the short-term fixes that provided immediate alleviation of some economic pressures as well as the tried and true practice of sacrificing the prime minister at the alter of the regime, there was a series of steps taken to bolster the new government of Ma’rouf al-Bakhit. One such step was King Abdullah II’s “Letter of Designation” to al-Bakhit. The letter stated that forces whose interests would be threatened by change had stalled the reform process and there would be no tolerance for that this time around. There was also the announcement by al-Bakhit of a new public gathering law that would now only require forty-eight hours notice for demonstrations rather than permission from the governor. Finally, the regime also acquiescced to the demand for a national teacher’s union—notwithstanding the yet-to-be-defined nature of said union.

If the above measures represented minor and immediate attempts at bolstering the new government, there were other more publicized steps that soon followed. Most discussed was the establishment in March of a 52-member National Dialogue Committee (NDC) to secure a "consensus" around the reform process within the framework of national unity. The NDC has since become the lynchpin of the regime’s domestic and international campaigns to prove its alleged now-serious approach to reform. That the president of the royally-appointed Senate (i.e., the upper house of parliament), however, is also the official chair of the NDC, has made several opposition groups question its independence. The Islamic Action Front, for example, has refused to participate without assurances that constitutional reform would be included on the agenda and that the committee’s conclusions would be binding in one way or another. Other opposition groups have also taken issue with the membership of the NDC, accusing it of being inadequately representative, especially when it comes to women, who make up only four of the fifty-two members.

Despite these dynamics, the NDC has taken center stage in public discussions of reform in Jordan as its deliberations have coalesced around three sub-committees, each with its own specific topic: the definition of a “New Jordan”; laws regulating the formation and operation of political parties; and an election law. These issues, though consistently part of the formal opposition’s grievances, are grounded in debates and grievances that pre-date the emergence of regional uprisings and thus represent business as usual vis-à-vis the reform game. Any serious redistribution of power, independent methods for holding public figures accountable, and the removal of pre-existing red lines of political speech remain absent. What many observers—both local and international—seem to miss, or rather choose to ignore, is that this is not the first time a national committee has been established to undertake consultative deliberations on reform (e.g., the National Charter Committee). It is unlikely that the results of the NDC will differ much from their predecessors in their recommendations or their implementation, which raises questions about the utility of the NDC in bringing about fundamental change. Still though, the vast majority of opposition groups (formal and alternative) as well as civil society organizations have legitimated the NDC through either their participation or their statements of support.

If the regime in Jordan had temporarily lost control of the discourse on reform to demonstrators on the street, it has since reconsolidated its image as the vanguard of change and progress in the Kingdom, claiming to both plot the course of reform and manage its dangers. If anything, the NDC and other regime-sponsored measures represent the continuation of top-down political reform that offers controlled outlets for public frustration while maintaining the concentration of power in both the polity and the economy. Unlike Syria and Yemen, the “reform game” is still playing itself out in Jordan with little indication of a rejection of orthodox politics.

This regaining of the momentum by the regime should come as no surprise given that the starting point of the demonstrations was something quite different from those of Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. The level of polarization between the regime and the general Jordanian population was never close to the zero-sum game it reached elsewhere, and it was never allowed to reach that level. This is partially the result of the multi-pronged strategy of the regime in the wake of the regional outbreak of demonstrations as well as several complex historical factors specific to Jordan.

While the types of confrontations between protesters and the regime that characterized Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen were nowhere to be seen, the Jordanian regime’s strategy was not void of coercive measures. The nature of protesters’ demands and the numbers of those mobilized were manageable independent of violent dispersal, especially in light of extra-coercive strategies. However, three particular instances—beyond the general fact of continuing authoritarian rule—reminded the population of the potential/reality of violence and other forms of coercive action without radicalizing existing or would-be protests. The first took place during one of the weekly Friday protests (February 18^th), when plain-clothed assailants attacked demonstrators with sticks, stones, and makeshift whips. Despite the usual police and gendarmerie presence, not one of the assailants was apprehended during the attack. While the government publically denounced the assailants, discussion of an official inquiry and prosecution of those responsible eventually faded. The second instance was when the March 24-25^th sit-in at the Dakhiliyyah Roundabout was first attacked by “loyalist counter-protesters” and then violently dispersed by the gendarmerie. Here too, vigilante acts were denounced but little was done in the way of accountability against the plain-clothed assailants or the gendarmerie despite over one hundred reported injuries and one confirmed death. This incident, perhaps more than that of February 18^th, has echoed loud and clear throughout the Jordanian news media and blogosphere. It is one thing to hold weekly demonstrations with generic calls for reform, it is quite another to hold an indefinite sit-in, articulate specific demands, and do so in a space that offered a Tahrir Square-like feel with respect to its public visibility and potential numerical increase. Finally, there was the reintroduction of the requirement of all male citizens between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four to update their military service deferment status. While details of this particular policy will be discussed in a forthcoming article, suffice it to say that the regime demonstrated its will to engage in population control tactics that a majority of the affected citizens possibly found too costly as a price for participating in or supporting reform-oriented public agitation.

The combination of regime strategies implemented as a response to the protests transformed an already small and limited disruption in the just over twenty-year-old regime-dominated discourse of reform into another example of the benevolence and exceptionality of Jordan’s authoritarian system of rule. While the thrust of explicitly political cross-sectoral mobilizations have dissipated, regime-protester dynamics seem to be taking a more diffuse nature in the form of a combination of disparate public sector employee strikes, university campus violence, and confrontations between security personnel and either tribal or Islamist members. However, rather than planting the seeds of an inevitable “Jordanian Spring,” such tensions—for now at least—are better viewed as the traces of Jordan’s authoritarian system of rule, its neoliberal policies, and the always present tensions therein; independent of any sense of an inevitable radicalization and spread of regime-protesters dynamics.

[Click here for a Spanish translation of this article.]