Reinforcing informal institutions through authoritarian elections: Insights from Jordan

Middle East Law and Governance

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 3-37

  Lust Okar, Ellen ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Elections; Electoral rules; Institutions; Political participation

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449252730     PISSN: 18763367     EISSN: 18763375     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/187633708X339444     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. President George W. Bush, speaking to the National Endowment for Democracy for its 20th anniversary on November 6, 2003, www.ned.org/events/ anniversary/20thAniv-Bush.html
2. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, "Autocracy by Democratic Rules: The Dynamics of Competitive Authoritarianism in the post-Cold War Era" (revised version of paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 28-31, 2002), 5, www.people.fas.harvard.edu/ -levitsky/researchpapers/SL-autocracy.pdf
3. Jennifer Gandhi and Adam Przeworski, "Dictatorial Institutions and the Survival of Dictators," (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 2001); Jennifer Gandhi and James Vreeland, "Political Institutions and Civil War: Unpacking Anocracy" (paper, University of California-Los Angeles, 2004)
4. Barbara Geddes, "Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of a Game Theoretic Argument" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, 1999
5. and Axel Hadenius and Jan Teorell, "Authoritarian Regimes, 1972-2003: Patterns of Stability and Change" (paper presented at the conference on Authoritarian Regimes: Conditions of Stability and Change, Istanbul, May 29-31, 2005)
6. Barbara Geddes, "Why Parties and Elections in Authoritarian Regimes?" (paper presented to the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 2005) and
7. Jason Brownlee, "Ruling Parties and Durable Authoritarianism," (working paper, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Stanford Institute on International Studies, 2004), http://iis-db.stanford.edu/ pubs/20761/brownlee.working-paper.pdf
8. See Lisa Blaydes, "Electoral Budget Cycles under Authoritarianism: Economic Opportunism in Mubarak's Egypt," (University of California-Los Angeles, n.d.), http://blaydes.bol.ucla.edu/Budget.pdf
9. Alberto Simpser, "The Manipulation of Mass Elections: Fraud, Expectations and Turnout" (mimeograph, Stanford University, 2003)
10. Beatriz Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
11. and Fabrice Lehoucq, "Electoral Fraud: Causes, Types and Consequences," Annual Review of Political Science, 2003:233-56
12. See Larry Diamond, "Thinking about Hybrid Regimes," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 23-35
13. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way. "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 51-65
14. Staffan Lindberg, "Opposition Parties and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Contemporary African Studies 24, no. 1 (2006)
15. and Andreas Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition (Boulder: Lynne Reinner, 2006)
16. Emily Beaulieu and Susan Hyde, "Cheating Incumbents, International Observers, and Election Boycotts: Evidence of the Second Image Reversed after the Cold War" (University of California-San Diego, 2006)
17. and Susan Hyde, "Can International Election Observers Deter Election Day Fraud? Evidence from a Natural Experiment" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, San Diego, 2006)
18. Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, at the Hearing of Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Subcommittee of the House of Appropriations Committee, "Congressional Statements in support of increasing US assistance to Jordan in FY 2003," http://www.jordanembassyus. org/new/aboutjordan/uj3.shtml#cs2
19. Most recently, Jordan received $50 million in 2001, $125 million in 2002, $844.5 million in 2003 (including $700 million in supplemental aid), $238.5 million in 2004, and $188 million in 2005. See the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Jordan, overview of the Cash Transfer Sector, http://www.usaidjordan.org/ sectors.cfm?inSector=23. Notably, the US provides more than three-quarters of Jordan's aid. See USAID, 2005 Congressional Budget Justification for Jordan, http://www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2005/ane/jo.html
20. Alan Richards and John Waterbury, A Political Economy of the Middle East (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996)
21. Importantly, a small class of business elites from Palestinian origin (primarily 1948 refugees) also tends to be more loyal to the monarchy
22. Sa'eda Kilani and Basem Sakijha, Wasta: The Declared Secret (Amman: Jordan Press Foundation, 2002), 126. The poll was conducted among 320 politically active elites, including doctors, journalists, lawyers, and politicians
23. Markus Loewe et al., The Impact of Favoritism on the Business Climate: A Study on Wasta in Jordan (Bonn: German Development Institute, 2006), 32, 34-35
24. Jordan Department of Statistics, Employment and Unemployment Survey (First Round): February 2006 (Amman, 2006), 64
25. Jordan Department of Statistics, Employment and Unemployment Survey Report 2005: Annual Report (Amman, 2006), 48-49
26. United Nations Development Programme, The Jordan Human Development Report, 2004 (New York: UNDP, 2004), 63, http://www.undp-jordan.org/jordan-hdr/ JHDR-2004.pdf
27. Andreas Schedler, "The Menu of Manipulation," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 36-50
28. Helmi Sari, "Tahlil Muhtawa al-Barnamij al-Intikhabiyya li-murashahi al-Intikhabat li'aam 1997 fil-Urdunn," inDirasat fi al-Intikhabat al-Niyabiyya al-Urdunniyya 1997, ed. Hani Hourani et al. (Amman: Sindbad Publishing House, 2002), 72, 74, 80
29. Hani Hourani, et al., Who's Who in the Jordanian Parliament: 2003-2007 (Amman: Sindbad Publishing, 2004), 22-24
30. Kilani and Sakijha, Wasta: The Declared Secret, 58
31. CSS, "Poll #31: Democracy in Jordan-2002" (Amman: Center for Strategic Studies, 2002)
32. Ellen Lust-Okar, "Elections under Authoritarianism: Preliminary Lessons from Jordan," Democratization, 13, no. 3 (June 2006): 456-471
33. CSS, "Poll #33: Democracy in Jordan, 2003" (Amman: Center for Strategic Studies, 2003)
34. Lust-Okar, "Elections under Authoritarianism."
35. Sanier Shehata, "Egyptian Parliamentary Campaigns: Campaigning with Mounir," in Ellen Lust-Okar and Saloua Zerhouni (Eds.), Political Participation in the Middle East and North Africa (Boulder: Lynne Reinner Publishers, forthcoming.)
36. Hani Hourani, et al., Who's Who in the Jordanian Parliament. 2003-2007 (Amman: Sindbad Publishing, 2004)
37. Hani Hourani et al., Who's Who in the Jordanian Parliament. 1997-2001 (Amman: Al-Urdunn Al-Jadid Research Center, 1998)
38. Hani Hourani, "Intikhabat 1993 al-Urdunniyya: Qira'a fi Khalfiyyatiha, Tarifiha, wa Nata'ijiha," Al-Urdunn Al-Jadid, 4, no. 2 (1994): 7-31
39. See Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958)
40. This point is also expressed in Loewe et al., The Impact of Favoritism on the Business Climate
41. Loewe et al., The Impact of Favoritism on the Business Climate, 44
42. CSS, "Poll #1: Democracy in Jordan-1993"
43. CSS, "Poll #13: Democracy in Jordan-1997"
44. and CSS, "Poll #33: Democracy in Jordan-2003."
45. CSS, "Poll #37: Democracy in Jordan-2004."
46. Ellen Lust-Okar, "Democracy in Jordan: Opportunities Lost," Paper presented at the United States Institute of Peace workshop, Beyond Liberalized Autocracy? New Options for Promoting Democracy in the Arab World, Washington, DC, July 18-19, 2005
47. CSS, Democracy in Jordan Polls-1993 and 1995-2004 ("Poll #1, 7, 8, 11, 15, 19, 23, 28, 31, 33, 37, and 40) and Jordan Center for Social Research, "Democratic Reform and Political Transformation in Jordan, Public Opinion Poll #3," June 25, 2006, available at http://jcsr-jordan.org/ registrationforms/632879349140528019.doc (last accessed 10/08/08.)
48. Note: Respondents holding neutral views of the parties' success have been omitted from the table
49. See Ellen Lust-Okar, "The Decline of Jordanian Political Parties: Myth or Reality?" International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no. 4 (2001): 545-70
50. Jordan Parliament Elections web site, http://www.electionsjo.com [in Arabic]
51. Author's field notes, Amman, July 2006
52. Haleh Esfandiari, "Is Iran Democratizing? Observations on Election Day," in Islam and Democracy in the Middle East, ed. Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, and Daniel Brumberg (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 124, 129
53. Michael Willis, "Morocco's Islamists and the Legislative Elections of 2002: The Strange Case of the Party that Did Not Want to Win," Mediterranean Politics 9, no. 1 (2004): 53-81
54. Ellen Lust-Okar and Amaney Jamal, "Rulers and Rules: Reassessing Electoral Laws and Political Liberalization in the Middle East," Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 3 (2002): 337-70
55. Calculations for disproportionality of 2003 seat distribution are based upon those of disproportionality in 1997 and only on the (excluding seats reserved for women). The population figures in 2003 were not available
56. Volker Perthes, ed., Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics of Change (Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder 2004)
57. "U.S. Democracy Promotion Policy in the Middle East: The Islamist Dilemma" (report prepared for the Congressional Research Service, June 15, 2006)
58. US Embassy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, "Economic Reforms: Jordan First," http://www.jordanembassyus.org/new/aboutjordan/er1.shtml
59. Dan Ephron, "Mad Hattar," New Republic Online, March, 28, 2005, http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050328&s=ephron032805
60. "President's FY 2006 International Affairs Budget Request" (prepared remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 16, 2005), http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/42343.htm
61. Sharp, "U.S. Democracy Promotion Policy in the Middle East"
62. European Commission, "A New Agenda for Europe and Jordan: Working Together to Strengthen Democracy and Human Rights, Promote Trade and Investment, and Increase Security in the Region" (Brussels: EC, 2005), http://ec.europa.eu/comm/external-relations/jordan/intro/230605.htm
63. Mohammed 'Awad al-Hazayma, "Idrak al-Nakhibin al-Urdunniyin li'l-'awamil allati tahaddud taswitihim," Majallat al-'Ulum al-Ijtima'i, 33, no. 3 (2005): 685-6
64. Voice of America News, "National Democratic Institute: A Global Initiative to Promote Women's Political Leadership," January 19, 2004, http://www.voanews.com/burmese/archive/2004-01/a-2004-01-19-4-1.cfm