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| Volume XI, Summer 2004, Number 2 |
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| EXCERPT: Return to Democratization or New Hybrid Regime?: The 2003 Elections in Jordan |
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| Curtis R. Ryan / Jillian Schwedler |
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Dr. Ryan is assistant professor of political science at Appalachian State Univeristy and Dr. Schwedler is assistant professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland.
In the summer of 2003, election fever
hit Jordan. Throughout the country,
citizens hotly debated the outcome of
the upcoming poll and hung photos of their favorite candidate in cars and shop windows. Enthusiasm crossed class, sectarian and regional lines, illustrating that Jordanians would indeed turn out to vote when motivated. More than 5.5 million votes were cast throughout the country, many at considerable personal cost to the voters. On August 18, typically noisy stores, restaurants and street corners fell silent as the results were announced. Shouts of joy and dancing in the streets followed moments later, as Jordan's Diana Karazon defeated Syria's Ruwaida Attieh to win the Beirut-based SuperStar contest, the Arab world's answer to American Idol.1
Just two months earlier, Jordanians also turned out -- in much smaller numbers -- to vote in their national parliamentary elections, the fourth contest held since political re-liberalization was launched in 1989. Although the government reported a 57-percent turnout -- a record high in recent years -- the general apathy toward that poll resulted from a steady deterioration of the political climate in Jordan over the past decade, particularly since the delay of the elections originally scheduled for November 2001 and in the climate of the second intifada in neighboring Israel/Palestine. Jordan had embarked on an ambitious process of political and economic liberalization in 1989, heralding the reforms as the most extensive democratization program in the region. While the post-1989 process allows for competitive elections, some level of pluralism and the emergence of civil society, opposition parties and groups have voiced considerable -- and well-founded -- concern regarding the state of liberalization in the kingdom. Especially since the signing of the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, the monarchy has become steadily less tolerant of the levels of pluralism, civil society and dissent that had flourished in the atmosphere of 1989-93.2
1 The number of votes cast amounts to approximately one vote per Jordanian, indicating that many voted repeatedly despite paying a fee for each phone call to vote.
2 Laurie A. Brand, "The Effects of the Peace Process on Political Liberalization in Jordan," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2, 1999, pp. 52-67; and Mehran Kamrava, "Frozen Political Liberalization in Jordan: The Consequences for Democracy," Democratization, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1998, pp. 138-157.
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