3 - Supporting, Mobilising for and Ignoring Jordanian Elections

Summary

This chapter analyses US and European efforts at electoral support and observation via the concrete example of Jordan’s first post-‘Arab Spring’ parliamentary elections in 2013. It pays particular attention to the ways in which ‘democracy promoters’ and international electoral observers invest Jordanian elections with seeming democratic meaning and demonstrates that the latter is regularly at odds with the signification that such elections hold for most Jordanians. As such, the chapter suggests that international ‘democracy promoters’ working in Jordan fundamentally fail to take seriously authoritarian modes of governance in and of themselves. Instead of an example of gradual procedural progress, as suggested by international electoral observers and the Jordanian regime, the chapter argues that Jordanian elections primarily function as a means of authoritarian upgrading. The chapter also pays attention to the role of researchers-cum-electoral observers in the reproduction of narratives of Jordan as gradually ‘reforming’ and ‘liberalising’. As the very possibility of authoritarian stability is thus analytically ignored, the latter is effectively reinforced.