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When Conflicts Do Not Overspill: The Case of Jordan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2019

Petter Nesser Open the ORCID record for Petter Nesser [Opens in a new window]  and
Henrik Gråtrud
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Abstract

How can vulnerable states adjacent to countries embroiled in civil war avoid conflict contagion? Jordan has all the classic attributes highlighted in the literature as creating vulnerabilities susceptible to spillover. It adjoins Syria and Iraq where jihadists have operated freely. It has a weak economy, refugees pouring in from adjacent conflicts and is home to hundreds—if not thousands—of jihadists. Moreover, jihadists consider the Jordanian regime to be traitors—who conspire with the enemies of Islam—and they want to replace it with an Islamic state. However, as we show, very few jihadist attacks have happened in Jordan. We test three hypotheses for the limited spillover. Our analysis suggests a state policy that we dub “calibrated repression” is the most significant explanation. This means that Jordan protects against spillover by repressing jihadist attempts at infiltrating the kingdom and clamping down on local terrorist cells linked to the Islamic State while keeping other domestic jihadist elements in check through co-optation. The regime restrains the use of force against less acute threats and displays some leniency towards radicals when the situation allows. Our findings speak to the broader literature on spillover and offer insights into the understudied topic of mechanisms limiting spillover in high-risk environments.

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Article
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Perspectives on Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 492 - 506
Copyright
© American Political Science Association 2019

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.

*

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EFLNUM

They would like to thank colleagues at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment and the University of Oslo, their Jordanian interviewees, and the anonymous reviewers for excellent input and advice. The study was funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment.

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