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This paper looks at the disconnect between interviews with internet cafe users in Jordan and Egypt who tout the Internet as a life changing technology, and the overt persistance of authoritarianism. If the Internet aids mobilization, then why don't we see more of it in the Arab world, given the rapid diffusion of the technology. This paper looks at a series of potential answers. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this paper is to elucidate Jordanian foreign policy in the two US-led wars against Iraq, and in the process to shed light on foreign policy-making in non-democratic regimes in the Arab Middle East. The second image of international relations, which stipulates that domestic politics is most responsible for generating foreign policy, is borne out in the Jordanian case. Public opinion, economic pressures, and leadership at the top (especially that of the late King Hussein) played the most salient roles in shaping Jordanian foreign policy in the two conflicts. Thanks to a liberalized domestic political structure that existed in Jordan from 1989 to 1993, public opinion was able to strongly influence Jordanian foreign policy in the first Gulf war in 1990-91 in the direction of close relations with Iraq. After a fundamental reorientation in foreign policy toward peace with Israel and a strong alliance with the United States after the first Gulf war, Jordan became dependent on the US for trade and aid. This economic factor pushed Jordan to discreetly offer the US-led coalition the use of facilities in Jordan during the second Gulf war in 2003. As for monarchical leadership, King Hussein and his son, King Abdallah II, each imprinted Jordanian foreign policy with his own leadership style. After examining each of these key factors which influenced Jordanian foreign policy in the two Gulf wars, the paper goes on to look at alternative explanations and their shortcomings: namely, neo-realism, international law, and public sphere theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity has been blamed for poor public goods provision in a number of different contexts. It is associated with reduced spending on services, meager rates of tax collection, and poor policies. At the same time, recent research has indicated that only certain types of diversity are associated with poor services and that in some cases diversity can actually improve service provision. I argue in this paper that the relationship between the groups themselves is essential for understanding diversity's impact on public goods provision. When relations are poor, public goods provision suffers; but this is not true for diverse groups everywhere. Through focusing on the case study of Jordan where tribes have relations characterized by mutual respect, I show that tribal diversity does not lead to poor service provision. I also argue that tribal cohesion is important in understanding the impact of tribal diversity on public goods provision--when tribes are cohesive, increasing diversity can positively impact service provision as it introduces greater electoral competition amongst candidates for the municipal council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper presents a hybrid of autocracy and democracy developing in Middle Eastern monarchies (as in Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia). It develops a theoretical model, the Seesaw Model, which permits the study of the interaction of the ruler and the ruled in a hybrid of liberalized autocracy. In elaborating on my hybrid model I cover various measures used by these different monarchs to control participation, to curtail political parties (where they exist) and to limit the rise of nascent civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that current "transitions" theory fails to sufficiently problematize the occurrence of transition politics itself, and therefore is unable to explain the persistent absence of transitions (referred to here as "durable authoritarianism")and the persistence of many Middle Eastern regimes. A framework for explaining durable authoritarianism is provided that explicitly problematizes the onset of the strategic behavior that typifies transition politics. A hypothesis that links successful strategies of rural incorporation to authoritarian durability is proposed and tested on three primary cases. Jordan and Egypt represent authoritarian cases where rural incorporation was successful and transition politics have not occurred. The Algerian case, in which a transition did occur, corroborates the study’s hypothesis. The conclusion discusses the importance of rural politics to regime durability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their claims to the contrary, the desired territorial borders of Israel posited by Israeli nationalist movements have undergone significant revision over time. Most explanations of the redrawing of the map-image of the appropriate territorial borders of the Israeli nation-state have minimized the role of domestic politics as a variable that might account for these shifts. This paper argues, however, that the impact of domestic politics is crucial for understanding the acceptance of partition of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River by both the Israeli left, and increasingly, by the secular right. With regard to the former, the paper shows that the Labor movement's coming to terms with the 1949 armistice lines as the basis for the final borders of the state was the contingent result of inter-movement struggles rather than an automatic response to changing elite incentives or an automatic adaptation to external constraints. While this transformation took place between the early years of the state and the 1980s, the acceptance of partition on the right only began in the 1990s. The secular Israeli right had increasingly based its opposition to partition on security arguments. In the 1990s, however, the perception of the security threat shifted from national to personal security. As a consequence, a security-based argument became increasingly consistent with partition of the land rather than maintaining control of the Territories. This shift, and the attempt to maintain the political benefits that had accrued to the right as a result of their identification with a security-perspective, has contributed to the increasing willingness of their leaders to accept the principle of partition - and even, as in the case of the security barrier, to its practice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the Arab Barometer, we assess the protest participation between 2005-08 in Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, and Yemen. We find protests were common during the years preceding the Arab Spring and the riskier form of protesting (marching in a demonstration) was approximately 1.5 to 2 times as common as the less risky form of protest (signing a petition), despite the dangers of voicing dissent in authoritarian regimes. We propose grievance and opportunity explanations of why people protested. We find support for economic grievance arguments connecting protest to income and corruption, but not to macro-economic policies. We find support for political grievance arguments connecting protest to exclusion from power and desire for democracy. We also find support for the argument that people are most likely to protest when they do not fear government reprisals. None of the arguments, however, have significant explanatory power in more than two of the four countries, suggesting that even in seemingly similar authoritarian regimes, people protest for different reasons. The propensity to seek a single explanation should be resisted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines details why Islamists run for parliament and what happens when they get the position. He focuses on two cases, Jordan and Kuwait, where their parliamentary experience has been notable. The author discusses the cases that show reform movements that have strong motivations to enter parliaments even if governing is not an immediate goal.

This essay examines the efforts between Israel and Jordan in the wake of their 1994 peace treaty to promote peace, economic cooperation, and cross-cultural understanding through tourism. It argues these efforts largely failed as the resulting cross-border travel experiences defined the border as a marker of difference between two seemingly homogeneous territorial nation-states while opponents of peace successfully portrayed the resulting cross-border flows as a threats to their own society's economy and security. To suggest an alternative itinerary for peace through tourism, the essay examines the 1994 travelogue by Egyptian playwright Ali Salem describing his drive through Israel and the West Bank. Salem's experiences, such as meeting Egyptian Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israeli, recognize the existing, but overlooked, ways that Arab and Israeli societies live in states that possess overlapping cultures with interwoven histories and territorial attachments. The essay concludes that tourism based on such itineraries may contribute to the pluralization of politics and identities within each state needed to promote peaceful co-existence between Arabs and Israelis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale economic and military assistance has been the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy in Jordan since the late 1950s and in Egypt since the mid-1970s. While U.S. aid is intended to jointly support friendly regimes and produce some degree of development, most academic studies have deemed it an economic failure in both of these countries. Blaming geopolitical imperative, weak and overburdened bureaucracies, and U.S. commercial interests for aid's shortcomings, above all Middle East regional specialists have argued that external rents inherently produce disincentives for rulers to craft developmental institutions--which are key to sustainable growth but nevertheless can carry high political costs. However, a longstanding literature on the "developmental state" in the field of political economy suggests that U.S. aid to South Korea and Taiwan played an important role in the construction of those state institutions underpinning the so-called "East Asian economic miracle." Large-scale foreign aid, then, is not sufficient to determine institutional and developmental outcomes, particularly the presence or absence of a "rentier state." Rather, coalitional demands on the recipient regime and pre-rent institutional legacies determine whether foreign aid will be used to construct and sustain developmental institutions or, alternatively, the redistributive institutions of the rentier state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article identifies ways in which the Internet in Arab countries has the potential to create the conditions for free association as a step towards building a more democratic culture and civically engaged public. A brief historical background on Internet diffusion in the Arab world is presented. The data analyzed for the study was collected during 5 months of Internet cafe research from January to May 2004 in Jordan and Egypt. The role of Internet cafes in affecting political change in the face of authoritarian control is discussed.

During the course of 1999, a unique phenomenon emerged in the Arab Middle East, specifically in Jordan: The Campaign to Eliminate So-called Crimes of Honor. A group of young Jordanians formed this Campaign with the purpose, as the name suggests, of combating honor crimes in which women who are suspected of sexual deviance are killed by a male family member to "protect" the family’s honor. The activists of the Campaign gathered the signatures of Jordanian citizens in an attempt to repeal the law that grants reduced penalties to men convicted of committing honor crimes: Article 340 of the Jordanian Penal Code. They argued that Article 340 provides legal cover for the murder of innocent women and has no place in civilized society. As of November 1999, they had collected over 15,000 signatures and created a storm of public debate about previously taboo subjects: honor crimes and the status of women. Although the Jordanian government officially stated its support for the aims of the Campaign, the government eventually co-opted the Campaign. The legislature overwhelmingly voted to keep Article 340, with its exemption for murder in the name of ‘honor.’ Ultimately, the Campaign’s experience shows both the possibilities for civil society in the Arab world and the difficulty of raising an autonomous voice for democratic protest, particularly when the subject is women’s status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1979, a group of Israeli water experts secretly crossed a makeshift Yarmouk River bridge to Jordanian territory. Their Jordanian counterparts greeted them and discussions ensued concerning the difficult issue of sharing scarce water resources. These talks and subsequent cooperation continued, on and off, for the next fifteen years before Jordan and Israel signed a formal peace treaty in 1994. During the same period, Jordan publicly rejected all ties with Israel since that country had allegedly failed to address the Palestinian issue and had made no significant progress in the peace process. The water sharing arrangement that resulted was successful because both riparians were willing to link the mixed issues of water cooperation with improving secret diplomatic relations. This came about because the two had faced common threats, and finally because both were allies of the same superpower, the United States. How did these extraordinary negotiations take place and succeed, while other cooperative efforts failed? This book examines the difficulties of such cooperation between states in a protracted conflict and the complexities of sharing scarce water resources. Overall, the issue is: why do rivals cooperate and what institutions facilitate such cooperation? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]