many decades, stemmed from their desire to protect their own private interests—even at the expense of the state.
Could reform efforts have taken a different course in Jordan? In a country where the king has broad powers over all branches of government, his expressed frustration over the struggling reform efforts begs the question of why the status quo remains intact. This decade-long process, initiated by the king, has been largely ignored by an ossified layer of elites seeking to protect their own interests. The clear discrepancy between the king’s directives to the seven prime ministers he had entrusted to form governments in his twelve years of power—and the actual record of reform completed by these respective governments—points to a structural problem that is all too often ignored.
Much research has been done on the creation of rentier and semi- rentier systems in the Arab world, whereby the state relies on rents from such nonproductive sources as oil or external assistance. Such rents, however, are also specifically utilized to provide privileges to the political elite in exchange for its loyalty. These groups, developed by many Arab systems over decades, support the existing order because it occupies a privileged position that would be compromised by merit-based systems, rather than ones based on clientelism and patronage.
In the case of Jordan, this group has become so entrenched, powerful, and ossified that it is now not only resisting such reform from below but—more dangerously—from above. In other words, these elites have become recalcitrant, self-appointed guardians of the state who believe they alone should decide how the country ought to evolve. They have no qualms about opposing the directives of the leaders or systems that created them in the first place if those leaders are seen as adopting policies that threaten their interests.
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