This research investigated recent Jordanian reforms arising from the ‘Arab Spring’. There were no large-scale protests, though political, social and economic reforms were externally-induced and internally-inspired. Jordan is atypical of reforms in Arab regimes and exemplifies characteristics that have shaped the trajectory of Arab regimes reforms. A different pattern emerged reflecting a gradual reform process that disguises the gap between rhetoric and actuality. Reforms were undertaken to pursue modernisation with a hybrid style of democratisation. This research used the testimony of Jordanian key informants to place in context the unique features of Jordanian society. A qualitative methodology, using semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and secondary sources was used to explain the reform process, as influenced by political party leaders, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), diplomats and senior government officials. The findings characterises the Jordanian reform process as the Liberal Jordanian Leadership Theory. Liberal Jordanian Leadership is a style of governance maintained by the Monarchy which balances the political and social measures necessary for long-term stability by combining internal and external factors influencing the contemporary reforms. These factors are the Arab Spring, the social media, MB, CSOs, Jordan’s political parties, US foreign policy, regional factors and the Monarchy. Consequently, the constitution and economic plans have adapted to the new challenges. The result is a break with historical tradition and more dynamic Jordanian political process. Political reform in Jordan was supported by the Regime since the beginning of the ‘Arab Spring’. In this, Jordan is unique, as it experienced a process of reforms and achievements reflecting its specific history, government system, economy and society.

This thesis examines the relationship between refugee-citizens and the state, through questioning the social citizenship rights that a fraction of disenfranchised Palestinianorigin Jordanians, living in East Amman, have been able to access since 1989. I analyse how state politics have rendered both refugee-citizens' access to socioeconomic rights and their integration as citizens, as Palestinian refugees and as vulnerable class more challenging. The patrimonial relationship between the state and its citizens has strengthened the class stratification and widened the disparities amongst people from different classes and statuses, often nurtured by state power. The political economy of rentierism has enabled the state to distribute its resources, in what may benefit its own interest in terms of shaping of national identity and serving its political and economic concerns. In Jordan, the neoliberalistion era since 1989 has dwelled on this politics, 'the politics of divisiveness', and widened further the disparities between citizens. Focusing on education and employment narratives of Palestinian-origin Jordanians of East Amman, this thesis analyses the ways social citizenship rights have been accessed. It considers the ways the state seeks to manage its hybrid peoples and how they have influenced the access to rights and usurped the essence of citizenship. This work demonstrates that such politics has made marginal subjects of Palestinian-origin Jordanians struggling for livelihoods within peripheral places in inner cities. While studying the challenges to access better economic opportunities, the politics of the state in managing its peoples have been unfolding, seeking to understand the process through which Palestinian refugees, holders of official Jordanian citizenship, have become disaffiliated from the broader society.

This thesis explores the development of relations between the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and Jordanian regime from 1945 to 2010, in which a distinction is made between the pre- and post-1989 eras that demarked a significant shift from partnership to crisis. Utilising an historical approach, the first era is defined by both parties’ mutual pragmatism, establishing a unified understanding of the Palestinian issue, and what the nature of politics in Jordan would be. However, the post-1989 era is analysed within the context of the regime’s shift in interests from internal to external issues, subsequently changing its pragmatic discourse towards the Brotherhood and Islamic movements. This study suggests that the shift in the regime’s focus, teamed with the implementation of policies such as the ‘one vote system’ and the peace treaty with Israel, left a space for radical voices to rise within the Brotherhood. To understand if the Brotherhood is compatible to Jordan’s parliamentarian system, the research identifies circles of division within the Brotherhood between Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb’s ideologies in the wake of regional conflict and poor regime-Islamist relations. This bifurcation is exacerbated in Jordan, as seen with the opposing fronts of the Jordanian Brotherhood’s Shoura Council: Hawks of Palestinian origin vs. Doves of Jordanian origin, claiming a new division: the ‘new’ Hawks, or, the ‘Salafist Brotherhood’. Supported by exclusive personal interviews with Brotherhood leaders, this thesis argues that allowing Islamist movements’ limited political participation in Jordan is essential for the country’s stability and religious modernity as since the 2007 boycott, increasing numbers of al-Bannaist Doves have converted into Qutbist Hawks. This has empowered the Hawks to demand fundamental reforms regarding the monarchy’s existence, initiating the Brotherhood’s final 2010 political boycott, and positioning the once-allied movement outside the political process and indefinitely removed from accountability.

This thesis examines the political career of Abdallah bin al-Husayn from 1908 until the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921. The central aim here is to explain how Abdallah was transformed from a Hijazi notable to a major force in the post-war politics of the Fertile Crescent and the founder of the Emirate of Transjordan. Abdallah's political career until 1921 is studied in the context of his family's evolving political ambitions and Anglo-Hashimite and Hashimite-Arab nationalist relations. Abdallah's early political career illuminates the changing character of Arab political leadership in the Arab East between 1914 and 1921. This thesis examines the shaping of Abdallah's political ambitions, the strategies Abdallah, his family and partisans adopted to realize those ambitions and the obstacles Abdallah faced in trying to establish his authority and the legitimacy of his rule, first, in Iraq and, later, in Transjordan. Examining these issues in the context of Anglo-Hashimite and Hashimite-Arab nationalist relations makes it possible to assess Abdallah's contribution to the emergence of new forms of Arab political leadership in the post-war Fertile Crescent, particularly in Transjordan and Iraq, and to the development of Arab nationalism. Chapters one to four analyze the shaping of Abdallah's political ambitions in the wider context of evolving Hashimite ambitions during World Var I. Chapters five to eight treat two closely related subjects: Abdallah's failure to realize his ambition to rule post-war Iraq and his role in the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan.

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This thesis answers the question: ‘what explains Jordan’s international alignments between 1955 and 1957?’ In so doing, the thesis addresses the broader question of why states in the Global South make alignments and explores the conditions under which these alignments are generated. The thesis advances beyond existing accounts in the historical and International Relations (IR) literature: especially the ‘omni-balancing school who argue that in Southern States, ruling regimes balance or bandwagon (like state actors in neo-realist theory) but directed against both internal and external threats. This thesis argues that such explanations explain Southern state behaviour by some lack or failure in comparison to the states of the global North. The thesis argues that omnibalancing imports neo-realist assumptions inside the state, endowing regimes with an autonomy they do not necessarily hold. The thesis adopts the theoretical framework of uneven and combined development to overcome these challenges in explaining Jordan’s alignments between 1955 and 1957. Using this case study, at a turning point in the international relations of the Middle East where Jordan could have taken either path, the thesis illuminates the potential utility of this theoretical framework for the region as a whole. The thesis argues that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries a ‘combined social formation’ emerged east of the Jordan river through the processes of Ottoman mimetic reform, land reform and state formation under the British mandate. The main characteristics of this social formation were a relatively egalitarian rural land-holding structure and a mechanism of combination with the global capitalist system through British subsidy to the former nomadic pastoralists in the armed forces, replacing formerly tributary relations. The thesis traces the social bases of the struggles that produced Jordan’s alignments between 1955 and 1957 to the emergence of this combined social formation and presents case studies of: the Jordanian responses to the Baghdad Pact, expulsion of British officers in the Jordanian armed forces, the Suez Crisis, abrogation of the Anglo- Jordanian treaty and acceptance of US aid at the time of the Eisenhower Doctrine. The thesis will be of interest in the fields of IR and Middle East studies: contributing to IR by critiquing existing approaches and demonstrating the utility of a new theoretical framework that can overcome the dichotomy of universality/specificity in the region.

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