Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan: Domestic Responses to External Challenges, 1988–2001

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Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan: Domestic Responses to External Challenges, 1988–2001. By Russell E. Lucas. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 185p. $65.00.

As the title suggests, this work seeks to explain the staying power of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. To his credit, Russell Lucas eschews essentialist arguments that rely on religion or culture to explain the staying power of Arab authoritarianism. He opts instead for an institutional approach, examining “regime manipulation of domestic political institutions … to quiet discontent caused by unpopular policies” (p. 1). Lucas argues that the regime has focused what he calls throughout the analysis “survival strategies” on three centers of political and civil society: political parties, the parliament, and the press. These strategies have enjoyed varying degrees of success, and the analysis concentrates on three factors—he does not prioritize them or give an indication of how much they explain—that have influenced the success or failure of the survival strategies: “the resourceful use of constitutional rules by the regime; the reinforcement of the opposition's disunity of collective action [sic] against the survival strategy and the regime's policies, and the attention to not imposing costs on sectors of the regime coalition that could fray its unity” (p. 2).