Economic Crisis and Post-Rentier Democratization in the Arab World: The Case of Jordan

The article argues that in many Arab countries the political economy of regional petroleum wealth has served to inhibit democratization. In the particular case of Jordan, petrodollar foreign aid and workers' remittances long served as a critical aspect of political stability, supporting regime neo-patrimonialism and blunting pressures for greater participation. Equally, the decline of those revenues in the late 1980s spurred the eventual collapse of the foundations upon which the old economic and political order had been built. With this came the need to negotiate a new social contract, resulting in a far-reaching process of political liberalization and partial democratization after April 1989.