Abstract

Declan McCrohan

The Jordanian case represents the duality of the effectiveness of the political process as a result of the procedural elections. On one hand, the electoral process – despite its limitations – promises future possibilities. On the other hand, holding democratic processes under conditions in which the concept of citizenship has yet to mature finds certain sectors and leaderships resorting to primordial identities – on the expense of the joint citizenship - as part of the selection process during the elections. During the last decades, basic contradiction between democratic and anti-democratic characteristics has shaped the Jordanian public sphere. The uniqueness of the ”democratic incentives" and concomitant changes in various domains exist simultaneously with gradually intensifying anti-democratic regime responses that have the effect of immobilizing or freezing the political structure of the regime.