Analysis: “How Stable Is Jordan?”

In a Policy Briefing from Brookings Doha Center entitled “How Stable Is Jordan? King Abdullah’s Half-Hearted Reforms & the Challenge of the Arab Spring,” Shadi Hamid and Courtney Freer argue that like Bahrain, Egypt, and Tunisia, Jordan represents yet another case in which a “seemingly stable pro-Western regime—has received curiously little attention.” While King Abdullah has publicly vowed to institute reforms, Hamid and Freer contend that “recent steps have fallen short of opposition expectations, calling into question the trajectory of Jordan’s reform process.”

The authors also argue that while Jordan is stable, its stability may not be as deep or sustainable as some analysts have posited. Given increasingly loud calls for a constitutional monarchy coupled with a close U.S.-Jordan relationship, Hamid and Freer feel that the U.S. administration “has the opportunity to make the kind of push in Jordan that it cannot elsewhere.”