Jordan’s Path to Stability: The Secrets of State Survival

During the 1950s and 1960s, many observers believed that the Arab monarchies would eventually collapse, while republican regimes, particularly those led by military officers, would thrive. The reality turned out to be quite the opposite and thus far none, of the Arab monarchy regimes have ceased to exist. The common explanation for the survival of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) oil monarchies is their huge oil and gas rental revenues. However, this does not apply to the two poorer non-oil Arab monarchies—Jordan and Morocco. What, then, is the secret to their survival? The aim of this paper is to examine this crucial question regarding the poorest Arab Monarchy—Jordan. The main argument is that although Jordan’s Hashemite regime is categorized as an ‘authoritarian regime’, from its outset in the early 1920s, it functioned as a ‘soft authoritarian regime’, which has enabled his its survival thus far.