Jordan First? Internal Politics and the Approaching Iraq War

Transcript

RAMI G. KHOURI: I've been living in Jordan for the last 27 years or so and writing from there and following developments internally quite closely, and I think the situation in the country now is really at a moment of significant change. And I wanted to share with you my thoughts about possibly what kind of change is going on, what is actually happening and how we should interpret it.

I think the starting point is to understand what kind of political system Jordan really is, and I describe it as a constitutional tribal monarchy in transition. And if you take those elements, the constitutional tribal monarchy in transition, I think that explains is pretty accurately. It is constitutionally based. There is a system of laws. But it's also extremely tribal. The value system predominantly is a tribal value system. And it is a monarchy and the rule of the king, the authority of the king far overwhelms I think everything else. Clearly the king calls the shots. Despite the constitutional nature of the system, the king has amazing power and is by the constitution above the law. But it's also in transition. There are significant changes taking place.

Now, King Abdullah has been king for three years now, more or less, and there are things, there are patterns I think that we can start to pick out. The most important point that we can see is that there has been very fast and very significant changes in the economic sphere in Jordan over the last three years. Some of it started before the accession of King Abdullah but most of it really accelerated and moved forward very quickly under King Abdullah.

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