How US and European 'democracy promotion' in Jordan ends up reinforcing authoritarianism

While Jordan is one of the main targets of US and European attempts at ‘democracy promotion’, it also demonstrates a remarkably stable authoritarian system. Existing literature on ‘democracy promotion’ however mostly fails to see a connection between authoritarian reinforcement and external efforts at moral intervention. The dominant approaches to the study of ‘democracy promotion’ widely suffer from a narrow focus on developing policy recommendations and/or from a lack of empirical research. This is often associated with a strong focus on the social background and normative convictions of Western ‘democracy promoters’, while the level of implementation on the ground is only inadequately explored. As findings from Jordan show, an investigation of what ‘democracy promoters’ in the country actually do when they promote democracy provides ample evidence for the conclusion that Jordanian authoritarianism is indeed so stable not despite, but in part precisely because of external attempts at moral intervention.