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The Jordanian Youth Movement): Organisation, Strategies and Significance for Social and Political Change in Jordan

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The Jordanian Youth Movement): Organisation, Strategies and Significance for Social and Political Change in Jordan Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement): Organisation, Strategies and Significance for Social and Political Change in Jordan Submitted by Maria Blanco Palencia to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Politics In February 2017 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. 2 Abstract This study examines Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement), from now on the HSU, and aims to be a first scholarly attempt at mapping the organisation, strategy, challenges, and significance of this youth- led and youth-organised social movement. Taking an interpretive approach to organisational research, this thesis has used a wide range of primary and secondary data, benefited from extensive periods of participant observation as well as interviews with a variety of people including movement participants, in order to achieve a better understanding of the HSU. The main findings that result from this research show that the HSU is ideologically an umbrella to a variety of ideologies, from leftist or communists to Islamists, and that it chooses to organise informally and uninstitutionally in accordance with their political conviction of political parties and traditional opposition groups being a tool of social control for the regime. Politically, therefore, the movement represents a rupture with traditional politics in the country which are perceived by participants as part of a historically constructed system for exercising social control. Finally, the movement challenges traditional frames of ethnic and religious understandings of social and political subjectivities by mobilising a more inclusive discourse that tries to recover the debate on class struggle. Its political independence from other actors in the Jordanian political scene allows participant to raise more radical claims that seek regime removal as well as demands for reform, and these radical discourse within the movement greatly depend on the varying political 3 opportunity structure in time determined by the Jordanian regime‘s combination of conciliatory and repressive counter-strategies. An analysis of the strategic conversation between the regime and the HSU is key to exploring the social and political significance of movement strategies in bringing about change in the country as it determines the challenges to organisation encountered. However, relevant transformations in the culture of activism in Jordan are evident, and have the potential to transforming the future of political participation and organisation. 4 List of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... 3 List of Images ................................................................................................................................ 8 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... 11 Introduction Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī; the protagonists of the study ........................... 14 Aims and questions ................................................................................................................. 18 Academic rationale .................................................................................................................. 20 Thesis structure ....................................................................................................................... 51 Chapter 1 Political Process Theory (PPT) and its Applicability for the study of Al-Ḥirāk Al- Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement): Mobilizing Structure,Political Opportunity, and Framing Processes .............................................................................................................. 56 General introduction to Political Process Theory (PPT) .......................................................... 56 Conceptualisation of mobilizing structure, political opportunity, and framing processes ........ 58 Strengths and initial limits to the application of PPT in the Jordanian case ............................ 66 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 74 Chapter 2 Researching Mobilisation and Repression in the MENA......................................... 75 General methodological approach ........................................................................................... 76 Methods of data collection and analysis .................................................................................. 77 The challenge of researching mobilisation in the MENA ......................................................... 87 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 92 Chapter 3 Contextualising the Case: Jordan‘s Liberal Autocracy in Containing Social Mobilisation 94 1952-1989. Consolidating authority, silencing opposition and martial law .............................. 96 1989-2000s. Establishing Jordan as a ‗liberalised autocracy‘ ............................................... 109 2000-2011: Accelerated economic liberalisation and increased securitization policies ........ 114 2011 and the State‘s Instrumentalisation of Social Mobilisation ........................................... 124 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 134 Chapter 4 Mapping Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement): Grievances, Aims, Structure and Ideology ................................................................................ 136 Nature of the subject of inquiry .............................................................................................. 137 Demographic characteristics of movement activists.............................................................. 148 Mobilising structure and organisation of Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement) ............................................................................................................................. 156 5 Organisational challenges for Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement) ............................................................................................................................. 161 Main ideological characteristic of the movement ................................................................... 169 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 176 Chapter 5 Strategy in Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement) ...... 178 Radical-reformist variation in the movement‘s strategic articulation: applying the theory ..... 179 Strategy and a varying political opportunity structure ............................................................ 183 Strategy and mobilising structure .......................................................................................... 201 Strategy and framing processes ............................................................................................ 208 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 217 Chapter 6 The Jordanian State‘s Counter-strategies: Challenges for Collective Action ........ 219 The Jordanian regime and the Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement): an imbalanced strategic conversation ............................................................... 221 Regime counter-strategies: between conciliation and repression ......................................... 224 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 255 Chapter 7 Enduring Social, Political and Cultural Transformations: Framing Significance in Al- Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement) ................................................ 256 Rethinking Success in the Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement) ............................................................................................................................................... 257 Framing Social Significance in Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement) ............................................................................................................................. 261 Al-Ḥirāk Al-Shabābī Al-ʾUrdunī (the Jordanian Youth Movement) and Framing Political Significance ............................................................................................................................ 269 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 275 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................
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