Abstract
In the mid-1980s Jordan began steps toward economic restructuring and reform. In 1989 the state formally introduced political liberalization by holding the first parliamentary elections in over 20 years. These events, and analogous ones in the developing world, generate expectations for changes in the way classes and groups deal with the state. For this chapter, the focus is on change in state-business relations. There are generally three expectations regarding this relationship and its potential impact on political liberalization/democratization. First, state disengagement from its dominant economic role allows greater policy involvement by the private sector and its associations. Private sector elites then utilize this access to block further political liberalization that would endanger (i.e. greater access for labor) their capital positions.2 A second expectation suggests — whatever business’s political intentions — that the greater accountability won through increased private sector involvement can have “positive externalities” for other social groups.3 Accountability is, in other words, fungible. Third, state divestment leads to a closer and more amiable relationship between the state and the private sector. This new pact would lead to increased private sector influence over national economic policy, providing crucial support for the economic future of political liberalization.4
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Notes
For example, Margaret Pearson, China’s New Business Elite: The Political Consequences of Economic Reform (Berkeley, CA: California University Press, 1997).
See also David G. Berger, “Business Associations in Latin America: The Venezuelan Case,” Comparative Political Studies, 23, 1 (April 1990) 126–30.
The volume by Syliva Maxfield and Ben Ross Schneider, Business and the State in Developing Countries (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), contains case studies demonstrating patterns of positive externalities throughout the developing world.
Guiseppi DiPalma, To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990).
For an overview of rentier theory see Giacomo Luciani, “Allocative vs. Production States: a Theoretical Framework,” in Giacomo Luciani (ed.), The Arab State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990).
Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
Kiren Aziz Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).
See Abla Amawi, “The Consolidation of the Merchant Class in TransJordan during the Second World War,” in Eugene Rogan and Tariq Tell (eds), Village, Steppe, and State: The Social Origins of Modern Jordan (New York: British Academic Press, 1996).
Timothy J. Piro, “Privatisation in Jordan: the Political Economy of Public Sector Reform.” Paper delivered to the Middle East Studies Association Conference, October 1992.
Michael P. Mazur, Economic Growth and Development in Jordan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), p. 233.
John Waterbury, “Democracy without Democrats,” in Ghassan Salamé (ed.), Democracy without Democrats? The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (London: I. B. Tauris, 1994), p. 215.
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Moore, P.W. (2000). Business-State Relations after Liberalization in Jordan . In: Kleinberg, R.B., Clark, J.A. (eds) Economic Liberalization, Democratization and Civil Society in the Developing World. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62818-6_9
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