Coordination failure and the politics of tribes: Jordanian elections under SNTV

Gender quotas in the Arab world ‐ 20 years on

“…The impact of quotas on women's substantive policy reform is further tempered in MENA through the instrumental use of gender quotas to serve narrow, often conservative, interests. In the case of Jordan, Warrick (2009, p. 131) finds that conservative groups such as tribes and Islamists “recognized in the women's quota an opportunity to serve their interest through new means.” Following Warrick, Bush and Gao (2017) also explore how quotas have been used to increase the presence of smaller tribes in local legislatures, which as one of the main political identities in Jordan, have been weakened by regime interference and strategic manipulation of electoral rules (Buttorff, 2015). Similarly, Sater (2007) maintains that in Morocco quotas solely serve the interests of elite women and not broader constituencies resulting in the tokenism of such officeholders.…”

Electoral Institutions and Identity Based Clientelism in Jordan

“…The system leads to a multiplication of candidates and coordination failure within social identity groups. Even where a single tribe dominates a given district, it is difficult to prevent “renegade” candidates from running, leading the tribe to break down along smaller internal fault lines, such as clans (Buttorff, 2015). These coordination failures extend to tribal elites, who face weakened control over their voter blocks and inabilities to make credible electoral coalitions with other tribal leaders.…”

Opposing Power

“…Many resort to rhetorical bluster to misrepresent their relative strength and claim a larger share of districts to compete in (Ong 2016). The single, nontransferable vote (SNTV) system also piles on more problems, to result in the most painful of coordination headaches (Cox 1997, 238-50;Batto and Kim 2012;Buttorff 2015). Over and above selecting candidates to contest in particular districts, party leaders also need to mobilize and instruct voters on how to vote so that all opposition candidates have enough vote share to win against the ruling incumbent party's candidates.…”

“…In some of these cases, larger opposition parties may need to persuade their supporters to vote strategically for other smaller opposition parties in the alliance so that these smaller parties can cross a minimum threshold to gain representation in parliament, such as in Turkey (Selçuk and Hekimci 2020). Similarly, in the latter system, opposition parties need to coordinate to select and nominate the appropriate number of candidates to run in each district and to persuade their followers to vote for the specific candidates (Buttorff 2015). But regardless of which system is used, both still require opposition parties and their leaders to make hard compromises to withdraw their own prospective candidates in favor of others and to work with each other to persuade the masses to vote strategically against the dominant incumbent.…”