Becoming Jordan and Kuwait
This chapter offers a detailed historical analysis of the emergence of regime clientelism in Jordan and Kuwait. It illustrates how the end of the Cold War restructured the ways in which international hierarchy shifted debates about democratization at the domestic level. During the Cold War, the bipolar nature of the world order meant that if the United States were to lose its ally in Jordan, the Soviet Union would be able to step up on the back of a new regime. If the United States then decided to cut off economic and security ties to Jordan, Jordanians might find comfort in the fact that the Soviet Union could play a role in continuing to secure Jordan's interests. Thus, those who resisted anti-American presence in the Arab world could launch their concerns more effectively because of an alternate patron—the Soviet Union—in the global order.