World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

· NOT_DEFINED date: FRI 23, 2.30-4.30 pm

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description:

Paper presenter: Stefanie Nanes (Assistant Professor-Hofstra University, USA), “Do Gender Quotas Help Women? A Quota for Women on Jordan’s Municipal Councils”
Over 100 countries throughout the world have passed some form of quota legislation to increase the representation of women in elected bodies. Typically, these quotas are justified as efforts to overcome the structural barriers that women face as candidate, hopefully producing more ‘women-friendly’ policies from these bodies. Current research shows the verdict is mixed, but generally positive (Dahlerup 2006).The Arab world has the world’s lowest percentage of women serving in elected bodies (Sabbagh 2007). To address this issue, Jordan instituted a quota reserving 20% of all municipal seats in the country for women in 2007. Municipal elections held that year delivered 226 women to the councils: 23 through competition and 203 through the quota. As one of the few Arab countries with such a quota, Jordan’s experiment allows us to re-examine standard questions about the impact and effectiveness of gender quotas in an understudied region. The initial data from Jordan indicates that the presence of women in larger numbers on the council has made it easier for female constituents to approach the municipality with their concerns, a significant change in Jordan’s conservative environment. Furthermore, it has compelled men to seek the advice of women if they require services from the council, further breaking down gender barriers. These findings offer fruitful opportunities for comparison with other municipal gender quotas, such as India’s, thus suggesting the possibility of building cross-regional theories about the effectiveness of such quotas (Kudvu 2003).This paper presents the earliest research available on Jordan’s municipal quota and is based primarily on in-depth personal interviews with elected male and female councillors as well as textual sources. The data in this paper will be supplemented by additional field work from October 2009 through February 2010 which will focus on whether women’s policy efforts differ from men’s and whether these women have loosened stereotypes about women’s ‘appropriate’ role in politics. As one of the few researchers pursuing this subject, I look forward to sharing these results at the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies. Drude Dahlerup, ed., 2006. Women, Quotas and Politics, London: Routledge. Kudvu, Neema. 2003. ‘Engineering Elections: The Experiences of Women in Panchayati Raj in Karnataka India.’ International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 16(3): 445-63.Sabbagh, Amal. 2007. ‘Overview of Women’s Political Representation in the Arab Region: Opportunities and Challenges’. From Arab Quota Report. Stockholm: International.

Paper presenter: Paolo Maggiolini (PhD Student-Catholic University of the Sacred Hearth Milano, Italy), “The Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan, political spaces and tribal culture”
The aim of this paper is to analyze the mandate state building course as a dynamic process which gave rise to a new socio-political space, modern and traditional at the same time: the Hashemite state of Transjordan (1923). Despite the fact that the Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan, with ‘Amir ‘Abdallah as ruler of the newborn state, has been considered as a product of London colonial strategic interests in the Near East ‘Sharifian Solution. The state-building process is not only a direct consequence of the interaction between Hashemite and British interests in the Near East, rather the result of the interaction and the effective overlap of these elements to the particular tribal political and social culture structure of Transjordan. This paper adopts an historical approach using archive documents and memories of some relevant Transjordanian people collected during the field work carried out in Jordan in 2008-2009. In order to describe the interaction between the Hashemite political space and the tribal culture of Transjordan the paper would focus its attention on two main subjects: the first one would be capital city of Amman and its role as Hashemite political front stage. The second one would be the Transjordanian Christian Arab minority and its role during the state building process. These two subjects help to describe the essence of the Hashemite political space. The paper is looking on the contextual creation of a new modern state in Transjordan and its capital city Amman. The new born capital and its gradual construction describe the course of the state building process, giving us the chance to explain how the new social-political space set up itself in the urban space. This happened during the thirties of XX century with Emir Abdullah I, again in the fifties with King Hussein and nowadays with King Abdullah II. This three different Amman describe the course of the Hashemite regime. Amman is not only the capital of the country, but moreover it is the exact representation of the Hashemite political system? a stage where the central power publicly display its nature and aim. Firstly, the paper describes how the British colonial policies worked with the Hashemite way of ruling and how the Muslim and Christians tribes of Transjordan reacted, raising the first political national movement, the National Pact (1929-1936). Secondly, the paper describes the particular administrative structure of the Hashemite Emirate of Transjordan which was based on a division between tribal administration and modern European-western administration. Thirdly, the paper analyzes the particular membership of the National Pact and its political performance. It is interesting to see how a small and relatively new intellectual elite, born during the last part of the Ottoman period, coupled with tribal leaders in order to participate in the state building process. Finally, the paper describes the achievements of the British-Hashemite and National Pact. One of the main result has been the arise of the Hashemite space placed in Amman and in the diwan ? court ? of Emir Abdullah I which cannot be described with a classical institutional approach. Amman became the hearth of the new state, the place at which the Transjordan population had to refer in order to achieve their interests.