Electoral reform in authoritarian regimes: veto player uncertainty in Jordan

What explains the move of Jordan to a proportional representation (PR) electoral system in 2016 but not in 2012? This is puzzling given the high public pressure for electoral reform in 2011–12 in the wake of the Arab uprisings compared to 2016. Applying veto player theory to Jordan, this article argues that the non-adoption of PR in 2012 and the subsequent move to PR in 2016 lies mainly in the regime’s perceived uncertainty associated with the results of elections. In 2012, it was feared that elections under a PR system would replicate the 1989 opposition-dominated parliament. The regime, therefore, opted for a mixed system by complementing the single non-transferable vote system with a national party list. To justify such a system, compared to the demanded PR system, the regime resorted to rhetoric directed at both elite and mass levels. In 2016, however, the uncertainty associated with adopting a PR system ceased to exist. The fragmentation of Jordan’s strongest opposition group, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, reduced uncertainty about their electoral strength. At the same time, malapportionment reduced uncertainty regarding the outcomes of the elections. The article shows how electoral reform in authoritarian regimes, as in some democracies, can be explained through the perceived uncertainty of elections’ outcomes.


Introduction
Public pressure is one of the main drivers of electoral reform (Shugart and Wattenberg 2001, p. 572). From this perspective, the Jordanian case represents a dilemma. In Jordan, the regime did not respond to the long-awaited electoral reform by adopting a proportional representation (PR) electoral system in the wake of the Arab uprisings in 2011-12 when there was high public pressure. Instead, the regime moved to a mixed electoral system in 2012, dominated by the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) system, and only adopted a PR system when there was little pressure for reform in 2016. This comes in contrast to Jordan's previous experiences with electoral reform which all happened during moments of public pressure (Esber and Hussainy 2016, p. 8).
Because electoral reform is "a breach of normality that is based on a balance of interests and conventions" (Rahat 2011, p. 538), both the 2012 and 2016 electoral reforms are puzzling. In Jordan, elections have always been one of the main arenas of political contestation where, according to Lust-Okar (2006, p. 457), "both incumbents and opponents vigorously debate rules governing participation." In such a context, ruling elites do their best to manipulate electoral rules to shape the representation of the opposition in parliament (Lust-Okar and Jamal 2002). Electoral reform, therefore, has always been high on the political agenda in Jordan since the early 1990s (Bani Salameh 2017, p. 49).
The literature on electoral reform in Jordan has a number of gaps which this article aims to bridge. First, the literature is full of descriptive analyses of Jordan's elections and their results (Bank and Sunik 2014;Lust-Okar 2006;Sowell 2016b;ValbjØrn 2013) with a few studies devoted exclusively to the topic of electoral reform (for an exception, albeit with an Arab regional perspective, see Lust-Okar and Jamal 2002). Second, studies of political and electoral reform in Jordan focus on the clientelistic effects of the pre-2016 SNTV system (Abu-Rish 2016;Bani Salameh 2017;Malantowicz 2019;Ottaway and Muasher 2011;Ryan 2011b;Yom 2013) without explicitly examining why the regime moved away from this system. This article contributes to the literature by examining the roots of both the 2012 and the 2016 electoral reforms in Jordan. In so doing, the article addresses the following question: What explains the move of Jordan to a PR electoral system in 2016 but not in 2012? 1 We argue that Jordan's move to a PR system in 2016 is explained by the changing policy positions of the autocrat, as a veto player. This changing position was the product of reduced uncertainty regarding the outcome of elections under a PR system and reduced uncertainty regarding the strength of Jordan's most powerful opposition movement, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood (JMB) and its political arm the Islamic Action Front (IAF).
The article is organized as follows. Sect. 2 introduces the case of Jordan and highlights its social and political complexities. Sect. 3 presents the theoretical model that guides the analysis. Sect. 4 explains the non-adoption of a PR electoral system in 2012. Sect. 5 outlines why the regime adopted the 2016 PR electoral reform. Sect. 6 concludes.

Jordan: political and social complexities
We use Jordan as a case study for three reasons. First, Jordan is a typical case (Seawright and Gerring 2008) of a hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime where elections have been held regularly since 1989. Second, Jordan offers instructive lessons for the wider comparative literature which has mostly focused on established democracies to the neglect of authoritarian regimes (Norris 2011). The fact that Jordan moved to PR in 2016 when there was little public pressure for reform and resisted such a move in 2012 in the absence of such pressure calls for investigation. In that sense, regime type aside, Jordan is not different from democratic countries such as New Zealand or Japan that adopted electoral reforms in periods that were not 1 Renwick (2010, p. 3) classifies electoral systems into fourteen types grouped under four categories: plurality/majority systems, proportional systems, mixed systems and other systems and we follow him in defining electoral reform as a "shift from one of these categories to the other.". considered "founding moments" or "external shocks" (Rahat 2011, p. 524). Third, among the few studies of electoral reform under authoritarianism, according to Ong (2018, p. 161), "assume any electoral reform as a generally positive outcome for the opposition and a negative outcome for the autocrat." Jordan defies this logic as this article shows since the movement to PR did not lead to democratizing political consequences.
Jordan, however, should not be mistaken for democracy. It is, in fact, a hegemonic electoral authoritarian regime where "the existence of formally democratic political institutions, such as multiparty electoral competition, masks (often, in part, to legitimate) the reality of authoritarian domination" (Diamond 2002, p. 24). 2 In that sense, Jordan has organized regular multiparty elections since 1989 but the regime has placed "those elections under tight authoritarian controls [...] to cement their continued hold on power" (Schedler 2002, pp. 36-37). 3 In such a context, "the monarchy is a system above the system; electoralism does not touch it" (Sadiki 2009, p. 75). Despite the Jordanian king's vast executive powers, he does not run the state's daily affairs which are mostly delegated to loyal elites (Lucas 2004, p. 108).
Jordan's parliament is divided into two houses: the Senate, the upper house, and the House of Representatives, the lower house. The king appoints the former whereas the Jordanian public elects the latter. Collectively, the Parliament is responsible for submitting bills for royal review and approval. A majority from both houses must vote for the bill to be passed onto the King, who then decides what additions or revisions must be made for the bill to receive his royal decree of approval. Together, the two houses can overrule a bill rejection from the King through a twothirds majority vote. However, this does not happen in practice. Indeed, part of the reasoning lies in the fact that the Senate is appointed directly by the King, and is usually comprised of his supporters (e.g., former ministers, diplomats, judges and military retirees). As a result, the constituents conceive the role of the lower house in terms of access to state resources. Through the parliament, representatives "can deliver the goods" for their constituencies (Lust-Okar 2009). This has transformed voting practices into a system of patronage (Lust-Okar 2001) and the lower house into "an arena for dispensing services" (Clark 2012, p. 360).
At a societal level, the Jordanian society is divided along ethnic lines between "East Bankers" and Palestinian-Jordanians with the regime's traditional support base since state-building lying among East Bank tribes (Abu-Rish 2014, pp. 286-287). The origin of the Palestinian-Jordanian divide is an issue that is still heavily debated among scholars (Bani Salameh and El-Edwan 2016;Yom 2014). Most analysts, however, agree that the birth of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the events of Black September in the 1970s represent some of the initial significant and visible indicators of this distinction within and among the Jordanian population. Prior to this period, Jordanians and Palestinians lived in "relative harmony," but the latter developments reframed Palestine and Palestinians living in Jordan as a source of instability for the Kingdom, particularly for the monarchy (Bani Salameh and El-Edwan 2016, pp. 991-992).
The ways in which formal and informal policies and practices were deployed in response have exacerbated this divide. Specifically, the 1989 elections were designed to ensure the monarchy's stability through structures that ensured tribal, and thus pro-regime (and pro-Jordan) interests and candidates would "dominate" (Clark 2012). The Jordanian monarchy also "provided subsidies to Jordanian tribes and preferentially recruited them into various parts of the state apparatus in an effort to secure and ensure the support of Jordanians of Jordanian descent, as opposed to Jordanians of Palestinian descent" (Clark 2012, p. 360). Moreover, some Jordanians of Palestinian descent (over 2300 between [2004][2005][2006][2007][2008], according to Human Rights Watch (2010) have had their citizenship 'canceled' and revoked in recent years through arbitrary and ambiguous procedures (Bani Salameh and El-Edwan 2016, p. 996).

Veto player theory and electoral reform
The article adopts Tsebelis's (2002) veto player theory, which provides a unifying framework for explaining policy change. It has been used to study electoral reform or non-reform in both democracies and autocracies (Hooghe and Deschouwer 2011;Smyth et al. 2019). The veto player theory belongs to the rational choice school according to which "electoral system stability and reform result from the behavior of politicians who calculate and compare the consequences of existing systems with those of alternative ones, and prefer those that maximize their power in terms of seats, office or policies" (Rahat 2011, p. 525). "A veto player," Tsebelis (1995, p. 293) notes, "is an individual or collective actor whose agreement is required for a policy decision." Tsebelis (1995, p. 295) elaborates on this saying Consider decision making that is delegated to one individual player (a dictator, a charismatic leader in a one-party system, or the leader of a disciplined party). By definition, the policies selected by this person will reflect his ideal point. For this reason, the status quo will follow the positions of this player, as long as he remains the decision maker. If his preferred policy shifts from one point to another, the status quo will follow; and if he is replaced by another decision maker, the status quo will move to her ideal point.
A first step in using veto player theory is to identify the number and identity of veto players in a given system (Tsebelis 2011, p. 6). While there are institutional and partisan veto players, there are also de-facto veto players determined according to the rules of the 'political game' even if not constitutionally recognized as veto players (Tsebelis 2002, p. 19). In that sense, political systems can have one or more veto players depending on the institutional setup (Tsebelis 2002, p. 76).
Applying veto player theory to the case of Jordan requires first identifying the number and interests of veto players. While some authoritarian regimes can have more than a single veto player, in Jordan there is only one: the king as a representative of the wider ruling elite (Svolik 2012). The Jordanian regime can be divided into two circles (Bank and Schlumberger 2004, pp. 44-49). 4 The first circle includes King Abdullah II in the middle along with senior bureaucrats such as the heads of the security, military and intelligence agencies, head of the Royal Court and royal advisors. The second circle includes East Bank tribal notables and Palestinian-Jordanian crony capitalists (Bank and Sunik 2014, p. 377). The king's rule is based on managing a ruling coalition with his first circle as the senior partner and the second circle as the junior partner (Abu-Rish 2014, p. 282). According to Gause (2013, p. 24), King Abdullah II along with other Arab monarchs "hardly stand above their societies. They have actively courted certain social groups and excluded others from power and wealth. They [...] represent the interests of certain factions and, by doing so, vest the interests of those factions in the continuation of monarchical rule." Given their overlapping, vested interest in the status quo, the two circles of Jordan's regime as a collective actor can thus be considered a single veto player. 5 In Jordan, electoral reform has always been the result of "strategic interaction" between the Jordanian regime, on one hand, and the JMB and its party the IAF, on the other (Patel 2015, p. 1). However, the JMB cannot be considered a veto player. By definition, a veto player has the capacity to block policy change (Tsebelis 1995, p. 305). There is no doubt that the JMB has always been the "most popular and best organized of the opposition forces, while the parties of the left remain to some extent in the shadow of the Islamists, competing for far smaller segments of the electorate" (Ryan 2011b, p. 374). Nevertheless, earlier experience shows the limited influence of the JMB on blocking policy change. An example of a previous electoral reform in the 1990s illustrates this point.
In response to the April 1989 Uprising, the Jordanian regime lifted martial law after 22 years and revoked laws restricting civil liberties and political rights (Lucas 2005, p. 25). The 1989 parliamentary elections were held under a PR electoral law of block voting. Voters thus cast a number of votes equal to the number of representatives of their district and the candidates with the highest votes in each district entered parliament. The 1989 elections produced a relatively representative parliament with Islamists winning the largest bloc of 34 out of 80 seats (42.5%). Of those 34 seats, 22 went to the JMB who were later offered five ministerial positions (Schwedler 2015;Singh 2017, p. 301).
In 1991, the late King Hussein of Jordan, father of the current king, expressed his interest in participating in the Madrid Peace Conference. However, he knew that passing a peace treaty with Israel through the parliament dominated by Islamists would be difficult. To overcome this hurdle, King Hussein enacted a new electoral law that would allow him to appoint a new government and form a malleable parliament (Lust-Okar and Jamal 2002, p. 358). Hence, the electoral system was changed in 1992 to SNTV, which became known as the "one-man, one-vote" law (Hamid 2013, p. 546). In response, the political opposition including the JMB called on the regime to return to the 1989 PR system. To put more pressure on the regime, opposition parties, the JMB included, formed the Higher Committee for the Coordination of National Opposition Parties (HCCNOP) in the mid-1990s (Ryan 2011b, p. 380). For twenty years, nevertheless, the regime resisted all calls for adopting a PR system even during the 2011-12 wave of protests in Jordan in the wake of the Arab uprisings (Hamid 2013, p. 549).
Having established that Jordan has one veto player namely the regime, the task now is to map the interests of this veto player. There is no reason to believe that the 2016 PR electoral reform reflects a genuine belief on the part of the regime in democracy. The reform "typif[ies] the top-down political and legal engineering that has prevailed in Jordan since the state's formation ... What is surprising, or should be, are opinions and perspectives that portray these shifts as embodying either democratic principles or the regime's 'mixed bag' of reform." (Abu-Rish 2016). In other words, the motivations and interests of the regime in 2016 were the same as they have always been. In the words of Marwan Muasher, a former Deputy Prime Minister for Reform in Jordan, "the political elite, the intelligence services, and the status quo in Jordan and the Arab world in general. Opening the system to them boils down to reducing their privileges. The excuses are endless. But the bottom line is that they don't want their privileges to go" (Ryan 2011b, p. 373). From this perspective, the regime's both circles are office seekers (Ström and Müller 1999, pp. 4-5) who seek to remain in office, whether that means being a king, minister, or member of parliament, for all the spoils it offers.
Under the veto player theory, embracing electoral reform primarily reflects changing policy interests of the veto player (Tsebelis 1995, p. 295). This article argues that certainty (or the lack thereof) regards the outcomes of electoral reform is one of the main drivers shaping a veto player's decision whether to embrace or block electoral reform. According to Renwick (2010, p. 56), "politicians and parties may be unsure of their support levels and thus unsure of which system would best serve their power interests. Reforms may also set up unpredictable dynamics: electoral reforms tend to be followed by high electoral volatility." When uncertainty is high, political actors choose one of two paths: first, they adopt very conservative positions assuming the world is a "black box" or second, they choose a path that would at least protect them in the worst-case scenario (Renwick 2010, p. 56). Under authoritarian regimes as in Jordan, electoral reform is blocked when uncertainty of electoral outcomes is high and is embraced in the case of low uncertainty. The next section analyzes how this high uncertainty explains the non-adoption of PR in 2012, despite high public pressure.

Changing tides? Electoral reform in response to the Jordanian Spring
In the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings, Jordanians called for nationwide economic, social, and political reforms (Bani Salameh 2017). Thousands of protests, sit-ins, strikes, and demonstrations took place in 2011 alone (Abudalu 2021), which came to be known as the Jordanian Spring. Social movement activists called for major constitutional amendments that would change the ruling structures in Jordan and lead eventually to constitutional monarchial rule (Bani Salameh 2017, p. 50). At the center of this reform package is a new PR electoral law that would give more power to the parliament.
In response to these demands, the regime did implement several legal changes. For example, the regime established a national dialogue committee and a constitutional reform committee (Freer and Hamid 2011, p. 3). The national dialogue committee worked on amending major laws, particularly, the laws governing elections and political parties. Both laws were slightly amended, but no notable change has developed within the political environment in Jordan. Similarly, the government's constitutional committee delivered 42 constitutional amendments (Muasher 2011). Whether these 'changes' are meaningful and legitimate or just cosmetic reforms to discourage further protest actions is debatable (Ryan 2011a). Furthermore, the regime started to address and publicly investigate some prominent corruption cases in the kingdom even when some of the accused figures are known to be close and loyal to the regime (Barari and Satkowski 2012, p. 52). The king also personally stressed to the public that the regime was moving towards a democratic path, both in his speeches of the throne and in his discussion papers. 6 He thus ordered the holding of parliamentary elections in January 2013 as one key step of this gradual democratic reform.
The elections were to be held under the new electoral law that was passed in July 2012. This new law allowed voters to cast two ballots: one for the candidate in their district and one for a PR party list. Additionally, the total number of seats increased from 120 in the previous elections under SNTV to 150, while preserving the 15-seat quota for women. However, the number of seats assigned for political parties/blocs under the list system was 27, with the remaining 108 members of the lower house directly elected under the 'first-past-the-post' system with multimember districts, which is identical in principle to SNTV. An Independent Election Commission (IEC) was also established in 2012 as part of the reform package.
When the electoral law of 2012 was passed, many opposition groups expressed their objection to the law and their intent to boycott the elections. Only one day after dissolving the parliament and calling for the 2013 elections under the new law, Jordan witnessed its largest protest since 2011 (Hamid 2013, p. 549). Opposition groups demanded that 50% of parliament's seats should be allocated to national party lists (Yaghi 2012), but the new electoral law assigned just 18% (27 seats). According to Dr. Khaled Al-Shogran, Director of Alrai Center and an expert on Jordanian politics and elections, in such an environment with strong popular mobilization, conservative circles within the regime feared that adopting a PR electoral system could result in an Islamist-led parliament that could go out of control. 7 The calls by the JMB for a constitutional monarchy during 2011-12 (Kirdiş 2016, p. 121) actually heightened the uncertainty of PR, leading the regime to resort to this mixed-member majoritarian system.
In addition to domestic reasons, the regime's uncertainty is also interlinked to regional and international factors. At the regional level, the electoral victories of Islamist political parties in Morocco, Tunisia and, most significantly, Egypt galvanized the regime's fears of a similar scenario in Jordan (Teti et al. 2018;Wagemakers 2020;Yom 2017). The historical relations and ideological affinity between the JMB and their counterparts in Egypt added to such fears (Wagemakers 2019, p. 264), thus increasing the uncertainty of elections under PR.
From an international perspective, Jordan receives and relies heavily upon bilateral and multilateral foreign aid from Western powers for its political and economic stability. Jordan has significantly relied on the United States and the European Union in this regard, particularly since the 1990s (van Hüllen 2015; Yom and Al Momani 2008). However, this aid often comes with specific agendas related to strengthening and developing political participation and civil society in the country. 8 Given the regional turmoil including the fall of long-serving Arab dictators, on the one hand, and the reliance on Western donors, on the other hand, the Jordanian regime wanted to hold elections to keep its reformist image in the West (Boukhars 2011). But, the regime also wanted elections to be held under a system that would not lead to a very adversarial parliament. Thus, the domestic factors, and the regional and international environment contributed to the high uncertainty facing the Jordanian regime in 2011-2012.

Rhetoric: legitimizing the 2012 electoral reform
To counter-balance the opposition's actions, the regime resorted to rhetoric that aimed to 1) legitimize the new law in the eyes of the people and to encourage them to vote and 2) mitigate potential large-scale boycotting by political parties of the scheduled 2013 elections. To use one example from the first discussion paper issued in December 2012, King Abdullah II wrote: This election is one of those critical steps and a station on the political reform roadmap. As candidates come to your neighborhoods over the next several weeks, they will be seeking to win your trust and your vote. But what they need to realize is that they must maintain your trust and honor your vote over the years to come [...]. To make democracy work, it is critical that we debate, 7 Dr. Khaled Al-Shogran, Interview by author, Skype, 17 February 2021. 8 There is a debate whether international actors may "create more problems than they solve," as Lust-Okar (2006) argues. International assistance, notes Clark (2012), may even "entrench" the clientelistic, service role of government figures that their projects allegedly attempt to reform and dismantle. discuss, and vote on the basis of the positions put forward by the candidates on key issues facing our country, and not on the basis of personalities or affinities related to geography or family (King Abdullah II 2012).
This rhetoric and the subsequent high turnout at the elections suggest that the king was able to effectively redirect the "path" of electoral reform in the country. What the king did in his discussion papers and speeches was a textbook example of how leaders can use rhetoric to justify electoral reform (Renwick 2010, pp. 71-75).
Also, in December 2012, King Abdullah II leveraged an elite-oriented rhetoric strategy. Specifically, the king arranged to meet with the leadership of secular leftist and nationalist opposition groups who were (and are) critical of the regime and led many of the major protest activities in the country. The king convened with this group at the home of a minister who was considered a long-time nationalist and well connected to both the opposition and the king. 9 Abdullah II started the conversation by introducing himself as a "fellow leftist" in terms of health and education, a "rightist" when it comes to the army and a "centrist" when it comes to politics. He expressed concern for the nation, given the rise of Islamists in the region. He further conveyed resentment in terms of how the security agencies in the country repressed protestors and even promised to resolve the outstanding court cases against activists due to their protest activities and/or criticism of the regime.
However, the king's main goal for holding the meeting in the first place was to convince these groups to participate in the upcoming parliamentary elections as a strategy to quell the rise of Islamists who hoped a large-scale boycott would discredit the elections (Abudalu 2021). Following their meeting with the king, the groups decided to participate in the elections. They wanted the elections to be successful, so the Islamists would not succeed in failing them. What this shows is that the king's rhetorical strategy was successful because it ultimately divided the proreform camp. Through what Renwick (2010, pp. 71-75) refers to as "argumentative persuasion and bargaining," the king emphasized and focused on a common 'enemy', the JMB. At the same time, the king promised to resolve open court cases against activists as a bargaining chip to further encourage these groups' participation in elections.
Elections were held in Jordan in January 2013 under the supervision of the newly established Independent Election Commission. The voter turnout on Election Day was 57% of registered voters which was higher than that in 2010. For the regime, such turnout was a success given that the JMB boycotted the elections (Bank and Sunik 2014, p. 378). With a pro-regime majority, nevertheless, the composition of the parliament looked very similar to previous ones under the SNTV system. 10 Commenting on the results of the 2013 elections, Esraa Mahadin, a Jordanian legal 9 A political activist who attended the meeting, Interview by author, Amman, 4 October 2017.
10 Bushra Abu Shahoot, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jordanian National Center for Human Rights, notes however that the 27 members of parliament who were elected via national lists performed noticeably better. In her view, they focused more on their legislative and monitoring roles rather than providing services and favors to their constituencies (Bushra Abu Shahoot, interview by author, Skype, 21 February 2021).
K and elections expert, compared electoral systems in Jordan over the past 30 years to "puzzles" made of the same "Lego pieces [...] the shape of the puzzle might look different every time, but the Lego pieces are the same. The elections of 2013 therefore just produced another puzzle." 11 The next section moves to examine the 2016 electoral reform.

Reduced uncertainty and the 2016 electoral reform in Jordan
The 2016 electoral law was ratified by King Abdullah II on 13 March 2016, after it was passed by the parliament, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, a week before. Compared to previous electoral systems, the 2016 law is significantly different in three ways. First, it moves away from the SNTV by adopting an openlist PR system that allows voters to cast votes equal to the number of seats in their district. Second, in contrast to the closed national list of the 2013 mixed electoral system, the 2016 law requires parliamentary candidates to organize themselves into open electoral lists, the size of which corresponds to the number of allocated seats in the district. 12 Third, the law brings down the number of electoral districts to 23, compared to 45 under the 2012 mixed electoral system, and the total number of seats from 150 to 130. In so doing, argue Muasher and Dunne (2016), the law aligns electoral districts to the provincial boundaries with each province treated as an electoral district except for major urban centers such as Amman (five districts), Irbid (four districts) and Zarqa (two districts) along with the Bedouin areas (three districts). While the reduction of districts represented a movement toward higher proportionality, this was counterbalanced by the decrease in overall seats from 150 to 130.
The law, nevertheless, did not stipulate the number of seats allocated for each district but rather left it to the by-law, to be issued by the government after the adoption of the law. This led 20 members of parliament to question the constitutionality of the law, given that the number of seats per district, argues constitutional expert Mohammad Hammouri, is of extreme importance for citizens' constitutional rights and should be decided by the legislature, not the government (Omari 2015). The question is: what explains the adoption of a PR system in 2016 when the regime was under little public pressure compared to the case in 2012?

Malapportionment: reduced uncertainty regarding the outcomes of the 2016 elections
We argue that the regime's changed position towards electoral reform in 2016 is rooted in reduced uncertainty regarding the outcomes of elections and the strength of the JMB. Uncertainty regarding the outcomes of the 2016 elections was reduced via malapportionment which offsets the electoral system's proportionality. Malap-11 Esraa Mahadin, interview by author, Skype, 13 February 2021. 12 The allocation of votes into seats takes place via a two-tier process. For an example on the calculation, see Esber and Hussainy (2016, pp. 4-5). portionment ensures over-representation of pro-regime East Bank tribes who inhabit rural areas compared to the pro-JMB Palestinian-Jordanians who are concentrated in urban areas (Patel 2015, pp. 6-7). 13 Table 1 presents malapportionment at the district level in the 2016 electoral law in Jordan. Before delving into analyzing malapportionment, a remark on the electoral districts in Jordan is in order. Jordan's electoral districts can be divided into three types. 14 First, urban districts, namely Amman, Irbid and Zarqa, are overwhelmingly inhabited by Palestinian-Jordanians. These districts, where elections are mostly con-13 Malapportionment is not new to the 2016 elections. It has been in place since the foundation of the Jordanian monarchy and was also institutionalized under the 1993 SNTV law (Abu-Rish 2016). 14 We would like to thank one of the anonymous reviewers for raising this point. tested based on programs not identities, have traditionally been strongholds for the opposition (Bondokji 2015, p. 9). Second, tribal districts, namely Karak, Tafileh, Maan and Aqaba, are inhabited mainly by East Bank Jordanians, who traditionally have supported the regime (ValbjØrn 2013, p. 314). Third, Bedouin districts are occupied by Bedouin tribes who have historical loyalty to the regime as manifested by their heavy representation in the security forces (Ryan 2011a, p. 567).
Malapportionment is calculated using Samuels and Snyder's (2001) widely-used method based on the absolute difference between voters and seat share. 15 Generally, the tribal and Bedouin areas show varying degrees of over-representation while the urban centers, except for Irbid's third and fourth districts and Zarqa's second district, show under-representation. 16 The most extreme example of over-representation is the Al-Karak governorate, a tribal district, where malapportionment stands at 4.64%, meaning that 4.64% of the seats should not have been allocated to the district.
All tribal and Bedouin areas, where pro-regime support is high, show an overall malapportionment score of 13.94%. In other words, pro-regime areas are awarded about 12 more seats than their population share. The most extreme examples of under-representation are Amman's second district and Zarqa's first district, where district malapportionment is -4.46 and -3.93% respectively. The urban centers namely all the districts of Amman, Irbid and Zarqa show an overall malapportionment score of 18.92%. This means that opposition-dominated areas are awarded around 16 fewer seats than their actual population share. 17 Total malapportionment is 19.96, meaning that 19.96% of the seats are allocated in a non-proportional way. From a comparative perspective, this is extremely high. In Samuels and Snyder's (2001, pp. 660-661) index of malapportionment across 78 countries, Jordan would be ranked the fourth malapportioned system in the world just after Tanzania (26.19%), Korea (20.75%) and Ecuador (20.40%).
In the 2016 elections, as illustrated in Table 2, malapportionment was fruitful with 115 out of 130 seats won by pro-regime businessmen and tribal representatives. Many pro-regime candidates even succeeded in anti-regime districts due to low voter turnout and widespread mistrust in the regime in general and the elections in particular. For example, voter turnout in Amman's third district, one of the opposition's strongholds, was only 18%. All meaningful opposition members who won seats in the elections were Islamists and their allies, mostly as part of the National Coalition for Reform list (12 seats). Three more Islamist seats were won under different lists in Amman's second and third districts, and in Irbid's third district. When the first parliamentary session was held, they formed the Reform Parliamentary Bloc. Later on, one member of parliament (MP) from Irbid's third district withdrew from this bloc, therefore reducing the number of active Islamist opposition MPs and their allies to 14. The next section examines how the fragmentation of the JMB also paved the way for the 2016 electoral reform. Source: Adapted from data provided by the Independent Election Commission in Jordan. Notes: Urban districts are classified as anti-regime based on the wide agreement that opposition support is higher in urban areas compared to pro-regime tribal and Bedouin districts (Patel 2015).

Fragmentation: reduced uncertainty regarding the strength of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood
The fragmentation of the JMB into four groups significantly reduced the regime's uncertainty about their organizational strength and therefore their foreseen performance in elections under K The fragmentation of the JMB into four groups is a process that reflects ideological and strategic differences among two internal wings namely the more strict "hawks" and the moderate "doves" (Al Naimat 2016, p. 2). This division, argues Bondokji (2015, p. 9), reproduces the wider societal cleavage between Palestinian-Jordanians, who are mostly hawks and East Bank Jordanians, who are mostly doves. Wagemakers (2020, pp. 40-43) divides the differences between hawks and doves along five dimensions that includes not only religious issues such as the role of Islam in public life and identity of the JMB as a political actor or a missionary organization but also political issues such as the approach towards the regime and cooperation with secular opposition groups.
This hawk-dove divide is the background for the current fragmentation of the JMB. Fragmentation however started as early as 2001 when some doves established the Islamic Center Party (ICP), with a core East Bank constituency mostly from al-Salt town. In the 2013 elections, the ICP won 16 seats, more than any other parliamentary list but won only three seats in the 2016 elections (Patel 2018, p. 6;Sowell 2016a). The second rupture in the JMB came in 2012 in the form of the Jordanian Building Initiative, commonly known as the Zamzam Initiative. It was founded by a number of JMB members with East Bank background, including senior JMB dovish figure Irhail Gharaibeh. The initiative called for reforming the JMB and working towards democratic transition with a broad national consensus, which some described as an effort to "Jordanize" the JMB (Bani Salameh 2021, p. 76). The JMB rejected the initiative and expelled three of its founders including Gharaibeh himself in April 2014 (Bondokji 2015, p. 10). In 2016, Gharaibeh announced the transformation of the Zamzam Initiative into the National Congress Party, a political "civil party" with an Islamist reference, and criticized the JMB for its focus on piety and preaching rather than programs (Esber 2018, 218: fn 1; Schenker 2016). The National Congress Party won three seats in the 2016 elections (Patel 2018, p. 6).
The third split of the JMB came in 2015 when hundreds of members led by a former General Controller of the JMB, Abd al-Majid Dhunaybat left the JMB. This was not only in resentment to the expulsion of the founders of Zamzam Initiative but also as a result of the hawk-dove divide. Shortly thereafter, they submitted an official request to register another organization entitled the Muslim Brotherhood Society (MBS), which the government approved (Wagemakers 2020, pp. 57-58) leading the old JMB to lose its registration (Al Naimat 2016, p. 1). In April 2016, security forces organized raids on the old JMB's headquarters and some of its regional offices shutting it down. This last split, in particular, argues Abu-Rish (2016) "created a potential opportunity for the regime to better manage the [2016] elections." This split was also coupled with another regional development, that is the waning influence of Islamists in Egypt. This happened after the 2013 coup ousting Mohamed Morsi, the first civilian, democratically-elected president in Egypt who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. Since then, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, putting them further on the defensive (Bani Salameh 2021, p. 73). The weakening regional influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, it can be argued, contributed to even easing the uncertainties of the Jordanian regime regards moving towards the 2016 electoral reform.

Conclusion
This article has attempted to explain why the Jordanian regime adopted a PR electoral system in 2016, when there was little public pressure, but not in 2012 despite being under high public pressure. Using veto player theory, the article argued that Jordan's move to a PR system in 2016 is explained by the changing policy positions of the regime, in itself a product of reduced uncertainty regarding the outcome of elections under a PR system and reduced uncertainty regarding the strength of the JMB.
From a comparative perspective, the case of Jordan offers three lessons. First, it demonstrates that under authoritarian regimes, as in many democratic regimes, electoral reform reflects a change in the policy position of the regime, as a veto player, which is driven by the degree of uncertainty of the outcomes of electoral reform (Tsebelis 2002). While the interest of regimes, autocracies and democracies alike, to remain in power is static (Gerschewski 2013), their perception of uncertainty associated with electoral reform is not.
Second, the article cautions against treating electoral reform in authoritarian regimes as an almost positive democratic gain for the opposition and a loss for the autocrat (Ong 2018). The 2013 and 2016 elections in Jordan, carried under two different electoral systems, produced similar parliaments that posed little threat to the regime's grip on power. In other words, the seemingly liberalizing effects of moving from SNTV to PR in Jordan were offset by two factors. First, the extensive malapportionment deployed by the regime over-represented pro-regime forces in the parliament. Therefore, the 2016 parliament elected under PR is clientelistic in ways similar to parliaments elected under SNTV (Kao 2016;). Second, the 2014 and 2016 constitutional reforms increased the executive propagative of the King. The constitutional amendments increased the king's powers to appoint a wide array of positions while limiting the parliament's oversight capacity (Malantowicz 2019, p. 338). The various constitutional reforms, argue Bani Salameh and Ali Ananzah (2015, p. 155), contributed to diluting judicial independence and empowering security agencies, thus strengthening the regime at the expense of the people and their representative institution namely the parliament.
Third, the article challenges the democratic credentials of opposition groups in autocracies (Blondel 1997). In Jordan, the democratic values of secular political parties are offset by their ideological orientation. The ideological cleavage between secularists and Islamists, while not unique to Jordan (Wegner and Cavatorta 2019), allowed the king to leverage the role of rhetoric to convince the secular opposition to refrain from pushing for a PR electoral system and to legitimize the 2013 elections carried under the mixed system. In studying electoral reform under autocracies, the motivations and preferences of opposition actors should not be studied using the duality of an autocratic regime and a democratic opposition but rather should be subject to empirical analysis. "While an opposition victory is not impossible" under authoritarianism, argues Diamond (2002, p. 24), "it requires a level of opposition mobilization, unity, skill, and heroism far beyond what would normally be required for victory in a democracy." This does not seem to be the case in Jordan.