Intentional Ambiguity: Citizenship Policies in Law vs. Implementation in Jordan

• In Event: Migration and Citizenship Debates in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Why do states adopt ambiguous policies toward refugees that say one thing in law but another in implementing regulations? Although it is well known that states often adopt ambiguous policies toward refugees (Stel 2020; Norman 2020; Natter 2021), particularly in first-receiving states, such as Jordan, where refugees initially flee, much less is known about what constitutes an ambiguous policy and why first-receiving states adopt such policies over time. This is particularly the case when analyzing refugees’ rights after they have entered a receiving state, rather than their ability to enter or not (Abdelaaty 2021; Milner 2009). This paper argues that states adopt ambiguous policies toward refugees in response to constraints and pressures from dominant stakeholders (i.e., the most influential and interested actors in a policy area) on the state’s executive leaders (e.g., presidents, kings, prime ministers, etc. and their close advisors) before the policy’s adoption. When these policymakers face conflicting constraints or pressures from dominant stakeholders about granting a specific right, then they can please both sides by drafting the policy’s law to placate one side and its implementation to please the other, producing a policy of intentional ambiguity. However, when these pressures or constraints are similar, then leaders can align the policy’s implementation with its law, producing a policy of intentional coherence. This paper evaluates these arguments by tracing and comparing the emergence of nationality and passports policies toward two Palestinian refugee groups in Jordan from 1949–1990. These include Palestinians who were displaced following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Jordan’s diverse citizenship policies toward these groups make these cases well-suited to examine this theory. In addition, focusing on these cases has enabled me to collect the fine-grained data needed to evaluate this theory. Specifically, I use extensive primary source data, including hundreds of U.S. and UK archival files on Jordan’s internal politics from 1949–1973, dozens of Jordanian laws and implementation orders, and 222 interviews I conducted with ministers, lawyers, refugees, and others during 15 months in Jordan from 2016–22. Overall, this paper reveals that gaps in implementation can reflect a strategic political practice—rather than simply institutional weakness or unaccountable bureaucrats—where executive leaders break apart a policy into its law and implementation dimensions to placate opposing influential stakeholders. These short-term political concerns can produce long-lasting ambiguous policies that render refugee rights opaquer and more precarious due to the contradictions in what the law versus its implementing measures say.

Author

• Lillian Frost, Virginia Tech