Jordan Is More Than a Democratic Fluke : Middle East: Even the fundamentalists have backed away from pushing their religious agenda in Parliament.

The elections in Jordan earlier this month--in which the Muslim Brotherhood and independent Islamists lost a total of 11 seats in Parliament--were a vindication of King Hussein’s democratization program, which he has stuck with since 1989, in spite of the Gulf War, worries about a fundamentalist power-grab and misgivings within his own inner circle.

There also have been regional pressures. The perception from Jordan has been that the strain in relations with Saudi Arabia is a direct result of democratization. Although the Saudis deny it, it has been no secret that they are uncomfortable with the development of new democratic institutions in the region. Only weeks ago, for example, there were reports that Hussein was being advised to delay the elections--as he had the constitutional power to do--because of uncertainties in the wake of the Israeli/Palestinian agreement. Hussein held firm, underlining again the ironic fact that Jordan’s monarch is also its most committed democrat.

Why this tenacity? Perhaps because democracy is emerging as the only viable ideological counter to the spread of Muslim fundamentalism. The secular ideologies that once created a counterweight to the appeal of fundamentalist Islam--Baathism, communism, socialism, Nasserism--have all become irrelevant. They survive as flags of convenience for opportunist politicians. Only democracy seems capable of filling the resulting ideological void. So whereas other Arab leaders cope with their fundamentalists by paying them off or locking them up, the king has invited them to operate as a legitimate political movement within the system. He is betting, in effect, that the attractions of democracy will be strong enough to build a popular reaction against the sort of medieval authoritarianism represented by the Brotherhood, before it can use democratic institutions to gain power. And he is hoping that the democratic example of Jordan will be a model for the whole of the Arab world. The election results give reason for optimism on both counts.

This is not, of course, the end of the story. Many observers believe that the fundamentalists are simply biding their time, reluctant to take on a popular king, but consolidating their grass-roots support against the time when he departs the scene. Those who take this view point out that the Brotherhood fought the elections at less than full force. They fielded only 36 candidates, for example, and seem to have been playing to maintain rather than upset the parliamentary status quo. Moreover, at least some of their losses are attributable to a change in the election law, which prevented voters from splitting their ballots between several candidates.

Finally, in spite of the election setback, the fundamentalists remain the best-organized and -financed political movement in the country. And since political party formation has proved something of a bust, this will likely remain true for some time.

But something else is afoot here that tends to vindicate the king’s commitment to democratization. Democracy is catching on. Public expectation has forced the Brotherhood to play by democratic rules, to compromise and to build coalitions, and they have backed away--at least for the moment--from pushing their religious agenda in Parliament. Arguably, the political process has leveled the playing field, turning Brotherhood candidates from prophets into politicians, to be judged by the same standards applied to everyone else. And the initial success of the peace process gives some prospect of addressing the great source of public anger that has fueled the Brotherhood and other radical movements.

Whatever the future, the Jordanian elections give democrats, whose occasions to rejoice have been rare in the Arab world, reason for satisfaction. It may just be that King Hussein, who has often been disregarded in Washington and politically isolated in the Arab world, is on to something.