As part of a final paper I’m working on, I requested, and obtained a copy of a M.Sc. and B.Sc. thesis in Political Science at MIT, entitled “Containing the Opposition: Selective Representation in Jordan and Turkey”, by Raffaela Wakeman, who also worked in the Center for Strategic Studies in the University of Jordan for a while.

So, I went through a good chunk of it and read it, and while it reaffirms most of what we hear already about representation being the most fundamental problems, it also hows how fundamental a problem it is. Cities like Amman, Irbid, and Zarqa are between 2-3 times under-presented than Balqa’a, Karak, and others.

However, upon reading this, a very common fallacy also came to mind, in which the ruling power’s decisions are always rationalized on the basis of self-interest/ill-intentions, which I think is not the right approach. For instance, Jordan’s sheer under-representation of Palestinian-Jordanians in the parliament (or rather, under-representation of intellectuals in the parliament), is not part of a master plant to create a nation with an idle mind, or dominate the people, but rather (very unfortunate) measures to secure the 1994 Peace Treaty, or (very unfortunate) responses to events ranging from Abdullah I’s 1951 assassination, to Black September.

In any case, saying Jordan’s selective representation (which is a real problem) is a plan to “contain the opposition”, ignores the strong opposition that many Islamists as well as Bedouin “loyalists” possess to many crucial Hashemite plans.

I do hope the new election law is more representative. Current rumors are not so promising; Amman and Zarqa seem to be getting more seats, but not nearly enough.

My two-cents.

For those familiar with my web projects, you’ll know that my main project: the MarkUp Game Development Magazine hasn’t been very active lately. For the past two years or so Robin Monks, along with myself, have handled all the high level issues of MarkUp for almost two years now.

In a recent post in the GMC topic for MarkUp Magazine, I stated the following to explain the personal aspect behind this:

It is easy to underestimate the power of personal life and the toll it might take on someone’s productivity, and unfortunately both Robin and myself have been hit really hard. We strived really hard in MarkUp’s first year to release on-time month-by-month issues and I think we succeeded to overcome any personal or technical barrier at that time, unfortunately with MarkUp’s second year approaching, it is rather obvious that we have not been successful (for reasons out of our power) to live up to the same standards of activity and productivity (though quality has continued to improve in the less-frequent issues). Sincere apologies for that, but we ask that the community bears with us and continues to support us the magnificent ways as it always has.

So what is it exactly that has hit my productivity so hard? Well its actually my senior school year, which proved to be unexpectedly busy, with university applications and interviews, various graduation projects, externally-assessed papers, etc. and the entire process is much more nerve-wrecking that I have anticipated. Getting too worked out means that I tend to be unproductive in the little free time I have and often resort to more ‘wild’ and active things to do to unwind.

Admissions decisions are in Late-March-to-mid-April, I’ll be sure to let anyone posted whatever ends up happening.

Anyways, if you’re a MarkUp reader, make sure to contact staff@gmking.org if you’re interested in contributing.