The Rule-of-Law as a Problem Space:Wāsṭaand the Paradox of Justice in Jordan

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores structural entanglements between the rule-of-law, as a globalized aspirational horizon in post-Cold War politics, and corruption, as a highly salient malaise, by way of an ethnography ofwāsṭa, an institutionalized practice of patronage in Jordan, and a salient object of corruption discourse in recent years. The article followswāsṭaand anti-corruption practices in various sites wherewāsṭais most salient and most problematized and situates the contemporary practice in relation to historical transformations in Jordan’s political economy and global discourses on justice and development. While globalized anti-corruption discourses pit practices of patronage and brokerage likewāsṭaagainst the rule-of-law, an ethnographic and historical view illustrates how the latter is the condition of possibility of the former, the framework by which it is diagnosed, and its presumed cure. Thus, I argue that the rule-of-law should be understood as a historically specific “problem space” that posits corruption as a prime diagnostic of the ills of state and society while generating practical paradoxes and a perpetual sense of temporal out-of-jointedness for “developing” countries.