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Document Type

International Studies and Languages

Abstract

This essay examines the influence of external economic pressures on state capacity in the Middle East through a comparative analysis of Iraq and Jordan. In the late twentieth century, both states faced fiscal shocks, including rising prices for staple goods, elevated unemployment, and revenue shortfalls that constrained regime distributive capacity. Against this backdrop of mounting domestic volatility, contrasting instruments of international economic statecraft were employed, namely, comprehensive UN sanctions against Iraq and sustained Western-led foreign aid to Jordan. Through exogenous state-building, foreign actors sought to exert punitive leverage in Iraq and pursue an agenda-setting partnership in Jordan. Despite pursuing different policy objectives, both forms of artificially introduced intervention distorted domestic political economies by concentrating elite power and obstructing robust institutional development. Beginning in the 1990s, comprehensive UN sanctions eroded the Baʿathist regime’s ability to sustain coherent authoritarian rule, thus weakening Iraq’s bureaucratic capacity and fracturing elite coalitions. This contraction empowered survival economies and regime intermediaries, while also enabling the mobilization of sovereignty and resistance narratives that reshaped social identity among the broader populace. For Jordan, sustained inflows of Western foreign aid insulated the monarchy as a rentier state by reducing fiscal accountability, stabilizing patronage networks, and promoting a facade of reform over tangible modernization. Despite sanctions and aid often being discussed as if isolated from one another, this essay identifies a convergent outcome in institutional development, with significant implications for policy and state-building.

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