Paper short abstract:

How is democracy activism affected when activists find out that a majority of the people does not want democratic reforms? The defeat of Jordanian democracy activists during the Arab Spring, this paper argues, offers a vantage point from which to rethink liberal ideas about democracy and openness.

Paper long abstract:

How is democracy activism affected when activists find out that a majority of the people does not want democratic reforms? This was a question that several Jordanian democracy activists asked themselves after their failure to bring about large demonstrations during the Arab Spring, and especially after their small demonstrations were violently dissolved by counterdemonstrations. The paper shows how this experience of defeat gave birth to an activism with a new view on the state, the opposition, and democratic debate. Jordan's political landscape changed, but an intellectual aspect of the defeat is as significant as the political aspect. Reinhart Koselleck has characterized the historiography of victors as short-termed. The defeated, on the other hand, are "forced to draw new and difficult lessons from history," which, Koselleck argues, seems to "yield insights of longer validity." In other words, can a failed democratic transition teach us more about democracy than a successful transition? Jordanian security forces retreated from political life during the Arab Spring, but democratic change, Jordanian democracy activists concluded, was dependent on something else than the absence of an authoritarian state. They came to believe in a form a discussion, but not the one that liberal authors commonly describe as the basis for democracy: it was not public and was based on a rhetoric of flattery and half-truths rather than only arguments. The defeat of democracy activists during the Arab Spring, this paper argues, offers a vantage point from which to rethink liberal ideas about democracy and openness.