Paul M. Esber (+61)49865 1515 (m)PhD Candidate,

paul.esber@sydney.edu.auThe University of Sydney

The Italian Political Science Association: Annual Conference 2016

Title: Networked Authority: Jordan and the 2016 ‘Supporting Syria and the Region Donors Conference’

AbstractWhile Popescu focuses his analysis of borderlands on geography and state-territory, this paper adopts a more de-territorialised approach by conceiving of an international conference as a borderland. The case study with which this is examined, is the ‘Supporting Syria and the Region Donors Conference’, held in London between the third and fourth of February 2016. Specifically, we focus on the address given to delegates by King Abdullah II of Jordan. Since Syria’s spiral into civil war, Jordan has hosted over one million refugees, having fled across the border. Yet as a state with chronic budget shortfalls and high unemployment, the scale of refugee arrivals has threatened the domestic stability long enjoyed in a turbulent region. This in turn if unaddressed may weaken the position of the Hashemite regime, which without financial assistance from international and transnational networks has a limited capacity to manage the dual pressures of a territorialised citizenship and the de-territorialised refugee population.

The international conference has long been a tool of inter-state diplomacy. However, if Popescu’s exegesis on the evolving shape, function and meaning of borders is correct, then the international conference as a site of politicking has more to offer scholars when conceived of as a borderland; one of networks, flows and global-national interplays. As this paper will assert, the international conference is a borderland, a space identified by Popescu as an ‘in-between’ space with a social, economic, political, institutional or cultural landscape.1 Indeed an international conference such as the one under discussion possesses all of these landscapes. It is furthermore, a temporary space established between the national and international, which provides an opening for flows between the local and global. It is therefore a site facilitative of networking and the networked border. More than this, conceiving of a conference as a borderland assists scholars and analysts in comprehending its sometimes existential significance.

1 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century: Understanding Borders (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012), pp. 80-81.

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Resultantly the ‘Supporting Syria and the Region’ conference becomes a site where solutions to domestic dilemmas can be found through the flow of capital from the global community, across the borderland of the conference, to the level of the state and below that, local communities. Elucidating this dynamic is the chief objective of this paper.

DRAFT ONLY:No quotation or citation without permission of the author

Part One

Introduction

‘Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography’.2

Written in the context of an emerging unipolar and globalising post-Cold War world, Said’s assertion conveys to us the central reality that borders both permeate through all levels of society, and are sites of contention. Thus before Balibar or Popescu developed and elaborated on the idea of the networked border,3 the essential power imbued in, and contentious function of borders in social organisation was well documented. Yet, as humanity approaches its second decade within the twenty first century, the evolving nature of bordering processes in politics, economics and culture incentivises scholarship to continue to examine borders, boundaries and our categorisation of the world.

Bordering processes, as we shall explore, are diverse in nature and context. This has only accelerated with globalisation, as socio-cultural issues become increasingly free from the rigidity of nation-state borders and enter into the global sphere.4 Furthermore, in order to adapt to the changing global environment, states, according to Popescu, perform active roles in both re-

2 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 6.3 For example: Etienne Balibar, Politics and the Other Scene (London: Verso, 2002); and We the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century. 4 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

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bordering and de-bordering practices.5 The validity of this evolutionary logic is illustrated through the space of the international conference, where a state’s leadership can consolidate its territorialised authority through a recourse to flows that are de-territorialised, that is not fixed to a specific geographical space. That this endeavour may have existential implications suggests that the very sovereignty and independence of states is being transformed.

Gabriel Popescu’s exegesis on the contemporary evolution, and state of border discourse in the social sciences is therefore a rich point of departure. His 2012 study Bordering and Ordering the Twenty-first Century: Understanding Borders, is a rejection of the more myopic comprehension which sees borders as little more than geopolitical lines of on a map, dividing nation-states and their associated sovereign jurisdictions from each other. Borders in the twenty first century, he argues, are more profound constructions than this traditional conception suggests. Subsequently, on the conceptual level Popescu emphasises the socially constructed nature of borders, describing them as a ‘social phenomena, made by humans to help them organize their lives’.6

Resultantly, this paper sees in Popescu’s border discourse, a platform through which oscillations between political actors can be examined. Furthermore, the analogy of the networked border facilitates, it is argued, a greater appreciation of the interplay between domestic politics and its international/global counterpart in a novel way.7 The study engages this by presenting an analysis of King Abdullah II of Jordan’s address at the Supporting Syria and the Region donors conference, held in London on 4 February 2016. An interdisciplinary approach, adapted from border studies and political discourse analysis, is employed to reveal how borders manifest themselves in political argumentation. And in so doing, examine the existence of networked borders and networked politics.

What are Borders? Bordering Boundaries and Bounding Borders

Borders asserts Popescu, are first and foremost ‘sites of power’.8 Their ability to shape and direct our lives, our collective and individual identities, in addition to influencing interpretations of the world around us attests to 5 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 76.6 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 7.7 While still being tied to existing literature, see for example: Robert Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of the Two Level Games’, International Organization 42:3 (1988): 427-460.8 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 23.

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this characteristic. It does however require some elaboration. To begin with, borders both facilitate and delimit knowledge. They do so, because of how human cognition functions. Studies in cognitive science illustrate that in order to make sense of a complex world, humans necessarily create categories.9 Yet as Reece Jones states, ‘there are far fewer connections between parts of the brain than there are neurons and synapses in each part’. Consequently, if the human brain is to absorb, store and utilise information across its different pathways, then this information must necessarily be ‘grouped into manageable units, that is, it must be categorized’.10

Categories therefore are important mechanisms through which we comprehend the world, how we construct our place in that world, and how large or small we recognise this world to be.11 A ramification of this intellectual process is that the world may be too parsimoniously categorised. Thus intricacies which characterise the social world may be lost or obscured. Van Houtum and Van Naerssen convey this in their stipulation that bordering – the act of producing and maintaining borders – ‘rejects as well as erects othering’ as it simultaneously removes distinctions between some communities of people, while creating distinctions between others.12 Observable in the colonial context of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, the construction of the self - other relationship is indicative of power. A power that specifically differentiates between the coloniser who possesses it, and the colonised for whom it is absent. This unequal relationship is sustained through bordering, both geographical and bodily. Geographical in the dividing of the earth’s surface into various states and spheres of influence according to imperial dictates, and bodily in the form of ‘the policeman and the solider...their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action’.13

Borders therefore are a variety of category, a product of the human brain’s desire to order and designate space on a geographical scale. As the above example suggests borders have much to do with domination and power 9 James Anderson and Liam O’Dowd, ‘Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance’, Regional Studies 33:7 (1999): 596; see also, George Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987); George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books 1999); and Peter Hatemi, Man is by Nature a Political Animal (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011). 10 Reece Jones, ‘Categories, Borders and Boundaries’, Progress in Human Geography 33:2 (2009): 178.11 Reece Jones, ‘Categories, Borders and Boundaries’: 179.12 Henk Van Houtum and Ton Van Naerssen, ‘Bordering, Ordering and Othering’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 93:2 (2002): 126.13 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin Books, 2001), p. 29.

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relations, and hence ‘in order to unearth the power of boundaries, we need to ask whose interests are being served by the imposition and maintaining of various borders’.14 Therein a symbiotic relationship between borders and boundaries exists, as all borders are boundaries, and all boundaries have borders.

Cognitively, the relative ease with which the mind categorises stimuli in the external world has produced what Lakoff and Johnson label the ‘container schema’.15 A result, is that we readily perceive of categories to be synonymous with containers, possessing ‘a definite inside, boundary, and outside’.16 Intellectually, this generates what Jones refers to as a category paradox. We know that the boundaries we construct around material entities and thoughts are insufficient in containing these in their totality. However, the attractiveness of fixed and stable borders to our way of thinking, pressure us to employ definite demarcations.17 Jones’s solution to this paradox is to emphasise the ‘inchoate’ or incomplete reality of bordering and bounding processes, and therein understand their fluid, even permeable qualities.18

If applied to the Jordanian nation-state, this conception reveals that while as a territorially bordered and thus defined entity, Jordan might be assumed as fixed in its contemporary form, this does not mean that the process of bounding/bordering, that continues to socially construct citizens called Jordanians is complete. As Annsi Paasi reflects, ‘political borders are processes and institutions that emerge and exist in boundary-producing practices and discourses’.19 Indeed successive waves of immigration and refugee transnational migration, including Circassians during the 19th and 20th centuries; Palestinians after 1948 and 1967; Iraqis following the American led invasion in 2003; and Syrians as a result of civil war; in addition to the presence of different religious communities, has complicated the production of a homogenous, clearly bounded Jordanian population.

14 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 23.15 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, pp 31-32.16 Reece Jones, ‘Categories, Borders and Boundaries’: 179.17 Reece Jones, ‘Categories, Borders and Boundaries’: 179.18 Reece Jones, ‘Categories, Borders and Boundaries’: 179.19 Anssi Paasi, ‘A Border Theory: An Unattainable Dream or a Realistic Aim for Border Scholars?’, in Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, ed. Doris Wastl-Walter (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 13; for Jordan see Joseph Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of Jordanian National Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

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Territoriality

Territoriality is central to bordering, as it revolves around the process of claim-making and counter claim-making that individuals and collectives assert in relation to territory. It is therefore an act of claiming, establishing and reproducing control over space.20 This control -the raison d’etre of borders–manifests itself through territory. Resultantly, a sizeable portion of political power within any given collective has a territorial anchor. Territoriality subsequently, assists us in comprehending the border - boundary relationship. Paasi extrapolates on this, by explaining territoriality as the ideological discourse and practice that ‘transforms national spaces and histories, cultures, economic success and resources into bounded spaces’.21

De-territorialisation

These bounded spaces however are not static categories, but are fluid and contentious. This is the result of the persistent interplay between de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation. If territoriality is about claim making and the acquiring of control through and over territory, then de-territorialisation refers to collective actors and their relationships ‘escaping the straightjacket of state territoriality’. This is undertaken, contends Popescu, through extricating the container function of the nation-state and its monopoly on the categorising of space. As a process therefore, de-territorialisation is associated with de-bordering, which is indicative of the disappearance of borders as barriers, or of the definitive characteristics of categories.22 Furthermore, as a ramification of globalisation, de-territorialisation has been understood as altering the territorially founded power of the state in the international sphere. A significant result of this has been a renewed interest in the concept of the networked entity.

Popescu alludes to this, asserting that the location and flow of power appears to be changing. Specifically, ‘a primarily networked organization of power is replacing a primarily territorial organization of power’.23 Christopher Parker provides an illustration of this shift through the reorganisation of cityscapes under the influence of neoliberal philosophy. Using the Jordanian capital Amman as a case study, he illuminates how 20 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 12; Robert D. Sack, Human Territoriality: its Theory and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986).21 Anssi Paasi, ‘A Border Theory: An Unattainable Dream or a Realistic Aim for Border Scholars?’, p. 14.22 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 69-70.23 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 70.

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governance practices in Jordan are being metamorphosed into specific ‘arrangements’, that facilitate the continuation of prevailing local/national elite networks by embedding them into global finance networks.24 In this instance, it is the elites’ connections with global networks which perpetuates their positions of advantage, rather than their status as elites in a territorially bounded nation-state. Parker’s study herein, lends support to Popescu’s observation that de-territorialisation reveals the ‘possibility of people living as nodes’ within a globally constituted networked society.25

Re-territorialisation

Whereas de-territorialisation may be thought of as the breakdown of border rigidity, re-territorialisation denotes its consolidation or re-assemblage. As de-bordering is to de-territorialisation, so is re-bordering the modality of re-territorialisation.26 When conceived in this way, the notion of re-bordering seems to convey a degree of reconstruction, the process of re-establishing a border or boundary altered by de-bordering practices. Yet it is critical to discern that the act re-bordering may not result in re-establishment at all, but instead, open a space for new social modalities and assemblages. Therein, it is pertinent to centre an understanding of re-territorialisation around efforts to reposition power territorially, resulting in what Popescu identifies as a ‘restructuring of the modern territorial framework of organization…. leading to the emergence of new territorial assemblages of social relations’.27

A recent example of this is evident in Jordanian centenary commemorations of the 1916 Great Arab Revolt. Writing for Jordanian newspaper al-Sabil, Abdullah al-Majāli comments on the reality that Jordan is the only Arab state which commemorates the Revolt, one that was undertaken in the name of the Arab people as a whole.28 Jordan’s specific connection to the Revolt is the Hashemite Royal family. Sharif Husayn of Mecca, the leader of the uprising against the Ottoman Empire is the great-great-grandfather of King Abdullah II. Thus the significance of the uprising to the territorially bounded Hashemite Dynasty is unsurprising. What is surprising however is how the events have over time been reinterpreted in order to emphasise the centrality of the Jordanian nation-state. Such is evident in the centenary emblem, revealed earlier this year. At the base of the emblem is an open book, symbolising the chapters of history in which the Revolt is 24 Christopher Parker, ‘Tunnel-bypasses and Minarets of Capitalism: Amman as Neoliberal Assemblage’, Political Geography 28 (2009): 111.25 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 70.26 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 70.27 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 70.28 Abdullah al-Majāli, ‘The Centenary of the Great Arab Revolt’, al-Sabil, January 30, 2016, Essays.

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immortalised. A spokesperson from the Royal Court explained that the desired effect is to link ‘the past, present and future of Jordan’.29 This almost nationalising of what was in reality, a more ambitious project of independence, is an illustration of the re-territorialisation of culture, an endeavour to anchor a regional phenomenon to a specific political landscape.

Borderlands

Borderlands are conceptually far broader than borderlines, as they denote localities of meeting, networks, hybridity and therefore contact.30 Geographically, they can be conceptualised as the ‘transition zone’ between two nominally distinct entities.31 Taken together these help us to identify the innate capacity of borderlands to facilitate cross-border exchanges and contact. This is, according to Newman, central to understanding their importance. He argues that borderlands are integral to the process of border opening in their capacity to facilitate contact between individuals and collectives on either side of the border.32 Contact is essential in the construction and consolidation of networks.

Thus borderlands are significant as sites of network production. However, it is practical to recognise, that borderlands are not necessarily geographical. As Newman elaborates, the borders of cultural and social practice ‘are also characterised by borderland spaces and zones of transition, even if these cannot be defined in spatial or territorial terms’.33

Two aspects of borderlands are of particular interest to this paper, and while we shall consider them in detail later, it is important to outline them here. The first is how borderlands ‘emerge as in-between spaces, transitional spaces that can serve to smooth over differences and facilitate interaction’.34 The point of interest here is how this aspect can cast light on international conferences. The second aspect, is the borderland as a space

29 Jordan Times, ‘Emblem Marking Great Arab Revolt Centennial Unveiled’, Jordan Times, January 3, 2016, Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/emblem-marking-great-arab-revolt-centennial-unveiled 30 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 80; Jennifer, Bickham Mendez and Nancy, A. Naples, Border Politics: Social Movements, Collective Identities and Globalization (New York: NYU Press, 2015), p. 365.31 David Newman, ‘Contemporary Research Agendas in Border Studies: An Overview’, in Ashgate Research Companion to Border Studies, ed. Doris Wastl-Walter (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), p. 37.32 David Newman, ‘Contemporary Research Agendas in Border Studies’, p. 37.33 David Newman, ‘Contemporary Research Agendas in Border Studies’, p. 38.34 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 81.

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that ‘can enable living across borders, rather than living inside them’,35 which as we shall argue, is of special significance when analysing the intersection of domestic and international/global politics.

Networked Borders

This intersection raises the issue of what constitutes a networked border. The analogy is predicated on the notion that borders or boundaries regardless of their form are integrated together. Resultantly, they have been ‘dispersed throughout societies and re-created in a network form’ that can encompass several states or the world itself.36 By extension, the interplay between de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation across spatial categories is the foundation of networked borders. Metaphorically, this interplay can be envisaged in the form of ‘node and-link- territoriality’ that connects individuals, collectives and places together across time and space;37 Therein as Root explicates, they offer ‘opportunities for learning and problem-solving that change how individuals organize, transmit knowledge, and experience and interpret history’.38

Subsequently, the network analogy conceives of borders as malleable to a substantial number of locations and circumstances, expressed by Popescu in the form of a network map of nine prime, though not exhaustible locations. These are: first, embassies and other institutions of inter-state relations; second, airports and other such terminals where identity is screened; third, the world’s oceans; fourth, domestic localities of identity screening from nightclubs to police stations; fifth, policies of segregation; sixth, spaces where individual agency is undermined including refugee detention facilities; seventh, public and private sector institutions; eighth, ports, trade routes and logistics; finally, and perhaps most significantly, the internet.39 What is compelling about the diversity exhibited on this map, is that it illuminates how borders and the processes behind them, are as much a shaper of politics as they are a product of it.40

Part Two

35 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 81.36 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 81.37 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 82.38 Hilton, L. Root, Dynamics Among Nations: The Evolution of Legitimacy and Development in Modern States (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2013), p. 234.39 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 82-83.40 David Newman, ‘Contemporary Research Agendas in Border Studies’, pp. 34-35.

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The Conference as Borderland

We propose here to conceptualise the phenomena of the international (and increasingly transnational) conference as a borderland, a transitional space where domestic and international/global politics intersect, where neoliberalism’s contradictory dynamics are manifest and competing, and where the interplay between de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation is on display.41 In doing so we illustrate Naples and Mendez’s assertion, that political consciousness is shaped by lived realities, ‘within contexts shaped by the effects of neoliberal “debordering” and militarized “rebordering,”’.42

Using the February 2016 Supporting Syria and the Region donors conference as a case study we now return to the two features of borderlands that are significant for our study. The first, is the ability of borderlands to facilitate contact and linkages. The second attribute, which emerges out of the first, is the notion that borderlands enable the living across, as opposed to within, borders. In relation to this, we examine how politicians, whose position and authority is grounded (territorialised) in national institutions, use international and transnational forums to find solutions to domestic political dilemmas and disputes. Analysed together these two aspects demonstrate Popescu’s contention that ‘if borderlands infuse borders with a sense of space by giving them an area, then networks give borders their spatial mobility’.43 Thus the two analogies are intimately connected.

In this forthcoming section, we present an analysis of King Abdullah II’s address at the aforementioned conference through a model of practical reasoning developed by Fairclough and Fairclough. To examine practical reasoning is to be concerned with the question of what should be done in a given context. Accordingly, practical reasoning takes the goals and circumstances (context - both social and natural) of the actor as argument premises.44 Similar with constructivists, they recognise that circumstances have both a facilitative and inhibiting influence over argument construction, as the repertoire of values and understandings of what constitutes socially 41 International in its strictest sense refers to the relations between nation-states. Transnational meanwhile as a characterisation recognises the involvement of non-state actors who exist and operate across borders. Notable examples include the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 42 Jennifer, Bickham Mendez and Nancy, A. Naples, Border Politics, p. 365.43 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 81-82.44 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis: A Method for Advanced Students (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), p. 44.

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acceptable behaviour, held by the actor, are informed socially.45 The meeting of values, circumstances and goals in the process of practical reasoning, produces a practical argument. The objective of the action that evolves out of this argument, is to ‘transform’ the actor’s contemporary circumstances, so that they achieve parity with the actor’s goal/s.46

Resultantly, the following analysis coalesces around the five components: values, goal/s, circumstances, means-goal and a claim for action, of practical arguments.47 While this means that our analysis does not proceed chronologically in accordance with the delivery of the Royal address, it nevertheless offers a platform for deeper textual and thematic analysis.

The Territoriality of Circumstances

Circumstances refer to the agent’s context of action, and therein include both social and natural facts of reality as perceived by the agent.48 Understandably therefore, the pool of circumstances that a speaker may draw upon in order to buttress the plausibility, or persuasiveness of his or her argument is substantially broad. Consider here domestic, regional and international categories. On the domestic front, two are of particular significance. Firstly, Jordan is a small, resource-poor state that is still coming to terms with the impact of the 2007 Global Financial Crisis and the 2011 uprisings.49 Secondly, it is a country with a high percentage of citizens under the age of thirty, who in the face of stubbornly high unemployment, have become increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with the political 45 For examples of the role of identity in interest formation see: Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization 46:2 (1992): 396-397; Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective Identity Formation and the International State’, The American Political Science Review 88:2 (1994): 385-386; Ted Hopf, ‘The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory’, International Security 23:1 (1998): 173, 175, 177; Andrea Teti, ‘A Role in Search of a Hero: Construction and the Evolution of Egyptian Foreign Policy 1952-1967’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 14:1 (2004):77-105; Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, p. 44.46 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, p. 44.47 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, p. 45.48 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, pp. 44-45.49 King Abdullah II, ‘The Burden on Jordan Far Exceeds that on the West. Help is Needed’, The Independent, February 3, 2016, Voices. Accessible at http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-burden-on-jordan-far-exceeds-that-on-the-west-we-need-help-a6849391.html; The World Bank, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: Resolving Jordan’s Labour Market Paradox of Concurrent Economic Growth and High Unemployment (The World Bank: 2009): 1-76; and Omar Marashdeh, The Jordanian Economy (Amman: Al-Jawal, 1995).

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system.50 This sense of disillusionment has been compounded by the presence of Syrian refugees who have placed colossal strain on the State’s limited resources. Scale emerges here, as an important mechanism for converting circumstances into structure of a practical argument. Such is reflected in the articulation and subsequent comparison that, ‘one of every five people living in our Kingdom is a Syrian refugee; it is as if the UK had to absorb the entire population of Belgium’. The initial comparison is compounded economically, when the king asserts that hosting the refugees ‘consumes more than one quarter of Jordan’s national budget’ per annum.51

On the regional front, Jordan is located in a turbulent environment, contemporaneously punctuated by the neighbouring civil war in Syria, regional rivalries involving Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, and the persistent occupation of Palestine. Jordan’s stability within this context, is reflected in the image of Jordan as an island in a sea of discomposure. Elaborating further, it is stated by the Monarch, that Jordan has always accepted refugees fleeing persecution, whether they be from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Iraq, Libya, the Yemen or regional minorities.52 Such generates an image of Jordan as a country that is stable, trustworthy, and willing over successive decades to welcome and host refugee populations.

Internationally, the evolution of border politics, orbiting around two seemingly contradictory ideational forces of neoliberalism, has played its part in altering sites of global relations. Sparke elucidates these two contradictory forces as economic on the one hand, and politico-cultural on the other. The former generates pressure on policymakers to continue to expand and consolidate the map of liberalised cross-border and transnational business networks; in order to better facilitate the flow of capital and trade. In other words, it is desirable for border regulation to be

50 Suzanna Goussous, ‘UJ students rate economy, refugee crisis as key challenges’, Jordan Times, February 3, 2016, Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/uj-students-rate-economy-refugee-crisis-key-challenges; Suzanna Goussous, ‘Fear blamed for UJ students’ low participation in politics’, Jordan Times, February 8, 2016, Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/fear-blamed-uj-students%E2%80%99-low-participation-politics; For detailed exegesis on Jordan’s political economy see Laurie Brand, Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations: The Political Economy of Alliance Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) and Warwick Knowles, Jordan Since 1989: a Study in Political Economy (London: Tauris, 2005).51 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’ (Address, London, February 4, 2016).52 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.

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minimised or removed for enhanced market movement. Politico-cultural forces contrastingly, produce counteracting pressures to deepen border regulation.53 This is to the extent that, as Popescu argues, borders and the politics that both shape and are shaped by them, are increasingly active away from traditional territorial frontiers.54 Instead, as outlined in the first section of the paper, they have permeated throughout societies, both domestic and international/global.

Thus as Sparke enunciates, ‘while the agents of the economic imperatives employ a geoeconomic rhetoric of economic facilitation and urge border softening measures, the advocates of intensified border policing make a geopolitical case for a harder border that combines an older, often ethnically exclusivist, xenophobia’.55 What Sparke does not consider at length however, is the ability of normative ideas regarding a shared humanity to, at particular moments in time, question and push back against this xenophobia. Recent events in Australia, following a High Court decision in favour of the government’s offshore asylum seeker detention facilities, is an illustration of this. On 3 February 2016 the High Court of Australia ruled by majority that Australia’s detention of asylum seekers in offshore centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea was constitutionally valid.56

The legality of the Australian Government’s network of offshore border security facilities however does not equate to a normative acceptance of this networked treatment of refugees. Since the court decision thousands of Australians have marched and demonstrated in support of the asylum seekers at the centre of the court case, who now in Australia, face imminent deportation to Nauru.57 Emerging out of this has been the powerful slogan, twitter tag and social movement campaign ‘Let Them Stay’, which has encapsulated many of the concerns of the Australian community about the

53 Matthew, B. Sparke, ‘A Neoliberal Nexus: Economy, Security and the Biopolitics of Citizenship on the Border’, Political Geography 25 (2006): 152; Ronen Shamir, ‘Without Borders? Notes on Globalization as a Mobility Regime’, Sociological Theory 23:2 (2005): 199.54 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 48, 53.55 Matthew, B. Sparke, ‘A Neoliberal Nexus’: 152.56 Daniel Hurst and Ben Doherty, ‘High Court Upholds Australia’s Right to Detain Asylum Seekers Offshore’, The Guardian, February 2, 2016, Australia. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/03/high-court-upholds-australias-right-to-detain-asylum-seekers-offshore. 57 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ‘Let Them Stay: Thousands Gather in Australia-wide Protests Against Return of Asylum Seekers to Nauru’, ABC News, February 8, 2016. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-08/let-them-stay-protests-against-return-of-asylum-seekers-to-nauru/7150462.

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treatment of refugees in offshore centres and the secrecy under which the centres are operated.58 As renowned Australian journalist David Marr noted:

‘The thought of little children being returned to Nauru with no prospect of release is beginning to trouble us. What the doctors have been saying for two or three years now can’t be dismissed. Ditto the verdicts of the Human Rights Commission, the UN and the churches. The story is gathering momentum’.59

The story of Syrian refugees, as opposed to the militarised conflict, is similarly gaining momentum after six years of civil war. Unsurprisingly therefore, King Abdullah II employs this humanist normative element in addition to the physical circumstances of his Kingdom in the construction of his argument. He states that not only is the present crisis ‘arguably the worst, most tragic humanitarian crisis of our time’, but furthermore, a ‘critical moment in history’; one which stands as ‘a crucial test of our resolve, resilience, resourcefulness and ability to act’.60 Asserting this at the beginning of the speech is done in order to clearly identify the scale of the problem in general terms, and in so doing frame his forthcoming response as key to any solution. That said, it is not suggested that the conference is necessarily altruistic. It’s timing after a year in which the European Union (EU) was inundated by an unprecedented migration of refugees from Syria and beyond, is indicative of this. It is noted however, that the norms regarding human rights and international action can have influential impacts.

Values and Networked Politics

The humanist discourse of refugees and their rights is derived from values, illustrative that the capacity to act is informed by them. In the context of 58 Ben Doherty, ‘“Let Them Stay”: Backlash in Australia Against Plans to Send Asylum Seekers to Detention Camps’, The Guardian, February 10, 2016, Australia. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/10/let-them-stay-australia-backlash-267-asylum-seekers-island-detention-camps; GetUp, ‘Let Them Stay’. Available at: https://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/refugees/refugee-x/let-them-stay (Accessed February 18, 2016).59 David Marr, ‘Signs at Last that Australia has Tired of Cruelty Without Mercy to Refugees’, The Guardian, February 9, 2016, Australia. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/09/in-the-pledge-of-the-premiers-a-sign-that-australia-has-had-enough-of-cruelty-without-mercy-to-refugees. 60 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.

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practical reasoning, Fairclough and Fairclough enunciate that the ‘value premise’ of any action may connote the actual values of the agent/arguer, or reflect a set of values that said agent/arguer ought to be concerned with.61 I think it is important to advance this further and note that the value premises of the audience should also be taken into account if the proposed argument is to be accepted. Therein, owing to the direct circumstances in which the address is given - in a foreign capital city, one which is a major global financial hub, an audience of foreign dignitaries, economists and business people - the values that concern the speaker are not necessarily the values he, she or the people they represent hold dear. Instead the speaker needs to tap into the values reservoir of the audience and link their values and objective to their own. Thus networking on the basis of de-territorialised, that is to say global, values and norms. Consider the following passage:

‘Our generosity is driven by Jordanian values, and sustained by the national resilience that has kept our country secure. This resilience is what has enabled Jordan to respond when we saw our neighbours in need and answer the call of the international community. Jordan has joined nations much larger and richer than we are in global peacekeeping and humanitarian missions’.62

Two key values expounded here are resilience and generosity. Both are means through which Jordan has not only survived in a region marked acutely by the tempestuous twentieth century, but has additionally been able to develop itself as a key ally to international partners and causes. However, if we take Sparke’s analogy of the contradictory forces of neoliberalism, then we cannot take these expressed values without critique. Recall that economic and politico-cultural forces generated by neoliberalism pressure policymakers in different directions when it comes to the politics of bordering. Subsequently, it is unsurprising that this dynamic is evident in the Jordanian case. A brief example is illustrative. A recent article published in the Jordan Times noted that somewhere in the vicinity of sixteen thousand refugees are camped in the borderland between Syria and Jordan, having fled from the north-eastern parts of the country. The author notes that while there has been pressure from the international community on Jordan to allow them to cross, the process has been gradual in the name of

61 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, p. 48.62 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.

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security. Jordanian authorities it is reported, became ‘suspicious’ of the relative ease with which the refugees were able to migrate from Syria’s northeast - controlled by the Islamic State - to the southern periphery with Jordan.63

This situation, elaborated on further by the King in an interview leading up to the London conference, highlights the pre-eminence of securitisation discourse in policymaking on refugees.64 In particular, the security of a bounded territory identified as Jordan, whose inhabitants, Jordanians, are subsequently identified by their existence on, and attachment to, this bounded territory; demarcated from the surrounding landscape in the form of the nation-state. That is to say security on the basis of territoriality. Agnew notes that because identities are conventionally understood to have territorial foundations, the boundaries and borders distinguishing between them are ‘defined by opposing and exclusionary identities’.65

However, despite notions of exclusivity and sovereignty linked territoriality, an intriguing emergent trend is the regularity to which this territoriality is defended via recourse to de-territorialised or pseudo de-territorialised entities.66 This, Sparke argues, building from Purcell and Nevins, is the result of a world which remains territorially structured by the nation-state, while it simultaneously becomes increasingly de-territorialised by transnational effects.67 Analogously Agnew contributes that the global organisation of economic flows is generating a world that is ‘increasingly global and local and decreasingly national’.68 They are not alone in

63 Khetam Malkawi, ‘Syrians Fleeing Russian Air Strikes in South “Not Heading to Jordan Border”’, Jordan Times, February 13, 2016, Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/syrians-fleeing-russian-air-strikes-south-not-heading-jordan-border%E2%80%99; this became further pronounced in the wake of a truck bomb blast on a Jordanian border outpost in June which resulted in the death of five soldiers. The Jordanian government declared the border with Syria closed, allowing no movement of people across it. See: “Al-Urdun yu‘alan rasmiyyān ghalaq ḥududo wa waqaf istiqbāl al-lāja’een al-Suriyeen”, ammonnews.net, June 21, 2016, available at: http://www.ammonnews.net/article/272890 64 King Abdullah II, interview by Lyse Douchet, February 2, 2016, transcript available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/you-can%E2%80%99t-say-no-time-around-us%E2%80%99. 65 John Agnew, ‘Borders on the Mind: Re-framing Border Thinking’, Ethics and Global Politics 1:4 (2008): 178.66 Laurie Brand’s analogy of ‘budget security’ elucidates some of this concept from a political-economy perspective. See Laurie Brand, Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations.67 Matthew, B. Sparke, ‘A Neoliberal Nexus’: 159; Mark Purcell and Joseph Nevins, ‘Pushing the Boundary: State Restructuring, State Theory, and the Case of U.S.-Mexico Border Enforcement in the 1990s’, Political Geography 24 (2005): 211-235.68 John Agnew, ‘Borders on the Mind’ 182.

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recognising what is inherently a tectonic friction between the dictates of state sovereignty and the reality of a networked and globalising world. Campbell, Kumar and Slagle present an examination of this friction, which succinctly illustrates that in a networked world, total sovereignty is not as desirable as it may appear.

They give the example of North Korea to suggest that complete rejection of non-state authority can have detrimental consequences. Which in North Korea’s case, manifest themselves acutely in its weak economy and crippling international sanctions.69 Analogous with Sparke, Campbell, Kumar and Slagle Subsequently posit that far from creating a new state system to replace the post-Westphalian order, globalisation has generated ‘a new process’ through which states and non-state actors interact.70 In terms of the world system of nation-states, this situation has resulted in a change in the constitution of authority. Instead of social life being controlled and contained within states, Anderson and O’Dowd reflect that authority is being ‘partially unbundled’.71 And consequently exposed to, and influenced by the global dissemination of norms. Adherence to which becomes a matter of state and regime interest.72

With this in mind, we return to King Abdullah II’s address. By accentuating Jordan’s collaborative nature with the international community on matters of security and counterterrorism he conveys the country’s proven capacity to be an integral member of international consensus. This is significant insofar as it suggests that there is a normative function which makes cooperation with international consensus advantageous. This does not end with security, but extends into economics and methodologies of development. Abdullah II’s conviction in the modality of neoliberalism is indicated in his stressing that ‘we are firm believers in the importance of

69 Joel Campbell, Leena Kumar and Steve Slagle, ‘Bargaining Sovereignty: State Power and Networked Governance in a Globalising World’, International Social Science Review 85:3/4 (2010): 109.70 Joel Campbell, Leena Kumar and Steve Slagle, ‘Bargaining Sovereignty’: 119; Jillian Schwedler, ‘The Political Geography of Protest in Neoliberal Jordan’, Middle East Critique 21:3 (2012): 262.71 James Anderson and Liam O’Dowd, ‘Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality’: 602.72 Joel Campbell, Leena Kumar and Steve Slagle, ‘Bargaining Sovereignty’: 119; See also Peter Katzenstein, ed. The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Jutta Weddes, et.al. Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of Danger (London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999) and Saskia Sassen, ‘Neither Global nor National: Novel Assemblages of Territory, Authority and Rights’, Ethics and Global Politics 1:1/2 (2008): 61-79.

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strengthening and expanding our private sector. By supporting entrepreneurship and investment, we will be able to unlock a future of opportunity for our population’.73

In articulating statements such as this, the King arguably is continuing to position Jordan within the international mainstream economic consensus which has seen the global dissemination of neoliberal principles and practice in recent decades. It is not implied here that the King is engaging in empty politicking, for there is considerable evidence to suggest that he believes in the potential of neoliberalism to improve Jordan’s economic sustainability.74 What emerges is something similar to the analogy of networked sovereignty articulated by Campbell, Kumar and Slagle, who posit that:

‘the idea of a networked sovereignty is a perceptual image meant to be projected on to a country's citizens, enforcing the idea of sovereignty by the scope of their international connections -- the more institutions/net-works that recognize these leaders, the more authority they are deemed to have, and the more power they gain domestically’.75

The analogy of networked sovereignty envisaged here is focused on the ways in which a population perceives of their leadership through that leadership’s international relations. Our position in this paper however is that the reality of networked sovereignty is broader, and can be better conceptualised if an understanding of networked authority is integrated into it. By networked authority we mean that the authority of nationally constituted leaderships is facilitated by transnational networks and flows. Additionally, the ability of leaderships to sustain their authority is tied to varying extents to these networks. This argument that state capacity can be enabled and consolidated through networking is further articulated by Sassen, who has identified links between aspects of state power and the

73 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.74 See for example: King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty King Abdullah II at Georgetown University’ (Address, Washington D.C., October 13, 1999); King Abdullah II, Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril (London: Penguin, 2011); Volker Perthes, Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics of Change (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004); and Lamis Andoni, ‘King Abdullah: In His Father’s Footsteps?’, Journal of Palestine Studies 29:3 (2000).75 Joel Campbell, Leena Kumar and Steve Slagle, ‘Bargaining Sovereignty’: 112.

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implementation of policies required by the global economy.76 In Jordan’s case, this suggests that being a member of the international politico-economic philosophical consensus can result in the acquisition of capital, capable of easing budgetary strain.77 However increased capacity does not necessarily equate to a strengthening of authority, as the forces of globalisation have produced a splintering of authority and power. Rosenau for example states that political authority is engaged in a three-way migration. It is migrating up towards transnational and international forums and organisations, downwards to sub-state governance structures, and ‘sideways’ to the state.78 Therefore, engagement by state decision makers in supra-state mechanisms should not expect to consolidate the centrality of state power without trade-offs.

Claims for Action: Different Faces of Territoriality

Circumstances and values are key components in making a claim for action. Fairclough and Fairclough identify two varieties of practical argument, in which agent values and circumstances have different roles. The first variety of practical argument is derived from the twin foundations of goals and circumstances. The central principle is if an agent is in ‘A’ circumstance and wants to satisfy ‘C’ goal, then they ought to undertake ‘B’ action.79 The second variety of argument contrastingly is premised consequences, either of action or inaction. Agents ruminate on the available options for action and evaluate as much as is possible how undertaking one or another option might advance them closer (or not) to their goals.80

In his London discourse, King Abdullah II makes two connected, we ought to do this, claims. The first is referenced early in the address in the notion that ‘traditional approaches to handling crisis simply do not work’ in the context of Syria, which requires ‘broader and bolder action’.81 Interesting about this as a claim, is that it draws on characteristics of both varieties of

76 Saskia Sassen, ‘Neither Global nor National’: 63.77 See for example Tariq Tell, Early Spring in Jordan: The Revolt of the Military Veterans (Carnegie Middle East Center, 2015), p. 9. Available at: http://carnegie-mec.org/2015/11/04/early-spring-in-jordan-revolt-of-military-veterans/iigv. 78 James Rosenau, ‘Illusions of Power and Empire’, History and Theory 44:4 (2005): 75.79 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, p. 49.80 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, pp. 49-50.81 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.

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practical reasoning. It can be reasonably hypothesised that the goal is a resolution to the refugee crisis, both in Europe and the Arab Middle East (AME). A crisis that is six years old, and showing little sign of de-escalating anytime soon. If so, then the argument appears to be one of - after six years of trying to manage this crisis we haven’t been able to so, we should consequently change strategy - that is, circumstances have dictated policy planning. Though there has almost certainly been policy on the run in some cases owing to the scale of migration, the claim made by the Jordanian monarch would have little impact if it did not coalesce around an argument of the second variety. Consequences of action and inaction are central here, and although the speech utilises minimal statistics, it endeavours to conceptually convince the audience that Jordan and its stability is central to any bolder and broader effort. Such resonates in the rhetorical flourish calling on the delegates to:

‘Imagine the impact (of the crisis on Europe/delegates’ own countries) had Jordan been different (neither generous or resilient). Had we not let in refugees into our country over the past decades? What would the impact on the region and world peace and security have been now?’82

Jordan is thus constructed and represented as an indispensable linchpin, not just in the present effort but in similar historical cases. Consider the absorption of Palestinian refugees after 1948 and 1967, and Iraqi refugees from 2003. By extension, Jordan becomes a defender of Europe, a seawall holding back the tide of Syrian refugees, and is justifiably, from the King’s perspective, ‘fulfilling a critical role in our region and staying strong for the world’.83 The claim accordingly can be conceptualised as: the international community should support Jordanian initiatives in order to accomplish ‘X’ goal (a sustainable solution to the Syrian refugee crisis) while preventing ‘Y’ negative consequences (further pressures on European nation states). Importantly, this argument is not limited to the conference address, but is evident in other public discussions.84 Moreover, it is through transnational networks that King Abdullah II is able to make such claims for a particular

82 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.83 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.84 King Abdullah II, interview by Lyse Douchet; King Abdullah II, ‘The Burden on Jordan Far Exceeds that on the West’.

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action. Therein his territorially defined authority is consolidated through the de-territorialised networks of globalisation.

Goals: Political Decision-making in a Networked World

Goals in policy terms are readily conceived of as material objects of desire, or a quantitative shift in a measured variable such as unemployment. However, scholars do a disservice to analysis if this is the only way goals are conceptualised. A useful complementary understanding of goals perceives them as imagined or idealised ‘future states of affairs’;85 a notion that assists in how we analyse the London address and the place of networked borders within it. Consider this concluding sentiment: ‘now is the time for the world to take a meaningful stand on Jordan’.86 Firstly, this denotes a desire for a future state of affairs in which the international community takes, in Abdullah II’s mind, a policy stance on Jordan that is more befitting of the role Jordan plays in the international/global community. His request that the conference produce a way forward that goes beyond ‘just enough aid to keep our heads barely above water’ is illustrative of this.87

It is significant that this had been a repeated theme in the King’s discussions and media releases in the lead-up to the conference. During his BBC interview with Lyse Douchet, he was asked what his message to Europe was, to which he responded by iterating that while the upcoming conference was centred on raising funds for Syria, he hoped that it would additionally be an opportunity to improve the lives of Jordanian citizens.88 Thus the territorialised nature of the King’s goals is revealed parallel with the reality that these goals can only be satisfied through transnational de-territorialised networks and flows. As a result, the reliance of his authority on Jordan’s international networks is alluded to, as the Jordanian state through internal means is unable to facilitate the expectations of its citizens.

85 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, p. 76.86 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.87 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.88 King Abdullah II, interview by Lyse Douchet.

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Following on from this, Douchet inquired as to whether this was ‘the week of the red line’, commenting that it appears ‘Jordan is saying if you don’t give us significant long-term support to develop our economy, if you don’t give us access to European markets, we can’t take in more Syrian refugees’.89 The King confirmed that sustained support from the international community was a red line, but stressed that if Jordan was to continue to contribute to regional and global stability it was a fair red line to establish. As he elaborates:

‘We are part of a coalition against extremism, not only in Syria and Iraq, but throughout the world. Whenever the international community has asked for Jordan to fight the good fight, alongside of our colleagues all over the international community, we have never said no. What we are asking now for the first time is, the international community, we have always stood shoulder-to-shoulder by your side; we are now asking for your help, you can’t say no this time around to us’.90

He is not alone in enunciating sentiments of this nature. Ministers in the former Ensour Government have argued analogously, with public statements from Jordanian Planning and International Cooperation Minister Imad Fakhoury particularly illustrative. At a conference hosted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on the sidelines of the leaders’ conference in London, Fakhoury stated that the government was hopeful that new investment opportunities would arise out of the London meetings. Critically, he alludes to the territorialised nature of his, and the government’s interests, through the prioritisation of Jordanian employment opportunities. Announcing, that ‘we (the Jordanian government) want new investments that will create jobs for Jordanians and initiatives that can create also jobs for Syrian refugees in a manner that is not at the expense of Jordanians and in areas where Jordan has non-Jordanian labour’.91

This argument demonstrates the territoriality of identity and the hierarchies that emerge consequentially. In a world increasingly marked by de-territorialisation, the hierarchical division of people and their needs on the

89 King Abdullah II, interview by Lyse Douchet.90 King Abdullah II, interview by Lyse Douchet.91 Jordan Times, ‘Jordan Wants Investments to Benefit Jordanians, Syrians – Fakhoury’, Jordan Times, February 3, 2016, Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/jordan-wants-investments-benefit-jordanians-syrians-%E2%80%94-fakhoury.

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basis of territoriality, appears to justify Agnew’s contention that we need a new model of citizenship. One which diverges away from ‘nationalist narratives’ which foster an image of territory as something to be owned and possessed exclusively.92

The second point of reflection generated by the King and his ministers’ statements, is how the forces of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation both manifest themselves in political arguments. The king of Jordan, whose authority is innately territorialised, is a delegate at an international and transnational conference – an intersection between the national and the supra-national – to appeal for long-term funding commitments for programs which will be inherently territorialised in function. That is to say, for the benefit of Jordanians and Syrian refugees. Moreover, no subtly is applied to conceal the fact that the needs of Jordanians will be the first priority.93 Requesting support from its network connections exemplifies Sassen’s contention that the global can be constituted within the national.94 We contribute to this further, by highlighting the reciprocal nature of this, for the national also manifests itself in the global, in part because cross-national interaction has made the global possible.

In connection, the third facet of reflection involves Sparke’s schizophrenic neoliberalism. On the one hand, the flow of capital across borders is welcome. To this end the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation is currently reviewing the country’s economic legislation, facilitated by a grant from the G7’s Deauville Partnership. Due to take three years, the review, conducted in consultation with the private sector, is designed to ensure that legislation complies with international standards and norms.95 Put differently, how can Jordan’s business environment be

92 John Agnew, ‘Borders on the Mind’: 187.93 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’; Jordan Times, ‘Jordan Secures $1.7b Grants, grant Equivalents at London Conference’, Jordan Times, February 4, 2016. Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/jordan-secures-17b-grants-grant-equivalents-london-conference; Omar Obeidat and Khetam Malkawi, ‘Jordan Succeeded in attracting World’s Attention, Help-PM’, Jordan Times, February 7, 2016. Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/jordan-succeeded-attracting-world%E2%80%99s-attention-help-%E2%80%94-pm; Jamil al-Nimri, ‘A Marshall Plan for the Sake of Jordan’, al-Ghad, February 5, 2016. Available at: http://www.alghad.com/articles/918680- -خطة-مارشال

. s=60ef0ff403175d7037574bafcb91a4aa? ألردن فورية-من-أجل-ا94 Saskia Sassen, ‘Neither Global nor National’: 63.95 Jordan Times, ‘Project Under way to Review Economic Laws in Consultation with Private Sector’, Jordan Times, February 13, 2016. Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/project-under-way-review-economic-laws-consultation-private-sector-%E2%80%94-fakhoury.

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more capably networked into the corresponding global environment. By contrast, the timing of the conference and its location are both indicative that unexpected and unpredictable transnational movements of people without regulation is another matter. The King is encouraged to reflect on this notion during the BBC interview. Douchet comments that it has taken the unprecedented arrival of refugees into Europe during 2015 for European leaders to acknowledge and understand the scale of what Jordan is experiencing. His response poignantly is that ‘it wasn’t until a trickle hit European shores that then, I think, eyebrows were raised and they began to realise the reality of the challenges that Jordanians have faced’.96

Each of these three points coalesce around a broader strategic objective that appears to be in operation; keeping Jordan indispensable in the mind of international policy makers. This is a matter of regime survival. Bueno de Mesquita has argued that regardless of typology, all regimes rely on supporters in order to survive. These supporters, whom he treats as domestic or indigenous to the political system in which the regime exists, are called the ‘winning coalition’. The interests of this coalition must be satisfied as a trade-off for their sanctioning of the regime.97 We further Bueno de Mesquita’s logic by including international and transnational actors into the winning coalition. This is an important addition to made in reference to Jordan, because Jordanian ruling elites have persistently turned to international partners to guarantee access to sufficient capital to address the needs of the Jordanian public generally, and the regime’s domestic winning coalition especially.98

Therein, if past policy behaviour is any indication, one of the central goals of the London conference for Jordan is to acquire finance to alleviate Jordan’s budgetary strain by getting other states and financial institutions to support the cost of hosting and integrating refugees into the domestic economy.

Means-Goal and the Paradox of Contemporary BordersThe means-goal component of practical arguments links circumstances, goals and values, as the means (action) by which the agent proceeds from

96 King Abdullah II, interview by Lyse Douchet.97 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita et.al., The Logic of Political Survival (London: MIT Press, 2005), pp. 38-51.98 See Laurie Brand, Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations and Warwick Knowles, Jordan Since 1989.

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their present circumstances towards their objectives.99 After stating that conventional crisis management schemes are inadequate, the King proposes a replacement model. He speaks of a ‘holistic approach’ to the crisis, one that is focused on sustainability and a shift away from ‘a demeaning reliance on hand-outs’ towards greater self-sufficiency.100 The Jordanian means-goal model consists of three pillars.

The first, involves a strategic reframing of the refugee crisis into a ‘development opportunity’, one which benefits Jordanians and the refugee population whom they host. At its centre is the objective to attract more foreign investment, and to improve access for Jordanian businesses to the European common market.101 The enhanced flow of economic activity across borders, it is hoped, will stimulate the domestic employment growth required to reduce Jordan’s stubbornly high unemployment. In addition to providing employment for the refugee population, who if Jordan’s Iraqi population is any guide, may remain in Jordan for at least a decade. The belief in the role of economic growth in improving circumstances for Jordanians is tied to the goals and values of the Jordanian leadership. Thus this first pillar is an endeavour to divine a way to opportunity through adversity, one which has support from non-state actors including the United Nations.102

The second pillar concomitantly revolves around the need to adequately fund the Jordan Response Plan (2016-2018) which is designed to improve the conditions of Jordanian host communities.103 The plan is a coordinated attempt to address the implications of the Syrian refugee crisis, while simultaneously not ‘jeopardizing’ the Kingdom’s development objectives.104 Therein, it can be analysed as a means to achieve goals, the prioritisation of which is innately territorial. However, the reality of funding shortfalls, means that the Plan must be supported through global networks of authority and finance. Indeed, one of the assumptions on which the Plan is 99 Isabella Fairclough and Norman Fairclough, Political Discourse Analysis, pp. 45, 48.100 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.101 Jordan Times, ‘Jordan Wants Investments to Benefit Jordanians, Syrians’.102 See comments by UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Jordan Edward Kallon in Khetam Malkawi, ‘Jordan Has Turned Refugee Challenge into an Opportunity’, Jordan Times, February 23, 2016, Local. Available at: http://www.jordantimes.com/news/local/jordan-has-turned-refugee-challenge-opportunity%E2%80%99. 103 Jordan Times, ‘Jordan Wants Investments to Benefit Jordanians, Syrians’.104 Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, Jordan Response Plan for the Syria Crisis 2016-2018 (2016), p. 9.

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based, is that ‘donors will be willing to channel increasing levels and longer-term funding’.105

The third pillar that Fakhoury outlines refers to need for financial support in order to strengthen the Kingdom’s macroeconomic framework as the country enters into a new Extended Fund Facility (EFF) agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).106 An EFF is designed to ‘correct structural imbalances over an extended period’, and is therefore used by the IMF to assist nation-states that either, struggle with their balance of payments or experience structural impediments to growth.107 Its focus is, resultantly, somewhat similar in philosophical scope to a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). Similar with the second pillar, the third bears witness to the interplay between the territorial existence of a state’s leadership, and its utilisation or at times dependence on cross border, de-territorialised financial flows. That the three pillars put together cannot stand in the absence of de-territorialising networks of authority and capital, is indicated by King Abdullah II in his concluding remarks that the Jordanian model ‘brings us together as partners – countries, regions, the private sector, international financial institutions – to build a new model for effective, sustainable action’.108 Thus it is suggested that the borders of political action and decision making have become a multifaceted and complex networked reality.

Conclusion

We began this paper with Said’s contention that ‘none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography’, and through the subsequent analysis, endeavoured to demonstrate how this struggle manifests itself in subtle, yet profound ways in an increasingly transnational world. It was argued that Popescu’s analogies of borderlands and network borders provided an advantageous platform, through which oscillations between actors in domestic and global politics could be examined. One central observation that emerged from Popescu’s exegesis was the understanding that as borders change ‘functions, shapes and meanings, people’s lives

105 Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, Jordan Response Plan, p. 10.106 Jordan Times, ‘Jordan Wants Investments to Benefit Jordanians, Syrians’.107 The International Monetary Fund, ‘The IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF)’, https://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/eff.htm. 108 King Abdullah II, ‘Remarks by His Majesty During the “Supporting Syria and the Region Conference”’.

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change as well’.109 Concomitantly the institutions which shape lives and behaviours, including the nation-state also transform. Such is reflected in the analogy of networked sovereignty, which is a direct by-product of the network border phenomenon.

This study of the conference as a networked borderland enabled us to elucidate elements of the power relationships between some of the actors involved in the bordering processes that the conference represents. Such was demonstrated in the section ‘Claims for Action: Different Faces of Territoriality’. Here we dissected a significant part of King Abdullah II’s address, in which he spoke of the consequences of action and inaction. Specifically, the consequences to European nation-states, populations, identities and leaderships, if they fail to support Jordan’s efforts regarding the hosting and settlement of Syrian refugees.

A dichotomy manifests itself here. The audience, to whom the King addresses his speech and claim for action, has power visa-vie Jordan with regards to finance. Put simply, Jordan relies on access to foreign capital in order to maintain domestic stability. This appears to turn modern and territorialised understandings of sovereignty on their heads. Instead of the state defending or asserting its sovereignty at its geographical borders, it is instead doing so from a de-territorialised space far from its geopolitical borders. The significance of this is its challenge to globalist narratives that posit a decline in nation-state hegemony in the global community.110 The state rather seems to be adapting flexibly to emerging conditions.

The second half of the dichotomy however, reveals that Jordan also has power in this borderland relationship. By being incapable of continuing to support an increasing population of refugees, there is a risk that the witnessed migration to Europe may increase rather than decrease in the foreseeable future. This circumstance, should it arise, may result in increased pressure on European unity, and enflame contemporary debates about identity, and sub-state social bordering practices.

Resultantly, our image of international conferences generally, and the present case study specifically is transformed, as we are more lucidly able to perceive of it as a site through which flows are controlled. Therein, the analogy of the networked border facilitates, a greater appreciation of the

109 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 151.110 See for example Hilton, L. Root, Dynamics Among Nations, p. 231.

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intimate interplay between domestic and global politics, in a world where politics is becoming increasingly ‘glocal’.111

111 Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century, p. 156.

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