Politics and Society Institute Examines the Policy Legitimacy Gap in Jordanian Legislation-Making

The Politics and Society Institute, in a new policy paper, examines a recurring problem in Jordan’s legislative process: the transfer of a number of draft laws to the House of Representatives amid wide-ranging debate over their objectives, justifications, and implications—accompanied by intensive efforts on the part of the government to explain and defend its bills only after they have already reached the legislature.

The paper poses a central question: does the problem actually lie in the government’s limited capacity to “market” draft laws, or does it originate at an earlier stage, rooted in how public policy is prepared and how the knowledge-based legitimacy of legislation is built before a bill is ever referred to parliament?

The paper notes that the government, given its constitutional role in legislative initiative and public-policy implementation, is obligated to explain its policies and clarify their objectives and implications—but should not treat legislation as a “product” requiring a marketing campaign after it has already been produced. It argues that effective government communication should begin before the legal text is drafted, through clearly defining the problem, presenting evidence, studying alternatives, consulting stakeholders, and assessing potential impacts.

The paper emphasizes that the quality of legislation is determined not only by the soundness of the legal text itself, but also by the quality of the process that produced it. Legislation grounded in data and evidence, preceded by organized consultation and impact assessment, arrives in parliament within a clearer environment—allowing members of parliament and the public to debate policy choices, rather than confronting, for the first time, basic questions about the legislation’s motives and justifications.

In this context, the paper proposes an interpretive framework it terms the “policy legitimacy gap”—a gap that can emerge when a draft law moves to the parliamentary stage before public debate has been completed on the problem it addresses, the available alternatives, the evidence the government relied upon, and its expected effects. The paper stresses that this concept is offered as an analytical framework for understanding the Jordanian case, not as a claim that the absence of consultation is the sole explanation for legislative controversy.

The paper examines the draft amendment to the Real Estate Ownership Law as an applied case that allows this framework to be tested, particularly given the debates surrounding some of its provisions and their potential effects on property rights, land values, real estate investment, and market expectations—including concerns related to expropriation and the routes of future infrastructure projects.

At the same time, the paper stresses the need to distinguish between the absence of consultation and the absence of its public documentation. It clarifies that the lack of sufficient publicly available detail regarding consultations that preceded the referral of the Real Estate Ownership Law amendment does not necessarily mean no consultations took place—rather, it raises a question about the level of transparency and institutionalization in documenting this process and making it accessible to the public.

The paper points out that Jordan’s own experience offers different models. In some draft laws—including the 2026 Local Administration Law—the government announced dialogues with members of parliament, senators, relevant sectors, and experts, drawing on studies and opinion surveys. It argues that the significance of this experience lies not in proving that the government never consults, but in raising a broader question: why don’t good consultative practices become a unified institutional standard applied to all draft laws with broad impact?

The paper contends that this question shifts the discussion from evaluating the performance of a particular government or minister to a deeper level concerning the design of the legislative process itself—so that the quality of consultation and impact assessment no longer depends on the nature of the bill, the ministry, the government, or the minister, but instead becomes a fixed component of the law-making cycle.

In response to the argument that the problem may be political or structural rather than procedural, the paper acknowledges that legislation is not a neutral technical process, and that many disputes over laws reflect genuine conflicts between political, economic, and social interests and visions that cannot be resolved simply through additional consultation.

Nonetheless, the paper maintains that procedural reform still holds value, since its purpose is not to eliminate political disagreement but to improve its terms. Consultation and impact assessment do not necessarily produce consensus, but they can shift the debate away from doubts about intentions and information gaps, toward disagreement grounded more firmly in evidence, alternatives, and anticipated effects.

The paper recommends developing a more integrated cycle for law-making in Jordan—one that begins with defining the problem and gathering evidence, followed by studying alternatives, conducting public consultations, and assessing impact, before proceeding to draft the bill and refer it to the House of Representatives.

It also proposes developing what it calls a “policy memorandum” to accompany major legislation, so that government documentation is not limited to the standard statement of justifications (al-asbab al-mujibah), but also includes a definition of the problem, the data the government relied upon, the alternatives studied, the reasons for selecting the proposed alternative, the expected economic and social effects, the results of consultations, and indicators for measuring success after the law is implemented.

The paper further calls for developing government communication mechanisms so that they shift from a model of “belated defense of the law” to one built on cultivating public understanding of the policy before it reaches parliament—arguing that the government should not be concerned merely with convincing the public that a law is good, but with enabling the public to understand the problem it addresses and the choices behind it.

The paper concludes that the challenge does not lie in the absence of good practices within the Jordanian state, but in the failure to systematically convert these practices into institutional norms. It argues that Jordan does not necessarily need to import an entirely foreign legislative model, but rather needs to institutionalize the good practices that already exist, transforming them from scattered initiatives into a fixed part of the legislative cycle.

The paper affirms that the goal of the proposed reform is not to make the government better able to defend its laws after they reach parliament, but to make the law-making process itself more transparent, more evidence-based, and more capable of building trust before the legislative stage is even reached.

The paper closes with a core message: the problem is not that the government sometimes consults and sometimes does not; rather, the quality of consultation should not depend on the nature of the bill, the ministry, the government, or the minister—it must become an institutional feature of the legislative cycle itself. Accordingly, the shift from “marketing laws” to “institutionalizing the law-making process” represents, according to the paper, a fundamental step toward more predictable legislation, greater capacity to achieve public-policy objectives, and a higher level of trust among citizens and economic actors.

To read the full paper, click here