Project description
The power of ambiguity: fragmented sovereignty in Jordan
Modern authoritarian regimes increasingly govern through fragmented, semi-privatised spaces like special economic zones and government-organised NGOs, which obscure authority and create a confusing ‘architecture of ambiguity’. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the AmbiStates project will investigate how such institutionalised fragmentation reshapes power and state–society relations in Jordan. By focusing on Aqaba and Tafileh, the study will employ participatory mapping, discourse analysis and interviews to examine how citizens navigate opaque systems and the retreat of welfare provision. The project also aims to generate innovative, transferable insights into how governance is reshaped under neoliberal restructuring and authoritarian resilience. Ultimately, theorising from the periphery will provide a new framework for understanding how states maintain control through deliberate fragmentation.
Objective
Authoritarian regimes increasingly govern not through coherent bureaucracies but through fragmented, hybrid, and semi-privatized arrangements such as Special Economic Zones (SEZs), Government-Organized NGOs (GONGOs), and Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). These ambiguous state spaces (ASSs) obscure authority while redistributing power in opaque, discretionary ways. Existing scholarship on the “state effect” and “ambiguities of domination” has shown how states appear monolithic through everyday practices—even when citizens are cynical. This project pushes state theory further by asking what happens when the state no longer seeks to appear unified, but instead institutionalizes fragmentation as a deliberate mode of rule.
The project interrogates state-society relations in ambiguous state spaces, while developing a framework for analyzing power through ambiguity. Two specific aims guide the study: (1) to investigate the spatial effects of ASSs—how SEZs or regime-linked GONGOs reshape the symbolic, scalar, and bureaucratic contours of authority; and (2) to examine citizens’ everyday practices—how they navigate opacity, uncertain authority, and retreating welfare provision.
Empirically, the project focuses on two peripheral sites in southern Jordan—Aqaba and Tafileh—where governance has been reconfigured through SEZs and GONGOs. Methodologically, it combines participatory mapping, discourse analysis, and interviews to capture both institutional self-representations and citizen perspectives.
By treating ambiguous state spaces as core features of governance, the project contributing to MSCA’s goals by generating innovative concepts, interdisciplinary methods, and transferable insights into how governance is reshaped under neoliberal restructuring and authoritarian resilience, while also fostering collaborations and training and positioning CCRS as a hub for comparative debates—showing how theorizing from the periphery generates globally relevant insights.
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
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