ABSTRACT
The argument about culture and political legitimacy presented in this project is derived in part from Habermas’s theory of legitimation crisis although it is not a direct application of that theory to the Jordanian case. Habermas intended his analysis to explain a problem specific to advanced capitalist states and the interaction of their political-administrative, economic and sociocultural aspects. However, the crux of the legitimacy issue lies in the relationship between the state and its sociocultural milieu, and in my view a very similar potential legitimation crisis faces states in developing countries. The study of legitimation issues in developing countries can perhaps contribute to the elucidation of the effects of culture on political development, an issue which has long been of interest in political science but which has also been the subject of some deeply flawed work. It is not the business of the present study to recreate these roundly-criticized arguments but rather to contribute to the rescue of terms like “tradition” and “political development” from their modernization-theory ghetto.
