When the king first moved against Parliament and promised to fix the much maligned election law, many groups praised the decision. As the economy has soured, with unemployment around 13 percent, the legislature has developed a reputation for self-interest and incompetence. It also lacked legitimacy because of accusations of vote-buying and fraud in the last election, though former officials say it was the intelligence service that oversaw the electoral manipulation.

Jordan’s actions are nothing out of the ordinary in the Middle East, where kings, emirs, sultans and presidents rely on elected institutions to claim legitimacy and give citizens the perception they have a stake in the direction of the state, political experts said. But those institutions have little independent power or authority. In Egypt, officials in 2006 delayed local elections for two years, saying they would use that time to improve the democratic conditions, though those improvements have not occurred.

When Jordan’s king dissolved Parliament, he also instructed the government to ensure that future elections were a “model of transparency and justice.” By doing that, he focused attention on the election law that was put in effect in 1993 by his father, King Hussein.

The law shifted control of Parliament away from heavily populated urban centers, with a majority of Palestinians and Islamist supporters, to more rural, tribal-dominated areas. The election law has been preserved over the years because it permitted some degree of public political participation, while allowing the government to preserve a social balance that it sees as essential to keeping Islamists from taking power, and keeping Jordanians of Palestinian origin from winning political control. Of the six million Jordanians, at least half are ethnic Palestinians.

Government supporters say changing the law would undermine the identity of the state and diminish the prospects for the two-state solution to the crisis between the Palestinians and the Israelis. But critics contend that the election law has been used as a political tool to protect old-guard interests.

“I don’t think that King Hussein, when he designed the election law, thought it would reach the situation we are in today,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, a former director of the Center for Strategic Studies, who now edits a weekly magazine. “But there are conservatives who believe that this is the best way to maintain stability.”

For the moment, the king has focused on the day-to-day management of a struggling economy. The national debt is headed toward $14 billion this year at the same time that the economy is contracting as a result of the global financial crisis. The king rolled out his final reshuffling on Monday, when he swore in a new prime minister, Samir Rifai, 43, a businessman and former palace adviser.