Encouraged by western donors, Arab regimes have introduced decentralization reforms as a means to enhance local autonomy, increase political participation and improve their economic situation ever since the 1990s. Yet, when tackling questions on authoritarian regime stability in the Middle East, scholars focused on central elites and state institutions, neglecting the significance of the local level. Only when the Arab protests in 2011 mostly originated from the local periphery, political scientists increasingly began to employ a bottom-up perspective and turned their attention to the dynamics of local politics. In 2015, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan joined the trend by introducing a law on decentralization as an initial step towards a decentralized governing structure. The most significant change coming with this top-down initiated reform project is the establishment of a governorate council in each of Jordan’s twelve governorates – a (partly) elected, financially independent body, which is now working as an intermediate player between the center and the local tiers of government. In general, the functioning of decentralization in the Arab world is subject to elite networks on all levels: central, intermediate and local. In turn, decentralization reforms also affect the formation and the logic behind these elite networks by providing new opportunities for local elites and other stakeholders to evolve. This paper provides a systematic account of the state of decentralization in Jordan and identifies changing dynamics within central, intermediate, and local elite networks triggered by the process. Drawing on the findings of extensive field work in Jordan in 2018, the paper gives answers to the following questions: Are decentralized government structures enhancing central control in the periphery by reinforcing central elite networks on the intermediate and local levels of government? Does decentralization develop its own momentum by opening up new “spaces of contentious politics” and thereby give way to unpredictable bottom-up dynamics? Based on a most dissimilar systems design, the empirical analysis of three governorates sheds light on changing elite dynamics, possible regional disparities and future prospects for decentralization in Jordan. The underlying theoretical framework builds up on an interplay between top-down initiated decisions and bottom-up activities. Top-down initiated decisions include formal mechanisms of political participation, e.g. elections, as well as informal practices such as cooptation. Simultaneously, the new role of the intermediate level opens up the possibility for formal and informal bottom-up dynamics to evolve, creating new “spaces of contentious politics”.