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Europe & Middle East / Working Paper

Morocco: negotiating change with the Makhzen

14/03/2008 By Kristina Kausch

Morocco compares very favourably throughout the region in terms of democratic achievements, and has often been held up as a model of Arab progressive political liberalisation by Moroccan authorities and international observers. Upon closer inspection, however, the picture of Moroccan democratic reform does not appear quite as bright.

While King Mohammed VI and the government have implemented a number of very important and valuable reforms, these have remained selective, ad-hoc, and in many cases flawed and superficial. Most importantly, the concentration of all meaningful political power in the palace has remained in the hand of the Makhzen, the political power apparatus behind the palace.

Freedom of association – the right to form an association able to freely develop its activities – is an often-neglected cornerstone of any democratic transition. The Moroccan civil society landscape is known to be among the most diverse and vibrant in the region.

While associative life has been benefiting from a series of legal and political improvements in recent years, a number of decisive challenges to free association remain.

This FRIDE Working Paper, written by Kristina Kausch, intends to accompany the Club of Madrid’s efforts to strengthen freedom of association throughout the North Africa and Middle East region, and provides an independent analysis of the situation of civil society in Morocco. All findings are based on a wide range of interviews among governmental and non-governmental Moroccan stakeholders.

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Publishing groups

Freedom of association in the Middle East and North Africa

Keywords

Civil society Democracy Democracy promotion Democratisation Dialogue Freedom of association Freedom of expression Governance Human rights Judicial reform Middle East and North Africa Morocco Political economy Political Reform Rule of Law

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Bio author: Kristina Kausch

Kristina Kausch is a Researcher at FRIDE's Democratisation Programme and focuses on European policies of democracy promotion in the European neighbourhood. She holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Göttingen. Prior to joining FRIDE in 2004, she worked for several years on programmes of good governance and democratisation for the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), and at the Bertelsmann Foundation.