Political transformations in Morocco (1980-2010): a neoliberal transition and a transition in neoliberalism

The start of a fundamental process of political change in Morocco has often been situated in the early 1990s and not so much at the beginning of the 1980s with the imple-

mentation of the first SAP. Since the 1990s, Morocco has often been referred to as a model reformer in the MENA-region. Trying to leave the turbulent 1980s behind, late

king Hassan II set Morocco on a path of political and social reform. This involved the so-called alternance process. The riots in Fez in December 1990 against the US-led invasion of Iraq (an invasion that was supported by the Morocco government), the increasing international criticism with regard to Morocco’s human rights record, the

continuation of the conflict in the Western Sahara and the publication of Gilles Per- rault’s Notre ami le Roi (1990), which denounced Hassan II’s thirty years of human

rights violations and criticized France’s policy of turning a blind eye to these violations, were some of the main events which urged the monarchy to implement serious political reforms to ensure its survival and maintain its political grip (Sater, 2010). At the beginning of the decade, Hassan II tried to give a political sign to the outside world by creating the Advisory Council for Human Rights (CCDH), releasing many political prisoners and closing the infamous prison of Tazmamart. 125 The actual political reform process started in 1992 with a constitutional reform, followed by another one in 1996. The monarchy also undertook several attempts to set up talks and negotiations with its political adversaries. This general reform process eventually led to the alternance government in 1998 which brought the historical opposition parties USFP, Isitqlal and PPS – since 1992 unified as an opposition to the established powers in the so-called Koutla al-demouqratiyya or Democratic Block – into the government (Zemni & Bo- gaert, 2006). 126 On 4 February 1998, the leader of the USFP, Abderrahman Youssoufi, was appointed prime minister. These events sparked the hope, especially among foreign observers, that a genuine process of democratization was under way. However, the alternance government remained a very heterogeneous coalition and the king was still in control of the so-called sovereign ministries: Interior, Foreign Affairs, Justice and Religious Affairs. 127

125 CCDH: Le Conseil Consultatif des Droits de l’Homme. 126 PPS (Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme) was the smallest of the three opposition parties beside the social democratic USFP and the conservative Istiqlal. The latter two had a history that went back to the struggle of independence. 127 for a detailed discussion on the specifics of the constitutional reforms of 1992 and 1996; the electoral reforms and a general overview of the alternance process see: Storm (2007) and Sater (2010).

110 Three decades of neoliberal reform in Morocco Mohammed VI, who ascended the throne in 1999, further expanded the political re-

form process. He immediately proved his willingness to reform by getting rid of the widely despised minister of interior, Driss Basri, and acknowledging the government’s responsibility during the “années de plomb” (Vermeren, 2002). 128 Additionally, the new king now openly stressed the importance of good governance, human rights and citi- zen participation in many of his royal discourses. Furthermore, Mohamed VI pushed through notable reforms such as the changes made to the Moudawana (family code) and several measures leading to a considerable improvement in human rights and freedom of press (Vermeren, 2009). 129 Together with some important electoral reforms, these measures tempted many observers to speak of a Moroccan exception to the wider trend of authoritarian durability in the Arab region. By the end of the 1990s, Amnesty

International and Human Rights Watch stated that Morocco had significantly improved its human rights record and the World Bank and other international institutions lauded

Morocco as being one of the ‘success-stories’ of reform in the region (Zemni & Bo- gaert, 2006). Within academic circles this process was looked upon with much more prudence and scepticism. Nevertheless, some observers saw promising evolutions (e.g. Malka & Aelterman, 2006). However, the story of a Moroccan exception took a setback when several suicide bombers struck Casablanca on May 16 th 2003. The monarchy re- turned to more authoritarian methods of government and arrested thousands of Islamist suspects. After the violent events, security became an absolute priority, often at the expense of earlier achievements and progressions made in for example the domain of human rights (Zemni, 2006b; Zemni & Bogaert, 2006). Nevertheless, despite the rising criticism on the stagnation of the reform process, some still believed that Morocco’s social policies implemented after 2003 – as an immediate answer to the socio-political crisis – were evidence of a real transition. These policies were embedded within a discourse displaying a strong commitment towards democratization, poverty alleviation and social development at the highest levels of the state (Navez-Bouchanine, 2009). The Villes sans Bidonvilles program (VSBP) and the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH) are two of the most salient examples.

I argue that these new social policy commitments are indeed evidence of a fundamental political transition. But the origins of this transformation should not be situated just in the 1990s, but can be traced back to the beginning of the 1980s. Furthermore, this transformation cannot be understood in terms often provided by mainstream narra- tives linking economic liberalization and market reform to democratization. Rather,

it reflects a profound shift towards intrinsically authoritarian modalities of neoliberal government. As a result, authoritarian durability in Morocco transformed in the ways in

which the interests of ruling elites and (global) economic elites are increasingly inter- twined. It gave rise to situations where “market requirements” justify authoritarian and securitized interventions at the expense of genuine democratic participation. As a result, populations are being required to participate in the making of a new political world

128 The term “Les années de plomp” (the years of lead) refers to the period (the 1970s and the 1980s) of severe social and political repression by the Moroccan monarchy. 129 However, we have seen that the freedom of the press has been under pressure the last few years. Some critical magazines and journalist have been fined for a lack of respect to either the king, the religion or the national state boundaries (the issue of the Western Sahara). With these fines and juridical battles the Moroc- can authorities have tried to silence certain critical voices. The critical weekly magazine Le Journal had to close its doors in 2010 because it could not pay of their debts anymore.

Three decades of neoliberal reform in Morocco 111

in which the ability to claim and articulate political rights are circumscribed not only by “the regime,” but by the sanctions and incentives of “the free market,” and by the enduring myths of contemporary globalization (cf. Parker, 2009; Parker & Debruyne, 2011). Furthermore, the political transition in Morocco of the last three decades is not only characterized by a transition towards neoliberal modes of government but also by a fundamental transition within Moroccan neoliberalism. We therefore have to pay closer attention to state institutional reform, new methods of government, the political rationalities that underpin them, and the social and economic consequences of these

shifts. In doing so, it becomes obvious that neoliberalism is a process rather than a final stage or a pre-determined model.

This transformation process within neoliberalism has been described by Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell as a transformation from a phase of roll back neoliberalism to a phase of roll out neoliberalism (Peck & Tickell, 2002; 2007). 130 Since the introduction of a SAP in the beginning of the 1980s, Morocco entered a phase of serious economic restruc- turing and retrenchment. “Roll back neoliberalism” refers to this destructive moment when state power was mobilized behind marketization and deregulation projects. The disengagement of the state from the economic sphere was the main objective. Yet, this implied not so much the roll back of the state per se, but rather the roll back of particular (developmentalist) state functions. In Europe and the US this involved the destruction of the Keynesian welfare state institutions and functions. In the Global South, neoliberal reform, mostly implemented through programs of structural adjustment, rolled back the achievements and functions of the developmental state (e.g. import-substituting industrialization (ISI), job security in the public sector, health care, etc.). Throughout

the 1960s and 1970s, the Moroccan political economy contained specific characteristics of a ‘state developmental model’ based on the principle that the state and the domestic

economic sector were the main driving forces for growth (Catusse, 2009a). But the severe state budget deficit at the beginning of the 1980s and the pressure from the IMF to comply with the prescriptions of structural adjustment, generated a radical turn. Fiscal

discipline, market liberalization, the downsizing of the public sector and the privatiza- tion of important public assets were some of the main measures that were introduced to

control budget deficits in Morocco. These drastic austerity measures did, however, not come without severe social costs and provoked a decade of violent urban street protests

and nationwide social disturbances. Riots broke out in cities like Casablanca (1981), Marrakech (1984) and Fez (1990 and 1991).

Because of the turbulent 1980s and the limits of early neoliberal reform, an important reconstitution of the neoliberal project occurred. This resulted in the elaboration of more socially inspired state interventionist policies which evolved during and coincided with the Moroccan political reform process of the 1990s (the alternance process). Despite the fact that Middle Eastern and North African countries had been prompted to liberalize their economies since the early 1980s, foreign investments and overall economic growth remained unstable (D Davis, 2006; Zemni & Bogaert, 2009). Therefore, besides

130 The authors refer almost exclusively to the North Atlantic zone. Their description of the internal shifts in neoliberalism is an attempt to generalize the various and distinct processes of actually existing neoliberalism. In the case of Morocco, I am convinced that the concepts of roll back and roll out neoliberalism give us the opportunity to see the political changes of the last 30 years from another angle.

112 Three decades of neoliberal reform in Morocco some political measures to improve Morocco’s human rights record, the democratic

deficit and the rights of women, the Moroccan authorities also engaged in the political reconstruction of its market to attract more foreign investments and promote economic growth. The transition to this phase can be associated with what Peck and Tickell por- tray as the ascending moment of “roll out neoliberalism”. 131 It refers to a more creative phase of neoliberalism that is characterized by new forms of institution-building, new modes of regulation and new configurations of spatially differentiated government that transfer the ability to govern political and economic life from traditional to new governmental arrangements (see below). Therefore, in contrast to the more common idea of a “retreat of the state”, neoliberalization, as a market-building project, involves the making of a new “destructively creative” social order with the iterative roll back of those institutions and social forms associated with the former order (e.g. Keynesianism and state developmentalism), together with the roll out of new state forms, new modalities of government and new modes of regulation (Peck & Tickell, 2007: 33). In chapter 2,

I already emphasized the specific changing role of the state in the development of new modalities of governmental agency to facilitate and coordinate the various processes

through which societal spaces are being produced and reproduced by capitalist strategies (i.e. the processes of re-institutionalization, re-regulation and reterritorialization). In addition, as I will argue in chapter 4, these newly adopted modes of state interventions and state-led programs were also intended to include those citizens who were socially marginalized and excluded by earlier neoliberal restructurings. Both VSBP and INDH have introduced such new market-oriented modalities of government. As such, the Moroccan state apparatus played a crucial role in the transformative character of neoliberalism (and vice versa), manifested itself through specific local formations of state craft (cf. chapter 5). As such, the alternance can not only be understood as the start of a (limited) process of democratic reform, but should also be seen as the start of

a process of fundamental political transformations within actually existing neoliberalism in Morocco.

The transition from roll back neoliberalism to roll out neoliberalism was a global transition, particularly noticeable in the discourse of international institutions such as the World Bank. The crisis of the 1980s and the severe protests actions that rose against structural adjustment policies around the world, set into motion a new political and academic discourse of ‘market failure’ (Roy, 2010). After the so-called “lost decades” – between 1980 and 1998 there was an average zero per capita growth in Third World countries and an increasing income divergence between rich and poor countries – a major shift occurred in development policies (Easterly, 2001). The focus shifted from structural adjustment to the promotion of ‘good governance’. Although structural adjustment as a development practice became only institutionalized in the early 1990s as the ‘Washington Consensus’, the shift towards good governance as the dominant development policy compelled the international donor community to revisit this ‘Wash- ington Consensus’ which had dominated economic policies since the 1980s (Santiso, 2001). 132 In the negative aftermath of the SAP-era, it was now clear that mere market

131 Characteristic of the period of roll out neoliberalism in Europe and the US were the “Third-Way con- tortions of the Clinton and Blair administrations” (Peck and Tickell, 2002: 388-389). In contrast, roll back neoliberalism could be associated with the free-market projects of Reagan and Thatcher. 132 It was however not until the economic crisis in Argentina (2001-2002) that the IMF was finally to

Three decades of neoliberal reform in Morocco 113

deregulation and price incentives were not enough to spur economic growth in the developing countries and under impulse of the then Chief Economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, the idea emerged that supporting a free market economy required state

capacity (Kapoor, 2008: 29). As a result, the state, first conceived as part of the problem, became to be considered part of the solution. This change in discourse gave rise to

the ‘Post-Washington Consensus’ and the recognition of the important role of governments in regulatory economic policy (Stiglitz, n.d.).

The publication of the world development report of 1997 with the telling title “the state in a changing world” marked a stepping stone in the discursive transformation of neoliberalism (World Bank, 1997). Other reports followed and they all emphasized the role of governmental institutions and institution building to support an inclusive (free) market environment (e.g. World Bank, 2001). The particular shift in the 1990s implied a renewed vision on the role of the state which was clearly different from the dominant perspectives of early neoliberal orthodoxy and structural adjustment. While

the so-called ‘first generation’ of neoliberal reforms aimed to stabilize and liberalize the national economies of developing countries (e.g. by rolling back state engagements in

ISI-policies, food subsidies, and public sector expansion), the ‘second generation’ of neoliberal reforms turned away from the idea of autonomous self-regulating markets and aimed at reforming and strengthening governing institutions. The general explana- tion was that the previous failures in the developing world to spur economic growth and global market integration were generated by the incapacity of institutionally weak states. Although “state-dominated development has failed”, the World Bank insisted, “so will stateless development”. Therefore the World Bank urged to rethink the state because “development without an effective state is impossible” (World Bank, 1997: 25). In place of the advocacy for a “minimalist state”, the international institution now advocated the important role for the state in protecting and correcting markets (Panitch, 1998). In the case of the MENA-region the World Bank was convinced that weak governance had contributed to weak growth because poor governance had “shackled the business environment”:

Many factors contribute to the region’s disappointing economic performance, with weak governance at the origin of many. Governance helps determine policy formulation and implementation that, in turn, determine whether or not there is

a sound, attractive business environment for investment and production. Busi- nesses react to incentives, costs, and constraints, which are often summarized as the “business environment” or, more narrowly, as the “investment climate.”

Influencing the environment for business and investment are the actions of the government in shaping and implementing policies. Needed are good policies –

and good administration of policies. One without the other would be ineffective. For most MENA countries, the bureaucratic environment for doing business still lags behind that of their comparators elsewhere in the world. (World Bank, 2003: 10).

This particular political shift was not at all the prelude for the emergence of a post-

admit the failure of its monetary and structural adjustment policies (Roy, 2010).

114 Three decades of neoliberal reform in Morocco

neoliberal order – hinted at cautiously by some observes (cf. Öniş & Şenses, 2005) – but rather an indication for the fact that the core macro-economic objectives of neo-

liberalism and the Washington Consensus needed strong institutional support in order to succeed. 133 The former macro-economic objectives now needed to be underpinned and supported by those institutional and social prerequisites in order to achieve what neoliberal theory promised. As a result, the increased attention given to the state did

not just entail that neoliberals now accepted the definite comeback of state intervention as such. It rather entailed that neoliberalism would seriously influence how state

intervention was to be deployed. This gave way to new perspectives on government, public management and public intervention. Past ideas on state intervention (e.g. developmentalism, protectionism, import-substitution, etc.) were replaced by more market- oriented perspectives on public policy (e.g. new public management, workfare, good governance, etc.). ‘Government’ now had to incorporate and adjust to the principles of

economic enterprise and apply to cost-efficiency, technocratic management and com- petition. The following statement of the former wali (governor) of Greater Casablanca,

Driss Benhima, in the weekly magazine Maroc Hebdo in 2001, was revealing in regard to this new vision on government:

In the current world, the enterprise is the framework of defining government [gestion]. In fact, it has imposed this framework upon several non-economic

organizations, and several administrations are currently governed [gérées] according to the running principles of enterprise (cited in Catusse, 2008: 195, own

translation). 134 The appointment of highly skilled young technocrats – often trained in the US and in

France – within the public agencies and institutions has brought in new values that are embedded in a neoliberal culture and adhere to international capitalist principles (Ibid.). Driss Benhima wasn’t the exception. In an interview with weekly magazine Telquel, the current minister of industry, trade and new technologies, Ahmed Chami, also pleaded his allegiance to this new technocratic culture, promising himself that he would run his ministry as a private company. 135

Ultimately, this global shift towards state-led market-oriented policy and good governance had an extra advantage for the international donor agencies. The political eco-

133 Some observers referred to the Post-Wasington Consensus as a form of “inclusive neoliberalism”, emphasizing the attention given to poverty alleviation and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) while pointing to the contradictory nature of the new consensus between neoliberal macro-economic policies and poverty-sensitive social policies (Ruckert, 2006). PRSPs were introduced in 1999 by the World Bank and the IMF as a new framework to enhance domestic poverty reduction policies and promote the cooperation between local governments and development partners (including the World Bank and the IMF). However, I don’t think that current poverty reduction policies, like for example the VSBP in Morocco, which is also promoted by the World Bank and other international donors, are inherently contradictive with the macro-economic objectives of neoliberalism. As will be discussed in chapter 4, these kind of market-oriented social policies are not just intended to reduce poverty but can also be viewed as strategies to increase the possibilities for capital surplus absorption (e.g. the social housing market) and integrate the (already limited) assets of a vast population of urban poor into the regular market-economy. 134 For a complete version of the interview with Driss Benhima in weekly magazine Hebdo: see: http:// www.maroc-hebdo.press.ma/MHinternet/Archives_490/html_490/mes.html (accessed 01/10/2010). 135 Telquel, 2010, n°404-405, p 6.

Three decades of neoliberal reform in Morocco 115

nomic theories that underpinned this shift anticipated in a way the criticisms of political adversaries who had denounced the devastating social impacts of structural adjustment. In the eyes of the World Bank and the IMF, it was now clear that the particular causes for the failure of SAPs as a development policy had little to do with the neoliberal dogmas per se. The actual increase of social inequality after structural adjustment was

supposedly due to specific conditions that were not really their responsibility in the end. With the new discourse on good governance the World Bank now seemed to sug-

gest that it were not so much the development objectives themselves that were the root of the problem (i.e. the Washington Consensus), but rather the domestic governance frameworks of the recipient countries (Jenkins, 2002). The responsibility for failure was thus passed on to the ‘developing’ countries. This said, the assumption was that free market policies would eventually prove to be effective, according to the international donor institutions, as long as the supportive institutional and legal frameworks were put in place.

Political transformations in Morocco (1980-2010): a neoliberal transition and a transition in neoliberalism