The Politics of Development in Morocco: Local Governance and Participation in North Africa 9781350989122, 9781848859210

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I dedicate this book to the memory of my father, Sven-Erik Bergh.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map Map 3.1 Al Haouz Province Commune Poverty Map 2007

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Figures Figure 3.1 View of the Zat Valley in Tighedouine commune

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Figure 3.2 View of the Azzaden Valley in Ouirgane commune

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Diagram Diagram 2.1 The system of decentralized and deconcentrated government administrations in Morocco, 2009

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Tables Table 1.1 A typology of participation

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Table 2.1 A chronology of the decentralization process in Morocco

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Table 3.1 Commune development priorities

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Table 4.1 Revenue composition for rural communes

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Table 4.2 Revenue composition for Al Haouz province (based on the total for 39 communes), in percentages

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Table 4.3 Total recurrent and investment revenues for Tighedouine commune (in Dirhams, DH)

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Table 4.4 Total recurrent and investment revenues for Ouirgane commune (in Dirhams, DH)

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Table 4.5 Revenue composition for Tighedouine (T) and Ouirgane (O) communes (in percentages)

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Table 4.6 Expenditure composition for rural communes

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Table 4.7 Expenditure composition for Al Haouz province (based on the total for 39 communes), in percentages

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Table 4.8 Evolution of recurrent and capital expenditure as share of total expenditure for Tighedouine (T) and Ouirgane (O) communes (in percentages)

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Table 4.9 Recurrent expenditure composition for Tighedouine (T) and Ouirgane (O) communes (in percentages) 141 Table 4.10 Capital expenditure composition for Tighedouine (T) and Ouirgane (O) communes (in percentages)

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Table 6.1 Associations’ degree of politicization

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Box Box 2.1 A typology of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Morocco

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am extremely grateful to Dawn Chatty, Emerita Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford for her expert academic guidance and personal support during the entire period of researching and writing this book. I am also much indebted to Dr. Michael Willis, King Mohamed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies at the University of Oxford, for his insightful comments and continued encouragement to work on the issues discussed here. I would also like to thank Samuel Hickey, Professor of Politics and Development at the University of Manchester, for his critical and very valuable remarks which helped me in revising the initial manuscript. I also owe much gratitude to the staff and students at the University of Oxford’s Department of International Development, the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, part of Erasmus University Rotterdam) in The Hague, and the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, where much of this book was written. In particular, I thank my research assistant and current PhD student at the ISS, Daniele Rossi-Doria, for his valuable help in updating the initial manuscript. I am also very grateful to the editors at I.B.Tauris for their patience, valuable comments, and encouragements to see this book published. Most importantly, I thank all the academics, aid agency staff, and civil servants in Morocco and elsewhere who have helped me with the field research in Morocco, and in particular my former colleagues at the World Bank office in Rabat. My heartfelt thanks are due to the

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inhabitants of the villages in the case study communes for their extraordinary hospitality and willingness to answer my questions. I remain extremely grateful to my reliable research assistants and translators, Ms. Fadoua Semlali and Ms. Khadija Mazouz. I thank my family and especially my husband Michel for their unwavering support, patience, and continuous encouragements throughout the ups and downs of the research and writing process. This book is derived, in part, from an article published in the International Journal of Public Administration, on 20 October 2010, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/ 01900692.2010.5133581 and, to a lesser extent, from an article published in Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, on 27 February 2009, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/ 10.1080/10402650802690060.2

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Note: All translations are unofficial AAZ

Association des Amis du Zat

ADL ADS

Alliances des Liberte´s Agence de De´veloppement Social

AGM AGRN ANAPEC ARUPs AWUA/ AUEA BAJ CA

Assistance a` la gestion des ressources naturelles Agence Nationale pour la Promotion de l’Emploi et des Compe´tences Associations Reconnues d’Utilite´ Publique Association d’Usagers de l’Eau Agricole Barnamaj al-Aoulaouaiyat al-Ijtimaiya Compte administratif

CBO CCGP

Cellule Centrale de Gestion du Projet

Association of the Friends of the Zat Valley (in Tighedouine) Alliance of Liberties Social Development Agency Annual General Meeting Assistance for natural resources management National Agency for Employment and Skills Promotion (Associations officially recognized as beneficial to the public at large) Agricultural Water User Associations Social Priorities Program Executed Accounts (commune balance sheets) Community Based Organizations Central Project Management Unit

xiv CDD

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Community-Driven Development CDRT Centre de De´veloppement de la Tensift Region Development Re´gion de Tensift Center (an NGO based in Marrakech) CGEM Confe´de´ration Ge´ne´rale des General Federation of Moroccan Entreprises du Maroc Businesses CLMVA Commissions locales de mise en Rain-fed Agriculture valeur agricole Development Commissions CP Contrat-Programme Contractual Programs CRS Catholic Relief Services CSO Civil Society Organization CT Centres de Travaux (agricultural extension services at the local level) CTB Coope´ration Technique Belge Belgian Technical Cooperation CTP Comite´ Technique Provincial Provincial Technical Committee DAHA Direction des Ame´nagements Directorate for Irrigation Works Hydro-Agricoles DCL Division des Collectivite´s Department of Local Authorities Locales (reporting to the DGCL, Ministry of the Interior) DEA Direction de l’Eau et de Directorate for Water and l’Assainissement Sanitation DFC Direction de la formation Department for Management des cadres Training (in the Ministry of the Interior) DGCL Direction Ge´ne´rale des General Directorate of Local Collectivite´s Locales Authorities (Ministry of the Interior) DGH Direction Ge´ne´rale de General Directorate of l’Hydraulique Hydraulics DH Dirham Dirham (Moroccan currency) DPA Direction Provinciale de Provincial Directorate of l’Agriculture Agriculture/Provincial Delegation of the Agriculture Ministry DPE Direction Provinciale de Provincial Directorate of Public l’Equipement Works DREF Direction Re´gionale des Regional Directorate of Water Eaux et Foˆrets and Forest Services DRI-PMH Projet de De´veloppement Rural Irrigation Based Community Inte´gre´ centre´ sur la Petite et Development Project (IBCD) Moyenne Hydraulique

LIST EA

Espace Associatif

OF ABBREVIATIONS

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Federation of local associations in Al Haouz province (not to be confused with a national level NGO of the same name) EU European Union FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FEC Fonds d’e´quipment Local Government Infrastructure communal Fund FEMISE Forum Euro-Me´diterrane´en des Euro-Mediterranean Forum of Instituts Economiques Economic Institutes FONORD Forum des ONG du Nord Forum of NGOs in Northern du Maroc Morocco FREPE Fonds Re´gional pour la Regional Employment Promotion de l’Emploi Promotion Fund Foundation for International FRIDE Fundacio´n para las Relations and Foreign Dialogue Relaciones Internacionales y el Dia´logo Exterior GEF Global Environment Facility GTZ Deutsche Gesellschaft fu¨r German Technical Cooperation, Technische Zusammenarbeit now called GIZ – Deutsche Gesellschaft fu¨r Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH HCP Haut Commissariat au Plan High Commission of Planning IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development INAU Institut National National Institute for Regional d’Ame´nagement et and Urban Planning d’Urbanisme (INAU) INDH Initiative Nationale pour le National Human Development De´veloppement Humain Initiative IRCAM Institut Royal de la Culture Royal Institute for Amazigh Amazighe Culture IRD Institut de Recherche pour Development Research Institute le De´veloppement (in France) ISIIMM (Research Program on) Institutional and Social Innovations in Irrigation Mediterranean Management [sic] JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency

xvi KfW

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Kreditanstalt fu¨r Wiederaufbau German Bank for Reconstruction and Development KSSP Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishad (Marxist party’s grassroots organization in Kerala) Ministry of Agriculture, Rural MADRPM Ministe`re de l’Agriculture, Development, and Maritime du De´veloppement Rural, Fisheries et des Peˆches Maritimes MAGG Ministe`re des Affaires Ge´ne´rales Ministry of General Government du Gouvernement Affairs MAP Maghreb Arabe Press (Moroccan official news agency) MARA Ministe`re de l’Agriculture Ministry of Agriculture and et de la Re´forme Agraire Agrarian Reform Ministry of Regional Planning, MATEE Ministe`re de l’Ame´nagement Water, and Environment du Territoire, de l’Eau, et de l’Environnement MAVA Ministe`re de l’Agriculture et de Ministry of Agriculture and Agricultural Development la Mise en Valeur Agricole MEDA (Principal financial instrument of the European Union for the implementation of the Euro – Mediterranean Partnership); mentioned here in the context of its funding for the PAGER in Al Haouz province MEPI Middle East Partnership Initiative MP Mouvement Populaire People’s Movement (political party) MPEP Ministe`re de la Pre´vision Ministry for Economic e´conomique et du Plan Forecasting and Planning OCDO Office du De´veloppement de la Bureau for the Development of Coope´ration Cooperation (in charge of cooperatives) OED Operations Evaluation Department (of the World Bank, now renamed as Independent Evaluation Group, IEG) O&M Operation and Maintenance ONE Office National d’Electricite´ National Electricity Office ONEP Office National d’Eau National Drinking Water Office Potable

LIST

OF ABBREVIATIONS

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Programme d’Approvisionnemt Water Supply Program for Rural Populations Groupe´ en Eau Potable des Populations Rurales PCM Programme Concerte´ Maroc (Partnership program between French and Moroccan civil society members) PDC Plan de de´veloppement Municipal Development Plan communal PDD Plan de de´veloppement de Village (or hamlet) Development douar Plan Socio-Economic Municipal PDESC Plan de de´veloppement Development Plan e´conomique et social de commune PDP Plan de de´veloppement du Irrigated Perimeter perime`tre Development Plan Livestock and Pasture PDPEO Projet de de´veloppement des parcours et de l’e´levage dans Development Project in the Eastern Region in Morocco l’Oriental PERG Programme d’Electrification Electricity Program for Rural Rurale Globale Populations PIC Plan d’investissement Municipal Investment Plan communal PMVB Projet de mise en valeur en bour Rain-fed Agriculture Development Project PND Parti national de´mocrate National Democratic Party PNRR Programme national de National Program of Rural routes rurales Roads PREDEL Projet eau et de´veloppement Water and Local Development local Project RA Research Assistant Moroccan Review of REMALD Revue marocaine Administration and d’administration et de Development de´veloppement RENFCAP Renforcement des capacite´s des (Environnment, De´veloppement et Action – ENDA Maghreb, acteurs locaux pour la the Rabat-based part of the promotion d’une citoyennete´ NGO ENDA which in turn is active et d’une gouvernance based in Senegal. Project on participative au Maroc ‘Strengthening local capacity for the promotion of active citizenship and participatory governance in Morocco’)

PAGER

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RIOD

Re´seau marocain des associations en lutte contre la de´sertification Rassemblement national des inde´pendants Sans Affiliation Politique

RNI SAP SRAT UC

Sche´ma Re´gional d’Ame´nagement du Territoire Union Constitutionelle

UNDP UNICEF USAID USFP WUA/ AUEP

Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires Association d’Usagers de l’Eau Potable

IN MOROCCO

Moroccan network of associations combating desertification National Rally of Independents (political party) without political affiliation, i.e. independent Member of Parliament or candidate Regional Development Plan Constitutional Union (political party) United Nations Development Programme United Nations Children’s Fund United States Agency for International Development Socialist Union of People’s Forces (political party) (Drinking) Water User Association

GLOSSARY OF ARABIC AND FRENCH TERMS

agadir amghar, pl. imgharn caı¨d

caı¨dat

cercle cheikh dar taliba douar jema’a

collective storage facilities an elder presiding over the jema’a formerly the agent of authority supervising the tribes or fractions thereof in the countryside; now referring to the civil servant in the Ministry of the Interior responsible for the territory within his or her caı¨dat administrative entity for the Ministry of the Interior under the responsibility of a caı¨d (usually including two or more rural communes); also denotes the building that houses the caı¨d’s office and those of his or her staff administrative entity for the Ministry of the Interior under the responsibility of a chef de cercle, also called supercaı¨d (usually including several caı¨dats) agent of authority at the level of clan/fraction, reporting to the caı¨d boarding facility for female pupils village or hamlet the group of (older) men who make up a restricted but permanent council (whose membership, however, can vary according to the tasks at hand), based on the lineage structure of the village; it organizes collective works or

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khalifa makhzen

muqaddim ouzi’a pasha receveur tutelle twiza wali

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those of common interest (e.g. maintenance of irrigation canals and mosques), settles disputes, and takes on various ritual functions the caı¨d’s deputy Literally, treasury – i.e. the place where all the state revenues are deposited; later denoting the Moroccan Government as a whole, and today referring to the power structures surrounding the monarchy agent of authority at the level of a village, reporting to the caı¨d collective purchase of livestock agent of authority in charge of a city Ministry of Finance official at the province level in charge of tax collection tutelage, guardianship or supervision by representatives in the Ministry of the Interior over local authorities such as the commune mutual help with agricultural work the representative of the Ministry of the Interior at the regional level, appointed by and reporting directly to the king

PREFACE

I was inspired to write this book based on my experiences working as a “Junior Professional Associate” in the World Bank’s Morocco office during 2002– 3. One event in particular triggered many questions. I was working on rural development issues and during a project supervision visit to the province of Azilal, the World Bank consultant engaged in answering farmers’ questions. The project in question was a participatory watershed management project and the (exclusively male) farmers were supposed to contribute some of their own money to maintaining the new rural roads. Some of them asked whether they could use this money to build a mosque instead, as their village did not yet have one. A mosque would significantly lift the status of their village compared to the surrounding ones. The consultant answered that this was not possible. As I thought about this anecdote later on, and against the background of critical studies on participatory approaches to development, I realized that local “development” priorities may be very different from what is on offer on donor agencies’ menus. Also, I started to reflect on who is participating in such projects that encourage the creation of local village associations, which in turn often acquire the official status of community-based organizations (CBOs). Why were there no women, and why did the farmers all seem to belong to the local elites? In other words, how representative are these CBOs? During my year at the Bank’s office in Rabat, I also worked with colleagues on supporting the government’s decentralization reforms, characterized by the then (2002) new

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Moroccan Municipal Charter and the renewed decentralization discourse. The main question for this book therefore emerged from this potential tension that I saw between, on the one hand, stimulating the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of such village or user associations (and even several in the same village), and on the other hand building the capacity of (rural) local governments. Would these two actors become partners or rivals in development? Would they use their enhanced capacities to work together in providing local public services, or instead struggle for power, status, and control over limited resources? Or, on a more abstract level, would the members of “civil society” be able to hold those in “political society” to account? As we will see in the findings, the short answer to this main question is quite sobering: membership of these two spheres overlaps to a great extent. Local government councilors tend to use their simultaneous positions in CBOs to enhance their status as local patrons and increase their chances of re-election. This may not be an entirely new insight in itself, but I strongly believe that this book’s main value lies in documenting how this phenomenon comes about, the extent to which it is happening, and the implications it has for the emergence of a strong local democracy. Based on my experiences in and with other developing countries, I am also quite certain that this situation is not unique to (rural) Morocco, but also happens in urban areas and in many, if not all, developing countries. I thus hope that this book will help to direct more attention, both from academics and policy makers, to the politics of local development. In particular, the findings in this book call for a much greater appreciation of the very human dimensions of local governance reforms, which tend to get neglected or ignored in the still largely neo-liberal and technocratic approaches to development.

INTRODUCTION

Decentralization, Participation, and their Interactions: Key Issues of a Debate Over the last four decades, both decentralization and participatory approaches to rural development have become major cornerstones of the good governance agenda promoted by the main players in international development. However, neither policy makers nor academics seem to have given much thought to the contradictions and potential interlinkages that result from the simultaneous implementation of these two policies in any given country. This book aims to address the resultant gap in the literature in the case of Morocco. In Morocco, the 2002 Municipal Charter seemed to be implemented separately from the 2020 Rural Development Strategy, which advocated a participatory approach. Should local governments not be given more prominence in “participatory” projects, given that they were, at least in theory, democratically elected, while this was not necessarily the case with the organizations created as part of the participatory projects (such as village committees and village associations)? Furthermore, what would be the short and long-term impacts of this apparent marginalization of local governments in development efforts? And would community-based organizations (CBOs) be capable of effectively substituting for them in terms of service provision?1

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To answer these questions, I used local government and village associations as proxies for decentralization and participatory approaches respectively. My conceptual framework is built on Peter Evans’ idea of state – society synergy. At the practical level, the term “synergies” refers to “mutually reinforcing relations between governments and groups of engaged citizens”.2 The core of this book studies the internal and interactive capacities of both local government and village associations along administrative, fiscal, and political dimensions as pre-conditions for state-society synergies to emerge. The themes of decentralization and participation are very much at the center of development studies, following the widespread disillusion with centralized and top-down development planning in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They form part of the “good governance” agenda, promoted mainly by neo-liberal public choice advocates since the late 1980s and adopted by Western donors and development organizations. At the heart of the good governance agenda is a fundamental rethinking of the role of the State for development. As the World Development Report 1997 points out,3 this rethinking was brought about by the collapse of communist regimes, the fiscal crisis of the welfare state in most of the established industrial countries, the importance of the State’s role in the “miracle” economies of East Asia, and the increase in the number of failed states and humanitarian emergencies. In short, a new consensus emerged that the State is central to economic and social development, not as direct provider of growth but as a partner, catalyst, and facilitator. This includes taking the burden off the State by involving citizens and communities in the delivery of core collective goods. As Craig and Porter point out,4 we therefore see a dual process of, on the one hand, the “vertical disaggregation” of state functions in which the local level has become the privileged scene for government action and donor-funded programs and projects, and, on the other hand, the “horizontal disaggregation” of the State, emphasizing “joined-up” co-production of services with “civil society” associations and NGOs along with the private sector.

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The wider context for this “good governance” agenda lies in the theoretical linkage between democracy and economic growth. A vast literature considers the importance of politics and political institutions in the process of economic development. It covers topics ranging from regime type to political instability, clientelism, elite capture, corruption, and the institutions of electoral competition and political decision making. One aspect of the governance agenda focuses on a specific subset of that literature – namely, that concerned with “voice”, accountability, and democracy. The emphasis on voice and accountability rests on a natural and persuasive logic: governments that pay little attention to citizen concerns – because citizens are unable to voice them or are unable to sanction governments that ignore them – are less likely to pursue policies that further social welfare. The presumption is that democracy is the only regime type that affords voice and accountability to citizens on a regular basis, and that democracy should therefore promote economic development.5 Based on this normative line of argument, the “good governance” agenda encourages institutional reforms that should “bring the state closer to the people” and increase its accountability and transparency. The reforms include administrative, fiscal, and political decentralization with the aim of strengthening local government capacities, and involving the participation of local communities and other local “stakeholders” in development activities.6 Since the late 1970s, a large number of countries have experimented with decentralization. As Manor puts it, “decentralization has quietly become a fashion of our time”.7 It appeals to people from diverse political positions, and is being attempted by both (mature and emergent) democracies as well as autocracies, and in places in which civil society is both strong and weak. The literature distinguishes between three major forms of decentralization: deconcentration, delegation, and devolution. Deconcentration is the process whereby the central government disperses responsibilities for certain services to its regional branch offices, and does not involve any transfer of authority to lower levels of government. It is often considered the weakest form of decentralization. Delegation refers to a situation in which central government

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transfers responsibility for decision making and the administration of public functions to local governments or semi-autonomous organizations that are not wholly controlled by the central government but are ultimately accountable to it. Devolution, which is also referred to as “democratic decentralization”, is the most advanced form of decentralization. It usually transfers responsibilities for services to municipalities that elect their own mayors and councils, raise their own revenues, and have independent authority to make investment decisions. This book is concerned with devolution, or “democratic decentralization”.8 Democratic decentralization is inherently a political project, as it means redistributing power (the authority to make binding decisions about the allocation of public resources) both vertically – incorporating citizens – and horizontally – expanding the domain of collective decision making.9 The extent of decentralization in any given country is commonly assessed along three major dimensions: the political framework, including electoral processes and local council procedures for legislation, authorization and accountability; administrative autonomy, referring to the local government’s functional responsibilities and its administrative capacity to carry them out; and the fiscal framework, with a focus on sources of proprietary (“own”) revenues, fiscal transfers from the State, and budget and expenditure procedures.10 These dimensions are defined in the legal framework governing decentralization. They will be used in this book to assess local government internal and interactive capacities. In terms of development outcomes, the literature emphasizes four main potential advantages of democratic decentralization.11 First, it is assumed that as political representatives get closer to citizens, a better mobilization and more efficient allocation of resources at the local level will be enabled. Second, decentralization may lead to more creative, innovative, and responsive programs by allowing local experimentation. Third, it can shorten the “long route of accountability”12 by reducing the social distances between those who govern public services, those who manage them, and those whom they are intended to benefit. In other words, decentralization carries the potential to create both downward accountability between local politicians and the

INTRODUCTION

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electorate, and horizontal accountability between local politicians and local administrators/civil servants. This is assumed to encourage transparency through improved information flows, and to ensure compliance with approved policies, plans, and management practices (the so-called “enforcement component” of accountability). Fourth, decentralization may provide better opportunities for local residents to participate in decision making, and, as a result, lead to increased associational activity. The literature also highlights a number of potential shortcomings of decentralization.13 First, administrative responsibilities may be transferred to local levels without adequate financial resources, making the equitable distribution or provision of services more difficult. Such “demand overload” may be exacerbated by high citizen expectations. Second, weak administrative or technical capacity at local levels may result in services being delivered less efficiently and effectively than before. Third, while the central government is responsible for developing policy and setting basic standards, the manner in which it exercises its monitoring and oversight role can either impede or encourage the effectiveness of subnational governments. For example, excessive centralgovernment control can lead to too much emphasis on upward accountability at the expense of enhancing accountability to local constituents. This points to the fact that an implicit objective of decentralization is often the (re-)centralizing of power, or at least the cultivation of political support and enhancing of regime legitimacy. Moreover, paradoxically, those whose political commitment is necessary to initiate administrative reforms often consider such a diffusion of power and participation a serious political threat. Fourth, decentralization may allow functions and benefits to be captured by local elites instead of increasing accountability at the local level (thereby leading to a “decentralization of corruption”). These elites may use their new functions and benefits to perpetuate a network of patronage for political mobilization. This is so especially in contexts where access to information, transparent procedures of government, and an effective media are weak or lacking. Lastly, the evidence presented so far does not, on the whole,

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convincingly show that democratic decentralization contributes to poverty reduction. It is clear from this short review of the literature that democratic decentralization is strongly linked to notions of democracy, popular participation, and empowerment. The term “democratic decentralization” emphasizes linkages between the State and people, and hence between decentralization and (political) participation. Indeed, participation and decentralization have a symbiotic relationship. On the one hand, successful decentralization requires some degree of local participation in order to ensure the responsiveness of local government to local needs. On the other hand, the process of decentralization can itself enhance the opportunities for participation by placing more power and resources at a closer, more easily influenced, level of government. Hence, participation is seen both as a means to and as a goal of (successful) decentralization.14 Two distinct approaches to participatory rural development have evolved over time. The instrumental or functional view holds that participation is a means to an end, a methodology, which will result in more effective projects. The transformative view, in contrast, holds that strengthening people’s ability to determine how to improve the economic and social conditions of their lives is the true essence of development.15 It is this second view that provides the conceptual linkage with democratic decentralization and its more political forms of participation, as I will explain in more detail in the next chapter. Participatory approaches to development have a long history, starting with colonial efforts at community development and animation rurale in the 1940s and 1950s, and Ghandian notions of village self-reliance and small-scale development in the 1950s. In the 1970s, participatory approaches gained further influence with Paulo Freire’s work (notably following his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1970). In the mid-1980s, it became increasingly clear that the top-down strategies that were supposedly implemented to assist the underdeveloped had actually exacerbated their dependency and underdevelopment. Initially, this failure was traced to the alienation and demotivation of “beneficiaries”, and especially the marginalization of women.16 This led to a renewed interest in

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the local management of resources and decisions. Carolyn M. Long cites the African Charter on Popular Participation (issued at the 1990 international conference on popular participation in Arusha, Tanzania) as perhaps the best expression of popular participation.17 Most importantly, the participatory development “movement” – led by Robert Chambers, author of the influential book Rural Development: Putting the Last First (1983) – argued for the poor to be informed participants in development, with external agents acting mainly as facilitators and sources of funds. In other words, participatory development should be about listening to what the poor have to say and helping them to help themselves. In his book Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last (1997), Chambers explains the failure of development interventions by referring to the education and training of professionals, the way that “all power deceives”, and the social and physical distance between professionals and local people. Professionals, as superior “uppers”, transfer and impose their realities; poor people, as inferior “lowers”, prudently reflect back the professionals’ beliefs. This contrasts with participation as an empowering process, which implies decentralization in terms of a loss of central control and the proliferation of local diversity. Further support for radically new bottom-up approaches came from the increasingly strong critique of development by academic social scientists such as Escobar18 and Scott,19 who argued that topdown perspectives were both disempowering and ineffective. Thinking in mainstream development circles was also significantly affected by the work of Hirschman (who introduced the notions of “voice” and “exit”),20 Cernea (who showed how large organizations such as the World Bank could “put people first” by working systematically at the local level),21 and Ostrom (who showed that endogenous institutions often managed common pool resources very successfully).22 Finally, Sen’s influential effort to shift the focus of development from material well-being to a broad-based “capability” approach23 also deeply influenced the development community, with its emphasis on strategies to “empower” poor people – an agenda taken on by the World Bank and other donors as part of their response to critiques of top-down development.24

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In terms of their methodology, participatory approaches to rural development channel project funding or capacity-building investments directly to communities. Mansuri and Rao define “participation” in this context as the active involvement of members of a defined community in at least some aspects of project design and implementation.25 While participation can occur at many levels, a key objective is the incorporation of local knowledge into the project’s decision making processes. Robert Chambers has been a leader in defining and popularizing rapid research techniques, especially Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA), which developed during the late 1970s and 1980s. In the late 1980s and during the 1990s, Chambers was among the advocates for making the process participatory (Participatory Rural Appraisal, PRA) and shifting the focus away from rapid to “relaxed”.26 Nowadays, PRA has become a standard tool for many development agencies that promote participatory development. Most importantly for this book, participatory methodologies frequently promote the creation of more formal “community” organizations so as to transform the “participants” into more institutionalized “partners” or “stakeholders” in a project. Such organizations are commonly referred to as community-based organizations (CBOs). Where these did not evolve internally, i.e. independently of the arrival of a development project, the formation of such CBOs has either been induced (as part of the conditions that communities must fulfill in order to participate in projects) or constructed by outside actors (such as project staff). They can vary in their degree of formality, depending on their legal status, formally stated rights and responsibilities, and a legally binding governance structure for recruiting members, selecting leaders, and conducting affairs.27 The potential advantages of participatory or community support approaches are strikingly similar to those of decentralization. They can be summarized as increased empowerment, improved responsiveness to citizen demands and priorities, more cost-effective and timely service delivery, and better targeting of benefits leading to more equitably distributed project benefits with less corruption and

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other rent-seeking activity. In addition, control of decisions and resources can enable communities to build social capital by extending the depth, range, and effectiveness of their social networks. In short, under ideal circumstances, community participation can help to achieve all five central development objectives of increased efficiency, sustainability, accountability, equity, and democracy.28 Unsurprisingly, the potential shortcomings of participatory approaches are also similar to the risks and dysfunctions that can afflict local government decision making and management: capture of power and resources by elites, entrenchment of barriers to transparency and accountability by rent-seeking community leaders, and appropriation of benefits by majorities in ways that perpetuate inequality and imperil responsiveness to the needs of marginalized groups.29 Furthermore, local experimentation by national governments and donors has resulted in the proliferation of so-called “community-driven development” (CDD) projects, each employing different methods and procedures. This exacerbates coordination and coherency problems. However, addressing these problems by introducing larger-scale community support programs carries the risk of excessive standardization and bureaucratization, and the resulting loss in demand responsiveness.30 Other difficulties facing the participatory approach include achieving economies of scale, resolving problems of territorial scope, and lack of strategic perspective on local development, particularly related to economic (market) opportunities and “upstream linkages” to sectoral policies and fiscal arrangements.31 A further fundamental caveat is that the current emphasis of linking CDD approaches to development plans and funding may lead to a disincentive for communities to undertake collective action to resolve local problems independent of (donor or government) funding.32 In other words, CDD may result in the same shortcomings as the earlier top-down strategies – namely, the increased dependency of poor people on outside actors (what in French is termed assistanat). Cooke and Kothari highlight the “tyrannical potential” of participation, i.e. the potential to facilitate the illegitimate and/or unjust uses of power.33 They argue that participation in most cases

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precludes any real social transformation due to the manner in which it has been conducted, and the resulting de-politicizing effects. For example, participation can be more costly for certain supposed beneficiaries than for others. A poor farmer is likely to be more constrained by the time commitments and transportation costs required for adequate participation than a rich one would be. Many, if not most, such projects do not take these constraints into account, thus facilitating elite capture of the participatory process.34 In addition, participation may lead to psychological or physical duress for the most socially and economically disadvantaged, since genuine participation may require taking positions that are contrary to the interests of powerful groups. Related to this is what Cooke and Kothari call the “tyranny of the group”,35 whereby group dynamics lead to participatory decisions that reinforce the interests of the already powerful. For example, under the guise of participation, some of the costs of service delivery can be shifted to potential beneficiaries, and can lead to situations in which participation is effectively a form of forced or corve´e labor, with the poor pressured into making far more substantial contributions than the rich.36 Other examples include instances in which “participation” was used to refer to participatory methods (such as PRAs), which were employed simply to gather information rather than to engage stakeholders in deliberative processes within the arena of policy making.37 Indeed, participation without a change in power relations may simply add a more “democratic” face to the status quo. The illusion of inclusion also means that the decisions made are treated as if they represent what “the people” really want, and gain a moral authority that becomes hard to challenge.38 This is linked to the argument that the notion of “local knowledge” in participatory approaches is highly problematic. Mosse argues that what is taken as “people’s knowledge” is itself constructed in the context of planning, and reflects the social and power relationships that planning systems entail.39 These observations illustrate the argument that mainstreaming participation has made it an instrument for promoting pragmatic policy interests, such as cost-effective delivery or low-cost maintenance, rather than a vehicle for radical social transformation.

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There is, however, an emerging literature that is considering the political relevance of these so-called “social” forms of participation by asking, “to what extent can social participation enhance peoples’ political participation?” This includes inquiring about the extent to which participatory development programmes contribute to processes of political learning among the poor. Political learning includes knowledge of formal political rights and increased awareness of the de facto local “rules of the game”. This is closely related to the concept of political capabilities. According to Williams,40 political capabilities “provide the set of navigational skills needed to move through political space, and the tools to re-shape these spaces where this is possible”. This literature is thus helpful in thinking about linkages between “social” and “political” forms of participation, as promoted by participatory approaches and decentralization reforms respectively. In contrast to the vast literature on positive and negative outcomes of decentralization reforms and participatory development programs, the literature on their interaction effects is much more limited. As Krishna points out,41 this is because until very recently, discussions of decentralization and of community-based development have proceeded separately from each other. The decentralization agenda has focused almost exclusively on factors such as financial autonomy and administrative competence that relate to the technical capacity of local governments. Relatively less attention has been paid to the question of how effectively local governments interact with their constituents and other local organizations. Similarly, the community-based and participatory development agenda has been preoccupied mostly with the internal dynamics of community organizations: how they are constituted, how they are managed, how they can implement programs effectively, etc. It has not been concerned much with issues of networking and scaling up, and with how community organizations can improve the environment for development initiatives over a wider terrain, including cooperation with local government. The result of these literatures progressing on parallel tracks is that studies of partnerships between local government and CBOs have,

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until recently, not been prominent.42 Some researchers have started to examine negative interactions. Here, the main question is whether participatory methods obstruct or enhance the potential benefits of democratic decentralization when they are used to establish a plethora of local institutions (such as CBOs and village development or user committees).43 A well-known example in this literature is World Bank support to CBOs in the form of Social Funds and other programs that frequently result in the creation of structures outside of local government. These then have limited (or negative) influence on the capacity of local government to support sustainable service delivery in the future.44 There is also a rapidly growing body of research on the more advanced types of local synergies in the form of participatory governance and co-governance, e.g. the participatory budgeting experience in Porto Alegre, Brazil.45 However, relatively few studies have considered the preconditions required (in terms of local governance arrangements and actors’ capacities) for local partnerships or synergies to actually materialize. Theories on the developmental State and the concept of “embedded autonomy”, as well as “state-insociety” approaches, are very helpful to start filling this gap.

Rethinking State – Society Relations: Implications for Research Methodologies The premise that the State should be seen as an organization maintaining a special, autonomous status from society has remained a powerful part of social and political theories right up to the present. It was expressed in statism, structuralism, rational choice theories, and neo-realism. According to Migdal,46 the influential volume entitled Bringing the State Back In (edited by Evans et al. in 1985) was part of the new statist literature that emerged as a response to socialsystems models and Marxist theories, which it criticized for their inability to distinguish analytically between the State and other sectors of society. State-oriented scholars drew heavily on the work of Max Weber, and especially on that part of his writings that stressed the conceptualization of the State as an autonomous organization

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13

with extraordinary means to dominate. However, those acted upon – the objects of control – played little role in these theories, and were conceived of as passive recipients of others’ rules. Migdal argues that “the assumption that only the state does, or should, create rules and that only it does, or should, maintain the violent means to bend people to obey those rules minimizes and trivializes the rich negotiation, interaction, and resistance that occur in every human society among multiple systems of rules”.47 Evans, writing from a comparative institutionalist perspective, develops the notion of the developmental state in order to give a more nuanced view of state autonomy.48 He suggests that although the characteristic features of the Weberian bureaucracy (highly selective meritocratic recruitment and long-term career rewards, creating commitment and a sense of corporate coherence) mean that these apparatuses have a certain kind of “autonomy”, they are not insulated from society as Weber suggested they should be. In Evans’ words, To the contrary, they are embedded in a concrete set of social ties that binds the state to society and provide institutionalized channels for the continual negotiation and re-negotiation of goals and policies. Either side of the combination by itself would not work. A state that was only autonomous would lack both sources of intelligence and the ability to rely on decentralized private implementation. Dense connecting networks without a robust internal structure would leave the state incapable of resolving “collective action” problems, of transcending the individual interests of its private counterparts. Only when embeddedness and autonomy are joined together can a state be called developmental.49 This apparently contradictory combination of corporate coherence and connectedness, which Evans calls “embedded autonomy”, provides the underlying structural basis for successful state involvement in industrial transformation. Evans’ subsequent work extends this framework to state involvement with society more

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broadly, and distinguishes between “complementarity” and “embeddedness.”50 (See Chapter 1). At around the same time as Evans wrote about “embedded autonomy”, Migdal et al. developed the “state-in-society” approach,51 which seeks to balance the (perceived) emphasis on state autonomy and domination by suggesting that “a state’s relative effectiveness is a function of the varied forms in which state-society relations are interwoven”. Their emphasis is therefore on the struggles and accommodations in the junctures between components of the State and other social forces.52 Most important for the argument in this book is Migdal’s observation that “in the midst of arenas of struggles and accommodations, the boundary between the state and other parts of society may continually shift, as powerful social forces in particular arenas appropriate parts of the state or the components of the state co-opt influential social figures”.53 In short, Migdal called for a move away from a perspective that simply pits state against society, and towards one that conceives of the State as part of society.54 A more recent theoretical approach in this direction is the “polity approach”.55 It focuses on how societal and state actors are constituted, how they develop a differential capacity to act and form alliances, and how they cooperate and compete across the public–private divide in order to produce purposeful change. Methodologically, the main implication of these intellectual approaches and theories is to disaggregate the State. This means analyzing state– society interactions not only between the “top” or center of the State and key social groups, but also at the periphery. It also implies recognizing the blurred and moving boundaries between states and societies, and to view states and societies as mutually transforming – and, in some cases, even mutually empowering.56 This approach is closely linked to anthropological theories on the State.57 Pieke (2004) warns against reifying the State as an institution existing above, but separate from society.58 Instead, he calls for a conceptualization of the State as a composite of often conflicting institutions and individuals, i.e. constituting fields of social interaction, and a discursively and practically constructed

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15

institutional reality. The institutional reality of the State is a negotiated and contested one, and should be treated as a product of informal bureaucratic practices as much as of formal institutional arrangements. Apart from taking these informal processes and influences into account, this book also draws on political-economy approaches in terms of the spatial dimension of the study. This differs from earlier practices in anthropology. As Ortner states,59 anthropologists had “a tendency to treat societies, even villages, as if they were islands unto themselves, with little sense of the larger systems of relations in which these units are embedded”. By contrast, the more recent anthropology of the State and of its policies recognizes the need for multi-sited and multilevel research.60 The fieldwork for this book was carried out in Al Haouz province, south of Marrakech, given that both the World Bank’s Irrigation Based Community Development project (known by its French acronym DRI-PMH) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD’s) Mountainous Areas project were being implemented there. These two projects illustrate very well how “participatory” projects are implemented by the government administration. In addition, several academics and development consultants assserted that Al Haouz province had one of the highest levels of “social capital” in Morocco. As one anthropologist and development consultant put it, “if the participatory approach doesn’t work in the Haouz, it won’t work anywhere in Morocco” (see interview WB05). The compact geography of hamlets in the High Atlas Mountains also favors the “participatory approach”, in contrast with the more dispersed settlements in the Northern Rif Mountains (WB09). I chose my first case study municipality (the rural commune of Tighedouine), which was part of the World Bank project, as it allowed me to build on the Montpellierbased Institut de Recherche pour le De´veloppement’s (IRD’s) “Agdal” research project on natural resource management being conducted in the same area.61 I chose the second case study commune (Ouirgane) in the same province based on its comparability with the first, and the fact that it was part of the IFAD project. I also studied a pioneering local governance project by the American NGO Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in two other communes in Al Haouz province.

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This project in turn inspired the governor of that province to structure relations between civil society, local governments, and the Ministry of the Interior in so-called espaces associatifs.62 I also collected data and conducted interviews on a number of smaller case studies, such as the Local Agenda 21 process and natural resource management projects funded by the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), the Belgian Technical Cooperation (CTB) and Oxfam Que´bec, among others. For reasons of space, I can only make brief references to the CRS project, the espaces associatifs, and the other smaller case studies in this book. A list of interviews is provided in Appendix A. The main research methods used were semi-structured interviews, analysis of financial data, council meeting minutes and other documents related to the functioning of rural communes as well as (internal) project documents, and participant observation (in offices of commune staff and representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, as well as in water user association training sessions). In total, between 2004 and 2006, I spent 13 months on fieldwork in Morocco, both in Al Haouz province and in Rabat. Semi-structured interviews were held with 33 local councilors and 13 commune staff, as well as staff in the Ministry of the Interior at various administrative levels in the province and other politicians such as MPs. In addition, my research assistants and I conducted 65 semistructured interviews with members of village associations, mostly with their presidents or other board (committee) members (35 interviews in Tighedouine and 29 in Ouirgane, plus one in the neighboring commune of Imegdal).63 The interviewees represented 50 village associations: 26 in Tighedouine, 23 in Ouirgane, and one in Imegdal. In terms of documents, I collected council meeting minutes, budget data for 2001 – 6, the commune councils’ internal statutes, the arreˆte´ fiscal (fiscal decree) of both communes, their 2000– 4 development plans, and their monographs.64 Out of the four council sessions per year, I focused on the minutes of the two most important meetings, i.e. the October meeting, containing the discussion on the draft budget, and the February meeting, at which the executed

INTRODUCTION

17

accounts as well as the allocation of the surplus are discussed and voted on.65 Finally, I collected the financial data for all the communes in Al Haouz province (presented in Chapter 4), although I have some concerns regarding its validity.66 (See Appendix B for a list of primary sources). In terms of limitations, the gender dimension is unfortunately largely missing as I could not identify suitable female interviewees; although I interviewed a few women farmers and learned about their needs and daily worries, they referred me to their husbands as soon as the conversation turned to the local government and development projects (interviews TF13, OF01 – OF04). Only in the case of the two women’s cooperatives/workshops did I get relevant information from female interviewees. However, I did systematically ask the councilors about women’s political participation, and the association members about women’s participation in their associations. The literature on women and local governance in rural Morocco is practically non-existent; most writers focus on women’s contributions to agriculture or the household.67 This is partly due to the fact that Moroccan women’s NGOs mainly exist at the national level with outreach activities to the local level (especially with regard to the application of the new Family Code), rather than having originated in a rural context. Another constraint inherent in this type of micro-political study is that of time, which prevents the full capture of ongoing changes in local governance. It is clear that my findings reflect only a snapshot of the power constellations within the commune councils, as well as their relations with CBO leaders at the time of the fieldwork. Although I spent a total of 13 months in Morocco, this was not enough to conduct a detailed social-network analysis of local leaders that would allow for a documentation of changes in these power constellations. Similarly, a more detailed study of local elites and their power bases would have given a stronger foundation for some of the findings presented here. This would have included a more detailed examination of the land tenure system in each locality,68 and local leaders’ socio-economic position. A related problem with regard to elite capture was the difficulty of mapping commune expenditure geographically (i.e. by

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village), as the data in the budget documents were not precise enough. Conducting a household survey on access to public services was also beyond my time and resource allowances. Likewise, the true extent of participation in village associations and the question of whether the association committees are representative of the local population, could not be studied in detail as they would have required more information on the poverty status of decision makers, and a large sample of village households. The empirical research therefore concentrated on the internal functioning of the associations.

Questions Addressed in this Book, and a Summary of the Main Argument The main objective in this book is to assess the actual record and scope for state– society synergies in Morocco in the context of decentralization reforms and participatory development policies, particularly at the local (rural) level. The principal research question relates to whether local government and local “civil society” actors have the capacity and incentives to engage in developmentally valuable relations based on complementarity and embeddedness (as these terms are used by Evans).69 These relationships can take the form of formal and informal co-production arrangements (i.e. partnerships for service delivery), or more political co-governance mechanisms. There are three sets of sub-questions that follow from this. First, to what extent have decentralization reforms in Morocco contributed to local government capacity (administrative, financial, and political), and how have they influenced the traditionally dominant role of the Ministry of the Interior as the tutelle (supervisory) authority? The analysis of local government administrative capacity includes a study of the balance of power between local governments and provincial delegations of the various government ministries charged with implementing participatory development projects. With regard to political capacity, the impact of such projects and programs on political capabilities is also examined, i.e. whether social forms of participation can become politically relevant.

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Second, what is the influence of such participatory rural development programs on the increase in the number of CBOs, their capacities, and their relationships with local government? The answer to this question includes an analysis of the extent to which these new CBOs are based on the traditional village councils (jema’at), and the implications for the CBOs’ effectiveness and sustainability. Third, what is the state of partnerships between local government and local CBOs, and what are the constraints on such partnerships? This question includes a study of certain local government and donor-driven experiments with local co-governance and coordination mechanisms. Finally, this book examines the underlying motives and roles of the Ministry of the Interior in establishing such mechanisms. The emphasis in this book is thus on the outcomes of decentralization reforms and participatory approaches (as part of rural development programs) in terms of local governance, i.e. the way authority is organized, legitimated, and employed by and on behalf of local people.70 This study does not aim to measure the impact of decentralization and participatory approaches on poverty reduction,71 the quality of service delivery, or empowerment at the individual level; rather, it concerns itself with an “anthropology of policy” by qualitatively assessing the real extent of implementation of these policies (compared to public discourse and the legal framework), their transformation in this process, their impacts on local capacity to bring about local development, and the (unintended and unforeseen) interaction effects that such simultaneous implementation have produced.72 My findings confirm several of the observations found in the literature. With regard to decentralization, the empirical data from Morocco highlights the continued importance, but also domination, of the central government over local government decision making. It also shows that the additional functions and benefits that the 2002 Municipal Charter devolved to the local level were mostly captured by the existing elite and used to strengthen patronage networks. This points to the importance of raising awareness about the implications of decentralization reforms with the actors involved, i.e. local

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councilors and local government staff. Otherwise, fairly progressive legal provisions will remain dead letters. With regard to participatory approaches, the findings of the project case studies show that the government officials in charge still mainly see them as instruments for implementing programs more cost-effectively and delegating responsibility for success or failure to the beneficiaries themselves, rather than as a vehicle to strengthen political capabilities that might, in the longer term, challenge existing power structures and thus bring about lasting change. Moreover, the proliferation of “participatory” development programs has led to a dramatic increase in the number of local CBOs. Yet, while the numbers are impressive on paper and contribute to continued optimism about the development of “civil society” in Morocco on the part of donors, the findings presented here show that CBOs’ capacities to implement projects, let alone engage in partnerships with local government, are still very limited. In addition, rather than building on and strengthening existing social networks and trust, these modern forms of association can exacerbate intra-community conflicts. Most importantly, the depoliticized view of participation ignores the fact that these new CBOs can easily become instruments for the local elite to strengthen their patronage networks. I found that a significant number of the associations in my sample of 50 were led by local councilors who are using them to mobilize the electorate on the eve of local elections. During a courtesy visit to Tighedouine in December 2013, one of my key informants confirmed that this finding still holds true. The main finding with regard to the interaction effects between decentralization and participation is therefore the increased elite capture of local institutions. This suggests that my initial assumption that local governments were being marginalized or bypassed by the newly created CBOs does not hold here. Rather, the main danger is that new avenues for citizen participation are being monopolized by a small group of people. With regard to the scope for local government– CBO partnerships, the findings presented here suggest that even if the problem of elite capture and politicization of relations could be overcome, there remain a number of key

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administrative and financial constraints to co-production in service provision and co-governance mechanisms. Taken as a whole, these findings fundamentally question the central assumption – found in much of the literature on coproduction and partnership – that there is a theoretical as well as an empirical divide between public (state) and private (society) spheres. Furthermore, the Moroccan experience examined here shows that “Western” concepts of “public” and “private”, let alone “public – private partnerships”, cannot easily or quickly be transferred to a context in which local governance arrangements are characterized by clientelism and intense political rivalries fueled by competition for donor funds. It is thus fundamental for both the research and policy communities to pay increased attention to how decentralization reforms and participatory approaches are implemented, and how they could be linked in ways that preserve the state –society boundary in terms of the actors’ personal identities. The book’s argument is especially relevant in the context of the National Human Development Initiative (known by its French acronym, INDH), which was launched in May 2005 and is still ongoing. The INDH is being promoted as the key development strategy for the country, with important implications for localgovernance arrangements. Similarly, the new 2011 Constitution of Morocco reinforces the decentralization agenda and includes the provision that “participatory mechanisms of dialogue and consultation (concertation) are put in place by the [newly established] Regional Councils and the Councils of the other local authorities to stimulate the involvement of citizens and of associations in the formulation and follow-up of development programs” (Article 139). Local elections were held in September 2015. In the area of agriculture and rural development, the “Morocco Green Plan” (Plan Maroc Vert, or PMV) was launched in April 2008. It is expected to be the main engine of growth and of combating poverty up to 2020. In addition, a host of donor-funded programs are under way in order to strengthen local governments and associations. The findings presented here thus provide essential insights into the existing local governance context in which these policies and programs are being

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implemented, enabling the reader to assess their relevance and political implications. The book is organized as follows. The next chapter (Chapter 1) develops the conceptual framework further by building on Evans’s concepts of complementarity and embeddedness, and the coproduction and co-governance literature. It also examines the concept of internal and interactive capacities (of both local government and village associations) and shows why they are relevant to studying the potential for synergies. Chapter 2 provides the necessary background information on the national policy and legal environment governing decentralization, state– society relations, and participatory approaches to rural development in Morocco. Chapter 3 then moves the analysis to the local level; it introduces the case study communes and presents the findings on local government administrative capacity in terms of the following: the human resource base; the perceived and actual extent of independence from the Department of Local Authorities (as the tutelle authority); the degree of awareness of the provisions in the 2002 Municipal Charter; the perceived and actual extent of the caı¨d’s influence over council affairs (the caı¨d being the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior), local development priorities, and the nature of the local planning process; and the extent of consultation by the government administration (including in the context of certain “participatory” development projects). Chapter 4 considers the fiscal and political aspects of local government autonomy and capacity. It also includes a critical analysis of the impact of “participatory” projects on political capabilities, i.e. whether social forms of participation can become politically relevant. Chapter 5 examines the fieldwork data on 50 local village associations in the two case study communes in terms of their objectives and activities; their human, financial, and material assets; their internal governance and decision making processes; and their relationships with other associations and the Ministry of the Interior. It also considers the degree to which they are based on the traditional village council ( jema’a), and the implications for effectiveness and sustainability. Chapter 6 studies the record of local partnerships, and explains the virtual absence of co-production

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arrangements by discussing the various administrative, financial, and legal constraints. I argue that these could be overcome, but that the more fundamental obstacle to embeddedness is the political instrumentalization that characterizes the relationships between local government and village associations. The Conclusion draws the findings together and lays out the theoretical and policy implications.

CHAPTER 1 DEVELOPMENT SYNERGIES

Decentralization and Participation: Conceptualizing their Linkages The conceptual framework developed in this chapter is a crucial first step towards building the overall argument in this book – namely, that the potential for (local level) synergies between decentralization reforms and participatory approaches to rural development in Morocco is currently still limited. This chapter provides the conceptual basis to understanding how several overarching goals are actually shared by decentralization reforms and (certain types of) participatory approaches, and how paying more attention to potential synergies can lead to more effective development outcomes. At the theoretical level, the term “synergies” refers to positive interaction effects between the two approaches to development, and between political and social forms of participation in particular. These synergies in turn have the potential to achieve social transformations that help to realize certain development objectives more efficiently, effectively, and with a more sustainable impact than these approaches would have if implemented in isolation. These objectives include empowerment, improved service delivery, and administrative autonomy along with greater downward accountability, partnerships, and enhanced local organizational and human capacity.1 At the practical level, local government and local community-based organizations (CBOs) can be considered proxies for decentralization

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reforms and participatory approaches respectively, and the term “synergies” at this level refers to “mutually reinforcing relations between governments and groups of engaged citizens”.2 In terms of its theoretical perspective, this study is situated in the literature on “participatory local governance”, which originates in post-Marxism and argues in favor of radical, transformative development and democracy that involve changing power relations.3 This perspective should be distinguished from the revised neo-liberal position taken up by researchers at the World Bank,4 which remains essentially technocratic in nature.5 For example, McLean et al. advocate working within “the opportunity space”.6 This “refers to the range of possibilities offered by the enabling environment, without efforts to alter the fundamental structures of a society or relevant institutions”. As Mohan and Stokke point out,7 this implies that the empowerment of the powerless could be achieved within the existing social order without any significant negative effects upon the power of the powerful. While I disagree with this view, I believe that the analytical tools developed within the “technocratic” perspective can still be useful in examining the potential for social transformation in contexts in which conditions for decentralization/participation synergies are mostly still lacking, as is the case in Morocco. This chapter is structured as follows. This section considers the conceptual implications of the literature review provided in the preceding chapter. The next section presents the conceptual framework on local government–CBO synergies at the local level. The final section introduces the criteria for assessing internal and interactive capacity with regard to local government and CBOs respectively. In the Introduction, the distinction between “political” forms of participation (as promoted by democratic decentralization) and “social” forms of participation (as promoted by participatory approaches) was introduced. “Social” forms of participation can be divided further into those that are based on an “instrumental” (or functional) view (which holds that participation is a methodology resulting in more cost-efficient and effective projects) and those that try to implement a “transformative” view (i.e. based on the belief that true development lies in strengthening people’s ability to improve

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the economic and social conditions of their lives as well as to change the power structures that hinder them in doing so). In fact, as Table 1.1 shows, it is possible to identify several types of participation within these two views. This discussion builds on the work of Williams, who calls for a more explicit political analysis of the impact of participation. The question is ultimately, in Williams’ words, “what longer-term political value do participatory processes have for the poor?”.8 As Moore and Putzel argue, an important criterion for the success of development projects should be the degree to which they contribute to the mobilization and sustained political action of the poor.9 This discussion links social forms of participation in (rural) development projects to political forms of participation that successful democratic decentralization (at least in theory) both requires and strengthens. This in turn leads to the question of how, and to what extent, participatory approaches can interact with decentralization in ways that would strengthen it. These interactions can take place both at the individual level, i.e. the impact of participatory approaches on individual agency, and that of social structure, i.e. local governance arrangements and power relations.10 As for the first, the main question is, “to what extent can social participation enhance peoples’ political participation?” This includes examining the impact on people’s political capabilities. These consist of “self-confidence, capacity for community organization, recognition of dignity, and collective ideas” to (re-)negotiate political space.11 As for the level of social structure, the main questions to ask are, “to what degree do participatory programmes reshape political networks? How are existing roles of brokers and patrons challenged or reinforced?” (bearing in mind that the latter are not always and everywhere a negative force). More fundamentally, do new spaces of participation ultimately challenge existing power relationships, and “equalize” social and economic inequalities? Or, in Sen’s terms, do they contribute to development as freedom?12 This study addresses these questions by assessing the characteristics of such new spaces of participation, i.e. CBOs, and their interactions

Manipulative participation or deliberate misinformation. Passive participation: being told what is going to happen. Participation in information giving. Participation by consultation, but which does not concede any share in decision making. Participation for material incentives: e.g. providing manual labour in exchange for food, cash, or other material incentives. Functional participation to meet predetermined objectives after major decisions have been made. Also referred to as “participatory implementation”. Interactive participation: joint analysis, such as Participatory Action Research, which leads to action plans and the formation of new local institutions or the strengthening of existing ones. These groups take control over local decisions, and so people have a stake in maintaining structures or practices. Also referred to as “deliberative participation”. Self-mobilization: taking initiatives independent of external institutions in order to change systems. This can entail receiving resources and technical advice but retaining control of how resources are used, and may or may not challenge existing inequitable distributions of wealth and power. Also called “transformative participation”, or “effective participation”.

1 2 3 4 5

view view view view

Transformative view

Transformative view

Functional view

Functional Functional Functional Functional

Based on. . .

Source: J. Drydyk, “When is development more democratic?”, Journal of Human Development, 6(2) (2005), pp. 259–60, citing J. Gaventa, “The scaling-up and institutionalizing of PRA: Lessons and challenges”, in J. Blackburn and Holland (eds), Who changes? Institutionalizing participation in development (London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1998) pp. 153–66 and J. Pretty, “Alternative systems of enquiry for sustainable agriculture”, IDS Bulletin, 25(2) (1994), pp. 37–48; and D. A. Crocker, “Deliberative participation in local development”, presented at International Conference of the Human Development and Capability Association, 29 August–1 September 2006, Groningen, Netherlands, pp. 2–3.

8

7

6

Description

A typology of participation

Type

Table 1.1

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with the local governance structure. As John Gaventa argues,13 the transformative potential of “participatory” spaces must always be assessed in relationship to the other spaces that surround them, as new spaces might simply be captured by the already-empowered elite if other participatory spaces that serve to provide and sustain countervailing power are absent.14 However, even though the focus of this book is on governance arrangements at the local level, it is important not to view “the local” in isolation from broader economic and political structures, as Mohan and Stokke argue.15 I agree with Helling et al.,16 who suggest that local governance arrangements and, ultimately, local development impacts are determined by the wider (non-local) policy and institutional environment, which includes laws; central and sectoral government policies (accompanied by capacity enhancement and resource transfers); and values, norms, and social practices that influence people’s decisions and behavior (such as propensity for solidarity, acceptance of social hierarchy, and relations with authority and leadership). It is also clear that the dynamics of state–society relationships in any given country influence change at the local level to some extent. The works by political sociologists such as Williams (2004) and Heller (2001) point to the importance of political leadership in pushing a transformative political agenda,17 which often explicitly underpins the effectiveness of both participatory approaches and democratic decentralization. Each of the successful examples in the literature (such as Kerala in India, and Porto Alegre in Brazil) benefited from a sense of political direction and aimed to produce a fuller and more active sense of citizenship. This includes strengthening political capabilities, and opening up the State to effective public scrutiny. Such initiatives require a high degree of state capacity to coordinate between levels of government, and to call for more regulation to guarantee basic transparency, accountability, and representation. In other words, a champion, or “reformist”, is required who pushes decentralization. In Heller’s cases, these were organized political forces, and specifically left-of-center political parties that have strong social movement characteristics. These political parties are program-

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matic and ideologically cohesive with significant ties to grassroots organizations. These ties are required in order to shift powers, devolve funds, and promulgate laws and regulations. Most importantly, they are needed to circumvent or neutralize groups opposed to decentralization by challenging entrenched powers of patronage and bureaucratic fiefdoms, and for redirecting development resources from rents to development. These initiatives were linked to the reshaping of political networks in which pro-poor alliances were not limited to the poor themselves, but extended beyond the grassroots to include cross-class and crossinstitutional linkages (within government, NGOs and/or parties). Heller argues that civil society and social movements can play a critical role in shifting power from traditional party brokers to more grassroots factions.18 This opens up the opportunity for functional complementarities to emerge between political parties and social movements that allow them to become agents of democratic transformation.19 Finally, successful democratic decentralization often relies on the poor taking these programs and movements seriously and participating in them in big numbers because they offer the hope of significant change. While these factors, present in a few “success stories” and in particular contexts, cannot be generalized and framed as binding conditions, they are nevertheless useful in organizing the material in the next chapter with regard to the Moroccan context. They point to first, the need to critically, and historically, examine the main drivers of decentralization reforms, and their underlying motivations. Second, it is useful to consider the nature and strength of civil and political societies at the national level, and the history of their relationships with the State. Finally, we cannot understand the current dynamics at the local level without first reviewing the nature and extent of popular participation in decentralization reforms, civil society movements, and participatory rural development programs in its historical perspective.

Local Government –CBO Synergies: Types of Interactions Having set out the conceptual linkages between decentralization and participation in more detail, I now turn to a discussion of the

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different types of local government –CBO interactions. I argue that these possible types of synergies lie on a continuum of increasingly blurred state – society boundaries. Following Evans,20 I define synergy in this context as “mutually reinforcing relations between governments and groups of engaged citizens”. Before discussing the different degrees or types of synergies however, it should be noted that situations in which synergies are altogether absent seem much more common so far. As indicated in the previous chapter, there is a growing literature presenting evidence that participatory methods often obstruct the potential benefits of democratic decentralization when they are used to establish a plethora of local institutions such as CBOs and village development or user committees. For example, Manor argues that the creation of user committees (as part of participatory approaches) fragments popular political participation.21 I also mentioned the example of World Bank support to CBOs, which frequently results in the creation of structures outside of local government. This can negatively affect the capacity of local government to support sustainable service delivery. The underlying reasons for such lack of synergies, or “negative interaction effects”, can be found in differing professional and organizational perspectives and ideologies, institutional rigidity, and inadequate coordination among the actors involved.22 Issues of sequencing have also rarely been explicitly addressed, e.g. whether communities should be strengthened first, and then local governments, or both simultaneously.23 In short, the argument here is that the absence of synergies between participatory approaches and decentralization reforms should be considered as a serious obstacle to achieving local development. Moving on now to positive interaction effects, Evans distinguishes between two elements that constitute synergy: complementarity and embeddedness.24 Complementarity suggests a clear division of labor, based on the contrasting properties (comparative advantages) of public and private institutions. Putting the two kinds of inputs together results in greater output than either public or private sectors could deliver on their own. For example, the State is responsible for

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ensuring the rule of law, which strengthens the efficiency of local organizations and institutions.25 A more tangible example is state provision of large infrastructure and citizen’s contribution of local knowledge and experience that would be too costly for outsiders to acquire. These examples still fit nicely within existing paradigms in public administration, and do not force any rethinking of the public– private divide. However, complementarity can also promote social-capital formation in civil society.26 In the irrigation sector, for example, efficient (public) provision of the tangible facilities may have the intangible consequence of making it more worthwhile for farmers to organize themselves. In such cases, complementarity supports day-to-day interaction between public officials and communities. Indeed, further evidence suggests that the permeability of public – private boundaries must be acknowledged as an inescapable part of many developmentally successful programs (including the East Asian “economic miracle”).27 Evans calls such ties that connect citizens and public officials across the public– private divide “embeddedness”.28 He argues that synergy is based on both complementarity and on embeddedness, which are mutually supportive. These ideas can easily be applied to the co-production model as proposed by Ostrom and others.29 “Coproduction” refers to the process through which inputs used to produce a good or service are contributed by individuals who are not “in” the same organization. It implies that with encouragement from public officials, citizens can play an active role in producing public goods and services.30 In Evans’ view, complementarity creates a basis for productive interaction, but without embeddedness the potential for mutual gain is hard to realize. In other words, complementarites create the potential for synergy but do not provide an institutional basis for realizing it. Evans cites examples where embeddedness, in the form of direct involvement of public officials, was a key component in getting citizen efforts organized and sustaining citizen involvement – for example, in the monitoring and maintenance of sanitation and irrigation infrastructure. The two concepts of complementarity and embeddedness can also be applied to the notions of the “stretching” and “deepening” roles of

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CBOs vis-a`-vis local government that have developed from the coproduction model.31 Local governments may lack the capacity to perform mandated functions effectively. Or they may be logistically unable to reach communities with the frequency and intensity required to deliver services effectively. In these cases, CBOs can perform a “stretching” role based on complementarity. In this type of co-production, CBOs can be engaged to function as subcontractors of the local government. They perform a service for a fee, usually in the short term. Their technical capacity, rather than their ability to mobilize and organize collective action, is of primary importance. They effectively stretch the authority of local governments both territorially and functionally. Examples include subcontracting in the fields of sanitation and primary education provision. In the case of “deepening” roles, CBOs organize citizens and mobilize resources for collective action, often on a voluntary basis. They do this usually in the long-term, and rather than being formalized in a contractual task assignment, such roles are flexible and based on consultation with the local government. Hence, deepening roles correspond to what Evans calls embeddedness. Examples of large deepening roles are the management of local pastures and the distribution of irrigation and drinking water, in which higher intensity collective efforts are required on a more continuous basis as compared to municipal functions such as street lighting or garbage collection. The larger their deepening role, the more CBOs need to be involved not just in project identification but also in design, implementation and budget management.32 Coming back to Evans, his analytical distinction reminds us to look for both elements of complementarity and embeddedness when examining such synergy. The key question here is whether networks that cross the public – private divide can be repositories of developmentally valuable social ties and networks based on trust rather than instruments of corruption or rent seeking. In other words, when analyzing relationships between local government and CBOs, the focus should be on the potential for complementarity and embeddedness that has positive, rather than negative, development outcomes.

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Evans33 considers the importance of corporately coherent Weberian bureaucracies in making sure that embeddedness does not degenerate into clientelism.34 Traditional Weberian features include meritocratic recruitment, good salaries, sharp sanctions against violations of organizational norms, and solid rewards for career-long performance. This contrasts with the more familiar story, in which bureaucracy eliminates the possibility of synergy due to its uniform, simplistic application of inflexible rules, which leave no room for initiative or imagination on the part of either local officials or their counterparts in civil society. Decentralization comes in here as a means of opening up bureaucratic hierarchies to inputs from below. This is linked to the idea that synergistic relations (should) have an impact on accountability flows. Accountability in co-production arrangements should ideally be three-way: citizens should be able to use the local government as a referee or accountability check on CBO leaders and to catalyze elections of new CBO leaders as needed; while CBO leaders monitor local government actions, decisions, and performance, and vice versa.35 Local governments and CBOs should be simultaneously upwardly and downwardly accountable (to constituents and voters, as well as to central government and donors), as well as horizontally accountable to each other.36 Most importantly, co-production should be an entry point for citizens to influence the overall practices of local governments and other service delivery actors, through a general opening up of decision making processes. Far too often, however, accountability remains restricted to the specific subset of activities being jointly produced, which is treated as distinct from the overall budget.37 Hence, co-production arrangements tend to promote depoliticized forms of participation. This is why ideally, state–society relations would take the form of co-governance (or participatory local governance, as indicated in the introduction to this chapter).38 Co-governance mechanisms can be found at the other end of the continuum of potential synergies, having moved on from complementarity to embeddedness. They explicitly violate the public–private, or state–society boundary.39 Since such

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co-governance mechanisms are not yet very common, I do not focus on their underlying concepts in detail here. Suffice it to say that such approaches are part of a broader notion of democracy than that implied by traditional electoral and deliberative mechanisms. They promote capacity building of local civil society and processes that increase the consultation of citizens (including marginalized groups) by local government officials. They thus link civil society to local government decision making (including policy setting and resource allocation), through processes that increase information flow (transparency) and ultimately aim to strengthen accountability and local government responsiveness.40 Such co-governance mechanisms are thus the most advanced type of local government–CBO interactions. Finally, the role of central government in supporting local level synergies should not be overlooked. Apart from its important function in supporting decentralization reforms,41 central government can play an important part in stimulating partnership arrangements. It can serve as referee and arbiter, ensuring that local governments and community organizations continue to abide by mutually accepted processes and rules of partnership. However, it should also allow for local variations of such rules, and not stifle institutional innovation.42 Strong central government coordination and monitoring capacities are also needed for successful cogovernance mechanisms.43 In terms of the empirical data from the Moroccan context, this means analyzing the role of the Ministry of the Interior at the provincial and local levels.

Local Governance and Local Actors’ Capacities Having outlined the conceptual building blocks for synergies between local governments and CBOs, I now turn to a discussion of the local conditions that need to be in place for them to occur. Such conditions can be found in local governance arrangements. Local governance is defined as the way in which authority is organized, legitimated, and employed by and on behalf of local people through planning, decision making, the use of collective financial and natural resources, the provision of public goods and services, rule enforcement, and

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accountability processes. It includes not only local governments and other public sector structures but also a variety of community and civil society organizations by which people organize in order to act collectively.44 In order to assess the nature of local governance, it is necessary to analyze the internal as well as interactive capacities of both local governments and local CBOs. The focus on these two types of capacity45 helps us to assess the scope for the different types of synergies that were discussed earlier. Following Morgan,46 capacity is an emergent property. It arises from the dynamics involving a complex combination of attitudes, resources, strategies, and skills (both tangible and intangible). There is a strong relationship between capacity and performance. Capacity is essentially a potential state, whereas performance can be seen as the result of the application or use of capacity. Lastly, capacity is about the creation of public value, i.e. the ability of a group or system to make a positive (rather than negative) contribution to public life. As for interactive capacity, it is defined here as the capacity to relate to other persons, groups, or organizations. However, the issue of capacity for and through local partnerships is a type of “chicken-and-egg” problem: is a minimum level of capacity needed to engage in partnership, or does it only follow as a result of having engaged in partnerships? While I agree with Fiszbein47 that partnerships often do contribute to the “individual strengthening” of the partners, the findings presented in the following chapters suggest that certain minimum capacities, especially certain key leadership skills, are needed in order to engage in partnerships in the first place. The findings also indicate the need to pay closer attention to the political identities and affiliations of, and conflicts among, local actors, as these can have considerable influence on the overall environment for partnerships. Given that local government capacity can be considered as an outcome of decentralization reforms, both its internal and interactive aspects can be conceptualized along the fiscal, administrative, and political dimensions of the decentralization framework discussed in the previous chapter. Assessing this capacity not only allows me to

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examine the potential for synergies with CBOs and other actors in a second step, but also enables me to gauge the extent of decentralization reforms as implemented at the local level. In terms of fiscal capacity, the analysis will focus on the degree of local government’s fiscal autonomy from central government. This is a relevant indicator, since a local revenue base contributes to a greater sense of ownership among people; their contribution, through taxes and fees, to the costs of local infrastructure and services strengthens both citizen demand and the accountability of public officials. The greater degree of local discretion associated with own-source revenues enhances decision makers’ capacity for responsiveness.48 Indeed, the more dependent a local government is on transfers from the center, the more likely it is to focus its accountability upwards, and to satisfy transfer criteria.49 In terms of expenditure autonomy, I will be interested to know how much flexibility the local government has to allocate/reallocate funds between recurrent and capital expenditures. If there is no discretion, and recurrent expenditure consumes all funds, then there is limited scope for partnership with local organizations. In other words, the local government’s interactive capacity will be limited. In general, the weaker fiscal decentralization is, the weaker are the partnership possibilities.50 As for the administrative dimensions of local government capacity, I focus on the local government’s functional responsibilities (i.e. what can it be held accountable for?) and the degree of autonomy from central government in terms of decision making. The study also considers local government’s organizational and implementation capacity in terms of human resources and capacity for local planning. The administrative aspects of interactive capacity include issues such as information sharing, processing community requests for funding and support, and monitoring community use of resources and the achievement of results. This requires human resources that possess not only managerial and technical capacity but also so-called “adaptive capacities”. These are skills employed in problem-solving processes requiring face-to-face interaction.51 Of course, the attitudes of local government councilors and civil servants towards CBOs also play a considerable role in influencing this interactive capacity.

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A further aspect of local government’s interactive capacity is its ability to influence and cooperate with deconcentrated sectoral administrations.52 The political dimension of local government capacity includes electoral processes and council procedures for legislation, authorization and accountability, as well as the role of political parties and political competition. The extent of public participation in local government affairs depends on the level of political capabilities (that may have emerged from social forms of participation in development projects), and the extent of local elite capture.53 These dimensions will be used to assess local government capacity in two rural municipalities in Morocco (see Chapters 3 and 4). As for local civil society, many CBOs are created as part of participatory development projects. Assessing their capacity is a necessary first step in order to examine the potential for synergies and partnerships with local government. This assessment will be done along the same three dimensions as those used for local government: financial, administrative, and political.54 Assessing the financial resources of CBOs is rather straightforward; it involves asking about bank accounts (for receiving donor funds), membership fees, and other incomes. I also include material resources here. Administrative capacity includes the nature of past and future proposed projects, human resources (committee members, ordinary members, and access to training), as well as internal governance and decision making processes. Interactive capacity is examined by assessing the attitudes of CBO leaders towards local government, the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior (caı¨d), and other CBOs and NGOs. The political dimension of CBO capacity includes analyzing the political motivations for creating the CBOs, and questions about the CBO’s political legitimacy with regard to existing traditional village structures.55 These questions point to the fact that actors in civil and political society have multiple identities and loyalties, and may be linked by various cross-cutting networks.56 Examining the capacity of local civil society organizations along these three dimensions is necessary in order to fully assess the scope for synergies with local governments, i.e. whether they are able to

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take on stretching roles, deepening roles, or even take part in cogovernance mechanisms. Or, in the cases where no such synergies exist, shortcomings in capacity, both in local government and local civil society organizations, provide valuable explanations for why this is the case, and the starting points for addressing them. With regard to the Moroccan case presented in this study, Chapter 5 will discuss the empirical results on the capacity of 50 local civil-society organizations in two rural municipalities. Chapter 6 will consider the actual record of local partnerships and the evidence on the political instrumentalization of CBOs. Taken together, the empirical findings presented in the core chapters of the book (Chapters 3 – 6) explain the limited scope for synergies at the local level in Morocco. More broadly, this study builds on recent attempts at rehabilitating participation through its re-politicization. By focusing on the idea of synergies, I aim to strengthen the case for truly transformative development based on popular participation, and to promote the view that development should be seen as a process of structural change in society rather than as a series of deliberate (outside) interventions.

CHAPTER 2 STATE—SOCIETY RELATIONS AND POPULAR PARTICIPATION IN MOROCCO

This chapter provides the necessary historical background on decentralization reforms, state – society relations, and popular participation in Morocco. This will provide the context for the empirical findings at the local level, which are presented in subsequent chapters. The first section reviews the decentralization process in Morocco in its historical perspective. It starts with a discussion of traditional social organization in the country prior to decentralization reforms, reviews the implications of independence from France and the creation of local governments (communes), the changes brought about by the second Municipal Charter (Charte communale) of 1976, and outlines the more recent reforms as enshrined in the revised Charte communale of 2002 and that of 2009. I argue that despite an impressive legal framework, actual (administrative, political, and fiscal) decentralization in Morocco is limited, mainly due to the king’s use of it as a strategy to shore up his own legitimacy and power position. The second section provides a typology of civil society organizations (CSOs) in Morocco and reviews the legal framework that governs them. The third section discusses the nature of political parties and their relationships with civil society. I argue that the various strands of Moroccan civil society are divided, that they are governed by a legal framework promoting “soft” state control, and that political parties

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function as patron–client networks rather than enhancing citizens’ political capabilities and participation. In particular, the monarchy’s policies have – at least until the emergence of the 20 February Movement in 2011 – hindered the emergence of cross-institutional alliances between civil society organizations and political parties that could mobilize the rural poor. The fourth section examines the record of social forms of participation in rural development programs, and the fifth section evaluates the current policy framework governing state– civil society interaction. I argue that social forms of participation in state-led rural development programs were until recently imposed from above, and that the current policy framework for state– civil society partnerships presents only limited scope for bottom-up participation and empowerment.

Morocco’s Decentralization Reforms in Historical Perspective The main questions guiding this section are threefold. What is the extent and nature of decentralization in Morocco? In particular, to what extent has power (the authority to make binding decisions about the allocation of public resources) been redistributed both vertically – incorporating hitherto disadvantaged or disenfranchised citizens – and horizontally – expanding the domain of collective decision making?1 Most importantly, what is the nature of the political project that is driving decentralization, and has it changed over time? Today, Morocco has three levels of local government. The first (regional) level consists of a region headed by a wali (regional governor) and a regional representative council. The second level consists of prefectures and provinces. The third level comprises rural and urban communes.2 In one of his first speeches as king, on 12 October 1999, Mohamed VI outlined a new concept of authority for the Moroccan state that would entail decentralization of power from the center to the regional and other territorial administrations.3 At the

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concrete institutional level, this idea was only taken up in earnest ten years later, with the launch of a program of institutional reform called “advanced regionalization” (re´gionalisation avance´e). The royal speech of 3 January 2010 and the creation of the Advisory Committee on Regionalization are major milestones in this regard.4 The committee presented its report to the King in February 2011, and its recommendations clearly fed into the text of the new constitution that was adopted in July 2011, notably the principles of administrative autonomy of local governments and subsidiarity.5 The 2011 Constitution affirms that “The territorial organization of the kingdom is decentralized. It is based on an advanced regionalization.”6 In the new constitution, regional representative councils must be elected by direct universal suffrage, which was not the case under the 1996 Constitution.7 It is clear that this creates a new political arena, in which political parties and elites will compete in the future. While the constitution lays out the framework for decentralization and advanced regionalization, it relies on the drafting and passing of an organic law to secure essentials such as the number of councils, the rules of eligibility, the electoral system, conditions of implementation of the deliberations and decisions by the presidents, shared and transferred powers, and financial arrangements.8 The organic law also needs to set out the details of how the new Fonds de mise a` niveau sociale (Social Improvement Fund) and the Fonds de solidarite´ interre´gionale (Interregional Solidarity Fund) – both established in Article 142 – will function. This organic law was adopted by parliament in May 2015, and includes the creation of 12 new regions (compared with 16 regions until then). Before that, the King had tasked the new Economic, Social and Environmental Council to come up with more concrete recommendations to implement the “advanced regionalization”, explicitly focusing on the southern provinces, which could then serve as a model for the other regions.9 It is thus clear that the regionalization process is a response both to the demands for participatory democracy at the local level on the one hand, and demands for the autonomy of the provinces that make up

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the internationally contested area of the Western Sahara, on the other.10 The prefectural and provincial level is tightly controlled by the State, and as Madani et al point out, “it would be misleading to talk about real decentralization even if the prefectures and provinces had elected assemblies. Their powers are limited, and their budgetary autonomy is almost non-existent (compared with that of communal councils). These levels are rather extensions of central administration and a means of territorial control of the population.”11 As with the history of the communes, reviewed below, this should be seen in the historical context: a large degree of provincial autonomy would have interfered with the need to establish the monarchy’s control over the territory.12 As for the powers of the local municipalities, these can review and vote on the budget and administrative accounts; set tax rates and various fees; borrow money and receive donations; and manage, conserve and maintain common property. Communes also have the right to take any action of cooperation, association, or partnership that helps promote their development. The president of the council (i.e. the mayor) also has control over the communal administrative police. However, as we will see later on, central government representatives continue to play an important role in the management of local government affairs.13 There is no hierarchical relationship between the three territorial levels, i.e. no local government body exercises authority over another. All local authorities are equipped with an elected body (commune council, prefectural or provincial assemblies, regional council) and subject to the supervision of an officer who represents state authority and executive power (the caı¨d for rural communes, the pasha for urban communes, the governor for provinces or prefectures, and the wali for regions14). At the level of the communes, decentralization in Morocco progressed during three main phases.15 The first one lasted from 1960 to 1976, i.e. from the first to the second Municipal Charter. It was mainly symbolic in nature given the dominant position of the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior in commune

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affairs, as well as the communes’ limited fiscal resources. The second phase lasted from 1976 to 2002, i.e. from the second to the third Municipal Charter. It saw a gradual increase in administrative and fiscal autonomy. In the third phase, which started in 2002, and which was given a boost with the revised Municipal Charter of 2009, the commune has been given both more political and economic development objectives and roles. The chronology below (Table 2.1) summarizes the key stages in the decentralization process. The following graph aims to facilitate the understanding of Morocco’s somewhat complicated configuration of parallel Table 2.1

A chronology of the decentralization process in Morocco

Date

Event

1956 1960 1962

Independence from France First Municipal Charter and first communal elections First constitution: local authorities receive constitutional status (provinces, prefectures and communes) Period of political crisis and hiatus in the decentralization process “Green March”: the mass march of 350,000 unarmed Moroccan civilians into the Western Sahara on 6 November 1975.16 Second Municipal Charter New constitution: the region becomes a decentralized local authority; the number of communes increases by 80 per cent. Law on the region becomes effective; elections for regional councils. King Mohamed VI announces the new concept of authority Reform of Municipal and Provincial Charters Reform of the Municipal Charter New constitution, based on “advanced regionalization” Three organic laws passed in parliament (on the regions, prefectures and provinces, and communes, respectively)

1965– 1973 1975 1976 1992 1997 1999 2002 2009 2011 2015

Source: Adapted and updated from Piriou-Sall and Sallier, “De´centralisation et de´veloppement”, p. 10.

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Decentralized local authorities

16 regions

17 wilayas*

75 provinces and préfectures

1503 communes 1282 rural

221 urban

communes

communes

162 cercles/8 préfectures d’arrondissement

509 caïdats/81 urban districts

Deconcentrated administration of the MoI**

Central Administration

Diagram 2.1 The system of decentralized and deconcentrated government administrations in Morocco, 2009. * Wilayas are administrative entities that include several provinces and/or prefectures; they are headed by walis, regional governors appointed by the king.17 ** MoI: Ministry of the Interior. Note: There is no line linking the decentralized local authorities (regions, provinces, and communes) to each other, as there are no hierarchical ties or oversight mechanisms between them (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] Maroc, Rapport de de´veloppement humain 2003: Gouvernance et acce´le´ration du de´veloppement humain [Rabat: UNDP Maroc, 2003]). Sources: R. Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques de de´centralisation au Maroc: Ou` en sommes-nous?”, REMALD, 51 –52 (July– October 2003), p. 11; Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Direction Ge´ne´rale des Collectivite´s Locales (DGCL), “Les Collectivite´s Locales en Chiffres 2011”; and “50 ans de de´veloppement humain au Maroc et perspectives pour 2025: Atlas Graphique: Carte du de´coupage administratif du Maroc” (2006).

decentralized and deconcentrated structures, which will be discussed below. Given this study’s focus on the politics of development at the local level in rural areas, the following discussion focuses on the rural communes, rather than on decentralization at the regional and provincial levels, or in urban areas.18 Besides, the decentralization

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process in Morocco is most advanced at the commune level in all three dimensions: fiscal, administrative, and political. Traditional Social Organization in Morocco and the French Protectorate19 Before the French protectorate, which lasted from 1912 to 1956, the Kingdom of Morocco was subjected to the authority of the sultan and his makhzen administration.20 This body ruled over about 600 Arab and Berber tribes through a hierarchy of “agents of authority” (agents d’autorite´ ).21 The pashas governed the cities and the caı¨ds supervised the tribes, or factions thereof,22 in the countryside. The caı¨d was in turn assisted by the khalifa (his deputy), the cheikh (at the level of clan/ faction) and the muqaddim (at the village level). Fiscal, administrative, judiciary, and military functions were distributed between these different agents of authority. The makhzen administration had the power to levy taxes and impose military conscription. Certain, predominantly mountainous, Berber territories or tribes, called Bled-es-Siba (meaning “realm of dissidence”) as opposed to the mainly Arab-populated plains subject to government authority (Bled-el-makhzen, or “realm of government”), periodically rejected the temporal and centralizing authority of the sultan in order to follow tribal and localized modes of administration. However, these Berber tribes still recognized the spiritual authority of the sultan (as the amir al-mou’minin, “Commander of the Faithful”), and sooner or later they would submit again to the makhzen’s authority – either through force or persuasion.23 The tribal and localized modes of administration took the form of the jema’a, which was an assembly presided over by an elder, the amghar, and which was elected regularly. These assemblies existed at three levels – the village (douar), faction, and tribe – with each composed of representatives of the lower level. The jema’a at the douar level was certainly the most active, and managed economic activities such as irrigation, settled conflicts, and served as intermediary between the population and the representatives of the makhzen. Even though this system had democratic traits, it favored the emergence of local despots. Above these local despots one could find the amel or

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“grand caı¨ds”, whose power was vested on the one hand in the authority of the makhzen and on the other in their self-professed role as “defenders” of local and Berber freedoms. The examples of the Goundafi and Glaoui caı¨ds in the High Atlas are the most famous ones, not least since they would become very powerful landholders and collaborators of the French during the Protectorate.24 With the Treaty of Fes in 1912, most of the Kingdom of Morocco became a French protectorate.25 The French authorities left the traditional makhzen machinery in place but imposed French supervisory agents at different levels of the hierarchy who soon became the real holders of power. The colonial administration was organized into a hierarchy of territorial units – re´gion, territoire, cercle, circonscription, and annexe – based on tribal divisions. In rural areas, the Native Affairs system (Service des Affaires Indige`nes) succeeded in penetrating local tribes and gradually incorporating them within the colonial system. This was achieved by repressing the tribal practice of transhumance, by land expropriation and the privatization of collective lands, taking control of local markets, and making the jema’a elders (imgharn) permanent officers of central government.26 These measures undermined a decentralized, flexible, and often consensual (participatory) form of governance in favor of top-down centralized government. In return, the Berber tribes of the countryside began to be perceived as potential allies of the Protectorate rather than as a threat to its existence.27 The origin of the nationalist movement can be found in the opposition to the so-called “Berber dahir” of 1930, a French decree that sought to institutionalize local customary law rather than Islamic sharia law in many of the Berber-speaking areas of Morocco,28 and which created Berber customary tribunals and courts of appeal. It established the competence of French tribunals in areas of customary status, placing them beyond the jurisdiction of Islamic law. This policy aimed at dividing the Arab from the Berber populations, but its unintended consequence was to confirm the Moroccans’ mistrust of French policy and thereby unify the population against the colonial power.29

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This brief summary of the pre-independence social and administrative organization suggests that the policies of the French Protectorate started the process of establishing the central Moroccan Government’s control over the entire territory. In other words, a pre-colonial tribal and localized (decentralized) system of administration gave way to centralized control under the Protectorate. As the next section shows, this control was then gradually decentralized after independence, but this time as part of a deliberate government strategy. Independence, Creation of the Communes, and the First Municipal Charter (1960) At independence in 1956, the Moroccan authorities were confronted on the one hand with the void left by the departure of the colonial civil servants and the agents of authority who had collaborated with the French, and on the other with the need to “re-Moroccanize” the administrative and institutional structures, in which Moroccans had only occupied subordinate positions. The new administration’s main mission was to build and consolidate the legitimacy and unity of the State. The Berber dahir was rescinded, and although the title of caı¨d was still retained in rural areas, the incumbents were (non-partisan) Moroccan government employees from the newly created Ministry of the Interior in Rabat. There was now a single chain of command in the tribal areas, with the muqaddim at the village level reporting to the cheikh at the faction level, who in turn reported to the caı¨d. In this way, the whole tribal system (and 36,000 villages) was drawn into the arena of national politics.30 Most importantly for the history of decentralization in Morocco, the 1950s and 1960s saw the creation and consolidation of the rural communes. Rural communes were first set up in 1951 to replace the jema’at. The jema’a had already in 1916 been given legal status as representative of the population, but had been stripped of its political functions and had a purely consultative role. The dahir of 1951 was formulated by the French authorities and made the jema’a into an elected administrative body with deliberative functions. While the variety of the tribal structure made generalization

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difficult, the French system envisaged about five communal councils for each tribe. The division of many tribes into smaller units was in line with the French policy of careful control and isolation of the countryside. In 1957, in order to create electoral districts for the first elections in independent Morocco, the Interior Minister appointed an Itinerant Commission to set up proper rural communes. An important rationale was to achieve economic viability as a framework for local government; it was hoped that each commune would have resources valued at at least a million francs and annual souk (market) transactions of half this amount.31 While the commune as new administrative unit was at least in part meant to substitute for the tribe as a focus of local loyalty, its boundaries sometimes followed clan or tribal borders.32 This is because the tribe often did provide a viable economic and social unit, since it might be centered around a permanent market or might occupy a compact area of farming and grazing. In the mountains near Marrakech, a valley or communicating valleys were used as the unit unless the resulting communes were too large or too poor. Yet the most frequently heard slogan of the Itinerant Commission was “Destroy the tribal framework”. This process meant that by 1959, there were 800 mostly rural communes averaging 10,000 inhabitants each. The first constitution of 1962 gave constitutional status to these local authorities. It also fixed the number of councilors to be elected in each commune.33 As for the provinces, they were divided into cercles (headed by a chef de cercle, also called super-caı¨d) and these in turn into caı¨dats. These were, and still are, purely administrative subdivisions for the purpose of facilitating organization and control by the Ministry of the Interior. In subsequent years, the administrative boundaries (de´coupage administratif) of communes and provinces underwent several changes. Most important was the de´coupage administratif introduced in 1992, which almost doubled the number of communes by increasing the number of urban communes from 97 to 247 and the number of rural communes from 760 to 1,297.34 Apart from replacing tribal loyalties and achieving economic viability, what were the underlying driving forces for the creation of

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the communes in 1959 and the holding of council elections in 1960? Waterbury claims that the local councils were first instituted by King Mohamed V to give Moroccans some experience in democratic procedure under strict controls, without running the risks of national legislative elections (which were subsequently held in 1963).35 At the same time, it could be argued that the elections in 1960 and 1963 were designed to inject new life into the old, dispersed, and discredited rural elites. This is echoed in Hammoudi’s account,36 which notes that the rural communes were set up for the reinsertion and consolidation of monarchic power at the local level. Hammoudi argues further that the 1960 municipal and communal elections were the last step in the administration’s concerted action to re-establish relations with the rural notables, who for a while had sided with the colonial powers. The group that the monarchy was to use as its support included people who had lost social positions acquired under the Protectorate as well as large landowners who needed administrative access in order to protect property acquired illegally at the expense of the tribes.37 The rural communes also created smaller local divisions that served more effectively as units of political control, and which perpetuated and refined the highly centralized system of the French Protectorate.38 Shoup even suggests that splitting the tribal population into numerous small communes meant that they had to compete for the same resources and was aimed at negating corporate tribal action.39 As for the motivations on the part of the political leaders at the time, Mehdi Ben Barka, the leader of the National Union of Popular Forces and, previously, an important figure in the Istiqlal (Independence) Party stressed his hope that the commune would become “the driving force in the total transformation of the country” and that it would generate “the fecund and dynamic spirit for the complete construction of the country”.40 However, Ashford concludes41 that the creation of the rural communes should be seen as a response to “partisan demands for monarchical concessions”, rather than as a serious attempt to bring about any radical change in the countryside.42

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Nevertheless, the first communal elections, held on 29 May 1960, did mark an important milestone, since for the first time there was formal local participation in government affairs on a nationwide basis.43 However, and in line with Hammoudi’s argument, while the tribal framework as such had been partly broken by the communal reform, the old rural elites seem to have kept their grip. For example, the candidates sought the endorsement of the jema’at before officially declaring themselves candidates, and many of the former caı¨ds, cheikhs and muqaddims were elected.44 Rivalries between local factions often expressed themselves in tensions between the council president and the cheikh, as both claimed to represent the same tribal factions. The new caı¨ds used these divisions to better control the local elites, and as a strategy to avoid depending on one single network in their contacts with the population.45 Mostly, it seems that the communes were designed to stimulate acceptance of governmental decisions and manipulate rural opinion in order to combat the influence of the political parties. The election mode (scrutin uninominal majoritaire a` un tour – single-candidate majority ballot) also helped to achieve the latter aim, as it allowed for direct and personalized relationships between the candidates and the voters, and eliminated partisan intermediation.46 The communes’ political autonomy at the beginning of their existence was thus fairly limited. In terms of the degree of administrative autonomy, the competence of local councils was not defined until a month after the elections in the form of the First Municipal Charter (Charte Communale, dahir of 23 June 1960). Although its Article 19 implies broad powers (“the council regulates, through its decisions, the affairs of the commune, and in particular it prepares and votes the local budget”), the caı¨d had the right of surveillance and veto. In practice, the council could not make any moves independently since it had to submit the agenda of all meetings to the caı¨d for preliminary approval.47 In short, the council only had limited deliberative powers, in charge of assisting the agent of authority to prepare the budget and supervise general management. As I suggest throughout this chapter, this issue of tutelle (i.e. tutelage, guardianship or supervision) by representatives from the Ministry of the Interior over

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local authorities such as the commune is a fundamental feature in Morocco’s history of decentralization.48 From the viewpoint of the makhzen, this high degree of tutelle was necessary to preserve the fragile unity of the country, and to compensate for the lack of competent civil servants in the local administration.49 This shows that there was a close relationship between the underlying reasons for the creation of the communes, reviewed earlier, and the communes’ degree of administrative autonomy, discussed here. It seems safe to say that the aim of the first Municipal Charter was to familiarize local populations with the commune institution and to decentralize without undermining the power of the State.50 As for the communes’ degree of fiscal autonomy, the data for the period from 1967 to 1975 indicates that government transfers on average financed only about one quarter of the operating expenditures of rural communes. While the ordinary surpluses in rural communes increased from zero in 1967 to 67 million Dirhams (DH) in 1975, the investment expenditures stayed roughly the same, at DH 15 million, throughout the entire period. This seems very little compared to those of the urban communes, whose investment expenditures grew from DH 43 million to DH 138 million over the same period – even given their much smaller number.51 In short, in the early years of their existence, rural communes did not contribute significantly to their own infrastructure and service facilities. The period between 1965 and 1973 saw a number of political crises (riots in Casablanca in 1965, two failed coups d’e´tat against the King by elements of the army in 1971 and 1972, and unrest in the Middle Atlas), which led to the proclamation of a state of emergency and the suspension of parliament. This period thus marked a hiatus in the decentralization process, although municipal elections went ahead in 1970.52 The Second Municipal Charter (1976) The year 1976 was an opportune time to launch the next step in Morocco’s decentralization process. The Green March in 1975, aimed at incorporating the Western Sahara into the country, led to a strong sense of nationalist enthusiasm. It also increased the King’s legitimacy

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as defender of the country’s territorial integrity and symbol of its national sovereignty.53 At the same time, due to the need to demonstrate to Western Saharans that some measure of local autonomy was being offered, the Saharan conflict also served as partial justification for hastening the implementation of the decentralization process.54 Another reason for the renewed impetus in the mid-1970s was the dramatic increase in phosphate export revenues, providing the government with extra resources. Furthermore, the makhzen recognized that increases in regional inequities of income and service distribution could become a major cause of political discontent. Hence, in the governments’ view, economic expansion and attempts to deal with regional disequilibria went hand-in-hand with the increase in participation and democratization through decentralization. The government also believed that these measures would improve government responsiveness and efficiency in local service delivery. These had been perceived as failing in the 1981 Five-Year Plan, which officially castigated “the excessive centralization which characterizes our administrative apparatus”.55 Finally, the political parties’ call for a reduction in the tutelle constituted another factor in speeding up the decentralization process. Together, these factors contributed to the promulgation of the Second Municipal Charter in 1976, which repealed and replaced the one of 1960. Its main innovation was to strengthen the attributions of the council president by making him the executive organ of the commune, a function previously held by the caı¨d.56 The council president also became the hierarchical head of the commune staff.57 Article 30 of the charter stipulates that “The council regulates, by its decisions, the affairs of the commune and, to that effect, decides what measures to take in order to assure the local authority of its full economic, social, and cultural development.”58 Hence for the first time, the communes were legally considered to be a framework for economic and social development. Although the charter provisions59 constitute a considerable advance in the decentralization process, this second charter still contained a number of limitations, all to do with the commune’s degree of administrative autonomy. For example, under Article 31,

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the Ministry of the Interior retained substantial tutelle powers, both over persons and the council’s decisions. It kept the right to (a) suspend the communal council in the case of an (undefined) “emergency”, (b) to “annul” the election of the president, and (c) to “declare resigned” council members with excessive or unjustified absences. Similarly, if the ministry disapproved of a decision passed by the council, it could “provoke” a reconsideration of the issue, and declare null and void any decision considered to be non-local in nature. In practice, the tutelle procedures led to long delays in approving the council’s budget. This largely accounts for the resulting flawed implementation of projects that were inscribed in the budgets.60 These and other provisions allowed the governors and officials at the Ministry of the Interior to take back control whenever they deemed necessary. As Nellis puts it,61 despite the grand language of the legal texts and the implication that the communes would shortly become centers of local planning and democracy, the reality in the 1980s was that they were only carefully controlled providers of mundane services: sewers, street cleaning, garbage collection, bus stations, markets, and slaughterhouses. In terms of administrative capacity, out of the 13,358 communal councilors elected in the November 1976 municipal elections, 60 per cent were farmers or agricultural workers, and at least 50 per cent of the council presidents were illiterate.62 The lack of education and experience of the elected councilors, especially in the rural communes, is considered to have been one of three key problems with the decentralization process throughout its history, and is used to justify the adoption of the “tutorial” approach. The other two problems are the absence of competent local support staff and the inadequacy of the councils’ financial resources. However, the constraints on administrative autonomy were addressed gradually. There was a large increase in local staff, but mostly at the lowest salary grades. In 1977, the post of secretary general was established for each council.63 The secretary general was able to formulate project proposals in order to tap into centrally controlled investment funds. However, it took a very long time until all communes filled this post (in 1988, there were only 410, and three quarters were posted in

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urban communes).64 In terms of training, in 1981, the hitherto small office of training in the Ministry of the Interior was turned into the Department for Management Training (Direction de la formation des cadres administratifs et techniques, DFCAT), which oversaw a vast enlargement of training operations for commune staff, also in the local administrative and technical training centres set up across the country. The DFCAT also devised “mobile” training modules for elected councilors in 1982, although it is not clear how effective they were, given the rate of election turnover (the following elections were held in 1983).65 In terms of fiscal autonomy, Nellis cites conflicting data from two sources.66 Whatever the real financial data for this earlier period, it is clear that the tax reform of 1989 improved the financial situation considerably as it entitled communes to at least 30 per cent of national value-added tax (VAT) receipts.67 This improvement is illustrated by the fact that basic, social, and economic infrastructure investments by local authorities increased 18-fold during the period 1976 to 1991.68 The scope of decentralization was in fact deepened in 1990, when the responsibilities to build primary schools and health centres were transferred from the respective ministries to the communes. They were paid for by investment subsidies, which were in turn funded by VAT revenue. However, this experiment with deepened decentralization only lasted until 1996 since the VAT receipts were not sufficient. This experience was nevertheless positive in as far as national-level procurement for prefabricated construction material for schools was replaced with the use of local manual labor and materials, leading to benefits for the local economy as well as a substantial reduction in costs.69 In terms of the political dimension of decentralization, the opposition parties ended their 15-year election boycott after several of their long-standing demands had been fulfilled, and decided to participate in the municipal elections of 1976. However, the Istiqlal Party and the left-wing Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) Party lacked the necessary political structure to compete nationally. They therefore resorted to enlisting popular local candidates who had

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no particular commitment to their parties. These candidates were willing to change political affiliation under government pressures, or if it otherwise suited their interests. This meant that while opposition parties did win majorities of council seats in several municipalities, they were paralyzed by shifting party affiliations and corruption scandals. Maghraoui argues that this outcome was in fact part of the makhzen’s strategy to weaken the political opposition.70 The high number of “independent” candidates (over 25,000) who were subsequently elected councilors (8,582, i.e. about four times as many seats as the second-highest scoring party, the Istiqlal, won) is also noteworthy.71 Thus, it is clear that the 1976 elections did not improve the councilors’ political accountability towards their constituents.72 In sum, the period from 1976 to the 1990s was characterized by the granting of limited, but gradually greater, administrative and fiscal autonomy, while political autonomy remained the leastdeveloped aspect of the process. I would concur with Ojeda Garcı´a that given the preceding period of political crisis, the reforms of 1976 should be seen as part of a process of the makhzen’s power legitimization.73 The Third Municipal Charter (2002) Several events presaged a revival of the decentralization process in the late 1990s: the death of King Hassan II in July 1999, the arrival of Mohamed VI, and the latter’s dismissal of the powerful Interior Minister Driss Basri in November 1999. The new king’s outlook accounts for much of the shift in discourse and policy, which culminated in the promulgation of the Third Municipal Charter in 2002 and its amended version that became effective in 2009. As mentioned earlier, shortly after his accession to the throne, King Mohamed VI introduced the new concept of authority (le nouveau concept de l’autorite´). In his speech to the regional and provincial governors and commune council presidents on 12 October 1999, he explained that this new concept was based on “the protection of public services, local affairs, and individual and collective liberties; and on the preservation of security and stability

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and the maintenance of social peace”. Most importantly, he added, these responsibilities “require a direct contact with the citizens and treating their problems on the ground by associating them in the search for appropriate solutions”. It has been argued that this new concept of authority amounts to a new culture of public service based on the respect for decentralized institutions and local liberties.74 It certainly implies a reduction of the tutelle d’opportunite´ and increased administrative and financial autonomy for local authorities. The King’s initiative, together with the recommendations of the 7th National Colloquium of Local Authorities in 1998, contributed substantially to the reform of the Communal Charter in 2002. It is more difficult to discern the underlying reasons for this shift in the discourse towards more local autonomy. The Ministry of the Interior justified the 2002 reform by referring to political reasons (deepening local democracy and enlarging local responsibilities and autonomies) as well as economic and social objectives.75 Ojeda Garcı´a locates the driving force in the same dynamic as that motivating the reform of 1976, i.e. a crisis of state legitimacy resulting from flawed economic management and democratic deficit.76 The shift very probably also had to do with the increased international attention focused on Morocco and the need to be – or at least perceived to be – seriously embarking on the transition towards democracy. Developments in the Western Sahara also contributed to the renewed attention given to regional decentralization.77 Furthermore, King Mohamed VI represents a new generation of leaders using modern language, which came to power across the Middle East and North Africa region – including King Abdullah of Jordan and Bashir AlAssad in Syria. The Municipal Charter (along with a new Provincial Charter) was issued in October 2002 and entered into force the following year, replacing the charter of 1976. The Municipal Charter enlarged the responsibilities of the councils, established a legal status for councilors, and gave a special status to the large urban areas. It also for the first time contained provisions related to the commune’s role in reducing poverty and exclusion.78

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Most importantly for this study, the 2002 charter (in force at the time of field research) for the first time included the possibility of creating partnerships with non-governmental organizations. Commune councils could enter into partnership agreements with local associations. Article 41 (paragraph 3) of the 2002 charter stipulates that the council undertakes all actions de proximite´ [community work] which are likely to mobilize the citizen, develop a collective conscience for the local public interest, organize his/her participation in the improvement of the living environment, [and which are likely] to promote solidarity and develop the mouvement associatif. On this account, it [the council] is responsible for undertaking all activities related to awarenessraising, communication, and information, and for developing participation and partnership with the village associations and all organizations or persons who are active in the socioeconomic and cultural field.79 However, the Ministry of the Interior still exercised a tutelle on such partnership agreements (Article 69 paragraph 7). The Fourth Municipal Charter (2009), and other Relevant Legal and Policy Reforms In his speeches to the National Meeting of Local Authorities in December 2006, and in his annual “throne” speech in July 2007, the King emphasized again his wish to turn the country’s local authorities intro “true partners” in the development process and to have an effective deconcentrated administration based on a territorial approach.80 To this end, a new Municipal Charter (dated 2008) entered into force in March 2009. Its provisions do not address the fundamental issue of local partnerships. Indeed, the relevant article in the 2002 Municipal Charter is not modified by the 2008 charter. However, the 2009 Municipal Charter establishes a new consultative committee for “equity and equal opportunities” at the level of the municipal council (commission de la parite´ et de

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l’e´galite´ des chances), which includes members of local associations and “civil society”. Given that the members of this new committee are to be appointed by the mayor, they are unlikely to include many critical voices.81 There are three further important changes in the policy and legal framework currently under way that have the potential to affect the administrative, fiscal, and political capacity and autonomy of (rural) local governments in a positive way. These may in the long-term also affect the scope for partnerships positively. First, the DFCAT at the Ministry of the Interior has been undertaking a national campaign to train the mayors (commune council presidents) elected in the June 2009 municipal elections on the provisions of the new charter. The ministry has extended the training to all councilors and commune staff, with special programs for female councilors. A series of training sessions, manuals, and handbooks has been developed on all aspects of municipal management and governance.82 Second, the new charter includes a clause that makes it mandatory for every commune to develop a 6-year Municipal Development Plan (known under its French name, Plan Communal de De´veloppement, PCD), covering the period from June 2010 to June 2016, in a participatory and gender-responsive way. A recent study found the following: [while] the PCD is, theoretically at least, a bottom-up process by which [it is] developed based on feedback received from consultative committees comprising members of civil society, [. . .] what happens in practice is very much the opposite. CSOs [. . .] are commonly excluded from the process. At best, the process is dominated by the municipal council claiming to speak on behalf of civil society; more commonly, it is determined from above by the representatives of the central authority.83 This contrasts with the host of methodological guidelines, manuals, and municipal information systems with which The Ministry of the

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Interior is working to support the planning process.84 Indeed, although at the province level, Local Development Agents have been trained and recruited to act as facilitators, it seems that it is mainly consultants – contracted either by the Ministry of the Interior on behalf of the poorer communes, or by the (wealthier) communes themselves – who have developed the PCDs without much societal input.85 In theory, such participatory and transparent development planning has the potential to enhance public accountability and reduce the weight of clientelist and personal interests in the allocation of public funds. It may also bring about positive incentives for political parties to emphasize public service performance and strategic vision over the distribution of material benefits in supporting individual (candidate) councilors. Similarly, national infrastructure programs and “participatory” rural development projects may become better integrated with, and better respond to, the official Municipal Development Plan. On the other hand, the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH), launched in 2005, also includes a local participatory planning element and seems to have sidelined local governments and the PCDs and given more power, again, to the Ministry of the Interior (see below).86 Third, new laws on local taxation, local finances, and amendments on the decrees concerning public procurement and municipal assets have been, or are being, drafted and voted on in parliament, and some of them became effective in 2013.87 They aim at increasing the communes’ fiscal autonomy and local revenues, as well as improving the legal framework and performance standards for contracting out local service provision to the private sector.88 In the context of continued high levels of illiteracy, it remains to be seen if the envisaged increased reporting requirements and information transparency in these areas (as well as a new planned public website, which would publish every decision taken by the commune council) will enhance the scope for societal accountability or even co-governance. These reforms are part of several recent strategies developed by the DGCL, including “CAP 2009”, presented in spring 2007, which was replaced by the National Plan to Reinforce Decentralization by 2015 (known as Horizon 2015), presented at the end of 2008.

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This last-named document has two main aims: first, to put the citizen at the heart of local activity and provide him/her with quality services; second, to gradually enable the local authority to revive the local economy. The strategy Horizon 2015 formulates a vision based on a “strategic councilor” (un e´lu strate`ge), a functioning (effective and efficient) local administration with sufficient financial and human resources, a state that is accompanying and facilitating (un E´tat accompagnateur et facilitateur), and a favorable legal framework.89 To conclude this section – which has been based on a thorough historical review of the decentralization process in Morocco along the fiscal, administrative and political dimensions – I have argued that the monarchy was, and still is, the main driving force behind it. There are strong indications that the monarchy used, and still uses, the process to shore up its own legitimacy and influence, and that this has hindered the development of a strong culture of political accountability. While the scope of decentralization in Morocco has gradually increased (with, for example, a reduction of the tutelle and an increase in areas of the commune’s legal competence), reforms in the legal framework have not substantially deepened citizens’ participation or enhanced their “political capabilities”. This outcome is also due to the weak nature of political parties in Morocco (see below). Nevertheless, the late 1990s saw the beginnings of a perceptible shift in the discourse about the respective roles of the communes and the central government. Donors have tried to turn this discourse into practice, as is illustrated by numerous programs aimed at accompanying or deepening the decentralization process.90 With the introduction of the 2002 and 2009 charters, the scope for potential synergies with local civil society organizations and participatory planning has increased significantly, at least in theory.91

Civil Society Organizations in Morocco, and their Legal Framework This section provides a brief typology of the different types of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) that are considered to be part of

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Moroccan civil society. This is followed by a review of the legal framework governing CSOs. A Typology of Civil Society Organizations in Morocco There is now a large number of associations and NGOs in Morocco, although reliable information is lacking concerning their precise number and membership. According to the Direction des associations au Secre´tariat ge´ne´ral du gouvernement (SGG), in the mid2000s, there were 40,000 associations of all types, and 29,830 were stored in the SGG database.92 Chammari even cites the figure of 70,000 associations.93 However, a 1998 study by the Espace Associatif, one of the main umbrella NGOs in the pro-democracy sector, argued that only about 20,000 were active at that time. Because there is no legal obligation to declare the dissolution of associations or the renewal of governing committees, the official number probably overestimates the actual number.94 It is possible to distinguish five main types of CSOs in Morocco, as summarized in Box 2.1. Box 2.1 A typology of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Morocco 1. Islamist organizations 2. Regional associations with strong links to the makhzen 3. Membership-based professional organizations (e.g. labor unions) 4. Pro-democracy or “advocacy” NGOs, including Amazigh (Berber) associations 5. Non-governmental service organizations, or ‘service NGOs’, in rural areas ˚ (Transnational) migrant associations ˚ Micro-credit and small-enterprise support ˚ Farmers’ cooperatives ˚ Local development associations (CBOs, with a focus on the village) ˚ Support and intermediary associations (either regional “antennas” of national NGOs, independent NGOs, or federations of associations) ˚ National-level NGOs and associations (working either directly in rural areas or in cooperation with CBOs) Source: Adapted from A. Hawthorne, Middle Eastern democracy: Is civil society the answer? (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), pp. 6ff.95

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The first sector includes the country’s Islamist organizations. The largest Islamist association in Morocco, the Jamiat al-Adl wal-Ihsan, calls for political institutions to become accountable, and played a role in the social movement that became known as the 20 February Movement in the spring of 2011. Given that it is publicly opposed to the monarchy, this is an illegal association. However, as Cavatorta points out, apart from providing important social services in Moroccan shanty towns, there has been formal cooperation between Islamist associations and human rights groups on issues ranging from freedom of speech to the end of torture and the legal protection for political prisoners.96 While the Islamist organizations in Morocco come closest to mass social movements (at least in urban centres – their presence in rural areas is still relatively weak), they encounter strong opposition from government and some quarters in the secular pro-democracy sector. Indeed, the Jamiat al-Adl wal-Ihsan later pulled out of the broad coalition that made up the 20 February Movement (see below) due to ideological differences with the secular organizations in it. The second type of CSO in Morocco includes those mainly created by the central government and composed of associations concerned with culture, social identity, and solidarity. Examples of such associations are the youth organizations created immediately following independence,97 and the regional associations created by the intellectual bourgeoisie from 1985 onwards at the initiative of the Palace. The latters’ aims were to co-opt new, mainly urban, elites in order to counterbalance the influence of political parties, and to control the population due to security concerns. These organizations, such as Association Fes Saı¨ss and Association Ribat Al Fath, are therefore directly or indirectly controlled by the government, and headed by former ministers or other members of the makhzen. They organize ceremonies to celebrate national holidays, but have also contributed to national literacy campaigns and drinking water provision.98 Not surprisingly, they enjoy good relationships with the local representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, have the status of “ARUP”,99 and receive subsidies from the State.100 Given their mostly cultural objectives and/or close relationships with the

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makhzen, this type of CSO does not have any discernible incentive to challenge existing power relations. The third segment of “civil society” includes membership-based professional organizations such as labor unions, professional syndicates, and chambers of commerce. Their main purpose is to lobby the government for higher wages and better working conditions. However, they are much better at blocking new laws than constructively contributing to new ones.101 The country’s three unions represent only 22 per cent of declared workers or even less.102 By contrast, the employers’ federation (CGEM) has emerged as an important player on the scene, having been consulted on recent economic policy reforms such as free trade agreements.103 In short, the organizations that could promote working class mobilizations are quite weak. Fourth, the broad range of pro-democracy or so-called “advocacy” associations (including human rights and women’s associations) is the sector that most outside democracy promoters and analysts usually think of as making up “Moroccan civil society”.104 The CSOs in this sector were behind the network that pushed for the reform of the Law on Public Liberties and the adoption of a new law on associations in the early 2000s. The Espace Associatif and other networks, especially human rights associations (which were, or still are, mostly funded by foreign donors such as the Friedrich Ebert Foundation) played an important role here and in subsequent battles – such as the monitoring of the 2002 legislative elections,105 and the setting up of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (Instance Equite´ et Re´conciliation, IER).106 The women’s advocacy associations pushed for the reform of the Family Code, which was finally adopted in 2004 (among other things, it established the minimum age for marriage at 18 years for both men and women and expanded women’s rights to divorce).107 Other groups mobilized to demand independence for the Western Sahara. In the socio-economic domain, Morocco in fact has known a history of riots – including the “bread riots” of June 1981, when the price of bread rose due to IMF (International Monetary Fund) conditions. The number of such incidents increased sharply in the

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mid-2000s, thanks to the more liberal political climate. Local groups (called “coordinations”) affiliated with national human rights associations have mobilized people to protest against increased costs of living as a result of cuts in subsidies, or privatization of water and sanitation services.108 Some of these pro-democracy NGOs were, or are still, part of the coalition that came to be known as the 20 February Movement (see below). Some of them also work in rural areas; hence, they sometimes overlap with the domain of the service NGOs described below. A further category of advocacy NGO are Berber, or Amazigh, associations; their activities range from promoting the Tamazight language and culture in public arenas, such as schools and the media, to calling for its official recognition as a national language in the constitution (which the 2011 Constitution granted), to claiming regional autonomy.109 The fact that the King established a Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture (known by its French acronym as IRCAM) in 2001 can be seen as one of their most important achievements to date, but this arguably also led to the co-optation of their demands and discourse by the makhzen.110 A final type of advocacy NGO is represented by the associations of unemployed university graduates. With an official unemployment rate for university graduates of 27 per cent in 2011 (up from 6.5 per cent in 1982),111 these associations represent a considerable mass of young people demanding public sector jobs. As Emperador Badimon argues, however,112 most of these associations are essentially apolitical, and solely focused on securing jobs for their members. They regard violence and police confrontation as a tactical tool to shake up a stagnant situation or to revive a comatose negotiation process. When the regime feels that certain “red lines” have been crossed, it responds by using repressive force irregularly, thereby getting protesters to discipline or censor themselves. The bargaining process is dominated by public officials negotiating separately with the various groups, which makes it almost impossible for them to coordinate their actions. Emperador Badimon further argues that the resulting periodic recruitment agreements are, in fact, a tool for state representatives to enlarge their clientelist networks. The case of the

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unemployed graduates’ groups thus cautions us “against thinking that social unrest or collective organization per se will automatically translate into attempts at political transformation”.113 Despite achieving some political change, the main weakness of the pro-democracy CSOs lies in the fact that they – at least until recently – have lacked widespread popular support for their causes.114 Pro-democracy NGOs are mostly the province of the secular, liberal elite, and their highly abstract discourse and activities (mainly workshops and reports) often seem alien to the real-life concerns of the population at large. Historically, repression, precarious funding (especially due to the donor policy of not funding recurrent expenditure), and weak management (including a lack of internal democracy) have also hampered their influence, despite recent attempts at professionalization. It has also been argued that in Morocco and in the Arab world generally, Western democracy promoters have targeted almost exclusively those groups that avoided being overtly political and thereby contributed to the flourishing of an apolitical civil society.115 Moreover, these CSOs have often been used as springboards for aspiring politicians, and risk being co-opted by the makhzen in order to stem the rising tide of Islamism.116 These weaknesses also explain to some extent the challenges faced by the 20 February Movement. Apart from the Islamist Jamiat al-Adl wal-Ihsan mentioned earlier, the recent 20 February Movement can be qualified as a true social movement in Morocco. Similar to other examples that marked the “Arab Spring” in Tunisia and Egypt, it originated from an online movement, i.e. the movement for “Freedom and Democracy Now”, which had successfully called for demonstrations in several towns beginning on 20 February 2011 (reaching 240,000–300,000 participants according to the organizers; 37,000 according to the Ministry of the Interior, in more than 50 cities).117 It was a decentralized protest movement. Its founding members were mostly young urbanites who were already politicized, as they had previously been active in the local “coordinations”; in the Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (known by its French acronym MALI) that campaigns mostly for religious freedom; or in the struggles of the

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political left, trade unions, Islamist movements, the Amazigh movement and the Unemployed Graduates.118 The grievances and demands voiced by the 20 February Movement through social media and demonstrations can be divided into those of a socio-economic character and those that were more political. The first category included grievances about the high costs of basic necessities and services, unemployment and low pay, poverty and exclusion, and corruption, as well as demands for social justice and rights, free education, and housing. The more political demands included those for the official recognition of the Amazigh language and profound constitutional and political changes to guarantee the rule of law and a free and independent legal system, embedded in a parliamentary (rather than executive) monarchy with a clear separation of powers.119 However, since 2011, the movement seems to have lost much of its original ability to mobilize large masses for public protest (in Rabat on 20 February 2013, only about 200– 300 protesters turned up, though on Sunday 24 February 2013, the crowd was estimated at 1,000).120 Hoffman and Ko¨nig argue though that their online and media activities are still as strong as in the beginning and the whole experience of discursive transgressions may lay the ground for future protests.121 In particular, in late 2011, as a response to an attempt by the PJD [Justice and Development Party] government to control civil society organizations by cutting their foreign funding, about 500 NGOs came together and canvassed the country’s territory with 22 meetings, culminating in what was called the National Conference of the Democratic Associative Movement. More than 3,500 NGOS and 5,000 activists participated, which set a new record in terms of civil society mobilization.122 Further meetings and conferences on freedom of conscience and individual rights were organized between 2012 and 2014. Indeed, Benchemsi claims that ‘since the failed constitutional reform [see below], the movement for individual freedoms has developed a

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spectacular mobilizing capacity’,123 obtaining a number of concessions from the authorities. Returning to our typology, the fifth type of CSO can be labelled “non-governmental service organizations”, or what are often called “service NGOs”. These deliver services such as micro-credits, job training, educational assistance, and community development to the public in order to complement, or in some cases substitute for, government services. Several sub-types can be distinguished here. First, members of the large Moroccan diaspora are trying to develop their villages of origin through migrant associations, which often work together with local village associations.124 Second, the microcredit and small enterprise support sector is currently booming, but it is not yet clear whether it really makes a positive contribution to poverty reduction.125 Farmer’s cooperatives represent a further type of local service association. According to the official statistics, as of the end of April 2006, there were 5,058 cooperatives or unions of cooperatives with a little over 320,000 members – over 60 per cent of them in the agricultural sector. Only 9 per cent of the total were women’s cooperatives.126 However, until recently, such organizations did not seem to be very effective, as they were mostly initiated and created by official government agencies. They are therefore often artificial and non-participatory institutions in practice – financially, technically, and administratively dependent on the government administration. This deligitimizes them vis-a`-vis the population. However, in the Souss region in particular, there has been an upsurge in successful female cooperatives for the production and marketing of saffron, argan oil, and olive oil.127 In short, although they have a fairly large membership on paper, agricultural cooperatives do not constitute a basis for a social movement favoring political change in Morocco. There are three further sub-types of service NGOs in rural areas.128 First, there are local community-based organizations (CBOs), which work in a very limited area, mostly in one village only; the (agricultural or drinking) Water User Associations (WUAs) are subsumed here. These CBOs will constitute the focus of the empirical research presented in Chapter 5. Second, there are the support and

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intermediary associations that are either regional antennas of national NGOs, independent NGOs, or federations of associations (and which work either directly in rural areas or in cooperation with the CBOs). Finally, there are the national-level NGOs and associations which also work either directly in rural areas or in cooperation with the CBOs, and which are increasingly creating federating structures.129 Although several of these NGOs apply participatory approaches, some of which strengthen the political capabilities of the poor, the overwhelming focus is on co-production for basic infrastructure provision at the local level, and not on fostering citizen participation in shaking up patterns of political control and patronage, as I will argue in more detail in Chapters 5 and 6. What is the makhzen’s response towards these various components of “civil society”? Naciri et al. argue that since the early 2000s, the makhzen has developed a strategy to control civil society, which includes several elements.130 First, it co-opts civil society leaders by promoting them to senior government posts so as to divert them away from organized political action in political parties. Linked to this are indirect incentives resulting in the transformation of civil society into a springboard to access political power. Second, the makhzen gives direct incentives and encouragement to certain elites to create new NGOs, which then become subservient to it (the National Initiative for Human Development, INDH, is arguably the main tool do so in recent years; see below).131 Third, the eligibility criteria for an NGO to achieve the status of ARUP show that the makhzen is keen to control those structures that are, or could become, important in socio-economic terms and to divert them to participate in its “democratic and modernist” project. Fourth, as already noted, the makhzen uses certain associations as bulwarks against Islamism, which means that the associations derive their legitimacy from the top rather than from the ground. Furthermore, the government has also taken up and transformed certain civil society ideas and proposals into concrete measures, but without giving due credit to their original proponents. Indeed, it could be said that the King has monopolized each of the significant initiatives and their final forms in recent years, and

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created institutions (e.g. the Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture in Morocco and the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs) or ad hoc committees outside the influence of democratic institutions (e.g. the Consultative Commission for the Reform of the Family Code, the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, and the Advisory Committee on Regionalization). By doing so, the King could claim certain matters to be closed, and co-opt leaders and organizations, at least temporarily.132 Most importantly, the makhzen’s response, especially in the aftermath of the 2003 Casablanca bombings and in the name of the “War on Terror”, has also consisted of sometimes violent repressions of not just Salafi Islamists but also “striking workers, unemployed graduates, dissident intellectuals, journalists and civil society activists who were deemed to be overly critical of the monarchy”.133 This suggests a throwback to the human rights abuses perpetrated under Hassan II and has had a deeply depoliticizing effect on a large part of Moroccan civil society, which has increasingly turned to working in the manner of service NGOs.134 Most recently, the regime responded to the 20 February Movement’s protests and demands by offering socio-economic measures (such as increasing subsidies for basic necessities, raising salaries for civil servants, providing jobs or benefits for the unemployed, improving access to healthcare provision, and launching the second phase of the INDH); using regime-friendly media outlets to discredit the promoters of the protests; applying the selective use of repressive violence, intimidation, and harassment; and, most importantly, introducing institutional reforms, including the drafting and passing of the new constitution in 2011.135 There is no space here to analyze the new constitution in detail,136 but it arguably fails to clearly and unequivocally reduce the power of the king, who retains major executive powers without any political accountability. Furthermore, the vast majority of its provisions will require the passing of implementing laws (loi organique) in order to become reality. This could take a considerable period of time, would strongly depend on the performance of parliament, and may result in more restrictive laws.137 In other

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words, it is doubtful that this new constitution will give rise to a parliamentary monarchy in which the king “rules but does not govern”, as demanded by the 20 February Movement and other groups.138 To sum up the findings from this typology, I suggest that despite the experiences of the 20 February Movement, there are several different segments of civil society in Morocco that sometimes work side-by-side but can rarely coalesce in a sustained fashion. This can partly be explained by the government’s strategy of “divide and rule”.139 Most importantly, although it is often referred to as an “associative movement” (le mouvement associatif), civil society in Morocco today is still too divided, with diverging objectives and even hostilities, to achieve (or even envisage) long-term systemic political changes, leaving the field open to piecemeal institutional changes on the part of the regime, which themselves may have cooptational effects. This does not detract from the fact that at least between the accession of King Mohamed VI, in 1999, and 2003 there was a considerable change in the political sphere with regards to freedom of association and the “democratic transition” more generally.140 This is evident in the changes to the legal framework governing associations. Nevertheless, the State has retained a sizeable measure of “soft” control over civil society. A Legal Framework Promoting “Soft” State Control The notion of association in the modern sense was introduced in Morocco by a dahir in 1941. However, it allowed only the French settlers to create associations and prohibited Moroccans from doing so. Only the Law on Public Liberties of 1958 (which was in turn largely inspired by the French law on associations of 1901) accorded the right to associate to everyone. It defines “association” as the “agreement by which two or more persons pool their knowledge or activity in a permanent manner for a purpose other than sharing profits”. The 1958 law was amended by the dahir of 10 April 1973. Since many members of the underground leftist political opposition had found refuge in associations, the 1973 dahir gave significant

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powers to public authorities to sanction and dissolve associations.141 For example, the amended law required the approval of the Ministry of the Interior before the holding of any meeting with the purpose of creating an organization (i.e. the association needed to submit a “de´claration pre´alable” and wait for a receipt). The authorities used this provision to conduct investigations and refuse permission to persons or organizations that might have advocated sensitive causes, such as Berber (Amazigh) activists, Islamist associations and parties, and leftist human rights and political groups. The amended law also introduced severe penalties of up to two years in prison. Most importantly, the government was given the right to suspend or dissolve an association based on vague criteria such as “if it seems that the activity of the association might disturb the public order”.142 After intense lobbying by civil society representatives, parliament approved a new law on associations on 11 April 2002.143 This law struck a balance between an opening up towards civil society and the maintenance of “soft” state control. In particular, Article 5 stipulated that every association had to submit a declaration of its constitution to the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior (the caı¨d), but would receive a dated and stamped (provisional) receipt right away. The caı¨d then would send a copy of the declaration to the court (parquet du tribunal de premie`re instance), and issue a definitive receipt to the association after a maximum delay of 60 days. However, the association was considered legal even if it did not receive such a receipt after this delay. The penal sanctions were also much reduced, and the provisions concerning the dissolution on the grounds of “disturbing public order”, and dissolution by decree had been struck; dissolution could only take place through the judicial system. The 2002 law introduced some additional bureaucratic control measures though; in addition to the national identity card, the founding members of the association also had to submit an extract of their criminal records, and still pay fees for the legalization of copies. These could consume a considerable amount of resources, especially when compared to the modest budgets of CBOs in rural areas (see Chapter 5).144 Furthermore, the 2002 legal framework gave a substantial role to the caı¨d, as it is his office that was in charge of all

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the administrative declarations required for the constitution of associations and the renewal of their committees. He was also responsible for granting permissions for public gatherings, including the public events organized by associations.145 Hence he could stifle, or at least delay, the creation of Amazigh associations or otherwise critical organizations. The 2002 law greatly expanded the range of potential sources of financing for associations and the types of real estate that they are allowed to own. However, it still did not clarify the situation for the associations working in socio-economic fields, for example those that are managing public services such as electricity, drinking water, and sanitation. This puts them effectively outside of the law.146 There is also the question of whether such associations, and those that engage in income-generating activities, have to pay patente (trading) tax, company taxes, or VAT.147 Another problem is that the profits from income-generating revenues cannot be reinvested in tools or machinery, or redistributed among the members of the association.148 Under the 2011 Constitution, civil society organizations have the right to submit motions and petitions, make legislative proposals, and contribute in shaping and evaluating public policy. They can only be suspended and dissolved by a judicial decision. However, many of the provisions in the Constitution depend on future organic laws for their implementation. A “national dialogue on civil society” was organized between March 2013 and March 2014 by the new ministry charged with parliamentary and civil society relations; it involved consultations with close to 10,000 associations. A draft for a new law on associations was circulated by the same ministry, and although it introduces some promising changes, it may take some time to be finalized and passed.149 In sum therefore, the current legal framework is less restrictive than it was before. However, it still grants considerable leverage to the local agent of authority, and needs to be further clarified with regard to some of the more recent functions that associations have come to take on. The legal framework has also not prevented

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the regime from the sometimes violent repression of social protests, as became clear with the emergence of the 20 February Movement.

The Relationships Between Civil Society and Political Parties In Morocco’s immediate post-colonial history, the direct relationship of civic associations with political parties became a core feature of an extremely divided political landscape. The political campaigns surrounding the 1962 referendum (on the country’s first constitution) showed the links between bodies such as trade unions, women’s associations, youth organizations and even human rights organizations and particular political parties. This meant that associations were very closely tied to the political process and the struggle between the political parties and the monarchy. Their lack of autonomy meant that they could not articulate any independent interests or purpose, and were repressed whenever the political party they were affiliated with was repressed, resulting in the weakening of associational activities.150 In addition, as argued earlier, King Hassan II reasserted his hegemony over the nationalist discourse in 1975 with the Green March to recover the Western Sahara, leaving little room for political parties to differentiate themselves from either the monarchy or each other. The underlying issue here is the monarchy’s use of political parties to preserve and strengthen its own power. In Morocco, the king, as the final arbiter, has historically played off various political parties against each other in order to prevent any one of them from becoming a credible threat to the monarchy.151 King Hassan II was responsible for founding a number of them (the People’s Movement (MP), the National Rally of Independents (RNI), the National Democratic Party (PND) and the Constitutional Union (UC)) in order to bind certain elites, such as businessmen and large landowners, to the Palace. He also sought to balance urban against rural parties. For example, the makhzen encouraged the MP in rural areas, to balance the Istiqlal and Socialist parties in the cities.152 This integration of

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parties into the neo-patrimonial makhzen system resulted in a network of mutual loyalties and services. It therefore strongly collides with the concept of free articulation of interests so important in the Western understanding of pluralism.153 These patron– client relationships also exist within the structure of individual political parties. Willis argues that many parties are “little more than large-scale interlinking patron-client networks”.154 A party leader’s election appeal is determined by his perceived ability to deliver material benefits, either directly or through the granting of posts. From the perspective of commune councilors and MPs, it becomes useful to change political party affiliations if there is “a better deal” on offer elsewhere. Out of 325 MPs elected in the 1997 legislature, almost a third had changed party affiliation by the end of the year 2000.155 On the other hand, it is in the interest of the political party to co-opt an influential person who can deliver the votes in a certain area. The highly person-centred party system also explains the inability of ideologically close parties to cooperate, and the large number of internal schisms.156 The result of such schisms, encouraged by the makhzen, was that the councilors elected in the 2003 municipal elections belonged to 27 different parties. The main consequence of these elections was therefore the further fragmentation of the party-political landscape. Most importantly, the excessive multiplication of parties, and the “representative atomization and institutional satellization” of their components, puts at stake the democratic credibility of the system and strengthens the legitimacy of the political leadership of the monarchy.157 In 2008, a new pro-regime party, the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), was established by Fouad Ali al-Himma, a close friend of the King and former deputy minister of the interior. Its purpose was quite clear: to counter the Islamists and implement the King’s vision. The creation of the PAM also rationalized the party landscape somewhat in the run-up to the June 2009 municipal elections, when many smaller parties dissolved in order to merge with PAM – including the Alliance des Liberte´s (Alliance of Liberties, ADL), the party of which many local councilors in the case study communes were members.158 Given El Himma’s access to the King, the

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members of the parties that merged with the PAM most probably saw the latter’s attraction in helping to position themselves closer to the gravitational centre of power. The PAM’s proximity to the King probably also explains its landslide victory in the municipal elections. It gained most of the municipal council seats: 21.7 per cent of the total of 27,795 seats, followed by the Istiqlal (19.1 per cent), USFP (11.6 per cent), and MP (8 per cent). The PJD won 5.5 per cent of the seats. Eight of the 30 parties represented in the poll won 90 per cent of the seats. However, the real winners of the election were women: out of 20,458 candidates, 3,406 won a seat (compared to 127 female councilors elected in 2003); half of them were under the age of 35 and more than 70 per cent had a university degree. This achievement was largely due to a coalition of women’s rights NGOs that successfully campaigned for a women’s quota.159 Although the elections were generally seen as free and fair, the media reported many instances of vote buying; official complaints about electoral fraud numbered over 900.160 Equally significant are the maneuvers that took place immediately after the elections. As the US Embassy in Rabat (2009) put it, “despite the relative transparency of the recent election [. . .], the subsequent election by council members of city and communal council leaders (mayors), may represent a step backward for Moroccan democracy”. The PAM reportedly used pressure tactics such as bribes and invoking the King’s name, as well as the support of security officials, to pressure other parties into entering pro-PAM mayoral coalitions and withdrawal from alliances with the PJD. The US Embassy in Rabat also concluded that, “most troubling, the Palace appears to have intervened in several places to keep the PJD from controlling Morocco’s major cities [such as Casablanca, Tangier, Sale´ and Oujda], while allowing them to run second-tier cities, such as Kenitra and Tetouan”.161 Another result of the patron– client nature of Moroccan political parties is the lack of programmatic content. I suggested earlier that adherence to a party’s political program is less important than the possibilities that membership offers for accessing material benefits. Rosen’s 1984 argument that political parties in Morocco are

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“generally perceived as amalgamations of individuals bound together by a multiplicity of different personal ties, rather than by any allpervasive organizational structure or ideological commitment”162 is arguably still valid today. It also explains the lack of incentives for political parties to play the role of informing and training their members and ensuring their adherence to a code of ethics.163 This is worsened by the fact that parties are run from the top down, with minimal input from ordinary members.164 It is no surprise, therefore, that in Morocco, party-political programs are not well defined and often constitute little more than electoral promises.165 This programmatic weakness of the political party system was in fact the monarchy’s precondition for the parties’ integration into the process of political opening up that started in the 1990s. In other words, the parties were given the choice of either muting their partisan colors or not participating in the national government at all. The conduct of elections did not strengthen the programmatic profile of the parties either. Elections mostly took place in an authoritarian context in which most candidates for local councils were hand-picked by the local agent of authority, thereby neutralizing local political activity outside the control of the makhzen hierarchy.166 The nature of the electoral system,167 and continued electoral fraud and corruption, means that political parties have not been able to develop into effective organs for the organization and aggregation of interests.168 This explains the limited public participation in politics, as is illustrated by the high rates of voter abstention. In the 2003 municipal elections, voter turnout was only 54 per cent despite the election law of 2002, which stated that “voting is a right and a national duty”. Voter turnout at legislative elections plunged to a historical low of 37 per cent in the September 2007 elections, down from 51 per cent in the 2002 elections and 58 per cent in 1997.169 In the 2009 local elections, the official turnout was 52.4 per cent, which was slightly less than in the 2003 elections. However, 11 per cent of all votes cast were invalid, so the actual turnout was closer to 40 per cent. There were also large regional variations, from a 29 per cent turnout in metropolitan Casablanca to up to 70 per cent in the Western Sahara

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provinces.170 At the 2011 legislative elections, turnout was up to an estimated 45 per cent, though revisions to the voters’ register seem to have contributed to the increase. The 20 February Movement and several political parties led a nationwide election boycott campaign. The limited voter participation, boycott calls, and a high proportion of protest votes indicated that the political reforms (i.e. the 2011 Constitution) did not yet satisfy citizens’ demands.171 It is therefore not surprising that political parties in Morocco, apart perhaps from the more recent Islamist movements (the PJD won the legislative elections in 2011, taking 107 seats out of 395), have mostly lost their credibility with the electorate. According to the Arab Human Development Report 2004, less than 10 per cent of the Moroccan population has confidence in parliament, political parties or trade unions.172 Several other surveys indicate citizens’ low trust in political parties.173 Instead, young people seem to exercise their political agency in other, non-institutional, spheres, such as social media and popular culture. It seems thus that the relationships between civil society and political parties are mostly serving personal ambitions, rather than presenting the potential for functional complementarities that would allow them to constitute a credible force in pushing for democratic transformation. The case studies will illustrate this argument, as well as some of the shortcomings of political parties discussed here.

Popular Participation in State-led Rural Development Programs As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the pre-protectorate makhzen’s monopoly in the spheres of taxation and external affairs left fairly large responsibilities to the tribes in terms of their internal social organization. During and after the protectorate however, the State came to take charge of everything: land and water property regimes, justice, forests, roads, and local police – and then later also agriculture, health, education, etc. Pascon argues that the two main consequences of this extension of the government’s presence were the irreversible destruction of the peasantry’s

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initiative and the establishment of imported procedures and frameworks that were foreign to local habits.174 Similarly, the makhzen’s concern to stifle the emergence of any politically autonomous force resulted in reducing every farmer to the level of a subordinate; consequently, the farmers felt themselves to be relieved of any responsibility and initiative, and referred all their problems and needs to the government administration. In addition, according to Pascon, having fragmented the decision making centres in order to ensure the traditional balance of power, the administration had made the coordination of activities (e.g. in integrated rural development programs), their planning and especially their adaptation to the local reality almost impossible. A further major obstacle to rural development in Morocco is land reform, which has never been fully addressed. In 1980, a million hectares (ha) were taken from the French settlers and “moroccanized”. One third was given to the rural elite, one third was redistributed, and one third given to the State to be managed. This land distribution was arguably used as a tool to establish the makhzen’s clientelist system.175 Similarly, King Hassan II’s occasional references to “agrarian reform” allowed him to maintain his alliance with the farming elite, make concessions to the left, and raise peasants’ expectations regarding social justice in the near future.176 Hence, I would agree with Desrues that the threat (or promise) of land reform formed part of the King’s strategy of governability.177 Participatory approaches to rural development should thus be seen against a background of highly inequitable land distribution. According to the agricultural census data from 1996,178 70 per cent of farmers had less than 5 ha each, and together only a quarter of the total useable agricultural land, whereas 4 per cent of farmers had more than 20 ha each and together disposed of a third of the total farmland. Rather than land reform, the dominant thrust of national development policy in post-protectorate Morocco was a major irrigation program (known as la politique des barrages). Officially launched in 1968, this was seen as the path to the country’s “Green Revolution”.179 The objective was to accelerate the extension of agricultural land, with the goal of attaining 1 million hectares of

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irrigated farmland by the year 2000 through massive state investment. It was hoped that this would stimulate the private initiative of the farmers. Hence, the first generation of “participatory” programs was in the area of agricultural irrigation as promoted by the 1969 Agricultural Investment Code. Participation in this context was based on a contractual policy of an obligatory nature, considering the populations as “beneficiaries”. The State committed itself to a vast program of dam construction, implementing large-scale irrigation schemes; managing irrigation networks; and providing grants, subsidies, and services for agricultural production. In return, farmers were obliged to plant their fields according to precise technical norms and economic considerations at the local, regional, and national level. In case of non-compliance, they would be sanctioned with expropriation. While the State contributed 60 per cent of total costs, the farmers contributed the remaining 40 per cent in the form of direct (financial) participation to be paid over 20 years, and an open-ended fee for irrigation water to cover the investment and operating costs of the irrigation networks. This contractual partnership was thus not entered into by the partners’ free consent, but was decreed by law based on national interests. The target of 1 million irrigated hectares was achieved in 1998, but the private initiative in increasing yields remained limited. Indeed, the primary effect of Morocco’s irrigation policy arguably was to further enrich the wealthy and neglect, if not further impoverish, most of Morocco’s peasants. In short, participation in this first experience was imposed rather than being based on dialogue and consultation.180 Starting in 1975, more than 13 Integrated Rural Development projects were implemented (covering 350,000 ha) in order to remedy the imbalance between the irrigated and rain-fed areas. Again, these were mostly conducted top-down without taking into account local needs or priorities.181 However, since the mid-1980s, as in most developing countries, several factors contributed to increasing the appeal of “participatory” development programs in the eyes of the Moroccan government. With the adoption of structural-adjustment policies in 1983, economic

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liberalization and the withdrawal of the State was followed by the government’s increasingly explicit calling on the associations to take over some of its tasks in order to stem the rise in poverty and fall in human development indicators.182 Indeed, the poverty rate fell from 21 per cent in 1985 to 14 per cent in 2004 (although it was still at 22 per cent in rural areas). As for the Human Development Index, it was 0.631 in 2003, placing the country in 124th position (after Gabon and before Namibia, and behind the other Maghreb countries).183 This situation as well as the international context (e.g. the Copenhagen Summit in 1995 and the Millennium Development Goals) explain the ascent of social development as a government priority in the 1990s, as expressed in the Social Development Strategy formulated in 1993, the chapter on the promotion of l’e´conomie solidaire in the 2000– 4 Five-Year Plan, and various royal speeches, which all emphasized the role of participation in civil society.184 Furthermore, as in most developing countries, international organizations started to insist that NGOs be associated with their projects or even implement them.185 In order to implement the Social Development Strategy, a series of national rural infrastructure programs was launched in the 1990s, aimed at the provision of electricity (PERG), drinking water (PAGER), and roads (PNRR), as well as education and health facilities (under the Social Priorities Program, known by its Arabic acronym BAJ, implemented in the 14 poorest provinces).186 For the first time, such programs were based on the notion of partnership between government administration, local authorities, and beneficiaries. However, cost-sharing dominated the rationale for such partnerships, and participatory techniques were used as a means to gain the adherence of the population rather than as a modus operandi.187 At the same time, more localized projects, especially those implemented by the water and forestry authorities in the area of watershed management, sought to achieve community-driven development (e.g. the project MOR93/010 in the Msoun and Tassaout watersheds, implemented from 1996 until 2002).188 At the core of these projects was the formulation and implementation of

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community development plans, mostly focused on a village, or douar (hence the ubiquitous use of the plan de de´veloppement de douar, or PDD).189 A pioneering “participatory” scheme was the Central Middle Atlas project, launched in 1983.190 Subsequent projects launched in the 1990s were implemented by autonomous structures (such as international donors or NGOs) outside of the government administration.191 This facilitated quick disbursement of funds to the local level. The Oued Lakhdar project by the World Bank was among the first to integrate participatory mechanisms with the government administration.192 Other participatory approaches were tested in the irrigation sector by establishing Agricultural Water User Associations (AWUAs),193 and in the rain-fed sector through 50 Rain-fed Agriculture Development Projects (Projets de mise en valeur en bour, PMVB). In most of these programs, the rural communes seemed to be effectively sidelined in planning and implementation. Building on these experiences, a plan to eliminate rural poverty by 2020, the “2020 Rural Development Strategy”, was adopted in 1999.194 In the strategy, broad-based rural development, including agriculture and off-farm employment as well as infrastructure, is identified as the key to sustainable rural poverty alleviation. The strategy adopts three guiding principles for implementation: (a) decentralization (in the sense of deconcentration of responsibilities to the Ministry of Agriculture’s provincial and local representations); (b) multi-sectoral integration; and (c) participation of all development stakeholders.195 To that end, the Ministry of Agriculture and the water and forestry authorities implemented a series of integrated and participatory rural development programs targeted at disadvantaged areas and supported by the World Bank, IFAD, EU, UNDP, FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), and others, some of which are still ongoing. In the context of progressive trade liberalization, a new agricultural strategy was deemed necessary and the “Morocco Green Plan” (Plan Maroc Vert, PMV) was launched in April 2008. It is expected to be the main engine of growth and of combating poverty up to 2020, and thus replaces the previous strategy. It consists of two pillars: the first one aims at developing a modern,

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competitive agriculture with high value added based on a new wave of private investment and on regrouping large and small farmlands to achieve economies of scale. It is supposed to benefit 540,000 farmers. The second pillar aims to provide a “solidary accompaniment” (accompagnement solidaire) to small and medium-sized poor famers (approximately 680,000 farmers in all) by encouraging them to switch from cereals to higher value-added crops, such as olives and almonds, and by intensification. Some cross-cutting reforms aim at providing a favorable business and policy environment for both sectors to succeed. In sum, DH 147 billion are needed to fund 1,506 projects over ten years. An agri-food chain approach has been adopted for each product, and performance-based contracts have been signed between the public sector and each organization representing the actors in the chain. The Ministry of Agriculture is being reorganized and the Agency for Agricultural Development has been established in order to oversee the implementation of the Plan. Akesbi notes that while the agri-food chain approach may be a good idea, the plan ignores some fundamental realities of Morocco’s agriculture.196 Its “technocratic” and purely economic vision, and heavy dependence on increased investment, ignores the important food security-related, social, cultural, territorial, and even religious significance of Moroccan agriculture, in which the family is the key unit, which cannot be expected to suddenly behave like a private company. Most importantly, it avoids the thorny question of land reform and ignores the fact that a real land market does not exist. It also says nothing about the more than 60,000 farmers without land, let alone social rights and protection for a million or so agricultural workers, or about off-farm employment. On the institutional front, the plan creates 16 new regional directorates and several specialized agencies, but does not attempt to fix the problems of the existing structures or explain how their (partly overlapping) activities will be coordinated or even staffed. And while the plan rests to a large extent on the success of “associating” (agre´gation) small and medium farmers to a large land-owning investor (l’agre´gateur, who in turn has a contract with the State) in order to achieve viable outputs destined for export, the former have not been consulted at all in developing the plan or

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informed afterwards.197 It thus seems that the previous gains in establishing a “culture of participation” have been reversed under the most recent policy framework. The following chapters analyze some of the aforementioned donorfunded integrated and participatory rural development programs in more detail; suffice it to say here that they are gradually opening up to input from decentralized local governments, but that the transformative impact of the different types of participation that they promote is still limited.

The Current Policy Framework Governing State –Civil Society Interactions The policy framework governing state– civil society interactions in Morocco saw a significant change in 2003. The Prime Minister’s circular of 27 June 2003 opened the way towards a new partnership policy aimed at implementing development projects and providing social services.198 Associations that work in a wide range of sectors (including poverty reduction and social exclusion, adult literacy classes and informal education, income-generating activities, basic infrastructure and social services provision) may receive government subsidies under detailed partnership agreements (for projects over DH 50,000). Selection committees were to be established at both central and provincial or regional levels, and selections were to be made according to the criteria of transparency, objectivity and direct benefit to target populations. Certain payment procedures have also been relaxed. It is clear that this circular has made it much easier for associations to establish partnerships with government administrations.199 Perhaps not surprisingly, the specialized ministries and agencies dominate these partnerships thus far. Chaker observes that the Ministry of Social Development, Family and Solidarity accounts for almost three quarters (72 per cent) of the total (official) government funds to NGOs.200 This ministry oversees the Social Development Agency (Agence de De´veloppement Social, ADS), which was conceived as a social fund, i.e. disbursing funds to NGOs and CBOs, and began its

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activities in 2001. In the first few years, almost three quarters of the funds went to basic infrastructure (drinking water, electrification and sanitation), another quarter to income-generating activities, and only 3 per cent to the institutional strengthening of local NGOs and associations.201 There is thus the danger that the ADS may turn small local associations into mere implementation agencies, with limited independence and responsibility,202 though capacity building seems to have gained in importance recently.203 This trend of pursuing development through non-state actors is being perpetuated by what the King himself has called a “chantier de re`gne”, i.e. a reign-long effort that will define his legacy in the longterm – namely, the National Initiative for Human Development (known under its French acronym, INDH). It is implemented at the level of rural and urban local governments (communes) and urban neighborhoods, mostly through local civil society organizations. The INDH is widely perceived to be a key instrument for reestablishing the King’s links with the Moroccan people, and thus contributing to the monarchy’s continued legitimacy.204 It is also supported by all major multilateral and bilateral donor agencies. The King has personally been involved from the start, inaugurating projects on an almost daily basis and in a well-publicized manner. The first phase lasted from 2006 to 2010 and was financed with DH 10 billion, i.e. about e900 million, funding approximately 20,000 projects targeting 5.2 million people. A few projects were urgently launched in 2005 following the King’s speech, for which an additional budget of DH 250 million was made available. The second phase (2011 – 15) boasts double the budget of the first phase, i.e. DH 17 billion (about e1.5 billion). In a recent study,205 I found that while the INDH promotes a discourse around participation and support to local “civil society” resulting in increased democratization, in fact what has emerged so far is an increase in the power of the (unelected) representatives of the Ministry of the Interior at the expense of local governments. The INDH has also served as a vehicle for co-opting regime-friendly NGOs and local associations, and has arguably led to the fragmentation and weakening of local (political) accountability.

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More generally, it seems that the government administrations involved in partnerships with civil society do not systematically adopt a participatory approach towards the target populations, as the strategies are determined at the central level or by donors. In addition, the associations themselves often choose activities that correspond more to funding availabilities than to the needs of the populations. A further disadvantage is that deconcentration in Moroccan government ministries is limited. This means that deconcentrated administrations of the central ministries do not have much latitude in deciding about partnerships that commit their ministries in material and financial terms over a longer period of time. Other shortcomings in partnerships with civil society include the lack of a coherent and multi-annual strategy; dispersed, uncoordinated, or even duplicated efforts; the establishment of various approaches and procedures rather than uniform ones, with the ADS’s being the most rigid; favoritism in selection procedures; and slow disbursement of funds.206 The Moroccan experience with participation thus includes many of the same problems that have been observed elsewhere: the dominance of supply driven projects, i.e. thematic fashions and conditional donor funds superseding the real nature of local needs; the fact that donors fund projects rather than provide institutional support to the associations; and the fact that many projects only benefit a few leaders or groups that are able to appropriate the project based on pre-existing social dynamics.207

Conclusion This chapter set out to provide the necessary contextual background for the empirical research findings presented in subsequent chapters, and to consider them in the national context. It was found that the legal and policy framework governing state–civil society relations has gradually been relaxed and allows for more interaction between the population, civil society, and government administrations. However, the framework has mostly acted as a constraint on the emergence of stable, grassroots-based, and pro-poor alliances that could become

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agents of transformation and stimulate deeper political “capabilities” and social engagement on the part of the poor – although the 20 February Movement constitutes an important step in this direction. For the past decade or more, the monarchy seems to have been oscillating between old forms of authoritarianism and experiments at political opening. However, even if the royal discourse now sometimes seems to be ahead of the reality on the ground, deepseated top-down modes of operation and attitudes towards the population and civil society, as well as resistance to change within the government bureaucracy, still present a considerable obstacle to any radical transformation.208

CHAPTER 3 LOCAL GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITY: EVIDENCE FROM TWO RURAL COMMUNES

Earlier in this book, I argued that local governments need to have certain internal and interactive capacities in order to achieve synergies (based on “complementarity” and “embeddedness”) with community-based organizations (CBOs). I suggested that such capacities are best analyzed along the administrative, fiscal, and political dimensions of decentralization. Assessing local government capacity also helps to gauge the real extent of decentralization reforms as implemented at the local level, i.e. local government autonomy from central government in terms of decision making and finance, and (increased) political representation and accountability. In this chapter, based on the empirical findings in two rural communes in Al Haouz province, I examine the administrative capacity in terms of the quality of human resources, the nature of the local elite, local councilors’ and civil servants’ perception of decentralization and awareness of the 2002 Municipal Charter, and the influence of the Ministry of the Interior’s representative over council affairs. I argue that apart from these factors, narrowly conceived development priorities, the politicized nature of the local planning process, and insufficient consultation by government administrations (compounded by the

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implementation mechanisms of “participatory” development projects), constrain local government’s capacity to engage with citizens and civil society in a transparent and open manner. This chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part introduces the case study communes and the province within which they are located. The second part discusses local government administrative capacity in terms of human resources, local councilors’ perceptions of their degree of independence from the tutelle as well as their awareness of the Municipal Charter, and the local planning process. It ends with a discussion of the local government’s relationships with deconcentrated government administrations (i.e. the various ministries’ delegations at the province level, also called services exte´rieurs in Morocco).

Introducing the Case Study Province and Communes Al Haouz province1 The two rural communes of Tighedouine and Ouirgane are located in Al Haouz province south of Marrakech, in the High Atlas Mountains (see Map 3.1). This province (measuring 6,231 square kilometers) is one of five that made up the Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz region.2 In 2003, this region had the lowest Human Development Indicator among the 16 regions in Morocco.3 Al Haouz itself is among the poorest provinces of Morocco. It is ranked 32nd out of the total 57 predominantly rural provinces in terms of poverty.4 It has a 90 per cent rural population of 484,312. Illiteracy declined from 80 per cent in 1994 to 62 per cent in 2004.5 The most common spoken language is Tashelheit, a Berber dialect, followed by Moroccan Arabic and French. The high poverty and weak social indicators can be partly explained by the fact that the province was only created in 1991. Before that, it was part of the Prefecture of Marrakech, which meant that the city of Marrakech received the bulk of infrastructure and social investments at the expense of the Haouz plain and the High Atlas Mountains, which constitute the city’s hinterland (see interview HA03). The province’s history is also marked by the concentration of wealth in the hands of the two grand caı¨ds, El Glaoui

Map 3.1 Al Haouz Province Commune Poverty Map 2007. Source: Royaume du Maroc, Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP), Carte de la pauvrete´ 2007 (Rabat: HCP, 2010), p. 98.

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and Goundafi. In particular, El Glaoui’s dispossession of unruly subjects resulted in the largest land concentration in the history of Morocco, by far surpassing the king’s holdings during the protectorate.6 Today’s seat of the province is located in Tahanout (see Map 3.1), a village 30 km south of Marrakech. The province is composed of 39 communes, of which only one is an urban municipality (Ait Ourir, 30 km to the east of Marrakech). For the administrative purposes of the Ministry of the Interior, the province is divided into four cercles and 14 caı¨dats. In 2004, the communes of Tighedouine and Ouirgane belonged to those with a poverty rate of between 20 and 30 per cent (see insert in Map 3.1, above), while in 2007, the rate for Ouirgane had decreased to between 10 and 20 per cent. With regard to infrastructure investments, the province has seen rapid progress over the last two decades. It benefited from the national rural drinking water, electricity, and roads programs (PAGER, PERG, and PNRR respectively), as well as the first phase of the Social Priorities Program (BAJ). At the time of fieldwork, the province was also included in three major donor-funded projects, which together covered virtually all of its communes. They were the World Bank’s Irrigation Based Community Development Project (known by its French acronym, DRI-PMH),7 the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) “Rural development project in the mountain zones of Al-Haouz Province”,8 and the UNDP’s Human Development and Poverty Reduction Program.9 The IFAD project is currently being followed up with another one called “Agricultural Value Chain Development Project in the Mountain Zones of Al-Haouz Province”.10 The First Case Study Commune: Tighedouine11 The commune of Tighedouine is located 70 km south-west of Marrakech, and essentially comprises the Zat River valley. Spanning an area of 454 square kilometers, it is one of the largest communes in the province. It was created in 1960, is made up of 23 electoral districts, and is composed of five tribal factions. They belong to the Mesfioua tribe, which has a long history of opposition to the makhzen’s authority. Four large-scale uprisings took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth

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centuries, mainly over the distribution of irrigation water.12 The caı¨d of Tighedouine is also responsible for the neighboring commune of Tidili Mesfioua. In 2005, Tighedouine had a population of 22,353 living in over 3,000 households in more than 100 villages. The high degree of geographical dispersion and the mountainous terrain make it difficult for the commune and ministerial provincial delegations to provide infrastructure and services cost-effectively. The low population growth rate of 0.7 per cent (since 1994) points to strong rural out-migration. The population is also very young, with around 40 per cent under 15 years of age. As in Al Haouz province generally, illiteracy is very high, at 65 per cent for men and 87 per cent for women.13 Subsistence agriculture is the main livelihood source. It is characterized by the predominance of barley, and limited cultivation of olive, walnut, almond, and apple trees. Half of the agricultural land is irrigated, but yields are low in the rain-fed areas. Other constraints are the small farm size (2 ha on average), and the lack of advanced tools and machinery. Two tribal factions are part of the World Bank’s irrigation project, which aimed to increase agricultural production. The UNDP’s program also intervened in various places in the commune to increase irrigation and drinking water supplies. Extensive animal husbandry is widely practiced, and includes the ancient tradition of transhumance to the Yagour Plateau.14 Forest takes up nearly 29,000 ha, but suffers from animal grazing and cutting for firewood – at least, according to official sources. This leads to erosion and leaves settlements unprotected from the flash floods that can occur in late summer. In August 1995, a catastrophic flood destroyed a whole village. Pottery and blacksmithing are the most important crafts practiced in Tighedouine. There are also two active milk cooperatives, and one women’s cooperative producing carpets and another handicrafts. The commune has a strong potential for tourism, given its stunning mountain views (see Figure 3.1), the mineral water source at Ain Sidi Ahmed El Ouafi, and the prehistoric stone carvings on the Yagour Plateau. This potential is not developed yet due to the paucity of hotels, qualified mountain guides, and a general lack of

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Figure 3.1 View of the Zat Valley in Tighedouine commune. Source: Author, 3 May 2005.

awareness (though the Association des Amis du Zat [AAZ] is developing tourist trails and mountain lodges). The commune has a commercial and administrative centre at the entrance to the Zat Valley called L’Arbaa Tighedouine. While the drinking water situation in the centre is relatively good thanks to the commune’s investments in tanks and pipes, the situation is more difficult in the villages, which depend on spring water. Although the PAGER program, the commune, and some CBOs have all built pumping stations from 1996 onwards, many of these suffer from frequent breakdowns due to insufficient water quantity.15 Drought and the level of snowfall in winter affect the quantity of available water. According to the provincial drinking water master plan, a dam is planned on the Zat River in order to improve the situation, but it has been put on hold following an impact assessment study, which found that it would be disastrous for the landscape (interview HA06). As for the water quality, virtually none of the water points in the villages are equipped with filters.

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Sewage canalization is limited to the centre, and only 15 per cent of the population has septic tanks. This lack of sewage canals clearly presents a health and environmental threat. The health services are composed of a health centre in L’Arbaa and four village dispensaries. They are responsible for children’s vaccinations and family planning. Not all of them are permanently staffed, and some lack equipment. As for primary schools, there are seven school groupings, each composed of one central school and several “satellite” schools in villages further away.16 While there is an increase in girls’ enrolment, the official monograph notes concern for the state of education in the commune. This was borne out by fieldwork observations: many parents complained of teacher absenteeism and of low teaching quality. The physical state of some of the classrooms visited also gives cause for concern (one was being used as a garbage tip). Nevertheless, since 2002 the centre has hosted a secondary school with 280 pupils, of which 13 per cent are girls. Tighedouine suffers from low levels of electrification. Only 21 out of 96 villages in the PERG were linked to the grid as of March 2005, i.e. 22 per cent, but near universal coverage was to be achieved by 2008.17 In terms of roads, the asphalted road linking the commune to the provincial road to Marrakech stops in L’Arbaa Tighedouine. This is also the end-point for the big taxis from Marrakech. A fleet of privately owned informal collective taxis in the form of Land Rovers and vans uses the network of 89 km of dirt tracks to serve the villagers, especially on market days. These dirt tracks are often dangerous and closed off in winter, and the six bridges over the Zat are also not safe in times of floods. However, the commune was to benefit substantially from the second phase of the national rural roads program.18 In addition to the commune’s administrative and technical services, there are over 30 village associations (CBOs) in the commune. Some have been created as part of the projects mentioned above. The Second Case Study Commune: Ouirgane The commune of Ouirgane is located 65 km south of Marrakech. Its territory of 137 square km is almost four times smaller than

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Tighedouine, as is its population of 7,000 (living in 1,300 households in 20 villages).19 The commune is divided into 11 electoral districts and two tribal factions. From 1959 until the creation of the commune in 1977, the territory was under the authority of the grand caı¨d Goundafi. In 1992, a change in the administrative boundaries reduced Ouirgane’s territory considerably, but did not improve its fit with the geography on the ground. The Azzaden River valley is virtually closed off from the rest of the commune due to the lack of a road link. Its population instead uses a dirt track to get to the village of Asni, which hosts an important weekly market. This has significant implications for the size of the commune’s tax revenue. The caı¨d of Ouirgane is also responsible for the neighboring commune of Imegdal. Like Tighedouine, Ouirgane has an important forest cover (78 per cent of the total surface), including two game reserves and part of the Toubkal National Park. Only a small portion of the commune’s territory is used for agriculture, mostly cereals and olive trees (although apple and pear trees were introduced in the Azzaden Valley in the 1960s).20 To increase production, it will be necessary to repair the irrigation canals damaged by floods and the ravines in the villages in the valley that are causing landslides into farmland. The commune was part of the IFAD project, which was trying to address these issues based on a participatory approach. Some villages, mainly in the Azzaden Valley (see Figure 3.2), have also been part of the GTZ’s (German Technical Cooperation’s) “Assistance for Natural Resources Management” (AGRN) project in the Toubkal National Park since the mid-1990s, as well as a project by the World Conservation Union from 1998 until 2001.21 There are two rivers crossing the commune, the Oued N’Fis and the Azzaden. At the time of fieldwork, construction had started on a dam on the N’Fis, which would submerge 1,210 square km, parts of it on the commune’s territory, displace over 1,000 people in four villages, and destroy 192 ha of agricultural land and 100,000 trees. The impact study by the General Directorate of Hydraulics (DGH) has calculated compensation amounts for those whose land would be expropriated, but it was not clear where new land would be found for them. Most importantly, the caı¨dat and commune administration

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Figure 3.2 View of the Azzaden Valley in Ouirgane commune. Source: Author, 2 December 2005.

buildings were also going to be submerged. The commune was planning to build a new administrative centre. It seems that the benefits to the commune in terms of increased water supply from the dam will not be substantial, given the dam’s objectives. These are principally to supply the city of Marrakech with drinking water, and to make up for the Lalla Takerkoust Dam further down the N’Fis River, whose capacity has been reduced to 50 per cent due to siltation. The new dam will, however, contribute to the development of tourism in the area.22 Indeed, the commune council is placing high hopes on the tourism sector as a vector for the commune’s development. It is already more developed than that in Tighedouine, with several hotels and guest houses, including French-owned ones. But the infrastructure investments to develop this on a large-scale were lacking at the time of fieldwork. A campsite was proposed in the 2000–4 Five-Year Plan, but it had not been built. Limits on electricity and water provision constrain the expansion of tourism establishments in the centre. Given

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that there is no sewage network in the commune (although 45 per cent of the population has septic tanks), such an expansion will also certainly increase pollution. Apart from tourism, the commune has small-scale pottery and carpet production, but there are no cooperatives. There is a salt mine in the hamlet of Laazib, part of Marigha village, which exports salt to Casablanca, in addition to private salt mines. On the Azzaden and N’Fis rivers, there are two stone quarries, and the commune is planning to levy taxes on these. The commune has a market, which is held each Thursday and attracts traders from the neighboring communes, but it is relatively small given that most of the 2,500 inhabitants of the Azzaden Valley use the market in Asni. As opposed to Tighedouine, where most villages have taps in the houses, drinking water in Ouirgane is supplied mostly by spring water in public drinking fountains that are managed by CBOs, dating from 2000 or later.23 A total of 13 out of 16 villages in the PERG were linked to the grid as of March 2005. The roads situation is similar to that of Tighedouine, with 46 km of dirt tracks used by informal collective taxis and trucks dwarfing the 9 km of asphalted road, which is part of the national road to Marrakech. In terms of communications, a land phone line serves only the centre, and the mobile phone network covers just 15 per cent of the commune’s territory. Formal health services are very limited, employing only two nurses. Both are based at the health centre in Ouirgane, which lacks continuous drinking water and supplies. According to a member of the commune staff (interview OS03), a health centre was built around the year 2002 in the Azzaden Valley but it is not functioning due to a lack of staff. Three trained and 33 traditional midwives work in the communes’ villages, including those in the Azzaden Valley. Illiteracy is lower than in Tighedouine, at 51 per cent for men and 76 per cent for women,24 but primary education has low enrolment rates and there are only two groups of schools, each of which has five “satellite” schools. Some 87 pupils (including 41 girls) attend the secondary school in Asni (15 km away on the road towards Marrakech), which has boarding facilities.

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As in Tighedouine, civil society is beginning to organize itself into village associations. There are 25 of these, including some that were created as part of the projects mentioned above. Having introduced the main geographic and socio-economic characteristics of the case study communes, the second part of this chapter now assesses their administrative autonomy and capacity.

Profiles of Councilors and Civil Servants The degree of administrative autonomy and capacity is, to a large extent, influenced by the level of human resources available at the local level. This section analyzes councilors’ and civil servants’ profiles in the two case study communes. Where possible, the data is compared with that at the national level, as well as with aggregated data at the provincial level (for the 39 communes).25 In terms of the education level of the councilors, the 2002 Municipal Charter stipulated that the president of the commune council must have at least completed primary school education, and must not reside abroad.26 Similarly, the secretary and budget officer (rapporteur du budget), as well as their deputies, must be able to read and write. At the national level, statistics on the 2003 elections show that out of a total of 22,944 commune councilors, 53 per cent had only “elementary” (probably meaning Koranic school) or primary education.27 After the 2009 local elections, 46 per cent of all councilors had no or only primary education. Al Haouz province is below the national average, as 70 per cent of all councilors have either no formal education at all or only at the primary level. The 39 commune council presidents (mayors) are much better educated though, with two thirds having secondary or higher education. In Tighedouine, the councilors’ education level is similar to the provincial average: 60 per cent of them have either none, only Koranic school, or (incomplete) primary-level education. In Ouirgane, the councilors are even better educated than the national average, as only 45 per cent fall into this category. The percentage of councilors with university studies there is three times that of the provincial average.

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As for their professions, a third of all Moroccan councilors elected in 2003 were farmers (down from two thirds in 1976). This dropped even further, to a quarter, in 2009. In Al Haouz province, 40 per cent of all 595 commune councilors elected in 2003 were farmers. In Tighedouine, there were fewer farmers but more teachers and private businessmen (especially entrepreneurs in the construction sector and shopkeepers) than among the total number of councilors in Al Haouz. The entrepreneurs were much less numerous in Ouirgane, where the professions are more varied (including farmers, civil servants, truck and taxi drivers, a manual laborer, a vegetable trader and a cook; the president used to be a ski instructor and his family owns a gıˆte [tourism lodge] in the Azzaden Valley). In terms of seniority in the council, there is no data available at the provincial level, but from the interviews it emerged that the council in Ouirgane was less experienced than the one in Tighedouine. In Tighedouine, almost two thirds of the councilors had sat on previous councils (elected in 1997 or earlier), while in Ouirgane, less than half of all councilors had done so. The interviews also asked each councilor about the location of his main residence, since managing the commune affairs and knowing about the local populations’ needs requires them to be available in their commune. The presidents of Tighedouine and Ouirgane councils at the time of fieldwork spent most of their time outside the commune. The former was a secondary school teacher in Ait Ourir, and the latter was based in Marrakech. Between a third (Ouirgane) and two thirds (Tighedouine) of the councilors had their main residence outside the commune. This helps to explain why in Tighedouine, only one out of 14 council meetings examined over the period 1998– 2005 was attended by all councilors. The president of the provincial council also pointed to the councilors’ absence from their communes as a serious problem for the communes’ development prospects (interview MP04). However, despite their frequent physical absence, the councilors in the case study communes arguably represent the core of the local elite. They correspond very well to the typology of the rural elites in southern Morocco drawn up by Ait Hamza.28 Listing the criteria of a

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local notable/elite member, he concludes that they were traditionally found only among two main categories of persons: those who hold spiritual capital, and rich people who put a share of their accumulated wealth at the disposal of the community in the form of financial help, facilitating employment, or paying for collective expenditures such as feasts and ceremonies. Having formed a clientelist basis of popular support, they are keen to transform the resulting influence (or symbolic capital) into political power by standing in local elections. The members of this traditional elite are adapting to the rise of rivals by sending their children to school or encouraging their emigration in order to ensure the incomes necessary to maintain their power, and by building networks of alliances and inter-notable marriages. Often, members of the same family occupy the functions of councilors, muqaddim, or cheikh. Today, there are therefore three additional ways to acquire elite status: first, through high school education combined with financial success. Further and higher education does not guarantee elite status, as it may lead to a sociocultural rupture with the population in the village of origin. This danger can be mitigated by marrying a local person or by participating in community activities and village associations (see, for instance, interview TC19). Second, former or present political party members, trade union or civil society activists, and unemployed graduates – as well as civil servants and teachers – can acquire elite status by becoming an indispensable intermediary (so-called “development brokers”) between the government administration (or other donors, including tourists) and the community, partly thanks to their language skills and social networks (e.g. interviews TC05, TC18, OC07, OC01).29 Third, economic success achieved through international migration (and a good pension) allows the returned emigrant to build up a client base (e.g. interviews TC10, TC12, TC17). While the traditional category of spiritual capital is disappearing, access to the local elite is still based on accumulation of wealth, ostentatious consumption, and redistribution (witness the large number of entrepreneurs among the councilors in Tighedouine). The concern to add political and social capital to his financial capital leads the ambitious elite member to build alliances

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of interest with families, clans, and political parties, as well as the local agent of authority.30 The prerequisite of personal wealth means that the elite are fairly old but also often illiterate, given the lack of educational facilities during their youth. Their illiteracy is an asset for the agents of authority, since they are docile and easy to dissuade, convince, or even humiliate. On the other hand, it means that they are incapable of communicating with the population about development projects, and of understanding the “advantages” they are given by the Commune Charter. Although they might understand better than intellectuals the daily problems of their constituents, they may find it challenging to explain them to others, let alone put them into the context of national or regional development plans.31 To conclude, the elite in Tighedouine is more traditional, while the councilors in Ouirgane are part of an emerging elite based on alternative trajectories of social ascension. As for the profiles of civil servants working in the communes, it was not possible to obtain the data for the whole province.32 For Tighedouine, the monograph notes 19 staff (16 male and three female), while for Ouirgane, the monograph also lists 19 staff (15 male and four female). This means that for Tighedouine, there is one staff member for every 1,176 inhabitants, while in Ouirgane the ratio is one for every 364 inhabitants, i.e. over three times more. The reasons for this are not known, but it seems a highly arbitrary allocation of human resources. The detailed staff list reveals that out of the 19 staff in Tighedouine, only six work on local finances and projects: the secretary general, the two accountants, and three technicians (one of whom is a young Japanese civil engineer who is a volunteer with JICA, the Japan International Cooperation Agency). Most of them have worked at Tighedouine commune since the early 1990s, i.e. the beginning of their careers. Only the technicians underwent a 2-year special training course, but they did not make use of more recent opportunities for skills upgrading in the area of civil engineering.33 The secretary general holds a university degree in law and did a 1-year training course at a specialized institute (as well as benefiting from four 1-week

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courses as part of a UNDP governance program more recently; interviews GO01, DF06, HA11).34 The two accountants studied Philosophy and Law, and Arabic Literature respectively, followed by a 10-month training course by the Ministry of the Interior (interviews TS02, TS03, TS05, TS06, TS07, TS08). In Ouirgane, contrary to the data in the monograph, the secretary general is no longer based at the commune (since approximately October 2003), although he is still on the commune’s payroll. Only three staff are directly involved in assisting the council with budget and projects preparation and execution. These are: the deputy administrator and revenue accountant, the accountant in charge of expenditure and staff management, and the technician. The first has a university degree in History, the second studied until the Bac (the high school diploma exam), and the third has the Bac plus a 2-year Technical Studies diploma from the Ministry of the Interior’s training school for technicians. However, while all were very young when starting their current jobs, none of them (except one) has undergone any significant training since starting to work there (which was 16, 11, and 20 years ago respectively as of the end of 2005; interviews OS01, OS03, OS04). The qualitative shortcomings of local human resources are partly due to the hiring process. Hiring takes place without competition, and at the discretion of the commune president. This means that the president’s recruitment decisions are likely to be influenced by personal interests or electoral concerns rather than the needs of the local administration. National policy incentives encouraged this kind of recruitment: during 1991 and 1992, commune jobs were given to 37,000 graduates as part of the government’s initiative to reduce unemployment, regardless of their qualifications for such jobs. Prior to the 2002 Charter, the president could only appoint staff at lower salary scales i.e. not the staff at superior grades such as the secretary general and the tax collector, who were recruited by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance respectively. This explains why most staff in local authorities are manual workers at the lower end of the salary scale. At the national level in 2002, 75 per cent of all staff were couriers and manual laborers, with middle and senior

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management making up the remaining 25 per cent. By 2008, this proportion had shifted to about 70 and 30 per cent respectively.35 Although the Ministry of the Interior talks of the problem in terms of “significant overstaffing as a consequence of 25 years of ‘uncontrolled’ hiring”,36 the main problem today is probably not overstaffing but the high concentration of staff in central ministries in the capital: on average, there are 4.9 staff per 1,000 inhabitants, but only 25 per cent of all government civil servants work in local authorities.37 Moreover, a 2007 survey found that over 20 per cent of all public servants in Morocco are illiterate.38 In the case study communes, some of the staff themselves (see interviews TS07, OS01, OS05) admitted that they and others did not always have the necessary qualifications but were hired due to kinship or financial relations with the council president, who makes the hiring decisions. One technician (interview TS06) pointed out that a background in civil engineering is not enough if the commune wants to help people to raise their incomes. Rather, employing agricultural engineers would be more appropriate. Some staff also complained about the physical absence of several staff on the commune’s payroll, as they are either seconded to the caı¨dat, cercle, or province, or to an urban municipality (interviews TS08, OS01, HA03). The provincial governor, through the DCL, has tried to introduce a “quality approach” in order to increase efficiency in the communes and provincial services. This includes better matching skills profiles to tasks, staff training, and a client-focused outlook. It seems to have only been carried out in the commune of Tahanout and within the DCL, and was greeted with limited enthusiasm by staff.39 In both case study communes, staff motivation seemed quite low, since in general the staff thought that the councilors were not up to their task of managing commune affairs. For example, the secretary general has to take over tasks that legally should be carried out by the elected but illiterate council secretary, such as taking and keeping the minutes of council meetings. Some staff expressed frustration at not having any influence on council decisions regarding budget allocation. Most importantly, they resented having to take instructions from, and be evaluated by, a council

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president who is less well-educated than them (interviews OS01, OS04, TS03, TS07, TC19, HA04). In return, some councilors were critical towards the staff for not keeping up a decent work discipline, and accused them of only working in exchange for bribes or at the intervention of the councilors (interviews TC04, TC10, TC16). In addition to these tensions, dependency on the deconcentrated government ministries at province level for project funding puts commune staff in a somewhat difficult position vis-a`-vis the councilors. As one staff explained (interview TS02), most councilors do not know that the commune is heavily dependent on the government administration for project funding, and raise the hopes of the local population, which cannot always be fulfilled. This results in the population blaming the commune staff for not doing their jobs properly. Hence the commune staff need to tread carefully in order not to upset the relationship between the population and the councilors, while preserving their own credibility vis-a`-vis the population.

Local Views on Decentralization and the Municipal Charter The councilors were asked about their awareness of the decentralization process and how they perceive the degree of independence of the commune from the tutelle of the province. Only very few councilors understood the concept of decentralization in French (interviews OC10, TC19, MP02), and even fewer understood the question when using the Arabic literary word al-la-markazia for “decentralization” (TC01, MP04). It was therefore difficult to say whether the respondent did simply not know the Arabic word for this concept, or did not know the concept itself. Hence the question was rephrased in two parts. First, whether the councilors thought that the administration was now closer to the citizen, and second, whether they thought the commune had, over time, become more independent from the provincial Department of Local Authorities (DCL) at the Ministry of the Interior. In terms of the first question, the councilors and some staff emphasized the positive effects of the changes in the administrative boundaries and deconcentration in the Ministry of the Interior.

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Members of the commune’s population do not have to travel as far as before to get their paperwork done or to see the agent of authority in case of a problem (interviews TC16, TC17, OC03, OC05, OC07, OC08, OC09, OS01, OS03). In response to the second question, most councilors found that the relationship between the commune and the DCL is purely administrative and consists of a formal type of tutelle, but that the latter nevertheless has the final say in approving the council’s decisions – at least for those involving large amounts of money (interviews TC03, TC08, TC09, TC12, TC13, TC14, TC17, TS03, OC04, OC08, OC10, OS03).40 In the words of the council president in Ouirgane (OC06), “the degree of tutelle is good, they [provincial authorities] don’t exaggerate any more like before [. . .] You can do your work in peace, il n’y a personne qui t’emmerde [no-one bothers you], you can allocate the money when you like, you and your council, you don’t have any problems with the visa [authorization], nothing”. A vice-president and the president of the provincial council (TC05, MP04) emphasized the legal nature of the tutelle, rather than its intervention on the substantive aspects of council decisions. The analysis of the council minutes confirms these statements, as there was only one instance in which the tutelle intervened in a draft budget – in that particular case, to make sure that it conformed to a ministerial circular (Tighedouine February 2001). Indeed, conversations with the staff at the Ministry of the Interior indicated that the “tutelle d’opportunite´” (i.e. discretion in determining the appropriateness of council decisions) has been largely dropped. The Director of the DCL explained that the main missions of the DCL include ensuring the legality of the commune council’s decisions, assisting communal services, and checking on project implementation on the ground (interview HA03). This interpretation corresponds to the 2002 Commune Charter’s provision regarding the objectives of the tutelle, although these also include guaranteeing “the protection of the general interest”, which arguably leaves some discretion.41 With regard to the scope of the tutelle, the 2002 Charter introduced only certain minor reductions of the tutelle in the areas of street cleaning, hygiene, and commune buildings.

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However, time delays for approvals have been shortened and the tutelle’s decisions have to be justified.42 In terms of a priori budget approval, the DCL criteria for approval are that the budget is balanced, includes certain obligatory expenditures such as public lighting and debt payments, and that there are enough funds to honor the partnership agreements that the communes might have signed. However, the director of the DCL in Al Haouz said that he sometimes intervenes to ensure that individual citizens’ demands have been taken into account. Control a posteriori is conducted by the local Ministry of Finance official, who verifies the executed accounts. A detailed audit by the regional accounts courts has so far not taken place in Al Haouz province (interview HA03).43 Similarly, the caı¨d in Tighedouine (TS04) described his role as “tutor in terms of the legality and conformity of decisions”. The head of the office for local authorities (Service des collectivite´s locales) at the cercle in Asni (HA02) explained that although he exercises a tutelle over any project costing more than a certain amount, this does not represent “any pressure but just a study of the impact of the project on the population”. The de facto strictly legal nature of the tutelle, however, does not automatically imply greater decision making power for the councilors. A striking example was found in the council meeting minutes of October 2004, concerning the naming of the new secondary school in L’Arbaa Tighedouine. In line with the provisions in the commune charter, the commune was asked to choose from a list of names of resistance fighters (during the French Protectorate); however, the councilors did not seem comfortable with having to make this decision, as they shortlisted three names and sent them back to the Governor of Al Haouz province, leaving the final decision to him. Another example occurred in the area of international municipal cooperation (twinning agreements; also called “decentralized cooperation”). For a long time, this area was limited to the cultural and immaterial sphere, but it is now increasingly about economic, technical, and training activities involving larger amounts of funds.44 However, there is a strong element of tutelle in negotiating

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such cooperation. For example, a draft agreement between Ouirgane and a French municipality apparently requires the approval of the Minister of the Interior as well as the king in order to become effective (interview OS01). The commune staff’s view with regard to the tutelle is quite different from that of the councilors. While they were generally satisfied with the DCL’s assistance when needed, it seems that from their point of view, the degree of tutelle is almost too light in terms of ensuring the quality of council decisions. According to a staff member in Tighedouine (interview TS06), the technical services at the province have so far approved every project that the commune technicians have prepared, including those that had been badly designed, leading to problems with the contractors. Another member of staff (OS01) emphasized the lack of competent and motivated staff at the provincial level, a situation that leads to delays in obtaining authorizations. The views of these councilors and staff members on decentralization point to the increased proximity of the local authorities, and the mainly legal nature of the tutelle. However, it seems that the tutelle authorities do not significantly contribute to local capacity building in the form of supplying technical and professional services. Neither do they appear to systematically act as a “watchdog” for service quality standards, evaluation, or auditing; from the conversations with the then-Head of the DCL (interview HA03), I got the strong impression that it was his personal commitment to the job that pushed him to take on these roles, rather than any structural incentives. However, according to Bardhan,45 the State has to sometimes take on these “activist” roles in order to achieve the ultimate objective of decentralization: making governance at the local level more responsive to the felt needs of the large majority of the population. I would therefore agree with El Yaagoubi,46 who has called for a change in the timing of the tutelle’s interventions; rather than coming at the end of the decision making process, it should take the form of upstream technical and legal advice, which could turn the relationship with the communes into one of active cooperation.

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Two interview questions were designed to assess the degree to which the councilors and commune staff were familiar with the Commune Charter of 2002 and whether they had received any training on it. The first question asked whether they had heard about the Commune Charter, and if yes, whether they had read it. Only half of all councilors in each commune reported to have read the charter, and most of them only partially. Most worryingly, about one third of the councilors in each commune had not even heard about the charter.47 On the positive side, the councilors who were commune presidents and vice-presidents at the time of the preparation of the Commune Charter’s reform were very much aware of the changes since they had been invited by the Ministry of the Interior to contribute their views. In Tighedouine, this even led to the creation of an internal council commission on the issue (interviews TC01, TC19, TS03, OC06). As for the civil servants at the commune, they had almost all read it. Given these replies, it was not surprising that when asked whether they had received any training on it, many councilors and staff answered negatively (interviews TC04, TC12, TS03, TS06, TS07, OC02, OC09, OC11, OS03). Indeed, the vast majority of councilors do not seem to receive any training at all during their mandate on any aspect of their work. The director of the DCL in Tahanout confirmed that the Ministry of the Interior organized only one or two seminars in Rabat in 1999 or 2000 in order to consult a sample of councilors about the new charter. He regretted that these seminars had not been continued after the new charter came into effect. He also pointed out that in addition to the charter, councilors should also know about other laws such as those on procurement and the management of the commune’s real estate properties, since they often use lands that do not legally belong to it (interview HA04). In short, it seems that the Ministry of the Interior did not conduct any systematic information campaign or training on the new provisions in the Commune Charter. Indeed, the legal status of the councilors introduced by the charter does not explicitly give them the right to undergo training. Staff and councilors’ training is part of the communes’ “transferable

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competences” (see below).48 It is therefore not surprising that nationwide, only 38 councilors benefited from seminars organized by the Ministry of the Interior in 2002.49 Furthermore, these training sessions focus on registry office matters and local taxes rather than financial management, local development planning, or environmental protection.50 However, in 2001, the Ministry of the Interior began publishing a newsletter for commune staff and councilors, and every few years it organizes the National Colloquium for Local Authorities. In recent years, as donors have taken a strong interest in Morocco’s local governance reforms, capacity-building projects are proliferating – notably on the issue of supporting the communes to develop their PCDs.51 Political parties do not engage in any systematic training seminars for councilors either. The councilors thus resort to informal knowledge-sharing among themselves. Starting in December 2005, some of them attended seminars on participatory needs assessments as part of the INDH initiative (interview OC10). The councilors’ limited awareness of the Municipal Charter can thus be explained by this lack of training, but probably also by their relatively low education levels, as discussed earlier. These findings therefore imply that many councilors do not know their rights and obligations vis-a`vis the tutelle authorities. Indeed, the most striking finding was that only very few councilors were conscious of their moral (if not legal) obligation to know the charter in order to be effective councilors. The 2002 Charter devoted a section (Title 3) to the statut de l’e´lu, i.e. the status of the councilor (this section has remained mostly the same in the 2009 Charter). This meant that, for the first time, all the rights and obligations of the councilors were laid out in one place. The rights include work leave to attend council meetings and per diems for certain council positions. As for the obligations, the charter stipulates that any councilor who entertains private interests with the commune can be sanctioned with dismissal (Article 22). Article 23 states that councilors are formally forbidden from taking on administrative functions in the commune (except for those of the president and his deputies). This, together with new limits to presidential delegations of powers, puts an end to

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councilors’ interventions in running the commune’s administrative services. This practice was previously considered legal, and allowed councilors to pursue their personal interests. However, it seems that the councilors’ attitude to public office is still dominated by the view that it provides additional social status and brings with it connections and benefits to one’s personal business.52 A somewhat cynical explanation for why the councilors do not read the Commune Charter would therefore hold that they believe they cannot be sanctioned for conflicts of interests if they do not know that they are illegal in the first place. A further innovation in the 2002 Charter is the more precise definition of the president’s responsibilities vis-a`-vis the caı¨d. It also transfers more power from the latter to the former in the areas of public order (tranquilite´), public health, and hygiene, as well as introducing new areas of responsibility such as environmental protection. Several interviewees mentioned the increase in the president’s powers at the expense of the provincial and local authorities as the main change brought about by the commune charter (interviews TC05, TC08, TC11, TC19, OC11, OS04, MP03). However, there is the risk of the “presidentialization” of local power, as the president is both legislator and executive.53 This means that a larger degree of participation by councilors and citizens is necessary in order to balance the power of the executive and to reduce the possibilities for corruption.54 Otherwise, there will be a significant risk that Moroccan decentralization is “decentralizing corruption”, i.e. creating more independent control points capable of extracting rents, such as vote buying, procurement fraud, and misuse of public funds.55 On top of enlarging its powers, the 2002 Charter strengthens the stability of the commune executive. If before, the yearly vote on the executed accounts (the compte administratif, CA) could become a means to blackmail the president, a decision resulting in a rejection of the CA now has to be justified. If the council maintains its decision after a second debate, the tutelle authority refers the matter to the regional accounts court, which has two months to decide on it. The president’s stability is also enhanced, since the council can no longer dismiss him by a two-thirds majority, and he

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gets to remain in power for the complete duration of the mandate (repeal of Article 7 of the 1976 Charter).56 Hence, councilors can no longer exercise pressure on the president, and the president is able (at least in theory) to focus his work on medium rather than short-term outcomes, although he still needs to ensure the backing of a majority of the councilors in order to approve his proposals.57 Some councilors in Tighedouine emphasized this elimination of Article 7 of the 1976 Charter as a major change (interviews TC05, TC06, TC18, TC19). This article was used in Tighedouine in 2001 to oust the then-President.58 The ex-President confirmed that the current president can work with a long-term vision for six years, whereas he started to worry about keeping good relations with the councilors in the majority after only three years (TC19). Of course, from the perspective of the opposition, this is now a problem since they cannot get rid of a president whom they view as incompetent (TC18, TC19). Nevertheless, although they are difficult for an outsider to observe, local alliances are in constant flux, and major realignments often happen before local or parliamentary elections (TA15).59 The interviews further aimed at finding out to what extent the councilors were aware of the increased responsibilities of the commune in the field of development under the charter. The 2002 Charter divides the council’s responsibilities into three categories: “own”, transferable, and consultative. The first category includes economic and social development, local finances, and local public service provision, as well as sociocultural activities and cooperation, association, and partnership. These categories of responsibilities together amount to a holistic framework for local development. However, only a very small part of the council’s “own” responsibilities are obligatory under special legal texts. In reality therefore, administrative services (such as issuing birth and death certificates and the legalization of signatures) dominate commune activities. Most importantly, without an increase in revenues it is very unlikely that the communes will be able to perform all their “own” tasks as listed in the charter. The second category of responsibilities consists of those that can be transferred from central authorities to the commune. Central

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authorities retain discretion over the timing and scope of such a transfer. There are 14 such transferable responsibilities, and they are qualitatively important. They concern the construction and maintenance of school and health facilities, reforestation, environmental protection, small and medium-sized irrigation networks, cultural heritage preservation, professional training, training for commune staff and councilors, and infrastructure and facilities of communal interest. Only a few councilors were aware of the commune’s increased responsibilities in these areas (interviews TC01, TC05, TC07, TC19, OC06, OC10). When asked about the specific articles that include transferable responsibilities such as Articles 43 and 44 on natural resources management and protection, the ex-President in Tighedouine explained that these articles have not been applied due to a lack of communication with the administrations concerned (such as the forestry services). He also suggested that councilors have not fully understood the important implications of these articles for natural resource protection (TC19). The President in Tighedouine (at the time of fieldwork) pointed to the limited budget of the commune, which renders the application of these articles unfeasible (TC01). The commune staff and authorities in particular argued that the limited degree of the charter’s application is due to the incompetence of councilors and illiteracy. In any case, the commune cannot take the initiative and request the transfer of these responsibilities, but it is the Ministry of the Interior together with the Ministry concerned (e.g. Agriculture or Forestry), who decide on this as well as on the transfer of the necessary financial resources. The only example of this transfer of responsibilities to the communes is the maintenance and repair of primary school buildings, which was financed by the communes’ taking up loans from the Local Government Infrastructure Fund (FEC) and their repayments by the Ministry of Education (interview HA04). A further interview question was designed to assess the degree of influence of the agent of authority over council affairs. While the role of the caı¨d in council meetings is officially limited to proposing agenda points, the caı¨d co-chairs all the council meetings and

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intervenes quite frequently in discussions, at least in Tighedouine, mostly to explain legal points. But it is very probable that he also influences the outcomes of council votes. In the council meeting minutes studied here, the proposals put forward by the caı¨d or the governor to council votes were all accepted (with the exception of two points in Tighedouine in October 2000 to do with increasing or imposing local taxes).60 Some councilors explained that despite the new powers for the president in the charter, the caı¨d can exert more influence over commune affairs when the president of the commune is frequently absent, as is the case in Tighedouine, or of a weak personality (interviews TC16, TC18, TC19, TS08). Others argued that the commune cannot exist without the agent of authority since the latter is in fact responsible for public order and safety as well as executing the council’s decisions, such as clearing blocked roads or organizing meetings (TC11, TC12). As one councilor put it, “the commune has the budget and the caı¨d has the power to mobilize people” (TC19). This power to mobilize people is illustrated in the context of “participatory” development projects. For example, it seems that most committee members in water user associations are selected by the caı¨ds. The caı¨d also intervenes at election times in order to make sure that there are at least two candidates in each electoral district (TA09).61 The interviews also attempted to gauge the degree of awareness of the new concept of authority and whether there had been a perceptible change in the behavior of the caı¨d away from “agent of authority” to “agent of development”. In general, the concept seems to be quite well known but applied only in a relational sense. Most councilors agreed that the caı¨d no longer uses repressive measures, and had become more accessible to the population (interviews TC04, TC05, TC07, TC11, TC15, TC17, OC10, OC11). Indeed, through the interviews as well as participant observation in his office in Tighedouine, it became clear that the caı¨d’s main role is to provide practical solutions to people’s problems by helping them with paperwork such as construction permits and by arbitrating over conflicts around water or grazing land. The long queues in front of his office on market day also attest to his importance for the population,

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while things were much quieter in the commune buildings. As the caı¨d himself pointed out, the national discourse on human rights has curtailed the discretion in the use of his powers (TS04). One councilor in Tighedouine (TC06) gave the example of a boy in his village who vandalized the school and health centre; he went to see the caı¨d about it, and the latter stated that he could not intervene given that the boy was too young (at 14) to be sent to court, and that organizations safeguarding children’s rights would protest if he did. However, the truly “developmental” role of the caı¨d is still limited. Some of my informants noted that the concept can only become fully operational if three conditions are fulfilled: the agent of authority needs to have a budget, know the territory well, and be able to stay in the same place for a long period of time (interviews TC19, TS04). This last condition is hard to fulfill, as caı¨ds change posts every four years or so. This rotation is officially designed to enable the caı¨d and his family to benefit (at least periodically) from better school, health, and recreation facilities in the towns and cities, although it seems that those caı¨ds with good connections to officials in Rabat are never sent to isolated areas to begin with. A more plausible, though unofficial, reason for moving the caı¨ds from time to time, especially after local and parliamentary elections, is to prevent conflicts or collusion with former and newly elected councilors (AC13). Based on this, albeit limited, evidence, I would agree with Abbadi and with El Yaagoubi that there is a gradual change happening in the internal culture of the territorial administrations.62 It used to emphasize the ideological and political control of society, which often took the form of abuse and despotism. For example, I was told that an old man in Tighedouine who has experienced several despotic caı¨ds in the past, still regularly brings a cock to the caı¨d so as to ensure his favor. This culture is gradually being replaced by one that is more oriented towards public service in the interest of the citizen, and the promotion of human rights. In terms of my conceptual framework, this change in culture opens up the possibility for embedded autonomy. The characteristics of the old administration (from 1956 to the early 1990s) correspond roughly to those of the old concept of authority, i.e. excessive centralization; the prevalence of the

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hierarchical principle; anonymity; vast discretionary powers; and bureaucratic abuses such as nepotism, negligence, and corruption. More recently, with the creation of the Consultative Council of Human Rights (which the 2011 Constitution transformed into the formally more independent National Council on Human Rights), administrative tribunals, and regional accounting courts, more precise norms have come into existence whose application can be more or less effectively controlled by citizens. In short, the new concept of authority directly poses the problem of how to reconcile liberty and order: the dialectic between individual rights and liberties and the preservation of security and stability. In the history of Morocco, the administration has tended to privilege the latter over the former, but this seems to be changing given the multiplication of governance institutions.63

Local Development Priorities and the Planning Process In order to assess the councils’ capacity to develop a vision for the commune’s development, one of the interview questions invited the respondent to name three main development priorities for his commune. This was an open question, asking “In your view, what are the three most important development priorities for the commune?”.64 The results are summarized in Table 3.1 below. The striking observation here is the emphasis on basic infrastructure and the relative unimportance given to measures that would raise the income of both the population and the commune. This emphasis on basic infrastructure reflects that observed in the communes’ investment expenditures (see Chapter 4), and might imply that the respondents do not believe that the national infrastructure programs are sufficient in addressing the population’s needs. It could, however, also point to the possibility that councilors and staff lack the capacity for visionary strategic thinking that would focus on off-farm job creation and increasing the commune’s own revenues. This seems a plausible explanation given the councilors’ and staff profiles, as well as the dominance of the government administrations at the provincial level in terms of defining the development agenda.

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Commune development priorities

Priority Tracks and roads Drinking water Electricity Irrigation canals/water Sanitation/Sewage network Bridge over Zat River Solid waste disposal Total infrastructure Education Literacy classes Health services Human development Social activity for youth Total social services Stopping desertification Attracting investments incl. tourism Increase of commune’s own revenues Raising the population’s incomes Helping the people whose land will be expropriated due to dam construction (in Ouirgane) Total investments and poverty reduction A commune president and councilors who work in the interest of the population Total: 18 priorities

Frequency Percentage 27 24 18 7 5 2 1 84 10 4 4 3 1 22 2 6 4 1 1

22 20 15 6 4 2 1 70 8 3 3 2 1 17 1 5 3 1 1

12 3

10 2

123

100

Source: Interviews with 41 councilors and commune staff in Tighedouine and Ouirgane, one Caı¨d, one MP, and the president of the provincial council.

Equally interesting was the fact that when answering the interview question about their development priorities for the commune, many councilors found it difficult to think in terms of their commune rather than their village. It seems that they very rarely have to express the needs of the commune as a whole. The coordinator for the Local Agenda 21 process in the province confirmed this phenomenon (interview GO02). This can be explained by the nature of the

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municipal planning process, as well as the historic importance of the village as a unit for local solidarities. In terms of the local planning process, a historic opportunity for bottom-up planning came in 1999. In the context of establishing the national plan covering the period 2000–4, the communes were for the first time asked to prepare their own five-year Economic and Social Development Plan.65 In his opening speech to parliament on 10 October 2003, the King also emphasized the importance of local planning. He advised the local authorities to formulate local development plans in order to take concrete actions in the priority areas of proper housing, investment, productive employment, and education.66 However, in reality, planning for development seemed to be of minor importance to the councilors (although this may have changed with the advent of the PCD as a requirement in the 2009 Municipal Charter). My analysis of the minutes for a total of 23 council meetings over 1998 – 2005 in both communes reveals that the communes’ development plans were discussed only once (and only in a formal way, in order to adjust it to the new fiscal year), and progress on infrastructure provision was also reviewed only once – both occurrences in Tighedouine. Nevertheless, the priority given to basic infrastructure in the interviews is reflected in the 5-year Development Plan for Tighedouine for the period 2000 – 4. The 13 projects in the plan (three of which were canceled) mostly concerned the construction of roads and bridges, and water and electricity provision. According to the council President at the time of preparing the plan in 1999 (interview TC19), the Ministry of the Interior (DGCL) in Rabat sent a framework that the council adapted to their local priorities. The council then proposed some of the projects to the various ministries. The ex-President claimed that the plan had been implemented until he was ousted in 2001, and that since then the council has not worked within a planning framework. This seems to be confirmed by the data in the project files (which show that most projects were implemented by 2001 or had been cancelled) and the information in the summary sheet from the DCL, based on which I calculate that 80 per cent of

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the total payments were issued between July 1999 and December 2001. In Ouirgane, some of the projects in the original Five-Year Plan would have had a more direct, and probably much larger, return on investment (they included commune properties that could be rented out, a camp site, and public parking space). However, the plan was hardly implemented at all. Out of five schemes, the commune has implemented only one (drinking water) project, which is managed by a village association. According to commune staff, the councilors reallocated the funds to other projects due to problems in securing building permissions (interviews OS01, OS03). These two examples confirm the observations in the summary monitoring report of the Five-Year Plan at the provincial level (received from the DCL in Tahanout), which noted that the problems encountered included the councilors’ lack of a clear vision for multiannual planning; insufficient staff competences for the preparation, implementation, and monitoring of the plan; insufficient funds; and underestimation of costs.67 These problems also point to the absence of a strategic development unit with specialized planning staff at the commune level. During the preparation of the 2000–4 Development Plan, the communes were obliged to resort to the provincial administration for help and even for obtaining the necessary statistical data.68 In Morocco as a whole, implementation as well as monitoring and evaluation of the Five-Year Plan were carried out only partially. This was mainly due to the lack of data and inter-ministerial cooperation, and the continued top-down nature of the planning process.69 The non-participatory nature of the plan was confirmed by the councilors’ responses to the interview question about their awareness of the Five-Year Development Plan. Their answers revealed that only very few of them actually knew of its existence. Although some of the councilors only entered the council in 2003, the plan nevertheless officially only ended in 2004, which means that all current councilors should have been informed of progress. Instead, many respondents referred to the annual allocation of the surplus for investment expenditure as the annual plan (interviews TC03, TC04, TC06,

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TC07, TC09, TC12, OC03, OC04, OC05, OC08). While it is true that, in theory, the annual plans could “add up” to the Five-Year Plan, I found this not to be the case in either commune (at least, after 2001 in Tighedouine). Apart from the technical problems mentioned earlier, I discovered three mainly political reasons that can explain the non-adherence to development plans in these two rural communes. The first reason has to do with the council president’s relationship with the councilors in his/her majority. As mentioned earlier, the president’s security was enhanced by the repeal of Article 7 in the 1976 Charter, which means that he can no longer be dismissed during the course of his mandate. However, he still needs to ensure the backing of the majority in order to get his proposals approved. The best way to satisfy the demands of the councilors is to divide up the investment budget (or rather, what is left of it after paying the contributions to national infrastructure programs) between several smaller projects. The president also needs to make sure that those councilors “receive” projects who did not receive any in the preceding year (interviews TS06, GO02, NG06, HA11). It is therefore not surprising that some opposition councilors complained that their electoral districts are neglected (TC10, TC19). This is true, as far as it was possible to see from the information in the surplus allocation meeting minutes.70 It is clear that adopting a fixed multi-year plan containing fewer but larger projects goes against this political planning logic. When an opposition councilor asked the council President about the links between budget preparation and the development plan (perhaps inspired by my interview with him a few days earlier), the President declared that “the budget preparation doesn’t need all this [planning] philosophy” (cited in October 2005 council meeting minutes). This strategy of implementing mostly localized and small projects means that the overall development impact of the commune’s investment budget is very limited. A commune staff member expressed this outcome via a Moroccan proverb: “if you divide the sea into several irrigation canals it will dry out” (TS03). The second, related, reason for preferring an annual rather than multi-year allocation of the investment budget is that every councilor

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is concerned about pressures from constituents in his village(s), which means that he needs to “bring” them a project in order to be re-elected (interviews TC16, TC17, OS01). He can then also more easily punish those inhabitants who did not vote for him (even within the same village) by excluding them from infrastructure projects. This can generate intra-village conflicts, even among children. For example, I was told that in one village, the children who live in households with electricity provision call those who live in households without power the “children of darkness”. Both the caı¨d of Tighedouine and the Director of the DCL in Tahanout mentioned this practice, and the need to work against it (TS04, HA03, and NG06, AC09, AC10). Change seems to be under way, though, as some councilors are realizing the limited development impact of undertaking small and isolated projects. They increasingly see the need to save money over several years in order to carry out one large and high-quality project, such as the sanitation network in L’Arbaa and the Tororde Bridge in Ouirgane (interviews TC05, TC17, TC19, OC10, MP01). The dramatic consequences of not saving up enough money for good quality infrastructure such as bridges is illustrated by the bridge over the Zat in L’Arbaa, which was completely destroyed by floods only two years after it was built. The President at the time admitted that it would have been much better to save up the necessary funds over three years for a good bridge (TC19). This change in tactics might explain the large carryovers and end-of-year surpluses observed in the financial analysis (see Chapter 4). In addition, the new Local Finance Law of 2009 (Law 45–08) does prescribe a three-year budget cycle.71 Apart from political reasons, the absence of long-term planning (at least until recently) is also due to weak monitoring by council commissions (see the council’s internal statute Article 17 on council commissions). Each council has at least three internal commissions: budget and finance; socio-economic and cultural development; and construction, urban planning, and environment.72 Several additional commissions were created in both communes during the period 1998– 2005 in order to develop or oversee various projects. However, apart from the budget and finance commission, whose reports are discussed during council deliberations on the budget and executed

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accounts, the minutes rarely mention any follow-up by the other commissions. As mentioned earlier, the 2009 Municipal Charter established the requirement for a six-year, participatory, Municipal Development Plan (Plan Communal de De´veloppement, PCD). While more research is needed on how these plans are developed in practice, those in charge of formulating and implementing them will have to struggle and overcome some of the structural weaknesses described here. Especially in rural areas, it will take time to foster the emergence of the “strategic councilor” (un e´lu strate`ge) that the national decentralization strategy, Horizon 2015, envisages (see Chapter 2). The PCDs will also be affected by the proliferation of various planning initiatives that undermine the coherence of the local planning process. For example, at the regional level, the regional council has developed the Regional Development Plan (Sche´ma Re´gional d’Ame´nagement du Territoire, SRAT). This plan adopts a 20-year horizon in terms of the infrastructure needed for a growing population and the comparative advantages of each region, and is then implemented by three or five-year plans. Furthermore, the Urban Planning Agency (Agence Urbaine) in Marrakech has developed a zoning plan for the centre (L’Arbaa) in Tighedouine and some villages around it, and it also had a plan in the pipeline for Ouirgane (interview GO05). In addition, the INDH set up its own participatory planning process.73 The UN-sponsored Local Agenda 21 process implemented in some communes adds yet another layer of local planning (GO02). In Iguerfrouane, a Social Development Plan in Favor of the Child (Plan de De´veloppement Communal en faveur de l’Enfant) was developed for the period 2004–6, with the support of the governor and UNICEF.74 The local planning process is limited further by the lack of cooperation with neighboring communes, despite the existence of common interests such as pastures, water preservation, and road links (interviews TC01, TC15, TC16, TC19, TS03, TS05, OC01, OC06, OC07, OC08, OC09). The interview replies are not substantive enough to develop this point further, although the underlying reason seems to mainly be political differences. The ex-President of Tighedouine (TC19) pointed out that rather than planning at

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the commune level, it might be better to radically reform the administrative boundaries for rural mountainous communes and make them coincide with tribal factions which often correspond to sub-watershed basins, thereby dividing up the current commune budget according to population numbers.

Relations with Line Ministries and Rural Development Projects The commune councils’ capacity to develop a vision for the commune’s development and to implement projects in cooperation with other actors is also determined by their relationship with line ministries (deconcentrated government administrations). Given the communes’ limited own revenues (see Chapter 4), it is perhaps not an exaggeration to say that the councilors’ role is limited to that of “beggars” who are forced to accept any development program that is offered to them by the various ministries (interviews TC19, AC08).75 Centrally determined programs seem not only to limit the councilors’ development visions discursively, as I have observed above with regard to their development priorities, but also to impose practical restrictions on local planning autonomy. This is despite the fact that the Commune Charter includes a category of responsibilities, called “consultative responsibilities”, which state that the council obligatorily gives its opinion on any project that will be implemented on the territory of the commune by the State or any other public institutions, and which is likely to generate expenses for the commune and/or damage the environment.76 However, this consultation is not taking place systematically, except in cases of investors’ requests for temporary occupation of the forest domain, via the water and forestry services.77 A major example is the communes’ participation in the three main national infrastructure programs for roads, water, and electricity provision. The communes do not have any role in the planning process, and their contribution is limited to financing the programs. It seems that the council is often not informed of government and provincial council projects, making it impossible to negotiate the commune’s

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required financial contributions and other details (interview TC19). For example, the council cannot influence the criteria used by the national electrification program to determine which households will be linked to the grid and which will not (Tighedouine August 2000 council meeting minutes). Given its very limited investment budget, the council is, in effect, forced to make requests to the relevant ministries – for example, in terms of school buildings (see council meeting minutes for Tighedouine February 2001, Ouirgane October 2002, and Feburary 2004); health centre staff (Ouirgane February 2004 meeting); sewerage (Tighdeouine October 2005 meeting), and the resolution of water conflicts. Indeed, when Tighedouine Commune commissioned its own technical study for the sewage network, it seems to have run into serious problems in terms of the quality of the consultant’s study (Tighedouine October 2003 meeting). Deconcentrated administrations dominate the relationships with the communes not only in technical terms but also financially. For example, in the region of MarrakechTensift-Al Haouz, the deconcentrated ministries spend on average over four times as much as local authorities on capital expenditure.78 There are also problems with the nature of the deconcentration process in Morocco itself. Certain measures designed to strengthen deconcentration did not make it into a real corollary that positively contributes to deepening the decentralization process at the commune level.79 For example, following a letter from the king to the Minister of the Interior in 1993, provincial technical committees (comite´ technique provincial, CTP) were set up in all provinces, to be presided over by the governor. This committee unites all the representatives of the different provincial ministerial directorates in weekly meetings, which are enlarged once a month to include the commune presidents. This committee is therefore the main tool for deconcentrated coordination. However, the continued dependency of the provincial directorates on their central ministries hampers the potential of this committee, and the commune presidents have very little say in it.80 The underlying issues here are the central administrations’ fear of losing their power and privileges, lack of trust, and lack of initiative on the part of the deconcentrated staff who have traditionally been

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used to simply execute the instructions coming from the central administration. There is also the problem of keeping up with changes in the de´coupage administratif, i.e. the territorial boundaries of the local authorities, and the fact that every administration establishes its deconcentrated services wherever it deems appropriate given its priorities and resources.81 This does not allow for coordinated interventions, and poses particular problems for the so-called “integrated” and “participatory” programs currently under way, including those of the INDH. Indeed, another major reason why the communes are sidelined in much of the decision making process is the “participatory” nature of several projects, which in practice means that the administration works directly with the newly created village associations or village committees rather than the council or commune staff. Although the 2020 Rural Development Strategy recognized the lack of linkage with local authorities, an evaluation of the strategy’s implementation concluded that the participatory approaches have created the illusion of local democracy by putting mechanisms in place that replace institutional solutions – such as support to local planning under the regular Five-Year Plan, or partnerships between local government and the administration (interview AC15).82 The evaluation states further that while some Provincial Delegations of the Agriculture Ministry (DPAs) have undertaken promising initiatives to adapt their programming to the areas of rural communes, these approaches are not mainstreamed yet. This means that some projects continue to produce community development plans, mostly focused on a village or douar (PDD), while others, such as the World Bank in the DRI-PMH project, produce municipal investment plans ( plan d’investissement communal, PIC; based on aggregating the Irrigated Perimeter Development Plans: plan de de´veloppement du perime`tre, PDP),83 or Socio-Economic Municipal Development Plans ( plan de de´veloppement e´conomique et social de commune, PDESC). Most importantly, these plans are in most cases drawn up by project consultants with minimal input from local councilors and civil servants. This can lead to unwise planning decisions, and erodes local accountability.84

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This lack of productive linkage between deconcentration and decentralization is illustrated by the extent to which the case study communes participated in two projects, both implemented by the DPA in Marrakech. In Tighedouine, the World Bank’s DRI-PMH project was working with two of the five tribal factions, while the IFAD’s Mountainous Areas project included most villages in the commune of Ouirgane. Both projects effectively started in 2002.85 In the DRI-PMH project, the PDPs were developed by the technical assistance consultants (rather than the originally planned “Participatory Planning Team”) and they, as well as the resulting PICs, were apparently not widely discussed or shared with the councilors or the local population. For example, there do not seem to be any official records of the only council meeting on the project (according to interview TS03, contradicted by TS04 and TC19). Most importantly, the consultants did not seek out municipal technical staff or members of the political opposition in the municipal council, even though these groups included some of the most knowledgeable persons in terms of previous (participatory) local development projects (TS02, TS03, TS06, TF16, WB02, WB08). The weak (formal) involvement of the commune is also illustrated by the fact that although it is obliged under the PIC to pay DH 240,000 in order to build drinking water installations (according to an Excel file received from interviewee WB01), this contribution was apparently covered retroactively in the form of a dirt track that the commune had built earlier and whose cost, miraculously, was exactly equal to the amount of the PIC contribution (TS06). It also emerged from the interviews that the consultants’ and council’s choice of two factions was overturned by the Governor himself, following the requests of certain powerful councilors who wanted their electoral districts to benefit. The result is the inclusion in the project of the faction of the President as well as the powerful businessman who is “pulling the strings” behind him. This faction has previously already benefited from several projects (see interviews TS02, TC02, TC08, TC12, TC19, WB01, WB02, HA03).86 In short, important opportunities were missed to ensure a transparent

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and fair process – thus improving the quality of the commune’s participation and debate at this initial stage of the project.87 In Ouirgane, the commune staff also voiced their frustration at not being involved in the IFAD project, since they could contribute with their technical and local knowledge as well as help in coordination. For example, some villages receive aid from up to two other donors in addition to IFAD, each with their own intervention procedures, while others do not receive any at all. The large number of small ventures included in the project contributes to the lack of strategic and coherent development planning at the commune level and limited overall impact. As for the councilors, at the project progress review meetings in the commune council in February 2004 and in December 2005 at the cercle, they voiced their concerns about promised projects that had not yet been implemented, since the high expectations raised and the long delays in implementation undermined their credibility with their constituents.88 The communes are also not really contributing financially to the IFAD project; according to the project document, they are estimated to pay for only 0.8 per cent of total project costs, and generally hardly figure in the document.89 However, the head of the IFAD project implementation unit at the DPA (interview IF05) insisted that the multi-year contractual programs (Contrat-Programmes, CPs) are signed with the commune council and the caı¨d, approving the village development plans (PDDs) before the start of project implementation. These case studies point to the problem of getting both the deconcentration and decentralization processes to advance in parallel – a desirable outcome, as they can undermine each other when one is lagging behind.

Conclusion This chapter has served to assess the communes’ administrative autonomy and capacity by examining eight main variables: their human resource base, the extent of independence from the Department of Local Authorities, the degree of awareness about the provisions in the new Commune Charter, the extent of the local agent of authority’s

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influence over council affairs, the application of the new concept of authority, the nature of local development priorities, the quality of the local planning process, and the character of relations with other government administrations. The findings presented here point to serious constraints in local government administrative autonomy and capacity. In terms of human resources, I found that between half and two thirds of the councilors are illiterate, and many are often absent from the communes. They represent a mostly traditional local elite based on private wealth, although an alternative and more outwardly open elite is emerging through better education, temporary urban or international migration, and the increasing need for development brokers. As for the civil servants, only a limited number of them are working directly on socio-economic development, and they do not have much incentive or opportunity to develop their skills. Their motivation is generally low due to tensions with the councilors. The tutelle exercised by the Ministry of the Interior is mostly of a strictly legal nature, but the councilors themselves seem to be uncomfortable with using the full “room for maneuver” to take decisions that they have in principle. Given the limited staff competences at the local level, a stronger tutelle in terms of technical standards might in fact be needed. I further found that the implementation of the Commune Charter is severely constrained by the councilors’ limited knowledge of its provisions, due mainly to insufficient training and information campaigns on the part of the Ministry of the Interior. This risks opening the door to continued conflicts of interests and the pursuit of personal gain, compounded by the increased “presidentialization” of local power. On the other hand, this limited knowledge of the charter also means that councilors will most probably never even try to push for the transfer of additional responsibilities and funding from central government. Indeed, even if the councilors were well informed, it seems that as long as the current system allows them to pursue their own vested interests without any significant interference from the population at large, there are no incentives for them to demand further decentralization of administrative powers.

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As for the influence of the local agent of authority in council affairs, it appears to be substantial. This is mainly due to his ability to mobilize the local population (through his network of cheikhs and muqaddims), although the discourses around human rights and the new concept of authority are gradually eroding his traditional influence, which was based on fear and repressive measures. It seems that the caı¨d’s persuasive influence on councilors depends to a great extent on his personality and intellectual capacity vis-a`-vis the council president. In addition, any informal, mutual accommodations and bargains that might have been concluded between the caı¨d and the councilors (especially those in the political majority) determine their relationships. Such accommodations are difficult for an outsider to discern. It is also difficult to generalize these findings, given that they are bound to differ from commune to commune. Finally, at least in the case study examples, the communes’ administrative and interactive capacity is further constrained by the councilors’ narrowly conceived development priorities. They are very much focused on basic infrastructure provision in their constituency villages, rather than on developing a commune-wide vision for economic growth, e.g. by attracting private investment, which would in turn increase local tax revenues and the ability to provide public services. National infrastructure programs and “participatory” rural development programs do not encourage the development of the councilors and population’s own priorities, mainly due to the lack of consultation (which is, however, legally obligatory). The national Five-Year Plan received scant attention, mainly because it would have interfered with tacit and politicized agreements between the councilors aimed at maintaining the council majority and their personal clientelist networks. A longerterm planning approach is emerging with the formulation of PCDs, but the proliferation of multiple local development plans by various other actors might reduce its potential importance for local development. The findings presented in this chapter stand in contrast to the “best practice” identified in the literature on public sector capacity. Based on six country case studies, Grindle and Hilderbrand stress the

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importance of organizational culture over structures for remuneration and control in order to explain effective public sector performance.90 Such organizational culture emphasizes flexibility, problem solving, participation, teamwork, shared professional norms, and a strong sense of mission. Successful human resources management also includes the effective utilization of those resources, i.e. ensuring that staff feel they are using their talents to accomplish meaningful tasks, with adequate equipment and with the prospect of having their good performance recognized in some way. These features thus go beyond those identified in the ideal Weberian bureaucracy model, which stresses meritocratic recruitment, good salaries, sharp sanctions against violations of organizational norms, and solid rewards for career-long performance – although these are crucial preconditions for achieving the “embedded autonomy” that characterizes the developmental states according to Evans.91 Based on the Moroccan case studies examined here, I would argue that tensions between commune staff and councilors (in particular, the council president), the role played by the tutelle authorities and the caı¨d in determining local decision making processes, the dependence on other ministerial departments for project planning and funding, and the ad hoc and opaque nature of the local planning process have all – at least, until recently – stifled the emergence of the desired organizational culture in the rural communes. Together with the findings on local government financial and political capacities that I present in the next chapter, this constitutes a serious obstacle to local synergies with CBOs based on complementarity and embeddedness.

CHAPTER 4 LOCAL GOVERNMENT FISCAL AUTONOMY AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION:EVIDENCE FROM TWO RURAL COMMUNES

In this chapter, I continue my analysis of local government capacity and the extent of decentralization in Morocco by focusing on the fiscal and political dimensions of these elements. As for the first, the degree of fiscal autonomy for local government is measured by the share of transfers from central government compared to local tax revenues in total local government revenue. As argued earlier in Chapter 1, this is a relevant indicator since a local revenue base contributes to a greater sense of ownership. In order to assess local government’s capacity to interact with other local actors, I analyze the proportion of recurrent to capital expenditures. If recurrent expenditure consumes all funds, there is limited scope for partnership with local civil society organizations.1 In terms of capital expenditure, I examine the nature of actual capital expenditure, and argue that the developmental impact of basic infrastructure investments remains limited due to the lack of certain complementary investments and initiatives. I also offer some possible explanations for the large budget surpluses that are carried over from previous years but which remain unspent.

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The second part of the chapter examines the extent of local-level participation in government, the extent of elite capture, and the role of political parties in enhancing accountability and programmatic voting. The chapter ends with a critical analysis of the impact of “participatory” development projects on political capabilities. As argued earlier, such political capabilities are important prerequisites for the emergence of participatory local governance. In other words, I am interested here in examining to what extent social forms of participation (in rural development projects) could enhance people’s political participation.

Local Government Revenues and Expenditure At the national level, an analysis of the revenue composition for rural communes in 2001 and 2006 (Table 4.1) shows that they are very heavily dependent on VAT transfers (accounting for almost 70 per cent of total revenues), and do not collect any significant local tax revenues themselves.2 At the level of Al Haouz province, I collected data for 39 communes over five years from the Department of Local Authorities at the Ministry of the Interior in Tahanout. I find that on average, VAT transfers account for 78 per cent of total revenue, and locally raised taxes (listed under “Other revenues”) for only 17 per cent (see Table 4.2; locally raised taxes increase slightly if the “revenues from forest domain” are added). Compared with the data at the national level, Al Haouz province is thus slightly more dependent on VAT transfers than the national average for rural communes (although the province data includes one urban commune). The revenues from the (supplementary) urban and businesses taxes are negligible because they are collected in only three communes of the province (interview HA07). Turning now to the two case study communes, I collected detailed budget data for the years 2001 – 6. When looking at the rate of growth of revenue in real terms over time (see Tables 4.3 and 4.4), I found the resource constraint to be considerable, given the important basic infrastructure and human development challenges in these communes. This is especially the case for Ouirgane, which has

LOCAL GOVERNMENT FISCAL AUTONOMY Table 4.1

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Revenue composition for rural communes 2001

VAT transfers Local taxes Business tax Urban tax Supplementary urban tax Other revenues Sub-total: current revenues VAT transfers for capital expenditures Loans Sub-total: capital revenues Total

2006

Amounts (in million DH)

Share of total revenues (in percentage)

Amounts (in million DH)

Share of total revenues (in percentage)

1,960 98 139 34 83

65 3 5 1 3

2,499 n/a 208 32 126

66

155 2,469

5 82

784 3,649

21 96

122

4

n/a

408 530

14 18

142 142

4 4

2,999

100

3,791

100

5 1 3

Source: DGCL, Collectivite´s locales en chiffres, E´dition 2002, p. 38 (Rabat: Centre de Documentation des Collectivite´s Locales, 2004) and DGCL, Collectivite´s locales en chiffres, E´dition 2009, p. 170 (Rabat: Direction Ge´ne´rale des Collectivite´s Locales, Direction des Affaires Juridiques, des Etudes, de la Documentation et de la Coope´ration, 2009).

roughly three times fewer inhabitants than Tighedouine but up to five times fewer revenues in certain years. When expressed in percentages and broken down into the various types of revenues, I found that on average, both case study communes are almost equally dependent on VAT, at 86 and 83 per cent respectively (see Table 4.5).3 Although some variation is seen between years, there is no perceptible declining trend. On the whole, Ouirgane is slightly less dependent on VAT thanks to its higher tourism and forest property receipts.

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Table 4.2 Revenue composition for Al Haouz province (based on the total for 39 communes), in percentages 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

2001– 2005 average

VAT transfer 80.2 81.8 70.2 78.0 80.2 Other revenues 14.8 13.0 24.9 16.2 14.5 Revenues from forest 2.5 2.6 2.5 2.5 2.6 domain National business 1.5 1.6 1.5 1.7 1.5 tax Supplementary 0.7 0.8 0.6 1.2 0.9 urban tax Urban tax 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.4 Total 100.0 100.1 100.0 100.0 100.1

78.1 16.7 2.5 1.6 0.8 0.3 100.0

Notes: The figures for the 18-month fiscal year 2000 –1 were adjusted for 12 months. 2005 figures are based on budget forecasts.

The most important implication of this marked dependence on central transfers is that it dilutes the commune councilors’ accountability to the local electorate.4 Moore suggests that the more a state earns its income through bureaucratic tax collection, the more it needs to enter into reciprocal arrangements with citizens about provision of services and representation in exchange for those tax contributions.5 This leads to the hypothesis that the greater the share Table 4.3 Total recurrent and investment revenues for Tighedouine commune (in Dirhams, DH)

2002

2003

2004

draft budget 2005

1,00,40,234 1,14,35,941 1,02,64,025 51,13,380

draft budget 2006

average 2002–2006

53,26,333

84,35,983

Notes: Data source: Tighedouine executed accounts collected from the commune administration, actual receipts (own calculations). The drastic fall in revenues observed in 2005 and 2006 draft budgets is due to the non-inclusion of end-of-year surpluses.

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Table 4.4 Total recurrent and investment revenues for Ouirgane commune (in Dirhams, DH)

2002

2003

2004

draft budget 2005

draft budget 2006

20,17,683 23,57,018 34,83,942 17,52,830 20,39,293

average 2002– 2006 23,33,245

Notes: Data source: Ouirgane executed accounts collected from the commune administration, actual receipts (own calculations). The figure for the 18-months fiscal year 2000–1 was adjusted for 12 months. The 2004 figure includes a VAT investment subsidy for electricity provision of DH 1.127.263. The fall in revenues observed in the 2005 and 2006 draft budgets is due to the non-inclusion of unused end-of-year surpluses.

that earned incomes represent in total revenues, the more likely it is that state–society relations will be characterized by accountability, responsiveness, and democracy. If we assume that this hypothesis is applicable to the case of local government in Morocco, the low share of such locally earned income in total revenues would suggest that the reciprocal element between the State and citizens is weak. The analysis and comparison of the recurrent revenue composition in the two case study communes points to a potential for increasing incomes from local taxes, real estate, and service fees – although tax enforcement seems to be the main problem. For example, local tax revenues in Ouirgane suffer from a decline in tourist and drinks taxes due to weak tax collection enforcement by the provincial tax collector from the Ministry of Finance (interview OS04). Tighedouine is not using this budget line at all yet, as the relevant article is absent in its fiscal decree. Ouirgane’s relative unimportance as a market centre is due to the lack of a road link to the Azzaden Valley, which means that the population there frequents the market in Asni instead.6 Real estate revenues are low due to missing property registration documentation, and the communes’ generally limited landownership. This is partly due to the multiple nature of land tenure status in Morocco (private, government, and collective lands,

85.8 3.3 8.3 0.0 1.0 1.5

T

O

0.2

83.6 11.2 2.8 0.8 1.5

2002

87.4 4.8 1.7 0.2 1.5 2.6 1.8

T

O

0.4

83.4 9.9 2.8 2.3 1.3

2003

81.8 4.5 6.1 0.1 1.1 3.5 2.9

T

O

0.8

83.4 6.2 2.8 5.3 1.5

2004

87.5 3.9 5.2 0.1 0.8 1.8 0.7

T

0.4

86.8 6.0 3.4 2.4 1.0

O 86.0 4.5 4.7 0.1 1.1 2.7 1.0

T

0.3

79.0 12.8 3.2 3.7 1.0

O

Draft budget 2006

O 85.7 82.7 4.2 8.9 5.2 2.9 0.1 3.0 1.1 1.2 2.4 1.6 0.4

T

Average 2001 – 2006

Notes: The 2000 –1 data is for 18 months due to the change in the fiscal year. Tighedouine data for 2000 – 1 is missing. Tighedouine data on revenues from treasury deposits and other incomes for 2002 is missing. Tighedouine receipts include a certain “rusum al-dahia” for 2003 and 2004 which have not been included as its revenue is negligeable. Ouirgane also has tax on impounded cars and a tax on markets which have not been included as their revenues are negligeable. Ouirgane forest receipts largely surpassed the budget estimates for 2005 as they accounted already for 6.8% as of 30.9.05.

100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.3 99.1

0.3

79.9 12.7 2.6 3.5 1.0

2000 – 2001 O

Draft budget 2005

Revenue composition for Tighedouine (T) and Ouirgane (O) communes (in percentages)

VAT Local tax revenues Real estate revenues Forest property revenues Administrative service fees Other service fees Revenues from treasury deposits and other incomes Total

Table 4.5

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as well as religious endowments – habous or waqf), and the cumbersome acquisition procedures (interviews HA10, NG07).7 Similarly, although forests account for a large proportion of the two communes’ land, revenues from forest properties are low.8 In Ouirgane, the creation of two reserves for Barbary sheep, as well as a royal reserve (in 2002) means that the commune cannot receive revenues from hunting leases, and the sale of wood is limited to that cut down as part of the N’Fis dam construction (OS01, OS04). In Tighedouine, no fellings are taking place in order to protect the fragile nature of the forest (according to the local forest guard, TS09).9 Administrative service fees (essentially from the registry office’s issuing of birth and death certificates) are negligible. Ouirgane commune does not charge for any other services at all, even though its fiscal decree gives it the right to charge for the use of the ambulance and public scales. The Tighedouine fiscal decree includes an article that cites a decision of the Minister of the Economy and the Prime Minister of 26 January 1993. It stipulates the price of water and meter rent, and puts the burden on the user to pay for the connection and pipes. The problem of collecting the water service payments from users was mentioned in council sessions in 1999 and 2002, but it seems that they were substantially paid only in 2004.10 Hence it appears that the commune’s capital investments in the water sector (see below) bring in virtually no returns. Finally, incomes from treasury deposits are negligible in both communes. This problem of increasing local revenues has to do with both legal and political issues. On the legal side, an analysis of the two communes’ fiscal decrees, which set out in detail all the local taxes including their amounts or bands, reveals a plethora of local taxes that in practice would seem virtually impossible to collect. Enforcing all these taxes would also be quite inefficient, given the small amounts involved. However, the fiscal decrees cannot be changed quickly as they need to be approved by both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Finance. The Moroccan Government has recognized the need to reform the local tax system, and agreed on a law that became effective in 2007 and was amended in 2010. It reduces the number of taxes and fees, and gives more power to

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councils to determine the rates within a band determined by the law (Laws 47– 06 and 05 – 10).11 There is also a political dimension to the tax collection problem. Despite repeated appeals for his help, it seems that the Council President in Tighedouine does not want to help with enforcement so as to preserve his chances of re-election and his relationships with the other councilors. The commune’s tax collector pointed to the possibility of increasing the rents of certain shops, whose monthly rent has remained the same low DH 20 (about e2) for the last decade.12 However, there was resistance to this idea from the shop owners, and it was dropped since the councilors fear electoral consequences (interview TS08).13 When asked about the possibility of raising tax levels, the councilors themselves referred mostly to the high incidence of poverty in the population, arguing that their constituents would not be able to pay increased taxes anyway (TC01, TC05, TC08, TC11, TC15). This data demonstrates the local governments’ dependence on central government fiscal transfers, the proliferation of local taxes that do not bring in any substantial revenue, and the difficulty for the commune staff on enforcing tax collection. I argued above that the limited share of local taxes in local government revenue presents limited scope for reciprocal arrangements with the local population and civil society. In addition, since most tax rates and fees cannot be set autonomously or in a speedy fashion, the communes do not, in practice, control their own revenue. This means that they cannot increase or decrease their provision of local services freely according to the population’s needs. As well as negatively affecting the efficiency of service delivery, this situation reduces both local autonomy and accountability.14 As will be seen in the next chapter, local CBOs have stepped in to provide some of these services. There is therefore considerable scope for partnerships in service provision, but these are likely to be hindered by bureaucratic delays and political interests. I turn now to the analysis of local government expenditure. At the national level in Morocco, the annual average of local authorities’ expenditures represents 15 per cent of the state budget

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(it is 50 per cent in France) and 5 per cent of GDP from the mid-90s to the mid-00s.15 In 2006, expenditure by local governments constituted 10 per cent of total public expenditure.16 Urban communes account for over half of total local authority expenditure, whereas rural communes account for only one quarter (the rest is spent by the regions and provinces). This shows a very strong urban bias, given that there are over six times more rural communes than urban ones.17 In order to assess the communes’ leeway in investing in their developmental infrastructure, it is useful to be aware of the proportion of recurrent and capital expenditures in the total budget.18 At the national level, I observe that recurrent expenditure dominates total expenditure, accounting for two thirds of the latter in 2001 and even more in 2006 (Table 4.6).19 The wage bill takes up almost half of all available resources in 2001, although this has decreased to 36 per cent in 2006. This severely limits rural communes’ role in providing infrastructure and services. This dominance of the wage bill in total expenditure at the national level is borne out in the provincial and case study commune data. Table 4.7 shows the aggregated data for all 39 communes in Al Haouz province. I calculate that staff expenditures account on average for 42 per cent of total expenditure. The steady increase in recurrent expenditures as a proportion of total expenditures (from 56 per cent in 2001 to 81 per cent forecast for 2005) is particularly worrying. Turning now to the two case study communes, I present the evolution of recurrent and capital expenditures in Table 4.8. In line with the findings at national and provincial levels, I find that on average, the share of recurrent expenditure dominates total expenditure, although to a lesser extent in Tighedouine (61 per cent) than in Ouirgane (84 per cent).20 The composition of recurrent and capital expenditures in the case study communes warrants a more detailed analysis in order to assess the scope for partnerships with other local actors, and the commune’s capacity for public service delivery. Starting with recurrent expenditures (see Table 4.9), I observe that staff-related expenditures make up between 51 and 77 per cent of total recurrent expenditure.21

66 23 4 0 6 34 100

1,632 572 100 10 155 837 2,469

4,565

565

4,000

1,660 1,762 102 476

Amounts (in million DH)

100

12

88

36 39 2 11

Share of total expenditures (in percentage)

2006

Source: DGCL, Collectivite´s locales en chiffres, E´dition 2002, p. 40 and DGCL, Collectivite´s locales en chiffres, E´dition 2009, pp. 170 – 172, author calculations.

48 13 5

Share of total expenditures (in percentage)

1,193 320 119 n/a

Amounts (in million DH)

2001

Expenditure composition for rural communes

Staff costs Other expenditures Loan repayments Technical Affairs Domain (Public Lighting) Sub-total: current expenditures New infrastructure and major repairs Mobile property acquisitions Real estate acquisitions Other expenditures Sub-total: capital expenditures Total

Table 4.6

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Table 4.7 Expenditure composition for Al Haouz province (based on the total for 39 communes), in percentages 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 Staff 40 Operating costs and other 13 expenditures Annual loan repayments 3 Sub-total: recurrent 56 expenditures Capital expenditures 44 (revenue surplus) Total 100

2001 – 2005 average

41 14

37 26

42 20

48 24

42 20

9 64

8 71

10 72

9 81

8 69

36

29

28

19

31

100

100

100

100

100

Notes: The figures for the 18-month fiscal year 2000– 1 were adjusted for 12 months. 2005 figures are based on budget forecasts.

This means that the communes are severely constrained in terms of expenditure decisions, given that staff cannot easily be fired. As for public infrastructure maintenance expenditure, there were no investments in road maintenance (except in the draft 2005 budget for Tighedouine), and the largest items are payments of electricity and water fees. This is certainly related to the weak enforcement of user fees observed in the previous section. It seems therefore likely that the commune is paying these charges in place of the users, although it was not possible to verify this. The communes’ maintenance capacity is also weakened by the need to repay loans taken out from the Local Government Infrastructure Fund (the FEC) for the PERG and PAGER programs.22 These loan repayments will undoubtedly increase in the coming years – especially for Tighedouine, which took out a loan to cover the commune’s contribution to the third phase of the PERG. Social expenditure includes budget lines for charitable contributions, male circumcision campaigns, the purchase of vaccination material, and maintenance of the local cemetery. Most importantly for this study, it includes a budget line for “aid to local associations and foundations”, but no amounts were issued under this line. Social

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Table 4.8 Evolution of recurrent and capital expenditure as share of total expenditure for Tighedouine (T) and Ouirgane (O) communes (in percentages)

2000– 2001 2002 O T Recurrent expenditures Capital expenditures Total

2003

2004

Draft budget 2005

Draft budget 2006

Average 2001– 2006

T

O

T

O

T

O

T

O

T

O

83

62

36

86

64

63

68

94

75

94

61

84

17

38

64

14

36

37

32

6

25

6

39

16

100

100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Notes: Data missing for Tighedouine 2000– 1 and for Ouirgane 2002. Tighedouine 2002: using author’s calculations of the total. Recurrent expenditures exclude surplus to second part of the budget.

expenditure is clearly not a priority for the commune, since it only accounts for between 1 and 5 per cent of total recurrent expenditures (although more resources are budgeted than issued). The membership fee in the Al Haouz union of communes, which allows the communes to cheaply rent heavy machinery and trucks for roadworks, however, is more important, especially for Tighedouine (given its larger population; the fee is calculated on a per capita basis).23 Given the substantial membership fee, it might be more advantageous for the commune to invest in its own machinery and rent it out to farmers or village associations. Overall, judging by their social expenditures, both communes’ engagement in partnerships is very limited. The case study communes’ capital expenditure composition helps us to gauge the communes’ financial capacity for public service delivery. First of all, the per capita calculations (using Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP) 2004 census data) reveal that on average Ouirgane spends only DH 46 per capita per year on investment expenditure (about e4.60), while Tighedouine spends about double this amount.24 The provincial average was DH 50 in 2004. Table 4.10 presents the composition of investment expenditures for the two case study communes over the period 1998–2006.

60 24 10 1 5

O

T

T

O

2004

2003 T

O

T

O

Draft budget 2006

T

O

Average 2001 – 2006

77 51 73 53 74 52 72 55 74 11 35 11 33 10 28 13 29 11 2 6 4 5 4 6 4 7 3 0 1 2 5 4 3 4 2 2 2 7 3 5 2 4 2 5 2 9 8 6 7 6 1 8 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

58 26 9 3 5

Note: Data is missing for Tighedouine 2000 –1 and Ouirgane 2002.

76 9 1 0 2 13 100

2000 – 2001 2002 O T

Draft budget 2005

Recurrent expenditure composition for Tighedouine (T) and Ouirgane (O) communes (in percentages)

Staff Operating expenditures Public infrastructure maintenance costs Social expenditures Membership in Al Haouz union of communes Loan repayments Total

Table 4.9

93

61

0 100

28 100

7 100

62 62 93 7

31

2000 – 2001 O

57 22 21

30

27

3

5 3 71 12 15

20

45

29

71

25

25

22

47 47 86 4 10

13

25

T

93 5 1

67

20

6

O

2004

66 30 4

18

48

T

57

0 43

O

57

O

38 19 30 43 30 89 100 2

21

T

74 13 11

18

25

31

T

73 10 9

29

32

12

O

Average 1999– 2006

1 7 9 2 42 43 30 29 14 7 34 100 11 0 26 27 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

58 16 26

33 15 7

18

O

T

T

O

2003

2002

Draft budget 2006

Notes: Data is missing for Tighedouine for 1998 –1999, 1999 –2000, and 2000 –2001. Tighedouine 2004: budget line called ’water or electricity network’ was added to ’public drinking water network’.

100

72 4 24

4

7

1999 – 2000 O

7

1998 – 1999 O

Draft budget 2005

Capital expenditure composition for Tighedouine (T) and Ouirgane (O) communes (in percentages)

Infrastructure: Roads and bridges Infrastructure: Water of which payment for PAGER Infrastructure: Electricity of which payment for PERG Sub-Total: Infrastructure Mobile property Real estate and construction/ repairs Technical studies Contribution to INDH Sub-Total: Non-infrastructure Total

Table 4.10

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The main observation is the predominance of basic infrastructure investments in roads, water, and electricity in both communes. As for the rural electrification program (PERG), it is progressing rapidly in terms of households that are being connected (according to the agreements that the communes have signed with the National Electricity Office).25 However, the program also places considerable financial pressure on the communes, especially in Tighedouine. National infrastructure programs, such as rural electrification, therefore seriously constrain the commune’s investment options. They also crowd out communes’ borrowing for other investments. The data for FEC loans to all the communes in Al Haouz province shows that 80 per cent of the almost DH 68 million in FEC loans since 1993 went to the national electrification program, and the rest to sewerage systems, roads, and the purchase of garbage trucks.26 These investment priorities are mirrored by the regional council’s investments in Al Haouz province over 2004– 6 (DH 15.5 million), which went almost exclusively to roads, digging wells, and building pumping stations.27 In the following paragraphs, I argue, in the context of rural road provision, that the communes’ infrastructure investments have limited developmental impact. The underlying reason for this is that the value of an investment is related to that of complementary investments that develop and complete a network.28 It seems that these complementary investments are missing in the case study communes. Basic rural infrastructure is essential for human, social, and economic development. The benefits of rural roads construction have been widely demonstrated. They include year-round access, lower prices for freight and passenger services, and a decrease in the time it takes for the population to access government administrative offices, agricultural extension personnel (who educate farmers on appropriate farming techniques and technologies), health centres, and rural markets. Agricultural activity also increases in terms of volume of production, productivity of the land, and monetary values of the output, as farmers switch from low-value cereals to high-value fruit orchards.29

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However, complementary actions are needed if rural roads are to benefit the poor. Private and public-sector institutions (including agricultural extension services) need to ensure the provision of viable and affordable transport services, and to address the problem of limited access to financial services (including credit and risk management instruments), key inputs such as seed and fertilizer, and output markets. They should also provide support for producer associations. In the absence of such complementary measures, road construction will only benefit the better-off who have surplus funds to invest in trading, an agricultural surplus to sell, or a network of connections and relationships outside the community that enables them to take advantage of trading or working opportunities. In short, the provision of roads needs to be coupled with incentives for livelihood enhancement in order to make an impact in povertyreduction terms.30 (A similar argument can be made for rural electrification: when electricity becomes available, it is used mainly for lighting, television, and other appliances, while its use for income-generating activities requires complementary equipment that is generally beyond the reach of the poor.)31 These observations are borne out in the case study communes. For example, although the dirt track along the Zat Valley was built a few years ago, there has been no change in cropping patterns as the farmers lack the savings to diversify. Only two (informal, privatelyoperated) Land Rovers service this road despite the considerable number of inhabitants living along it. The benefits of local public investments seem to be “privatized” by a few persons rather than enjoyed by the population at large. About 80 per cent of the transport of agro-pastoral products continues to be made on foot or on mules. Cash crops such as potatoes, apples, pears, and those with added value (cheese, jams, honey, etc.) hardly exist in the Zat Valley (interview TC19, personal communication with interviewee AC06, and fieldwork observations). The commune council has not taken much initiative in providing complementary activities by, for instance, soliciting the intervention of deconcentrated government administrations, private sector establishments, or local CBOs. For example, the commune services

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could put information about tourism-related investment opportunities at the disposal of potential investors (interview NG06). This passive attitude can be explained by the quality of human resources available at the commune, and the lack of vision for strategic planning on the part of the councilors, as observed earlier. The councilors, many of whom are businessmen, might also fear the increased economic competition that would result from such policies. In any case, soliciting and coordinating other actors’ intervention does not necessarily cost much in monetary terms, but it does require visionary leadership. This situation is not helped by the fact that the agricultural extension services based in the village of Touama are badly equipped and understaffed, and therefore not able to intervene effectively in the nine communes that they are supposed to cover. Moreover, they reportedly need permission from the Ministry of the Interior to carry out field visits, which limits their responsiveness (WB03 and WB04; similar for IF02). This situation at the local level mirrors policy limitations at the national level. As a rural sociologist pointed out, the PERG program seems to have been conceived “as if history stops today”; he asked, “what happens after the PERG? How are people supposed to pay for electricity and what are they supposed to do with it?” He argued that the National Electricity Office’s mission is limited to bringing electricity to the villages and does not extend to improving economic productivity, but that the population cannot achieve this on its own. He concluded that there is no development idea behind the PERG (interview AC10). The fact that the communes are not investing in complementary infrastructure and services is even more unfortunate given their sizeable, but unused, end-of-year surpluses. The accounts of the case study communes show considerable capital surpluses that are being carried over from previous years.32 My calculations, based on executed account data, show that for Tighedouine, the carry-over surplus from the preceding year was on average three times greater than the current surplus, and for Ouirgane, it was about 2.4 times larger. Indeed, many local authorities in Morocco do have considerable resources that could be used for capital expenditure – at least in theory. A newspaper article citing treasury

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data claimed that Moroccan local authorities had accumulated a surplus of DH 19.3 billion by the end of 2009, amounting to 2.6 per cent of GDP or 9 per cent of the total 2010 government budget.33 There are three main possible reasons for these considerable but unused end-of-year surpluses: expenditure delays, poor or politically motivated planning, and use of these surpluses to cover the national budget deficit. The delays in expenditure are due on the one hand to the tutelle authorities, whose authorization is needed to transfer funds from one budget line to another or to utilize resources allocated for contingencies. These procedures are slow.34 On the other hand, expenditure delays also result from the cumbersome public procurement procedures in place, which lead to payment delays. A second possible reason is poor investment planning and implementation. The Director of the DCL in Tahanout explained that some projects planned for the year 2000 had still not been implemented at the time of fieldwork. This was because the projects were not chosen well, did not respond to real needs, or were not urgent. He summed up the problem as being one not of over but of underspending (interview HA03).35 Nevertheless, as indicated in the previous chapter, these surpluses could also be a sign of a change in the communes’ development-planning strategy, i.e. the accumulation of budget allocations over several years in order to be able to invest in one large project. Alternatively, this strategy could be entirely politically motivated, as councilors prefer to accumulate a “war chest” until an election year and then spend it all on one massive and highly visible investment project in order to secure the votes necessary for re-election (personal communication from interviewee AC05). The third main reason for the large surpluses has to do with treasury policy at the national level. The total of urban and rural communes’ surpluses amount to huge sums: DH 11 billion in 2001 (compared to DH 2.8 billion in savings). These are used by the General Treasury to cover the government’s budget deficit, at least on paper. Hence, the Ministry of Finance has little interest in encouraging the communes to spend more of these funds on capital expenditures (interview GO09, and personal communication from interviewee AC04).36

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While it is difficult to assess the relative importance of each of these three explanations, I suggest that the first one will become relatively less pertinent in the near future, as delays in VAT transfers are being addressed and procurement procedures reformed, and the third reason should also not be a major impediment, as there are no legal obstacles to communes spending their surpluses. Thus, more strategic development planning, albeit with populist motives, seems to be the most plausible explanation, at least for now. Having reviewed the main features of local finances in rural Morocco, I now turn to a discussion of the nature of local political representation and participation.

Public Participation in Local Politics Due to the composition of my interview sample, the following findings on public participation in commune politics are based mostly on the interviews with councilors rather than with ordinary citizens. Asked about their views on the general populace’s participation in council decisions, most councilors said that the population does not take part in council decisions, since it is the councilors who make them in their stead. They suggested, however, that the population informs them of their needs and that they try to address them either right away or in the next budget proposal (interviews TC02, TC03, TC04, TC05, TC06, TC07, TC08, TC09, TC11, TC12, OC05, OC06, OC10). This might explain the very limited public attendance at council meetings in both communes, from which women are completely absent, but other factors are probably much more plausible.37 High illiteracy levels among the population and a lack of information about council meetings are other possible constraints on public participation in commune politics. The 2002 Municipal Charter (Articles 63 and 67) states that the council’s plenary sessions are public and that their agendas, dates, and decisions must be posted on the commune building. Every voter in the commune has the right to a copy of the minutes. In practice, it seems that only a few citizens know about these provisions or find out about council meetings (interview OS01).38 In addition, as argued earlier, low local tax rates

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and per capita expenditures mean that citizens do not have significant incentives to hold councilors accountable for their spending choices. And as electoral districts mostly comprise more than one village, some parts of the population may not feel represented on the council. They feel that the relevant councilor only represents his own village of origin or residence in the council (TA04, TA29). The interviews also tried to assess the level of information flowing from the councilors to their constituents between elections. Most councilors claimed that they consulted and informed the population regularly about commune affairs (interviews TC02, TC03, TC04, TC06, TC07, TC14, TC16, TC19, OC02, OC04, OC06, OC07, OC08, OC11). However, the predominant view from the small sample of the population consulted during fieldwork (and who are not related to a councilor or cheikh) was that the councilors do not inform them of council decisions (TF01, TF04, TF06, TF08, TF10, TF11, TF12, TF15, OA31; and even one muqaddim, TA12). Indeed, the population was generally very negative about their MPs and councilors, saying that they are not doing anything for the population or only having a limited impact. As one farmer expressed it, “the commune hasn’t given our village even a coffee spoonful of cement” (TF02). The interviews with some of the village association members confirmed this attitude. They stated that “we haven’t seen [our councilor] since the elections” (TA04, TA12, OA31). It seems, from field observations, that the population prefers to ask their muqaddims and cheikhs to resolve their problems, or address the caı¨d directly.39 Only a few councilors complained about their constituents’ lack of interest in council affairs despite their efforts to get them to attend meetings (TC18, OC01, OC09). One even accused the population of only being interested in receiving money for their votes at election time (TC13).40 A more fundamental reason for low public participation in commune affairs may lie in the fact that the current communal administrative boundaries have not succeeded in creating a feeling of belonging to the community, i.e. the commune has not yet become an integral part of citizens’ identity. Indeed, it is even possible to speak of a ‘communal illusion’. This is linked to rural – urban

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migration patterns and the continued importance of the tribe (taqbilt) and village (douar) for people’s emotional attachments, collective identities, and relationships of solidarity. King Hassan II tried to develop a sense of local attachment among the country’s youth by introducing, in 1998, a new subject called le fait local, i.e. “local affairs”, in the curriculum of the baccalaureate, under which students have to prepare a paper on their local authority of origin.41 If public participation in commune politics is limited, it is worth examining the accountability mechanisms available to the political opposition in the council. At the time of fieldwork in Tighedouine, there was a majority of 16 councilors and an opposition of seven; while in Ouirgane the situation was eight against three (one opposition member had recently switched to the majority, allegedly because he depended on the favor of the President for a building permit). Indeed, the relationship between the council majority and opposition seemed to be a very conflictual and unproductive one. Most opposition councilors expressed their frustration at not having any influence at all in the council, especially since they are very well educated (the ex-President of Tighedouine is a university professor in geography, and three other opposition members there hold university degrees; interviews TC10, TC15, TC18, TC19, OC11). As the ex-President (at the time of fieldwork; since the 2009 elections, he is again the President) of Tighedouine argued, the major drawback of the 2002 Commune Charter is that it has not addressed the issue of the rights of the opposition in the council, and in fact enshrines the “dictatorship of the majority”, which means that “if you have the majority in the commune council you can do anything you like” (interview TC19). The analysis of my sample of council meeting minutes shows that the council opposition is indeed unable to influence voting outcomes, as stable majorities mean that virtually all the president’s proposals are accepted (except one in Tighedouine, August 2000, when the council refused to approve the executed accounts, in the context of ousting the President). Only very few council decisions represented a modification of the president’s proposal or a new proposal that emerged during the discussion (9 decisions out of a total of 62 decisions). Looking at voting outcomes on the executed

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accounts, the surplus allocation, and the budget proposal, it is always the same members of the majority who vote in favor and the same members of the opposition against, or they are listed as abstentions (except in the Ouirgane February 2005 meeting). Opposition councilors’ requests to add agenda points are sometimes rejected without any convincing reason (see Ouirgane October 2003 meeting). The members of the opposition are excluded from council commissions and cannot hold any formal position in the council (except for one in Ouirgane who is vicerapporteur, but who claims that he is excluded from the budget commission meetings, contrary to the provisions in the Commune Charter; interview OC07). This means that opposition members’ access to information is restricted, and explains why their demands for budget and accounting information take up significant time in council meetings although they remain largely unanswered. The minutes also record numerous procedural objections by opposition councilors. For example, they argued that they should each be given a copy of the executed accounts in advance of the meeting (instead of just listening to them being read out), and that they should be read by the council’s budget officer and not by commune staff. In Tighedouine, it was only when even the caı¨d asked for copies of the executed accounts in February 2005 that the request was answered. This inability to access information and to influence council decisions also explains the collective walkouts – notably in Tighedouine in February 2004, when six opposition councilors left the meeting after the discussion of the executed accounts but before the vote, saying that the discussion had not been complete. Hence, if even members of the council cannot hold those in power accountable, it is hard to see how this could be possible for the wider population. The President of Tighedouine commune had the following to say with regard to the local village associations’ capacity to influence council decisions, especially in rural areas (interview TC01): In cases where their relationship [with the council] is not harmonious, the associations can resort to the provincial

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administration which will ensure that the requests are passed down to the commune president. In urban areas, the NGOs use different medias, such as magazines and newspapers, and hold demonstrations with posters. There are more developed forms to exert pressure on the local councils to implement projects in favor of the inhabitants and in the interest of development. In rural areas there are channels to present suggestions to the council presidency, but these channels are still in the construction phase. The dominance of the council majority can also be interpreted as evidence of interest group capture, since it means that certain tribal factions are excluded from access to information and material benefits such as infrastructure. Clientelism within an electoral district was observed in the previous chapter with regard to local planning. It refers to the practice by individual councilors of punishing those inhabitants who did not vote for them by excluding them from infrastructure projects. For the Moroccan case, systematic studies are lacking, but the tribal history of most of the country arguably clashes with the imposed “democratic” framework and the idea of free elections. Hamimaz talks of the “tribal” syndrome in explaining how local election campaigns have contributed to intra and inter-tribal conflicts.42 She cites anecdotal evidence of politicians’ punishment for disobedient voters in the form of exclusion from public infrastructure and the arbitrary imposition of fines.43 I also found evidence of clientelism involving political parties in Al Haouz province, which explains the virtual absence of programmatic voting there.

Political Representation and Accountability, and the Role of Political Parties The following findings from the case study communes illustrate the arguments that I made earlier about the nature and role of political parties at the national level (see Chapter 2). The party of the majority in both councils, the ADL, was founded only in 2002. The local party

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leader is a very wealthy businessman and owner of a sewage pipe factory in Ait Ourir, as well as president of a commune in Al Haouz. He joined this new party because he knew that he would not be able to keep his seat as MP of the Constitutional Union due to the new electoral list system introduced in 2002 (interview MP01). In the 2003 municipal elections, the ADL party captured the presidency and majority in 14 of the 39 communes in Al Haouz province, including the two case study communes. However, the links between the ADL and its councilors are weak. This is illustrated by the fact that many of the ADL councilors interviewed did not even recall the name of their party. Several long-time councilors had changed parties with each new election (OC03, OC04, OC09, TC16).44 The relative unimportance of political parties is illustrated by the replies of a rich and powerful councilor, the owner of a construction company in Tighedouine, who declared that he “represents the political party of Tighedouine”, and when asked about his electoral district, stated that he “represents all the villages in Tighedouine” (TC11). When asked why they joined the ADL, the councilors gave various answers – but none of them mentioned any kind of ideological affiliation. They replied that it was simply because they needed party affiliation in order to stand in the elections; that all the other candidates had chosen the ADL; that the party representative had promised them material benefits, such as roads and electricity; or because they hoped to receive money to finance their campaigns (interviews TC02, TC03, TC06, OC08, OC10).45 Most strikingly, a few councilors openly admitted that they had each received one tonne of cement from the ADL MP’s factory for each village that they represent, in return for securing the inhabitants’ votes in the next parliamentary elections in 2007.46 Two councilors had put this cement to collective use by building a water reservoir and the office of a village association (OC03, OC05, OC09, OC10, TA21).47 Indeed, according to council meeting minutes in Tighedouine for February 2005, the MP for ADL even offered to build the bridge over the Zat River without the commune’s contribution. The opposition councilors were suspicious of this gesture, preferring to involve the Ministry of Public Works in order to ensure the necessary quality. All this points to the

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strong possibility that the local party leader was in the process of reinforcing a clientelist network that he hoped would help him secure his re-election as MP in the 2007 legislative elections.48 The relationship between councilors and MPs mirrors that between MPs and ministers. The MP for the Popular Movement in Al Haouz province, for example, uses his relationship with his party colleague, the Minister of Agriculture, to secure funds that he was refused at the provincial level – for example, to build an irrigation canal in his commune (interview MP02). This example confirms Denoeux and Desfosses’ finding that in Morocco, most constituents (especially in rural areas and among the poor) “tend to believe that an MP’s proper role is to be an intermediary between the population and the bureaucracy, and to intercede with the latter for services, favors, and the resolution of personal grievances”.49 Similarly, with regard to the elections for the provincial council, a USAID study notes that the only stake in the electoral competition for the council presidency is personal proximity to the governor, which is seen as a means to build up a client base in order to fulfill further political ambitions.50 These predominantly clientelist relations do not necessarily mean that there is frequent contact between the local party leader and his councilors. Contact is, in fact, mostly limited to a few days at the beginning of the election campaign when mutual promises are made. A councilor compared it to the threshing of wheat during harvest time (‘aroua’), when all the mules and horses of the villages are pooled to help each farmer: “This is what the political parties are doing, they assemble everyone during election time and then they leave again” (interview TC08). The political leadership in more established parties, such as the leftist USFP, does not communicate party programs to the local level either, as the ex-President of Tighedouine and the President of the regional council explained (TC19, MP05). As Ait Hamza observes, no commitment links the party with the candidate, but both gain from the arrangement: the parties embellish their image by increasing the number of members on their lists and assuring a large coverage of electoral districts, while the candidates fulfill a required administrative formality.51 After the elections, both

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are again free to behave as they like, and the political party program never even enters the discussion. It is therefore no surprise that almost none of the ADL councilors were able to cite any points in the ADL political party program (some of the councilors did not even seem to understand the notion of a party program; see interviews TC04, TC05, TC08, TC09, TC12, OC03, OC08, OC10). The councilors who did remember the program vaguely defined it as developing the communes’ basic infrastructure (TC01, OC05, OC06). This interpretation sounds more like an electoral promise than a program, and contrasts somewhat with the “official” ADL program as described by the MP’s Political Secretary who emphasized employment creation (MP01). In short, the lack of substantive policy issues in party programs means that there is no room for programmatic voting at the commune level. As one councilor put it, “you know well that in Morocco the programs are just to be elected and after the elections they don’t matter anymore. The parties only want to win the elections; because if they had real programs there wouldn’t be 40 parties but just two” (OC11).52 However, the MP for the Popular Movement party argued that ahead of the 2007 legislative elections, accountability towards the electorate is becoming more important: All the programs are maybe the same, but this year in 2006, we will find big changes because now the people in 2006 are not the people from 1985 or so; [. . .] Because in the past, it was only orally, only words, but [the program] was never implemented. But now the people have changed a bit, if you tell them: “tomorrow I will do this and that”; they will tell you: “you have not even finished the work that you had promised earlier” (MP02).

The Impact of “Participatory” Development Projects on People’s Political Capabilities Given their widespread and increasing presence in rural areas in Morocco, it is useful to consider whether participatory development

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projects contribute to political learning, mobilization, and political action on the part of the rural population involved in such projects (see Chapter 1). In sum, do participatory projects enhance the political capabilities of the participants? A consideration of this issue means addressing the questions of who gets to participate, and how. In the following section, I will draw mainly on two major project case studies: the World Bank’s integrated and community-based smallscale irrigation project (known as DRI-PMH) in Tighedouine commune, and the IFAD’s Mountainous Areas project in the commune of Ouirgane.53 I will argue that their potential contribution to strengthening political capabilities is rather limited, given the extent of elite capture and the modalities of participation. The latter emphasize financial and labor contributions, rather than the involvement of the “participants” in the negotiation and planning phases, which could translate into political skills. Furthermore, the examples cited here illustrate the risk of implementing “participatory” projects without changing organizational cultures in the government administration or lifting bureaucratic constraints. The risk is that the government administration loses the trust of and credibility with the “participants”, which in turn will make future state– society partnerships even more problematic and unlikely. As I argued earlier in general terms (in Chapter 2), social participation in state-led rural development programs in Morocco – at least until the 1990s – was dominated by a concern for cost sharing, and participatory techniques were used as a means of gaining the adherence of the population rather than as a modus operandi. Nevertheless, the 2020 Rural Development Strategy did link rural development to democratization and citizenship at the local level: Rural development requires responsible citizens. Granting freedom of expression and choice to the rural inhabitants constitutes a first condition for their involvement in development; this means there is a need for developing dialogue and consultation spaces, which will make it possible to inject dynamism into the democratization process at the local level.54

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The strategy’s definition of participation also gives some cause for optimism: “Participation aims at rendering the development actors responsible through mechanisms that allow them to make planning choices themselves, and then have control over the use of the resources allocated to the chosen activities.”55 This definition could thus be qualified as falling into the category of “interactive or deliberative participation” (see Table 1.1 in Chapter 1). The strategy also recognizes that the notion of “negotiation” between the government administration and the rural population is central to such a view of participation.56 In practice, the negotiation phase in participatory projects usually results in a one or multi-year contract between a village committee or association and the implementing ministry, such as the DPA. Such an arrangement could be compared to a “social contract”, which reflects an acceptable compromise between individual and collective interests, and between short and long-term concerns. Ideally, it also reflects a compromise between concerns for the environment (sustainability of resources), the economy (the increasing value of investments), and social structures (power distribution, social equity).57 A social contract in the democratic sense implies that there are possibilities of appeal when obligations are not respected. However, in development projects, this aspect is often left vague and favors the government administration. While the administration can suspend a contract in case village beneficiaries do not fulfill their obligations, the villagers have no obvious means to force the administration to fulfill its obligations. This is linked to the fact that the village committees have no legal status and no legal claim to the land or the natural resources that are being “developed”.58 These points are well-illustrated by the findings on the IFAD project. The IFAD project preparation document states that The beneficiaries themselves will establish a douar development plan [PDD] based on the priority activities chosen. This plan will be the first contractual document proposed by the douar and will be followed by annual work contracts to be signed each year. During a “consolidation”

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phase, douar development committees will be set up to ensure correct implementation of the annual work contracts for which their respective douars are responsible (emphasis added).59 The reality seems to be rather different. My analysis of the PDDs for the villages in Ouirgane commune revealed numerous examples of “cut-and-paste” (e.g. the same geographical or demographic details were given in the documentation for two different villages). This points to a very superficial, if not careless, approach to participatory planning. Asked about this finding, IFAD project staff members (interviews IF01, IF03) blamed the responsible water and forestry services staff’s low motivation, or referred to a shortage of local staff; ten staff members apparently ended up drafting the PDDs for 210 villages in the project zone.60 The activities contained in the PDDs consist of long lists of projects, without any consideration for the capacity of the local association (as well as the administration) to implement them all in a sequentially logical and timely manner. For example, one village association signed a cooperation agreement for 22 projects in 2003, but only two had been implemented at the time of fieldwork (OA02).61 Moreover, since the “participants” quickly found out which small-scale projects “are on offer” as part of the project (e.g. fruit tree planting, drinking water provision, dirt track construction), the consultations are likely to have taken the form of selecting from a pre-determined “menu” rather than a genuine needs appraisal. Indeed, a consultant for the project told me informally that she was asked by the project leader to suggest irrigation works to the population, as there was a budget line for this type of project (AC03). Given these ambitious PDDs, it is not a surprise that when discussing them with the association presidents, it turned out that most activities had not yet been implemented (see, for example, interviews OA08, OA26, OA27, OA30). At the time of fieldwork, the IFAD project’s activities seemed to have consisted mostly of the distribution of fruit trees (OA16, OA21, OA22, OA24, OA27). When confronted with this finding, a project staff member (IF03) admitted that the agreements signed between the administration and

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the local associations had been too ambitious and could not be adhered to by the DPA. Instead of undertaking an annual contract program with several activities, the DPA now only signs contracts for each activity separately, and the annual contract will be signed later in the year, i.e. retroactively. In short, it seems that contracts with the associations were not really negotiated, or at least not on a realistic basis, and their impact on political capabilities is probably very limited. As the sociologist in the team observed, the contracts are drawn up by project staff at the DPA, and the representatives of the associations only come to read and sign them (interview IF01). Moreover, the contracts place a heavy burden on the associations. In addition to requiring the commitment of considerable financial resources and free manual labor, they stipulate that the associations are solely responsible for the operation and maintenance of the equipment and the resulting operating costs.62 The contracts also include the threat that “any failure to fulfill the obligations or any conflict that could not be resolved in a friendly way will be brought in front of the competent tribunals.”63 They do not include any mechanism for the population to hold the government administration to account. Turning now to the question of “who participates?”, the World Bank project provides an instructive example. Apart from its poverty reduction objective, two expected social benefits of this project are of particular relevance here. These are first, improved participation and access of beneficiaries to decision making processes and investment opportunities, thus enhancing ownership for project investments and their sustainability; and second, increased organizational capacity for the user groups involved, contributing to the formation of social capital.64 To achieve these objectives, the project requires the creation of Water User Associations (WUAs) around the irrigation perimeters, where canals will be improved (mainly by cementing the existing earthen ones). In reality, the Ministry of Agriculture imposed the creation of WUAs on the selected tribal factions as a condition of the project going ahead. Accounts of how the local committees were elected or

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appointed diverge, but it seems that the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior had a significant role in appointing his clients. The result was that in one WUA, four out of six committee members are councilors, and in the other, all are political party members. The first WUA is presided over by the brother of the council’s President, who is in fact a businessman rather than a fulltime farmer; indeed, most committee members work as shopkeepers or businessmen (see, for example, interviews TC12, TA02).65 It could therefore well be the case that many of the members in the WUA committees have a business interest in cementing the irrigation canals, and might think that being on the committee will help them get the procurement contracts for these works (TC08, TC19; and as actually happened in Azilal province, according to AC12). In any case, only about 35 people participated in the Constitutive General Assembly on the perimeter of Ait Inzal Jabal, and many farmers did not seem aware of the project (TF01, TF02, TF04, TF05, TF06, TF15). The project design hardly mentioned elite capture as a substantial risk, nor did it put in place any measures to mitigate it.66 Nevertheless, it has to be recognized that political capabilities take a long time to develop, and that notables who might dominate these “participatory spaces” now might no longer dominate them in ten years’ time. The AWUA law in Morocco calls for the renewal of a third of the committee members every two years, which might sideline those working only for their personal interest (GO14). Leadership renewal has been observed in other projects. For example, in the pastoral cooperatives established under the IFAD project in the north-east of the country (Projet de de´veloppement des parcours et de l’e´levage dans l’Oriental, PDPEO; 1st phase: 1991 – 2002), the traditional notables were mostly replaced as presidents of the cooperatives due to their incompetent management or the emergence of skilled leaders.67 In the case of the World Bank project in the fieldwork area, a follow-up study68 found that after the project ended in 2009, the WUAs effectively closed down (only remaining on paper) and their tasks were taken over again by the village jema’at, mainly due to limited financial and administrative capacity.69

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The nature of the implementation of “participatory” projects also gives rise to concerns in terms of their impact on state – society relations. It seems that the Moroccan Administration has not yet found a way of reconciling the demands of participation, as defined in the strategy, with donor requirements for accounting rigor and budget anticipation.70 In both project case studies, there have been considerable delays between the “participatory” planning phase and project implementation due to the very slow and complicated government and donor procurement procedures.71 This has a negative effect on the mobilization of local participants and on the credibility and trust enjoyed by the administration. As one youth put it, “when [the IFAD staff] see that we suffer a lot they just give us two fruit trees to make us shut up. As an association you spend a lot of money to make the requests but nothing is done” (interview OA19).72 A further source of conflicts is the fact that expectations are raised by consulting with the population in villages that are later excluded from the projects. In the DRI-PMH project in Al Haouz province, only 3,000 ha out of the 5,000 ha on which participatory needs assessments were carried out were ultimately included in the project, cutting the number of included villages and perimeters from 155 and 33 to 106 villages on 22 perimeters. However, due to the intervention of the Governor, all 11 communes were included, overriding the technical selection criteria (interviews WB07, WB08).73 The extension services staff were left to deal with the complaints of farmers who were excluded (WB03 and WB04). This process unfolded on an even larger scale as part of the UNDP’s Human Development and Poverty Program in rural areas (Programme de de´veloppement humain durable et de lutte contre la pauvrete´).74 The provincial action plans identified 2,215 project ideas in four provinces, but only 100 were implemented.75 In Al Haouz province, the program identified 500 projects but only 120 were chosen, and only 30 had actually been implemented as of February 2005 although the program had been launched in September 1996.76 The national and provincial project coordinators (interviews GO01, HA11) admitted that this led to substantial disappointments on the part of the population.

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The loss of trust is compounded by the fact that local people are well aware of the huge sums of money involved in all these projects, which they believe are wrongfully withheld from them (due to unclear village selection criteria), or even that they have been defrauded (OA02, OA08, OA11, HA08).77 A further issue involves the differences in investment cost contributions and user fees required from the population under similar projects implemented by different donors/agencies; it is inevitable that conflicts arise if an emergency drought program provides free drinking water quickly in one village while a neighboring village is asked to pay a user fee after having waited for several years (GO13). In sum, the Moroccan Administration seems to be caught between donor requirements to implement projects in a “participatory” way, bureaucratic constraints, and an organizational culture that values top-down methods over bottom-up, negotiated, planning. This last point is illustrated by the existence of a technical study carried out by consultants for the IFAD project. It contains data on the same villages as those covered in the PDDs, including statistics on agricultural production, land tenure, and water rights. It also proposes changes in favor of market garden crops, and a reduction in barley. These are backed up by elaborate models of yield increases and livestock development, which would result in almost doubling the current average agricultural income. However, these models do not seem to have been discussed with the farmers (interviews IF02, OA31).78 This suggests that the agricultural ministry either does not trust its own staff to conduct reliable participatory needs assessments and plans, or does not trust the population’s knowledge – or both. In any case, it illustrates the predominance of participation understood as financial and labor contribution, not as involvement in decision making and the management of resources (see also interview DF11). In short, the government administration does not yet seem comfortable with, or serious about, bottom-up development. The 2020 Strategy’s notion of “citizenship” does not seem to have been accepted as an explicit objective in the context of participatory rural development – let alone natural resource management – projects.79

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The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) grant (2007 – 13) given to Morocco in the amount of $697.5 million (which is funding a part of the Plan Maroc Vert, described earlier) included a fruit tree productivity component worth almost half of the total grant amount ($301 million), implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture in order to intensify and expand rain-fed and irrigated olive, almond, date, and fig tree plantations, and expected to benefit 136,000 farm households. The component was implemented in both Tighedouine and Ouirgane, and also included the institutional strengthening of irrigation water-user associations’ capabilities in using the resource more efficiently and effectively. Although project documents use the language of participation, this seems mostly topdown, and little concrete implementation details or evaluations are available yet.80 An underlying, open question here is whether a universal, standardized, “participatory” approach fits with Moroccan history and social norms. As the sociologist in charge of training WUAs at the national level reminded me (interview GO14), the Ministry of the Interior for a long time did not allow people to express themselves freely. Secondly, the “participants” will not tell the project consultant that they do not have time for “participation”. As he put it, “they will be there with the body but the mind will be elsewhere; they will pretend that they are discussing with you but they are actually just doing it to please you”. It may be worth reflecting on this situation in order to develop a more appropriate home-grown version of participatory approaches to rural development.

Conclusion In the first part of this chapter, I assessed local government fiscal capacity and the implications for local-level partnerships. I concluded that fiscal autonomy remains limited, due mainly to the high dependency on VAT transfers. I also highlighted the high share of recurrent expenditure within total expenditure as a further constraint on local government in engaging in partnerships with local civil society. With regard to capital expenditure, I established that it is

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dominated by basic infrastructure, and argued that its developmental impact will remain limited as long as certain complementary activities are missing. I also emphasized the existence of considerable end-of-year surpluses, which could be used for such investments. Nevertheless, the main constraint on using local resources productively and in innovative ways – for example, in co-production arrangements with civil society organizations – seems to be the lack of visionary leadership and the predominant concern on the part of the councilors to satisfy clientelist demands. The findings presented in the second part of the chapter help to explain this situation. I argued that local people have few incentives to participate in commune affairs, and only very limited means of holding their councilors to account. Indeed, even the councilors in the political opposition within the council cannot do so as they have very limited access to information. The role of political parties is also very weak. Their main value in the eyes of the councilors seems to be their ability to distribute material benefit to them, rather than providing a framework for formulating measurable public policy programs or plans. These findings are somewhat surprising given that Tighedouine is historically one of the most politicized communes in the province. Up until 1969, there was considerable mining activity there for metal (manganese), which led to the growth of a strongly unionized and left-leaning working class (interview TC19). I would thus concur with Ferrie´81 in arguing that public municipal space is not yet fully formed in Morocco, given that politics – if defined as the expression of conflict in impersonal, antagonistic terms – does not actually take place much in the country. In the last section of the chapter, I briefly reviewed the evidence on the two “participatory” rural development projects being implemented in the case study communes from the perspective of their potential contribution to strengthening political capabilities. However, although they – at least in theory – present multiple opportunities for honing negotiation and planning skills, their impact in this area is likely to be minimal. This is because the projects are prone to elite capture, and the overall structural power imbalance works in favor of the government administration at the

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expense of the ordinary “participants”. I also suggest that the superficial way in which “participation” is solicited in these projects, and the erosion of trust resulting from government not keeping its end of the bargain, actually puts state–society relations at a considerable risk in the longer term. However, many promising developments are now under way in Morocco, following its brief “Arab Spring” and earlier protests in the course of which many segments of the population made it clear to the government administration that they do want better public services. Given the exponential growth of civil society organizations in Morocco over recent years, to what extent can local village associations play a role in pushing for developmentally valuable interactions with other local actors, including local governments? The next two chapters will provide some answers to this question.

CHAPTER 5 THE CAPACITY OF LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS

Introduction: Civil Society in Al-Haouz Province This chapter presents the empirical findings on the capacity of 50 local community-based organizations in the two case study communes. Examining the capacity of local civil society organizations along financial, administrative, and political dimensions will help us to fully assess the scope for synergies with local governments, i.e. whether they are able to take on stretching roles, deepening roles, or even take part in co-governance mechanisms. Or, in the cases in which no such synergies exist, whether shortcomings in capacity provide valuable explanations for why this is the case, and the starting points for addressing them. The findings also provide a more realistic assessment than many donors and even government administrations seem to have of the capacity of local associations, and – by extension – of the state of local “civil society” in Morocco. The chapter is structured as follows. This first section gives some background to civil society in Al Haouz province, including some of the best-known NGOs. The second section presents some basic data on the 50 village associations in the sample, and then focuses on their administrative capacity; it examines the record of past projects and the nature of future, proposed projects and assesses their human resource base (in terms of committee members, ordinary members, and access to training) as well as internal governance and decision-

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making processes. This includes a discussion of the impact of “participatory” projects on CBO institutional capacity. The third section examines the associations’ financial (and material) resources, based on interview responses regarding bank accounts, membership fees, and other income streams. The subsequent section is devoted to the associations’ interactive capacities with regard to their relationships with other CBOs, NGOs, and the Ministry of the Interior (the findings on interactions with local government are presented in Chapter 6). The final section discusses the political dimension of CBO capacity by focusing on the degree to which the associations are based on the traditional village council ( jema’a). This relates to the associations’ political legitimacy, and has important implications for their effectiveness and sustainability. The overall findings presented in this chapter indicate a generally very limited capacity to engage in co-production and other partnerships. The number of associations in Al Haouz province has increased dramatically over the last decade. Whereas the monograph of 1997 lists only three associations, including the Association des Amis du Zat (AAZ) in the commune of Tighedouine, and the Association Aı¨t Iktel de De´veloppement,1 a more recent monograph by the Ministry of the Interior2 talks of 400 associations (including 11 per cent that are active in sports).3 In the spring of 2005, the Head of the unit for coordination and cooperation at the province in Tahanout claimed the existence of 1,200 associations (interview HA01), and the Governor mentioned 1,400 in a meeting with World Bank staff.4 An article published in February 2015 in the Moroccan newspaper Le Matin cites the figure of 2,300 associations. Since 2007, they have been federated in a structure called Espace provincial des associations de de´veloppement (known as Espace Associatif, but not to be confused with the Rabat-based national umbrella NGO mentioned earlier), i.e. Provincial Forum for Development Associations, physically housed in an imposing building of the same name, which was inaugurated by the king.5 This growth at the provincial level is mirrored at the commune level. During a courtesy visit in December 2013, the commune

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President of Tighedouine stated that there were now 47 village associations (up from 26 at the time of fieldwork). This rapid growth is probably linked to the implementation of the INDH, which has encouraged the creation of new associations.6 The Governor of Al Haouz province at the time of fieldwork seems to have played a key role in encouraging this growth. Several interviewees referred to him as a pioneer in opening up to civil society compared to the other provincial governors in Morocco, except perhaps for those in the Souss region and the provinces of Figuig and Oujda (interviews NG01, DF01, DF12, OC10, MP04, WB01, WB09, AC13). The Governor might also have encouraged the growth in the number of local associations as part of a strategy to capture the funds of as many “participatory” donor projects as possible (AC13). These projects in turn also stimulated the creation of local associations – and hence, it is difficult to say which came first: the donors’ or the governor’s strategy. What seems most plausible is that they coincided and reinforced each other.7 The most famous village association in Al Haouz province is the one in the village of Aı¨t Iktel in the commune of Abadou. The Association Aı¨t Iktel de De´veloppement was founded in 1995, following a successful drinking water project. The association actively encourages the contributions of its internal and international emigrants, and emphasizes the principle of equity in access to basic infrastructure. Apart from drinking water provision, its projects include the construction of irrigation canals, electricity supply, health dispensary upgrading, informal schooling, and the construction of a boy’s and a girl’s boarding house near the commune’s secondary school. For the latter, the association was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001. Most importantly, the success of this association can be largely attributed to the successful readaptation of the role of the jema’a, the traditional village council. This was done by taking into account the growing influence of emigrants, women, and the youth, as well as preserving its main operating principles: information sharing, decision making by consensus, and the inclusive nature of the projects. Of course, the association’s reputation and human resource base facilitate access to

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funding and relationships with the authorities and provincial ministerial delegations (interview NG02, and field visit notes).8 There are also a number of intermediary associations in Al-Haouz province, such as the Centre de De´veloppement de la Re´gion de Tensift (CDRT), and the Fondation Marrakech 21 (FM21). These associations are “professional” in the sense that they have the capacity to employ facilitators and volunteers for conducting awareness-raising campaigns (notably in the health and education sectors), and they enjoy a region-wide, if not national, reputation. The CDRT has several fulltime employees, and its membership of 200 includes many university professors and civil servants as well as presidents of associations. This NGO was granted the status of ARUP, which means that it enjoys preferential treatment in terms of access to funding. The CDRT does not implement projects on its own behalf but cooperates with local associations, for which it also provides important training activities.9 The FM21 is based on a similar membership and strategy as the CDRT (interview NG04). Having briefly described the main actors on the associational scene in Al-Haouz province, the remainder of this chapter presents the fieldwork findings on local associations’ capacity in the two case study comunes.

Administrative Capacity: Development Projects, Human Resources and Internal Governance The sample of 50 village associations in Tighedouine and Ouirgane includes various types of associations. As for Agricultural Water User Asssociations (AWUAs), it includes the two recent AWUAs in Tighedouine (created under the World Bank project) as well as two defunct older AWUAs there – i.e. four in total. Another subgroup is made up of five school associations that were set up to represent the pupils, parents and tutors associated with a school and its “satellites” (smaller school buildings). These nine associations were thus created by law or with the strong encouragement of the government administration. Several other associations were created as part of donor projects, especially in Ouirgane; these include the

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MEDA (PAGER) (the principal financial instrument of the European Union for the implementation of the Euro – Mediterranean Partnership), IFAD, GTZ projects and the UNDP program (one village committee in Tighedouine), although it is not always possible to clearly establish whether they were “imposed” after the start of a program or created by villagers in anticipation of such programs. In fact, when considering the years in which the associations in the sample were created, I observe major surges in the founding of associations in the years 2000 and 2002 in both communes, with about one third of the total established in 2000 and one fifth in 2002.10 These surges can be explained by the increased need for basic services and resources such as water due to more frequent droughts, the start of the IFAD project and other projects around those years, the new government policy of contracting with associations for infrastructure projects more generally, and the holding of local council elections in 2003.11 Indeed, analyzing the individual replies, I found that about one fifth of all associations were created as part of a government or donor project or because the founders felt that this was the only way in which they could access these projects. The actual proportion could well be higher, given that it is not known in all cases what the reasoning was behind the stated “collective decision” taken to create an association. Regardless of the true impact of donor policy on the creation of associations, many interviewees cited providing basic infrastructure in their village, such as potable water provision, as the main reason for establishing an association (interviews TA10, OA05, OA07, OA13, OA14, OA16). Several created their association as a response to others being created in neighboring villages (TA16, OA02, OA15, OA20, OA26, OA27). Sometimes this was cited in connection with the resulting ability to request a service such as drinking water from the government (OA19). Others put it more directly as the need to be a legal entity in order to implement projects. As one interviewee put it, “Even the makhzen [here used in the sense of government administration in general] won’t talk to you if you don’t have an association in your village. If they have a

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project to give to a village they always want to communicate and work with an association.” (TA12). Several other interviewees made statements to the same effect (OA06, OA22, OA31, OA18, OA24). Similarly, in one case, landowners founded their association in the early 1990s in order to have more bargaining power in negotiations with the authorities over planning permissions for tourist guest houses (interview TA03). The idea of creating an association was also sometimes brought in from the urban context by younger men who work in the cities (TA29, OA09). All these statements ultimately refer to the constitution of associations due to a need for representation and recognition in the legal “universe” of government and donor projects, which the traditional forms of village leadership (the jema’at) cannot provide.12 However, there are also sometimes more personal and political reasons at play in the creation of local associations. Quite often (in 23 per cent of all associations in Tighedouine and 38 per cent in Ouirgane), the idea originated with one person – mostly the current president of the association. In several cases, it seemed unconvincing that a person would found an association simply to address the unspecified “development” needs of a village (interviews TA20, TA25, TA33, OA08, OA25). Such answers might indicate a political reason on the part of the founder, i.e. to use the association as a campaigning tool for commune council elections, which the interviewee did not want to spell out. Others had fewer reservations about openly admitting political reasons. As one commune councilor explained (interview OA29), I didn’t want to create this association but during election times the people came to me because they knew that [name of a political rival and association president] would stand but some didn’t like him so they asked me to represent them in the elections. They wanted to create an association as well [to help with rallying support] so they quickly created a committee and I took care of the paperwork.

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It seems that this councilor’s cousin then created his own association as a response, and even chose the name of the association to reflect this (interview OA30): ‘Tamounte means “union”. He explained, I had the idea to create this association, because after the damage of the elections everyone had taken a party and there were some frictions between people and we had the idea to unite them and to leave the problems of the election aside and to organize them, so that we could contribute to the development of the area and benefit from the programs at the time [like IFAD]. A similar case was reported in a village in Tighedouine, where an association was created for electoral purposes. However, at election time the committee members fell out over which candidate to back as well as who should become the association’s president, which explains why the association is not active anymore (interview TF16). In Tighedouine, there are also some more politically oriented Amazigh (Berber) associations that were created to “defend [that community’s] legitimate right to cultural and environmental development” (TA14). These findings confirm those recorded by Abdelrhani Charfi,13 whose typology of rural associations in Morocco distinguishes between those that were created to address a pressing problem (mostly drinking or irrigation water supply), those created as part of a development program, and those founded by a literate and/or politicized elite.14 This distinction is useful for donors who are trying to identify appropriate local partners, as the origins of an association’s foundations often impact on its sustainability. Most importantly for this book, it means that a careful analysis of the circumstances of each association’s creation is needed in order to determine whether there is scope for complementarity and embeddedness with local governments. I turn now to the main findings concerning the projects that have been implemented by the 50 village associations in the past. First of all, there are a number of inactive associations: at least seven of them

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have not implemented any projects so far at all. This is due to a lack of resources (interview TA18) or the failure to find drinking water (in the case of the MEDA project, see TA27; also OA14 and OA18). Of course, some associations could also be inactive because they were created for electoral purposes only. As the councilor cited earlier said, After the creation of the association I realized that no-one wanted to come to meetings because I had won the [commune council elections]. [Why? ] because their objective [in creating the association] was just to make [name of his rival] fail in the elections. Once this objective was achieved they weren’t interested any longer; [the association] wasn’t established to implement projects, their objective was political (OA29). This was confirmed by an official in the Ministry of the Interior in AlHaouz province, whose personal view was that the high level of councilors’ involvement means that many associations only exist on paper and do not contribute to development (interview HA03). The next chapter will discuss this point in more detail. The two new AWUAs in Tighedouine were at the stage of undergoing training, and were not yet actively working at the time of fieldwork. It is also quite unlikely that they will in the future undertake projects that are outside their remit of maintaining and managing the irrigation canals and other items of irrigation equipment that were built under the World Bank project, given the legal restrictions in their statutes.15 Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the follow-up study by Rossi-Doria found that the AWUAs were no longer functional after the project closed in 2009.16 Three previous AWUAs created as part of the DPA’s Tabiaa project in Tighedouine in the mid-1990s were also no longer active (interviews TA22, TA26, TC16).17 In addition to these associations, which have been inactive from the beginning, 13 associations have only implemented one project since their creation. Hence it could be said that about 20 out of the 50 associations in this study were not very active at the time of fieldwork.

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It was also sometimes difficult to distinguish between the projects implemented by an association and those carried out by the jema’a of the village (see below). Indeed, it seems that some association presidents talked of their personal efforts (such as giving land for a dirt track), or those expended by the jema’a and the larger village populations in cooperation with the commune, in order to hide the fact that they had not done much in their capacity as associations (e.g. interviews TA06, TA25, OA20). In fact, in terms of both case study communes, it can be safely said that there is only one association with a long and mostly successful record of projects and donor funding – namely, the AAZ mentioned earlier. Since 1993 (though it became a formal association in 1996), it has done everything from building bridges over the River Zat; opening dirt tracks; providing drinking water; cementing irrigation canals; building a health centre, a school, and three rural tourist lodges; and undertaking natural resources management activities (fruit tree planting, encouraging the growth of small village forests, replacing wood pottery and bread ovens with more energy-efficient ones, as well as providing solar tanks for mosques in 30 villages) to making a film; organizing student camps and conferences on mountain tourism; training women and organizing literacy classes; building a documentation centre for the local youth; and distributing school kits.18 The following paragraphs summarize the associations’ work in the social services arena (health and schooling, literacy, and cultural activities); in basic infrastructure and services (drinking water, irrigation networks, environmental preservation), and in a range of income-generating projects. It ends with a short discussion of some of the conflicts that have been observed. In the health sector, some associations in Tighedouine seem to have cooperated on a commune-wide circumcision campaign in 2002, in which the commune and a French NGO also participated in distributing the medicines (interviews TA10, TA14, TA33). In addition, one association said that it was organizing the circumcision for all the villages of its tribal faction every April (TA25); and one claimed that it had paid for vaccines and

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medicines for the population of its village (TA23). These initiatives are related to the organization of awareness-raising campaigns on AIDS (OA12) and prostitution (TA03, TA14). The five parent and teacher associations are special cases, as they have a limited mandate that consists of the following tasks: maintaining the school buildings and ensuring electricity and water provision, organizing the school bus, helping the school management to sign up the children, and making lists for schoolbook distribution and buying materials for poorer families. Some members of the associations also regularly inspect the schools and help the teachers who depend on private transport to reach the more remote schools. Some members forward complaints to the delegation of the Ministry of Education, as these are not taken seriously if they are made by the parents directly (interviews TA19, TA21, TA28, OA04, OA11). Several associations organize sporting events for children (TA10, TA14, OA25) or encourage children to attend school by awarding prizes to the best pupils (OA06). In terms of education – and, in particular, literacy classes for women – only six associations have organized such classes, mainly in cooperation with the Ministry of Education (interviews OA07, OA12, OA13, OA23, OA30, TA34). However, it seems that in general these efforts have not been long and sustained enough to have a substantial impact on literacy rates. This is due to several reasons, among them a general lack of interest on the part of the women (e.g. in OA18). For example, a US Peace Corps volunteer in Tassa Ouirgane (part of interview OA23) tried to organize literacy classes, but the initial 37 women were not interested later on and it was difficult to find a teacher who would give the classes for free, or for a small fee; another factor there was the arrival of electricity in the village, which meant that in their limited free time the women preferred to watch TV than go to class or do any other activity such as sewing or knitting. Another reason was that the targeted women were mostly young, and they left the village to get married before completing the literacy course (OA07). One village simply could not find a local teacher, which was the condition for the commune’s financial support (OA22).

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Moreover, only one association has contributed to a campaign on raising awareness among women about the new Family Code (interview TA14). The two most active associations in each commune, the AAZ and AFAK in Tighedouine and Ouirgane respectively, have also each organized forums on rural tourism. As for cultural activities, the Amazigh associations in Tighedouine have organized celebrations for the Amazigh New Year, made a study of the ancient rock engravings on the Yagour Plateau, and promoted Tamazight language classes and theater plays for the children (TA14, TA15). In contrast to social service provision, there is a higher level of associational involvement in the implemention of infrastructure projects – and in drinking water provision in particular. Indeed, about half of all associations (23) are active in this field (and an additional one has built a sewerage system). In most cases, the initial investments in infrastructure were made in partnership with either another association, such as the AAZ, or projects/donors such as MEDA, IFAD, or GTZ. The second most frequently established infrastructure projects are irrigation networks (8 associations), followed by road tracks (4), and mosque construction or upgrading (3). Several associations have also built a venue for themselves, some in partnership with donor-funded projects. The environment is another area in which it would seem that the associations are taking over tasks that legally belong to the commune: One association (interview TA03), for example, has moved the local garbage dump away from the river, where it was polluting the water. Another association spent one week cleaning up L’Arbaa in Tighedouine and the area around a popular tourist location, as well as helping to import a machine from Belgium that compacts garbage (TA10). Similarly, in Ouirgane, one association organized two campaigns to collect household waste (OA12). Natural resource management activities are mostly promoted by projects such as the AGRN (the GTZ’s “Assistance for natural resources management” project), which has given more energy-efficient ovens to villages bordering the Toubkal National Park. There is also one case in Tighedouine in which the president of an association managed to secure the agreement of forest users as well as the forestry authorities

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to close off the local forest for a while in order to allow for its regeneration. Indeed, they reached a collective agreement on the amount of the fine to be paid in case of infraction, and the revenues will be split between the forest authorities and the association (TA05, TS09). The AAZ is also very active in the area of forestry. The next category of activities are income-generating projects, which would seem a natural area for village associations to make a long-term difference in raising the living standards of local populations, and in which many outside donors are also currently investing (e.g. the Fonds Re´gional pour la Promotion de l’Emploi, FREPE, launched in late 2005 as a joint partnership between the region of Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, ADS, and UNDP; see interview GO12). The field observations are, however, rather sobering. In the area of women’s textile work (such as embroidery and weaving – these workshops or community centres are called foyers fe´minins in Morocco), five such experiences can be briefly described. The female cooperative “Yagour” in Tighedouine includes 40 women but suffers from several problems, which include weak public relations and marketing capacities; dependence on its (male) president, who is alleged to have sold the cooperative’s products for personal gain; lack of revenues (which means that the cooperative can no longer pay the rent for its workshop); and, finally, a management crisis in that the current president needs to be brought to resign from the board before a new management can take over (interview GO04). The “Yagour” association is planning to help them with buying raw materials and finding market outlets (TA14, TA35). As for the “foyer fe´minin” of the association AFAK in Ouirgane, its members are still in the training phase (although, at the time of fieldwork, it had been open daily for 30 women for a year) and it has sold products to only one client so far, according to its facilitator (interview OA28). Similarly, GTZ gave the association in Tizi Oussem some materials for weaving but this remained at the experimental stage with only one carpet made, due to the lack of sufficient materials (OA13). Some members of the “Anza” association also had the idea (in cooperation with another association) of giving training to girls in weaving, but there was a lack of funds to procure

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the necessary machines. There also seems to have been some resistance in that the families of the girls did not want them to venture outside the home (TA12, TA32). Most importantly, in Tassa Ouirgane, the main “demonstration” village of the GTZ project, the women’s weaving project failed since the then association President only paid a derisory sum for the carpets that the women had been weaving over three years starting in 1997 (as market prices in Marrakech were low, the villagers agreed to hold an auction; it ended with the President of the association committing to buying them at a high price, but subsequently he paid a much lower sum; OA10). This meant that the women lost the trust and motivation to embark on such activities again, although the US Peace Corps volunteer managed to undertake some short-term activities with them in 2004 – 5 (OA23). Another frequently encountered type of income-generating project is the planting of fruit trees. This was done in Tassa Ouirgane with GTZ and the Peace Corps (interview OA23); in Ouagmoute with GTZ and IFAD (OA24); in Tinzert, Asserfsen, Tahliouine, and Aguinan with IFAD; and also in Tororde (OA09) and Ait Wiksane with the water and forestry services (TA13). Apart from climatic obstacles, such as drought (OA09), and problems in planting the right species (OA23), there are also potential management problems: for example, when the trees are planted on forest domain, the association needs to agree with the water and forestry services how the profits will be shared. This is the case in Tassa Ouirgane with the carob trees planted with the GTZ. In other cases, the tiny size of farming plots in the mountain areas mean that fruit tree distribution is simply not appropriate. However, they can still be useful to the association, as this example from the association in Tiziane shows: We took the trees and we sold them to others and we made a list of the people we gave them to [so that we can show the list to the DPA in case they come to inspect the trees]. Because it’s better for the association to sell the trees in order to have money to do something else. [What did you do with the money? ] We bought the pipes to connect the households to drinking water

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and we repaired the mosque. There were people who didn’t have land to plant the trees so it was better for them to sell them to someone who has land and who has access to irrigation water. That way they won’t die (OA19). Bee-keeping has also been tried as a means of generating revenue for associations and their members. The AAZ has successfully promoted this in several villages, and also keeps some bees to generate revenues for itself (interview TA34). The best example that demonstrates the importance of good management above technical skills is probably the bee-keeping activity in Tassa Ouirgane, which was started under the GTZ project in 1997. The members of the association were well trained and supervised in the beginning – leading to a dramatic increase in honey production in a short space of time, and the use of 72 beehives. However, the then-President of the association allegedly gave most of the honey away for free in order to curry favor with the population and civil servants, and then stole the considerable amount of money (DH 11,740) that the association had gained from the sale of the remaining 90 kg of honey. The association is now slowly starting this activity up again, given that it still has a lot of the materials (OA10). Other revenue-generating projects are to give sires (male cows or he-goats) to the associations so that its members can use them to improve the genetic make-up of their livestock. Experiences vary, as the sire can turn out to be sterile – as happened under the IFAD project in the villages of Aguinan and Tahliouine (interviews OA15, OA16). Animal vaccinations provide other project activities (OA27), and income can be generated from the distribution of small chickens (TA14, TA33) or the collection, marketing, and sale of medicinal plants (TA14). A main issue here is equity, in that some types of project will only benefit one or a few individuals, i.e. those with the necessary capital to make use of them. In addition, association members might be reluctant to commit collectively, especially when a collective loan is involved (IF08 and participant observation in FREPE/ADS meetings). Several associations also engage in tourism activities. However, this is an area in which conflicts can easily arise over the fair sharing

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of profits.19 Most of these disputes have their roots in the uncertain property status of land. This is the case with the Association Gaouz, which claims that the AAZ is not sharing the profits from the revenues it generates from rural tourist lodging despite an agreement that it would do so in return for the village having given the land for free (interview TA29). Another President (TA10) also claims to have been hindered by the AAZ in terms of bringing tourists to Tighedouine, as the AAZ monopolizes the offer with its rural lodgings in the same places. Another conflict is still ongoing in Anza, and involves the building of a tourist lodge by a French national and the ownership status of the land it was built on. The association claims that the land belongs to the village and that all profits from the lodge should be equitably shared, but apparently the French national is unwilling to do so and seems to have tricked the (illiterate) villagers into signing an agreement that gives him sole ownership over the land. At the time of field research, the villagers were attempting to block progress on the construction of the lodging by cutting off its water supply (TA23, TA32). Another conflict with AAZ involved an electrification project in the village of Anza, where a water turbine was installed to generate electricity for the village. While the President of the AAZ explained that the project failed due to a conflict between the two parts of the village (interview TA34), the association members (TA23, TA32) blamed mostly the lack of follow-up by the donors – AAZ and the international NGO Caritas – but also the conflict due to the unfair pricing of the electricity (a single tariff for everyone, disregarding the number of light bulbs used; TA12, TA23), and the lack of water that is needed for the turbine (TA32). As for the associations’ plans for future projects, it seems that the current trend of heavy involvement in basic service provision will continue. It is not always possible, though, to clearly establish how realistic some of these future projects are.20 The members of six associations acknowledged right away that they did not have any (realistic) plans for the future, either due to lack of finances (interviews TA19, TA28), because their committees need to be

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renewed first (TA33), or because their presidents cannot invest time in the associations due to other commitments (TA10). Potable water provision dominates the agenda of future projects for about 20 associations – the sub-projects here range from digging wells, building water reservoirs, and installing or replacing pipes to connect the individual households to a network, to installing meters so as to be able to bill every user according to his or her consumption, and combinations thereof. Irrigation infrastructure works (both the building of irrigation water reservoirs and the cementing of irrigation canals) are a future priority for 16 associations. There is also still considerable need for road (dirt track) construction or enlargement; no less than 15 associations mentioned this as a priority. Other associations cited the need for bridges (interviews TA29, OA09), reforestation, the stabilization of ravines (OA20, OA22), and their own venue or a multiuse building. In the area of personal hygiene and sanitation, the building or enlargement of collective hammams (bathhouses) is a concern for four associations in the Azzaden Valley (interviews OA13, OA15, OA16, OA17). Another one (TA29) would like to install a collective sewerage system for the village, and one aims to establish a laundry facility for women (OA19). With regard to education, two parent and teacher associations have concrete plans for the future – namely, to acquire computers, organize a cre`che, build enclosing walls and provide their schools with drinking water (OA04, OA11). Several other associations have similar plans (OA22, TA03, OA05, OA12, OA25). Similarly, at least eight associations feel the need to organize adult literacy classes. As for income-generating activities, five associations would like to create a foyer fe´minin. One (interview OA17) has already received some materials for weaving from the GTZ project but has not used them yet since it first needs to construct a building, for which it in turn needs to draw up a permanent lease document. Five associations are interested in obtaining small livestock for women, such as goats (TA27, OA19, OA25) or hares, chicken, and sheep (OA20, OA27), as well as bee-keeping (OA19) – mostly under the IFAD project. Other income-generating revenues include the purchase of olive oil presses

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(TA18, OA07); the ionization of the salt of a local mine in order to prevent the occurrence of goiter, and to be able to sell it commercially (OA07); and the purchase of a modern wheat mill (OA19). The association in Tinzerte (OA27) would like to collect and sell the local thyme as part of the IFAD project, but it first needs permission to harvest it in the forest domain. A handful of associations have further plans for tourism projects (TA05, OA24), including developing their village into a “clean village” modeled on experiences elsewhere in Morocco – a process that involves improving the look of the village, e.g. by taking care of the garbage, paving the alleyways, and/or equipping each household with a guest room for tourists to stay in (OA08, OA12, OA13, OA19). To sum up, I noted the relatively low level of past activity of the associations, and the overwhelming priority given to basic infrastructure and service provision. This indicates that local governments alone are not able to fulfill their mandates for basic service provision under the Commune Charter. I would therefore argue that there is considerable scope for synergies with local associations, which could play “deepening” and “stretching” roles. In addition, the experiences documented here highlight the importance of management and administrative capacity when it comes to implementing incomegenerating activities. I now explain these findings further by reviewing the associations’ human, material and financial assets. In terms of the associations’ human resource base, most of their committees are composed of between 7 and 13 members. The education level of the interviewed association committee members reflects that of the general population in the province: on average, over half (58 per cent) of the interviewees have none, Koranic (mosque) or some primary education only. Despite some associations not having any literate committee members at all, it seems that almost all can draw on the help of young graduates who return to the village periodically (interviews OA05, OA22, OA27). However, several members complained about this problem as a cause for not making any progress with their associations (OA16, OA20, TA29). One even blamed illiteracy for the association having missed out on project opportunities offered by government

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agencies, and argued that as a result the projects keep being allocated to the same well-educated associational elite (OA02). The examples of conflicts discussed above also point to the importance of being able to read and understand legal contracts that commit the association to share assets such as land with other local or external actors. Furthermore, although the interview guide did not include a specific question on this issue, the association members’ generally low education levels most probably impacts on the keeping of minutes and other records. These play an important role as transparency mechanisms, and hence indirectly enhance the quality of an organization’s performance.21 Indeed, only one person (apart from the President of the AAZ) referred to records of meetings during their interview (OA13). Similarly, the coordinator of associations at the caı¨dat in Tighedouine (interview TA10) blamed illiteracy for many associations’ lack of compliance with the laws in terms of committee renewals (see below). Indeed, it is certainly no accident that the most active association (the AAZ) is also the one with by far the best human resources. Its committee includes six university professors, one international development consultant, two school directors, two teachers, one commune technician, and one shopkeeper.22 This is true to a lesser degree for the most active association in Ouirgane (AFAK), which is headed by two civil servants: one employed at the Chamber of Commerce in Marrakech and one at the cercle in Asni. Indeed, in Ouirgane, one fifth of the association members are civil servants. In both communes, though, about 40 per cent of all members are farmers. As for their previous or concurrent experiences in other associations or NGOs, in Ouirgane, half of the interviewed committee members said they did not have any other or previous experience with associations, while in Tighedouine this figure is slightly higher. Again, the President of the AAZ is by far the most experienced leader, as he is a member of several nationwide networks and associations as well as being the previous president of the Espace Associatif in Ait Ourir (a federation of associations at the level of the cercle, mirroring the Espace at the provincial level mentioned earlier).

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This generally low level of exposure to other associational experiences probably also has to do with place of residence. The overwhelming majority of the interviewees (63 per cent in Tighedouine and 79 per cent in Ouirgane) reside in the same village in which the association is based. The remaining members live either in the main village of the commune, the towns of Ait Ourir (for Tighedouine) and Asni (for Ouirgane), or in Marrakech. Although several associations have members that are urban emigrants, there is no critical mass of international emigrants that could bring in resources or expertise for projects, as is the case in the Souss region.23 Indeed, it is rather ironic that the president and several members of the only association in the sample that was created explicitly to foster such cooperation (the Association Migration et De´veloppement in the fraction of Tighedouine) are absent from the village on a long-term basis. This means that this association is totally inactive, although earlier some emigrants contributed to the construction of a drinking water reservoir and a mosque (interview TA33). Urban emigration therefore seems to mostly hinder the work of the associations, as the emigrants do not have the time to become involved in the associations’ works and meetings can only be held a few times a year during religious feasts when they return to their home villages (OA16, TA15). As the Manager of the UNDP program confirmed, certain associations do not work well because the illiterate members ask their sons for help with the paperwork. Agreements that they have signed with the UNDP are not subsequently implemented because the younger men are, by then, away working in the big cities (GO01). This lack of skilled human resources is linked to the issue of training with regard to financial, administrative, and project management. In Tighedouine, the members of half of all associations said that they had not received any training, while the other half had received some as part of a donor project or from the DPA – or from other local associations and NGOs (such as Ennakhil and Tamaynout), or government agencies such as the ADS and the OCDO (Office du De´veloppement de la Coope´ration) as well as the Agenda 21 program (interviews TA13, TA14). These trainings focused on the administrative and financial management of an association, although

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those that were held as part of projects were mostly of a more technical nature. In Ouirgane, there is a considerable lack of training; 80 per cent of its associations had never received any, and only one had cooperated with other associations in this field.24 In terms of training provided under donor-funded development programs, a national training course for the agricultural Water User Associations (WUAs) was developed from 1994 onwards in order to ensure that they would be able to take on their intended roles, given the disappointing results of earlier small and medium-scale irrigation projects (interviews GO14, GO15, WB11, WB12).25 Hence, the committee members from the two recently created WUAs in Tighedouine were invited to attend several training sessions organized by the Ministry of Agriculture at a plush venue in Marrakech. Notes from participant observation at these training sessions shows that the members were, on the whole, interested not in the training content regarding more efficient irrigation techniques (and unable to remember much of it at the end of the sessions), but rather in obtaining information about when construction would start.26 This is not surprising given the fact that, as noted earlier, the committee members belong to the local elite and most probably are not dependent on income from farming alone for their livelihood. Indeed, the entrepreneurs in the construction sector were probably hoping to be awarded some of the procurement contracts involved in the projects. The content of the training sessions was then supposed to be “multiplied” to other farmers by this same elite, out in the fields. However, it is likely that this remained limited to a one-day outing with the training consultants, rather than taking on the form of an ongoing capacity-building exercise. Indeed, at the national level, of the total of 1,300 WUAs, only 15 to 20 per cent are working well according to the national coordinator of the training program (interview GO14). Given the timing of the fieldwork, it was too early to evaluate the extent to which these training events contributed to the administrative capacity of the WUAs; however, a training consultant argued that the role of the training is to push the WUAs to demand their rights vis-a`-vis the administration – for example, by insisting

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on the participation of various government administrations in the implementation of the 18-month action plan that each WUA is asked to develop in the final training session with regard to its future activities (interview WB11). Even the associations created as part of the national rural drinking water program (PAGER) do not seem to receive any substantial training, although in principle the relevant government administration is supposed to support the drinking water user association for one year with technical training and assistance (interview DF08).27 According to an official at the Tensift Watershed Agency in Marrakech (GO16), in order to manage the collective public drinking fountains (bornes fontaines), the president of each drinking water association is supposed to conduct a census of users and ask for pro rata payments from each family in order to cover the expenses for maintenance. However, it seems that this was not followed up by the provincial delegations in charge, and that the fees are not paid systematically, nor have accounting systems been put in place. The idea of establishing small businesses in several communes that would sell spare parts for the water pumps and other equipment to the associations also did not materialize. The official concluded that the MEDA investment was in the process of being wasted.28 As for training of associations under the IFAD project, according to a project staff member (interview IF01), only 50 out of the 200 associations in the project had been trained as of May 2005. This was due to time constraints on the part of the trainer, and the unavailability of association members. The training of associations consisted of four modules on the legal and reglementary framework, administrative management, financial management, and project design (IF07). It seems that the project placed the emphasis on technical training for farmers, in order to improve agricultural practices, rather than on training the associations. Indeed, according to a staff member (IF02, and similarly in HA10), only “active” associations benefit from project funding; in other words, associations that lack capacity to start with are (in practice) excluded from a project.

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In short, there is no systematic approach with regard to training by the associations themselves, the donors, or the government agencies. Rather, associations rely on personal contacts to enhance their skills, which probably means that the same small group of people is being trained (e.g. OA07). Turning now to the issue of the associations’ ordinary membership, I found that, on average, a high proportion of the associations did not have any ordinary members at all.29 While three associations in Tighedouine do not have any ordinary members, this is the case for two thirds of the associations in Ouirgane. The notion of membership seems thus much more widely accepted in Tighedouine than in Ouirgane. A possible explanation here is that the associations in Ouirgane are more closely linked to the jema’at (see below). In both areas, however, there are a number of associations, including the AAZ, that consider the project beneficiaries automatically as members. As for women’s membership, hardly any associations include female members – either in the committee or as ordinary members (exceptions are mentioned in interviews TA15, TA16, TA32, TA33, TA34, OA25).30 When asked about the reasons for this, the replies referred to women not understanding the role of an association (TA25, TA29) or directly to their illiteracy (TA05, TA13, OA02, OA07, OA18). Others argued that women do not want to be members since they have no spare time (OA16, OA24, OA26) or that, because of cultural reasons, they would not want to mingle with men in public (OA06, OA13, OA14, TA21). Some association members expressed hopes, however, that with the creation of a foyer fe´minin women would be encouraged to found their own associations (OA17, OA19, OA27). Apart from their human resource profiles, other factors to do with internal governance and decision making processes influence the associations’ internal and interactive capacities. These factors include the internal dynamics of leadership election and replacement, participation in decision making, and awareness of rules. In terms of the internal dynamics of leadership election and replacement, it proved to be difficult to establish whether a given committee had been elected or appointed, in part due to the close

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relationship between the association and the jema’a of the village (see below). Mostly, it seems that the committee members were chosen in a process called taradi, or mutual consensus, by the jema’a.31 In only very rare cases were committee elections restricted to votes by the paid-up members (interview TA14). This decision proved unpopular in one case, and it was only possible to enforce it by appealing for the intervention of the caı¨d (TA13). Similarly, it seems that only one association has set up internal committees to deal with different kinds of activities (OA12). With regard to internal leadership changes, an overwhelming majority of the committee members in Tighedouine had occupied their position since the creation of the association, while this percentage was much smaller in Ouirgane. This state of affairs is related to the frequency of general meetings. In Tighedouine, one quarter of the 24 associations for which I have data have not had a single Annual General Meeting (AGM) since their creation, and the same proportion have held them only irregularly (i.e. every 2, 3, 4, or even 5 years), while the remaining half said they hold meetings annually. In Ouirgane, only 35 per cent of associations said they hold annual meetings but almost half are holding them more irregularly. Hence, the irregular, but on the whole more frequent, general meetings taking place in Ouirgane compared to Tighedouine might explain the higher leadership rotation there. In general, most associations renew their committees every three years.32 The fact that some associations have not held any AGMs at all goes some way towards explaining the findings above, i.e. that a sizeable proportion of the total number of associations exists “on paper” only. This was also confirmed by the official in charge of monitoring the associations at the caı¨dat in Tighedouine (interview TA10), who said that out of 30 associations on his list, 24 are on a blacklist and would actually need to be dissolved because they do not comply with their own internal statutes. He regretted that he did not have the power to intervene, apart from sending them letters to remind them to hold their meetings and renew their committees. His counterpart at the caı¨dat in Ouirgane estimated that only 10 per cent of all associations are active. Asked how the governance of associations could be

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improved, he pointed to the need for training of the association presidents, vice-presidents, and secretaries – and also for himself as coordinator: “I’ve been here for one-and-a-half years but I have never had any training” (OS02). The political reasons underlying the creation of some of these associations mentioned earlier help to explain this internal “democratic deficit” to some extent. Another reason for not holding meetings and elections regularly could be the high (administrative and transportation) costs involved in renewing the committee; a couple of associations have even changed their statutes in order to increase the period between elections due to the levels of these expenses (interviews TA03, OA05). Given the lack of financial resources (see below), it is not surprising that only five interviewees mentioned AGMs as a means of guaranteeing (financial) oversight by the association’s members (TA12, TA34, OA10, OA26, OA27). As for the frequency of committee meetings, the interviewees’ replies were mostly vague (such as “when necessary”) and it was difficult to verify this due to the absence of meeting minutes. It seems that out of the active associations, most committees meet at least once every three months (i.e. during the main religious festivals). As for the two new WUAs, they were in fact obliged to meet regularly, at least during their first two years, given that they had to follow the training and field visits of the DPA. The most important factor in terms of the associations’ internal governance is the position of the president. In several associations, the personality of the president dominates the information flows and activities – sometimes to the extent that the association cannot take any decisions without his presence (interviews OA21, OA26, TA25, GO04).33 Only a couple of presidents freely acknowledged that they should hand over to someone else if they are not able to stay involved in the association due to other commitments (TA25, TA33). In some cases, associations are inactive for lengthy periods since no one can be found to step in as president (OA02). Indeed, given the lack of financial resources (see below), occupying the post of president can involve having to invest considerable personal wealth in projects (TA21, OA26).

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Finally, in order to assess their degree of institutionalization and, ultimately, their sustainability, I tried to find out whether the interviewees were aware of their rights and obligations under the law governing the associations as well as those in their internal statutes.34 Again, the answers were ambiguous as almost all of them (except interviewee OA18) replied that they knew about these documents, or even possessed copies of them, but it was difficult to clarify whether they had really read and understood them or not. In any case, it seems that members of certain associations, such as Yagour in Tighedouine, read them out to those of others (TA23). In a few cases, it was possible to obtain copies of the internal statutes. Having translated these documents, it turned out that the statutes (including the development objectives of the association) of at least one association are exactly the same as those of Yagour. As the members of Yagour explained (TA14), “we copy the statutes and we delete or add certain things according to the specificity of the village [such as the name]. [. . .] You read out the internal statutes of Yagour and tell them all the objectives and ask them if they want them or not, and then you adapt it accordingly.”35 The danger with such a “cut-and-paste” approach arguably is that it frees founding members from the need to discuss, in-depth and among themselves, what exactly they are trying to achieve by creating the association, and it might explain the sometimes quite unrealistic development objectives mentioned in the interviews. It also does not bode well for the associations’ ability to formulate concrete strategies when concluding formal partnership agreements with local governments or intermediary NGOs.

Financial Resources and other Assets It has been argued that financial assets have the most significant impact on an organization’s performance.36 Given that it is an important condition for receiving funds easily and transparently, I asked the members whether their association had a bank account. It was found that almost half of all associations have one (though the proportion is slightly lower in Ouirgane). The reasons for not having one mostly have to do with some confusion about the conditions for

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opening a bank account, in particular the level of starting capital required. Not many members were aware that the post office also provides an easy and cheap banking service (interviews OA04, OA08, OA31, TA15, TA26, TA29). The interviews also tried to establish how much money each association had, although it is clear that the answers to such a sensitive question are not always reliable. I found that the associations are on average much richer in Tighedouine than in Ouirgane. This is not least thanks to the two newly created WUAs, which have already collected a considerable amount (between DH 6,000–7,000, and DH 13,000 respectively). In Ouirgane, 16 of the 21 associations (76 per cent) for which data was given said they had no resources at all, or very little (i.e. under DH 1,000), and only three have DH 5,000 or more, while there are eight such associations in Tigheoudine. The AAZ has undoubtedly the most important financial resources. Indeed, according to its president (interview TA34), it has invested about DH 3.5 million in total between July 1996 and December 2005, thanks mainly to funding from international donors and NGOs. As for the sources of funds, membership fees are not a significant source, given the low membership numbers noted above.37 I distinguish between membership fees imposed on committee members and those on ordinary members. As regards the first: in Tighedouine, almost half of all associations do not impose a set fee for committee members and rely on donations, but the other half do collect fees, mostly between DH 50 and 200 per person per year. In Ouirgane, however, only one association collects a set fee from its committee members. All the other associations are dependent on irregular donations. This explains why the costs of creating the associations and of attending meetings are, in the majority of cases, borne by the committee members themselves. This has important implications in terms of who can afford to participate in these associations. Regarding the second type of fee, only one quarter of the associations in Ouirgane receive a membership fee from ordinary members – including the two school associations, which impose a fee per pupil. This is not surprising, given that Ouirgane associations hardly have any ordinary members, as noted earlier. In Tighedouine,

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the proportions are the opposite, as three quarters have a set membership fee of between DH 10 and 100 per year per person or household. With respect to alternative income sources, especially in Ouirgane, many associations are already, or are hoping to, generate revenues from the sale of drinking water. At present 18 per cent rely on receipts from water fees, but 41 per cent of the associations in Ouirgane do not have any source of income at all. Most strikingly, only four out of 48 associations receive regular incomes from donors, although many of them are part of the IFAD project. It is also surprising that, contrary to the situation in Tighedouine, no association in Ouirgane has managed to capture any of the considerable tourism revenues that flow into the valley, even though several of them are concerned with cleaning up the pollution that such tourism brings. Given the limited training and awareness campaigns observed above, it is not surprising that several associations complained about the difficulty of collecting water fees from the users. Sometimes this seems to be related to the fact that donors have given the basic infrastructure “for free”, and hence the population does not think it is legitimate for the association to charge for it (interview OA10). The installation of individual meters in each house is seen by some associations as a way of countering fraud allegations (see below), and to motivate people to pay (OA06, OA10, OA12, OA23, TA17). Several associations are employing one or more staff members to look after water networks (e.g. OA05, OA13), although the distinction between the association and the jema’a was not always clear (OA19, OA27). Several interviewees said that the association would employ someone in the future, after the completion of more drinking water projects (OA14, OA17, OA22, TA17). In general, it is only the wellestablished associations, which either have incomes from water or donor funds, that can afford salaried employees – though even then most are temporary and hired for a certain activity or project, such as literacy classes, in cooperation with government ministries or agencies (OA07, OA12, OA25, TA34). In both communes, over 80 per cent of the associations said they did not have any salaried employees.

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In terms of material resources, in both communes, about two thirds of the associations for which data was available (17 in Tighedouine and 20 in Ouirgane) do not have access to a venue dedicated to the association for holding meetings or storing archives, and the venues used by the rest are not all finished yet. They were either given for free by a patron (interviews TA03, TA34) or built with the help of a donor project. As for other resources, only three associations have their own computers. The interviewees were also asked whether they had produced any publicity for their associations, so as to attract interest and funding. In Ouirgane, the overwhelming majority of associations had not done so, while in Tighedouine, Yagour was promoting itself and a few other associations via the Amazigh program on the local radio station (interview TA16). The lack of local internet access was also cited as problem (TA16, OA02). The president of one other association uses his work-related contacts with tourists to promote tourism projects within the association (OA06), and another has approached tourism agencies and operators in order to promote his tourism projects (TA10). Again, the AAZ is by far the most advanced association, as it has a website, is often written about in national and French newspapers and internet articles, and even appeared in the 2006 edition of Le Routard, a well-known French tourist guidebook (TA34). The fact that its President is a university professor in geography also explains the large number of theses and academic articles that are written about the valley and the AAZ.38 In general though, it seems that most associations lack the motivation or strategic approach to promote themselves. As one member explained (interview OA13), The associations in Ouirgane are sleeping. There are people who don’t know how to present their associations even when they make requests in meetings. They make big requests such as for drinking water and irrigation infrastructure and in the end they won’t get anything [because they are asking for too much].

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As the coordinator for Agenda 21 explained, the associations believe that as long as there is no money they cannot do anything, instead of putting together a project portfolio with which to approach potential donors (interview GO02).

Partnerships with Other Development Actors As relations between the associations and the communes will be discussed in the next chapter, this section will limit itself to examining the record of partnerships and cooperation between associations, as well as to relationships with the caı¨d. The first point to note here is that about half of all associations are only interested in developing their own village. This average hides the high proportion of such associations in Ouirgane (78 per cent), and the fact that in Tighedouine many more associations are active in more than one village (58 per cent) or even the whole commune (19 per cent). This is due to several reasons. First, there seems to be a greater level of fear in Ouirgane of encroaching on the “sovereignty” of each village, and of generating rivalry. As one President explained (interview OA13), “Imagine if I do something in another village which has its own association, imagine how the president would react if I would do something there? Every village has its own association!” In Tighedouine, it may be that thanks to the long involvement of the AAZ, which aims to develop the whole valley, it has become more accepted practice to intervene in several villages.39 This is not to say that such an approach is free from conflicts, as I noted above with regard to sharing tourism revenues (TA10, TA29). Similarly, the Amazigh associations that aim to establish a network of like-minded local organizations are much more active in Tighedouine than in Ouirgane (TA14, TA33). The second reason is perhaps the nature of the projects, as there are more road construction and tree planting projects in Tighedouine than in Ouirgane – initiatives that usually benefit more than one village. Similarly, more of the parent-and-teacher associations in the sample are located in Tighedouine, where they represent the pupils

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from several villages and even the neighboring commune in the case of the secondary school (TA21). Third, it may be that it is easier for the associations in Tighedouine to cooperate due to its better road network. Fourth, certain projects such as those of the GTZ and IFAD, promote a “one village” approach, and maybe even inter-village rivalry, by focusing in their PDDs on one village rather than an entire commune or valley. Indeed, there have been two cases in Ouirgane in which one association was created for several villages but then each village decided to have its own association later on, due to conflicts and popular demand. These findings seem to be confirmed by the interviewees’ replies to the question of whether the association had been or was cooperating with another association. Again, only the AAZ was mentioned in terms of project cooperation (interviews TA13, TA20, TA24, TA27, TA30, TA34), while others talked about the “moral” cooperation between Yagour and four other associations – e.g. in the area of training or coaching, which does not involve a formal contract (TA16, TA19, TA23, TA25, TA33). Similarly in Ouirgane, one association claimed to cooperate with six associations inside the commune and five others outside it, but these turned out to be personal contacts rather than written agreements (OA25). Only one other association (OA08) is working with an NGO (an organization in Casablanca) on a feasibility study for a larger-scale tourism project. Relationships with the civil servants at the caı¨dat and the caı¨ds themselves seem to be mainly good. For example, when asked how long it took to complete the paperwork for the creation of their associations, most replied that they got it done within one month. The bottlenecks seem to lie in the requirement to provide excerpts from the criminal register from the tribunal in Marrakech for each committee member (interviews OA05, OA07, OA13, OA24; see Chapter 2). This requirement also has a significant impact on the total cost of creating an association, which averages between DH 1,000 and 2,000 (for the 30 associations for which data was given), due to the stamps that need to be put on each page, as proof of legal copy, and the transport costs. In proportion to the associations’ overall financial resources observed earlier, these amounts are very high.

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However, the members of a few associations experienced long delays and other manipulation (such as requirements for additional legal stamps, and even the threat of putting them in prison) by the caı¨d at their foundation. These were mainly those with an Amazigh agenda (interview TA14) or those perceived as being associated with them (TA24, TA33). With the general political opening up to Amazigh culture, however, such problems seem to have passed recently (TA15). However, political alliances and opposition also impact on this relationship; the members of two associations blamed the President of a commune for siding with the caı¨d in trying to block them (OA25, TA33). In one case, the association members blamed the President of the cercle for obstructing the village’s request to be linked to the electricity grid due to differing political affiliations (OA08). In short, and as argued earlier, representatives of the Ministry of the Interior are not immune from local politics, and should be seen as important actors who influence local governance arrangements and the scope for local partnerships. In line with the findings on the new concept of authority discussed earlier, I also found evidence that certain participatory programs, such as the Local Agenda 21 process, are slowly changing the relationships between the associations and the Ministry of the Interior. As the regional coordinator for Agenda 21 explained, now people don’t accept the caı¨d’s authoritarian tone anymore but want to know what he’s doing [for them]; now when the caı¨d sees how the associations talk in an informed way of their problems he is shocked and the associations can even criticize him in front of others; so tomorrow he will also come not wearing a tie, like everyone else (interview GO04).

Political Legitimacy: Relationships with the Traditional Village Councils It is often argued that the local associations in rural areas are a natural extension of the village jema’a and other traditional practices of solidarity.40 For example, the remarkable associative dynamic in the remote villages of the Souss region is attributed to the survival of the

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(mostly Berber) communal traditions of mutual help and solidarity (e.g. twiza, mutual help with agricultural work; agadir, collective storage facilities; and ouzi’a, the collective purchase of livestock). The jema’a is commonly defined as the group of (older) men who make up a restricted but permanent council (whose membership in meetings can, however, vary according to the tasks at hand), based on the lineage structure of the village. It organizes collective works or those of public interest (e.g. the maintenance of irrigation canals and the mosque), settles disputes, and takes on various ritual functions. There is a vast literature on the jema’a and traditional forms of solidarity, especially on the extent of its historical decline in various geographical areas.41 There are, however, some myths surrounding the jema’a as an institution. First and foremost is the erroneous notion that it is egalitarian.42 As Rachik points out,43 the jema’a is nothing but the political manifestation of the power structure that prevails in the group in question. Second, such social structures, while reassuring for their members and protective of the individual, can be very constraining, leaving little room for personal initative and self-fulfillment. This is related to what Kasriel calls a “permanent auto-censure”,44 given that each individual lives continuously under the gaze of the group. This stands in contrast to the Western understanding of associative action as a personal, voluntary effort that one freely consents to.45 Certain writers have even argued that the lack of “associative culture” in Moroccan society (outside of village and family networks) is one of the main problems that its associations face today.46 The relationship between the association and the jema’a is nevertheless important for the level of participation that villagers are ready to engage in; hence, one interview question tried to establish whether it was easy or difficult for an association to solicit the people’s contribution. Where the association and the jema’a work closely together, this seems to be easier to obtain. Examples of popular participation in association projects include contributing land (for tourism lodges), manual labor, transport of materials, and local building materials such as sand (interview TA34). Indeed, there are numerous examples of popular participation in village

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infrastructure projects. For example, the population has built many kilometers of road themselves (TA09, TA17, TA32). Even today, it is the jema’a that organizes the construction of mosques in the villages (OA20). As noted earlier, it is also often the jema’a that collects the money to pay the person who is looking after the drinking water network (OA10, OA19, OA27). In order to establish to what extent the newly created associations are based on the traditional jema’a, the interviews asked the association members whether the association had taken over the role of the jema’a. For several association members, the association is playing the same role as the jema’a but has the advantage of being a legal entity now (interviews TA16, TA20). “The association is like a developed form of the jema’a” (OA25).47 As noted earlier, this is useful for concluding partnerships with government administrations and the commune. An association that represents the jema’a can also be more efficient in terms of taking part in public meetings at the village level, as one interviewee claimed (OA17, and similarly in TA20): It’s good for the association because if there is a thing in the common interest of the village not the whole jema’a needs to go but the association represents the village and especially the president of the association speaks for them [in meetings]. That’s the only advantage of having the association for now. This could, however, increase the danger of depriving the inhabitants of their decision making power. In some cases, this is overcome by the obligation that the association must invite members from the jema’a in order to hold discussions about projects (interviews OA23, OA19, TA17). Similarly, the Amazigh associations claim to use the associative legal framework as a means of trying to revive the tradition of twiza by preserving it with a more modern method in the form of association membership (TA15, and OS02 for a similar argument).48 However, I also found indications that the new forms of association have a negative impact on the old traditions of solidarity

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(such as twiza). “There is no longer this sense of twiza after the creation of the association; now when you ask them for something they say ‘you should ask the thirteen members of the association committee’.” (interview OA14; similar in OA15 and OA16). Similarly, as the founder of another association explained (OA08): Before creating the association there was a sense of teamwork in the jema’a; the people made groups for twiza etc. [. . .] Before, there was a sense of solidarity, for example to collect money and they did not have this fear; but now when you ask someone for 10 DH they won’t give it to you because they have doubts; you always have to tell them what for and need to give justifications. This way the people become obstacles for the work of the association. This mistrust also means that the population is much less willing to work for free, and expects the association president to pay them (interview OA13). This is the reason that one association has not introduced any membership fees (OA27): “We avoided that [i.e. membership fees] because once you have asked for something they will think it will automatically be done and then they will ask you all the time when it doesn’t happen right away and they won’t trust you anymore.” The relationship between the association and the jema’a can be further complicated by the rumors of large sums of money that come with donor-funded or government projects, and whose disbursement methods are not transparent. This can lead to the village associations’ committee members being accused by the jema’a of embezzling project funds for their personal profit rather than using them for the association (interview OA05) – which may, sometimes, indeed be the case (see OA10, OA23). Some level of mistrust between the association committees and their members is perhaps healthy in order to ensure the necessary accountability and oversight, although it can take on exaggerated dimensions. As one leader (interview OA05) told me,

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every time we hold an annual meeting they [the members] see the amount of 6000 DH [the receipts from the water fees] and they accuse us of stealing the money. But when you do a justification of all the expenditures they go quiet. So you need to make a copy of this for everyone, with all the expenditures such as the water pipes, and the short trips we make; we even justify the buying of light bulbs. We now have a secretary who is getting his Bachelor degree in private law in Rabat; he is really precise and justifies everything; when he is here in the summer he does the accounts and he’s very exact; he even counts the matchboxes. One day we presented all this to the people in the AGM and they started to laugh. Do you know what it means to account even for a matchbox that costs 50 centimes? In some cases, the rift between the association and members of the jema’a stems from the belief that the association was created for political reasons only. As one president explained (interview TA33): “Some people from the jema’a cooperate and some do not because they think that the association was done for electoral reasons so they do not trust us.” Linked to this issue of trust is, therefore, the extent to which the general population understands the concept of association. Some presidents complained that the lack of cooperation between the jema’a and the association is due to the latter’s lack of awareness of the purpose of an association (interview TA27). “Once the association was created, they [the jema’a ] thought that it will do something right away but they never joined the association; they don’t know what it means.” However, as one President pointed out (TA13), the process of building trust and understanding is happening slowly: “I personally think that to talk of associative work to the people in those isolated villages is already a success; the fact that they even know what the word means; and it will come later. But the association cannot right away take over from the jema’a.” Indeed, several associations found that they first had to educate the population about what an association is or does (interviews TA04, TA12, TA16, TA18, TA29). As one President explained (TA33),

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“we did a training session for the people to raise awareness about what is an association and how it is created. They don’t know what it is; we had to define the word because they think that to create an association is just to get money for the personal enrichment of the committee member.” A first successful project, or simply holding open elections, are also seen as a good ways to gain people’s trust (TA03, OA12, OA26). Some projects (such as the UNDP one) also promote the use of “village committees”, which essentially represent the jema’a of the village, as a first step towards becoming an association (TA30).49 There are, of course, also cases in which the association and the jema’a do not have any links at all. This can sometimes simply be explained by the inactivity of the association (interviews OA18, OA30, TA29). Another reason could be that the association has different objectives from the jema’a – or, at least, that the association does not consider the jema’a as a unit that could contribute to these objectives (OA24). Another potential reason for the lack of any relationship is the age and generation gap. In some villages, it seems that the association was founded by the youth who want to implement new ideas and for whom the members of the jema’a, as the older generation, are in fact responsible for the under-development of the village (also confirmed by GO04).50 In more extreme cases, an association was founded to right a wrong that the older generation had committed. For example, the President of an association (TA29) blames the jema’a for having been tricked into giving away a piece of village land to the AAZ for the construction of a tourist lodge, without ensuring a fair share of the tourism profits in return. The findings presented here confirm the typology outlined by Chaker,51 who describes three types of relationships between the jema’at and the associations. In the first case, the association is subservient to the jema’a and in many cases the members are shared between both entities. This is due to a concern for representativeness, rather than for professional competence or operational effectiveness. Hence, in many such cases, the association’s decision making is slow, and it becomes more of a modern instrument that reproduces traditional norms rather than a tool to promote social change. In the second case, a younger generation is pushing for change, but is still

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taking into account the existing balance of power. Hence, in a transitory phase, these associations may include some members of the jema’a in their committees, who play the role of intermediaries between the two entities. This facilitates the exchange of information and mobilization, as well as the acquisition of land for the association’s projects, although there is the danger that conflicts and traditional antagonisms in the jema’a will be “exported” to the association. Finally, as I have shown, relationships between the association and the jema’a can be hampered by mistrust.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have presented empirical findings on the local associations’ internal and interactive capacities along administrative, financial, and political dimensions. With regard to administrative capacity, I observed that a considerable proportion of associations are not active even though they exist on paper. It seems that this finding can be generalized for the whole province, if not for most of the rural areas in Morocco.52 According to the former President of the Provincial Espace Associatif (the structure that aims to federate all the associations in a province), it seems likely that only two or three associations in each commune in Al Haouz province are active in a continuous fashion, and therefore sustainable in the long-term (interview NG05). In particular, those associations that were “imposed” by outside projects are generally seen as not working and not sustainable (NG03). This state of affairs is partly due to the weak human resource profile of most of the associations, which also explains their limited ability to forge links with intermediary NGOs at the provincial level as well as to negotiate effectively with government administrations in the context of rural development programs. These programs, in turn, do not place very much emphasis on training the associations, even though the latter are in many cases expected to manage and maintain vital basic infrastructure such as potable water supply systems. Similarly, most associations have limited financial resources in the form of incomes from membership fees, although some receive

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revenues from drinking water provision. A strategic approach to fundraising also requires a certain level of education and training – which appear to be lacking. I suggested that the most important factor in explaining the low level of activity is the fact that many leaders of local associations are in fact using them as a base from which to build popular support for getting (re-)elected as local councilor. Indeed, as Bourjeois and El Kam put it, “creating an association is a means to buy [political] ‘virginity’ for oneself, and to conquer the political field”.53 This practice has contributed to a discrediting of the concept of “associations” in the eyes of the population, but several associations are now raising awareness in order to rehabilitate it. I also found serious shortcomings with regard to the internal governance mechanisms in many associations, such as the holding of regular annual meetings, leadership renewal, and record keeping. The monopolization of information by the president is a further serious issue, constraining a wider participation in associative activities. In terms of the possibilities for co-governance with the communes, this raises the question of how the associations could be motivated to ask for more accountability from the commune if they themselves are not accountable to their members and donors. Given that many associations have evolved from the traditional village councils, the jema’at, it will take time to formalize management procedures and making them transparent to the communities at large. This should, however, happen in a way that preserves the positive aspects of the organizational fluidity that characterizes the jema’a, and that, most importantly, does not undermine traditional forms of intravillage solidarity. The findings point to some important implications for the study of “civil society” in rural Morocco. It seems that it is not possible yet to speak of mass-based “social movements” – although the Amazigh associations may constitute the basis for such movements in the future, and some have had important links with the 20 February Movement in 2011.54 Most associations studied here are inwardlooking and very much concerned with developing their own village rather than forming alliances with each other or other NGOs. This is

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due to the history of social organization and decentralization discussed earlier (in Chapter 2), and in particular the repression of any local protest by the Ministry of the Interior and its local representatives, at least until recently. The decentralization process and the establishment of local councils have also meant that a new type of “political society” has emerged in the form of councilors and political party members.55 I suggest that this “political society” dominates and, in many cases, mixes with “civil society”. This development has important implications for the possibilities for synergies between associations and local governments, which I turn to in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 6 LOCAL GOVERNMENTS AND VILLAGE ASSOCIATIONS: LIMITED EMBEDDEDNESS AND POLITICAL INSTRUMENTALIZATION

Introduction This chapter seeks to examine the scope for local state – society synergy in Al Haouz province. As discussed in Chapter 1, synergies between local governments and CBOs can consist of different types of interactions, ranging from co-production to co-governance mechanisms. In Morocco as elsewhere, co-production arrangements have evolved due to two main factors. First, they are a response to weak governance capacity at the local level. Second, local government may not effectively deliver some services to their ultimate recipients due to more logistical reasons: perhaps because the geographical environment is too complex or variable, and the costs of interacting with very large numbers of poor households is too great – especially in rural areas. Public services in such a context can best be provided through regular, long-term relationships between state agencies and organized groups of citizens, in which both make substantial resource contributions.1

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Drawing on field research in Al Haouz province, I have discussed the lack of local government capacity, and presented examples of village associations’ service provision (especially in the area of drinking water) in the preceding chapters. Taken together, they lead me to conclude that there is substantial need for co-production at the local level. However, I have also discussed weaknesses in the internal and interactive capacities of local governments and associations in engaging in such co-production. The limitations in local government and local associations’ capacity help to explain the disappointing record of local partnerships, which I present in this chapter. Other explanatory factors include various financial, administrative and technical obstacles that hinder the emergence of an enabling environment for public-community partnerships. The most important obstacle, though, is represented by the finding that political instrumentalization dominates the relationships between local governments and village associations. Moreover, government-led attempts to federate local associations at the commune, cercle, and province level in the espaces associatifs have so far failed to overcome the constraints of politicization, and illustrate the Ministry of Interior’s continued concern about ensuring control rather than promoting local partnerships.2 In terms of the conceptual framework, I apply Evans’ analytical distinction between elements of complementarity and embeddedness when examining the potential for synergy. This distinction is based on the assumption that the creation of networks that cross the public– private divide is essential for achieving positive development outcomes. However, the findings presented in this chapter emphasize the fact that there is a very fine line between networks that constitute developmentally valuable repositories of trust, and those that are transformed into instruments of corruption or rent seeking.

The Record of Local Partnerships and Evidence of Political Instrumentalization In the two case study communes, I found limited evidence of partnerships between local governments and village associations or

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CBOs. In the interviews with members of village associations, I asked whether they were cooperating with the commune. Most association members replied that they had experienced no such cooperation even though several of them had made requests for help (interviews TA12, TA13, TA18, TA20, TA24, TA32, OA11, OA21, OA25, OA30). In some cases, the commune contributed with materials for smallscale, basic infrastructure projects – for example, pipes for drinking water networks (TA06, TA16, TA25), cement for a drinking water tank (OA16, OA20, OA22, OA24), or both (OA14, OA26). In the area of road construction, the commune provided heavy trucks or the money for petrol (OA10, OA26, TA05). In two cases, it contributed the cement for irrigation canals (OA13, OA14). Another association member claimed that the commune had given them DH 5,000 to upgrade a mosque and a hammam (OA10). It was sometimes difficult to know whether these projects were really conceived, designed, and implemented by the village association. It seems more likely that in many cases they took the form of informal agreements between the jema’a of the village and the commune, with the jema’a using twiza to provide the necessary manual labor for free. The association would then only provide minimal input, such as meals for the workers (as hinted at in TA02, TA05, TA23, TA27, OA13, OA15, OA16, OA19, OA23, OA27). These limited types of partnerships thus amount at best to what Evans calls “complementarity”, based on a clear division of labor between the commune and the village communities. I found only very few cases that could be said to constitute examples of partial “embeddedness”, in the form of the direct involvement of public officials in organizing citizen efforts and sustaining citizen involvement.3 In one case, a commune technician helped an association with the technical plans for building the association’s venue, as these plans were the precondition for the association being able to access funds from the GTZ project (interview OA17). Two other association members said that commune technicians had helped them with a technical study, but in their personal capacities (TA03, TA15). One commune staff member claimed to have given training to associations on the rules governing the creation of associations and constitution of

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the committee – but in a strictly personal, volunteer, capacity (TS03). These examples point to sporadic instances of embeddedness, rather than any long-term engagement. The evidence on financial flows from local government to associations confirms these findings. In Tighedouine and Ouirgane, the communes’ social expenditures include a budget line for “aid to local associations and foundations” (see Chapter 4). However, although expenditures were budgeted in several years, no amounts were subsequently issued under this line. Instead, social expenditures are allocated to supporting boarding school facilities, buying vaccination materials, and performing circumcision surgeries. In any case, social expenditures account on average for only around 2 per cent of the two communes’ total recurrent expenditures (between 2000–1 and 2006), given the dominance of the wage bill. It is no surprise, then, that several councilors blamed the absence of partnerships on the lack of funds in the commune budget. One councilor (interview TC11) declared, “instead of helping the commune, the associations want money from it”. Another one agreed, saying, “There is no cooperation; it’s the commune that needs help; we cannot expect it to help the associations!” (TC16). A commune staff member explained, “the commune needs the associations to help it rather than the other way around. The commune can only give 10,000 DH or so which is nothing for an association; it is actually the commune that needs a donor!” (TS06). However, the president of the commune in Tighedouine affirmed that, thanks to the provincial governor, there are now budgets available for the associations to implement development projects in cooperation with the local communes (interview TC01). Confirming the figure in the 2006 draft budget, a well-informed councilor said that from the 2006 fiscal year onwards, the commune is setting aside DH 15,000 for associations. Out of this, DH 5,000 would be spent on building an association office in a village, and DH 10,000 on other projects. This is most probably the commune’s contribution to the Espace Associatif at the commune level. The 2006 draft budget also mentions DH 100,000 set aside under infrastructure investments for the INDH, some of which might be paid to local associations.

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Another councilor suggested that financial aid to associations would be given in the future (once the PERG loan had been repaid). However, first the associations would have to prove that they work well, and that only the properly performing ones should receive grants (TC07). A staff member in Tighedouine (interview TS03) confirmed that although it was possible for the commune to do so, it had so far never given any funds to any association. However, he did point to the exception of an association that was created under the EU’s MEDA program for managing potable water provision (itself part of the PAGER program), in which a tripartite agreement was signed between the commune, the association, and the National Potable Water Bureau (ONEP). He doubted the parties’ capacity to adhere to the agreement, though, given the lack of adequate financial resources on the part of the association and the commune. Indeed, the President of the drinking water association in question (TA17) explained that the association had signed an agreement with MEDA and the commune under which the commune would give DH 95,000. The association was asked to open a bank account, in which it deposited DH 25,000 that it had collected from the village population (so as to comply with the obligation to participate at 5 per cent in the project costs). However, the association withdrew the money, since under the project it was not allowed to connect the water directly to each house but was obliged to build collective fountains (bornes fontaines); hence, the association preferred to pay an informal private contractor (called a tachroun) DH 18,000 to build these fountains, and later on the AAZ paid for the individual, household connections.4 In Ouirgane, there is an agreement between the commune and an association outside of the commune. This agreement is with the charitable association that manages the dar taliba in the village of Asni, a boarding facility that houses the female pupils from Ouirgane who attend the secondary school in Asni. The agreed sum paid amounts to DH 30,000 per year (interviews OC01, OC10, OS01; October 2005 council minutes). From the council minutes of October 2002, it emerges that it was in fact the representatives of the

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Ministry of the Interior who had urged the communes in the cercle of Asni to enter into a multipartite agreement with charities to manage the dar taliba there. Some money was also channeled from Ouirgane commune to the federation of associations, the Espace Associatif. The commune gave DH 30,000 to the Espace Associatif in 2004 (and the same sum was included in the draft budgets for 2005 and 2006) for upgrading three schools in the Azzaden Valley (involving installing latrines, and providing drinking water and electricity). The role of local associations is to monitor the works and to pay the manual labor, although the workers are not necessarily members of the associations (interviews OS01, OC06, OC09).5 As will be discussed below, this school upgrading program in fact covers the whole province and was launched at the request of the provincial Governor. Hence, it seems that the more substantial and formal partnership agreements were all “imposed” in the context of donor-funded projects or at the request of the provincial authorities, and did not evolve out of any local initiative. At the time of fieldwork in Tighedouine, the commune had not yet funded any projects through the Espace Associatif. According to the President of the commune, this is due to administrative problems related to the lack of clear legal guidelines on how to spend the available money (interview TA25). Similarly, the President of the secondary school association in Tighedouine argued that we even have a law [the Municipal Charter] that says that the association should be helped by the commune. We told the President that the commune needs to give us a percentage of the budget, but they haven’t given anything yet. [. . .] [How much is this percentage? ] About 13,000 DH. But we didn’t get it; this was in the budget from last year. But if you want the truth, they will divide these 13,000 DH up for all the associations and in the end there won’t be much for us (interview TA21). Thus, it seems that while Ouirgane commune has overcome certain administrative hurdles, Tighedouine has not. The Municipal Charter

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of 2002 states that the Ministry of tutelle has to approve such partnerships (Article 69 point 7; this is unchanged in the 2009 Charter), but does not explain the procedure. The head of the local authorities department (DCL) at the Ministry of the Interior in Tahanout explained that he had tried to establish a simple procedure for signing agreements between communes and local associations. First, the commune council approves the agreement by deliberating upon its feasibility and financing, and then votes on it in a council session. The proposal is then sent to the governor (or sometimes the Ministry of the Interior in Rabat, or the regional wali in Marrakech), who in turn gives it to the head of the DCL. This official then examines the legality of the council deliberation, and ensures that the commune has enough funds in its budget to commit itself. He does not consider the appropriateness of the agreement itself. The agreement is then sent to the commune council for implementation (interview HA04). The head of the DCL complained, however, that the commune councils do not have the capacity to conduct proper deliberations on such agreements, and do not know how to write a clear agreement. In addition, he sometimes has to “substitute” himself for the commune council by taking on its responsibility and inscribing the commune’s financial contribution in its budget as an “obligatory expenditure” in order to ensure that the agreement would be respected. He explained that this is the meaning of tutelle, i.e. a safeguard in order to ensure that the council respects the agreements that it has signed (interview HA04). It seems that other than relying on the tutelle, there are no legal means for an association to force the commune to keep its promises. According to the President of an intermediary NGO in Marrakech, such agreements are purely signs of goodwill, have no legal value, and often remain dead letters (NG01). In terms of agreements signed between communes and associations in the whole of Al Haouz province, the available data6 shows that 17 agreements were recorded for the 2003, 2004 and 2005 fiscal years (of which 11 were recorded in 2003). Six agreements concerned drinking water provision, another six were about the

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management of the female secondary school boarding houses (dar taliba),7 three concerned other unspecified “social projects”, one was for the extension of the sewerage network, and one for the construction of a garbage dump. In total, 15 different communes are involved in these agreements (out of the total 39 in the province; the two case study communes did not figure on the list). Much data is missing on the amounts involved, but in four cases the commune contributes the full amount and in one case 81 per cent. However, the total amounts in these cases do not exceed DH 37,000. Indeed, all small-scale forms of cooperation go unrecorded. As a civil servant at the cercle in Asni explained, documentation of partnerships is rare since they are mostly limited to giving some cement and pipes. If the amount is under DH 2,000, there is no formal requirement for a written agreement (interview NG06).8 In short, there is some evidence of formal local government –CBO partnerships in Al Haouz province, but it is very limited. Local government subsidies to the CBOs are insignificant. This means that the CBOs are not really getting a chance to develop their capacity for joint project implementation with the commune. Apart from the lack of local government subsidies to local associations, due to financial and administrative constraints, this lack of partnerships can also be explained by the difficulty of establishing and applying fair and transparent partnership criteria. It could be argued that given the high number of CBOs in each commune, it is difficult to divide these very limited subsidies up in a transparent way and monitor their use. As one association member (interview OA06) explained, “I don’t think we’ll get any [funds from the commune] because there are too many associations, the commune cannot help them all. If you give money you have to monitor the project phases; it’s a responsibility that needs to be taken, so it’s better [not to do it].” The former commune President and President of AAZ explained that when he was still council President he never gave any funds to any association because there were too many of them, so giving to one of them would constitute “favoritism” and in any case, none of them was active, i.e. meriting such subsidies (TA34). The commune president at the time of fieldwork expressed

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his concern that the Espace Associatif should ensure that it distributes its funds fairly among all the associations, since ‘it’s not possible for the commune to cooperate with one association and not with others. Since we already have the Espace Associatif we need to have a wellstudied activity so that the funding will be reasonable and logical for all associations” (TA25).9 These explanations for the limited evidence of local partnerships are mostly technical in nature and could arguably easily be resolved, e.g. by devolving more funds earmarked for partnerships to the local governments (accompanied by clear rules on how they are to be disbursed, and regular audits), and by informing the associations on funding criteria and procedures by issuing calls for project proposals. In sum, I have argued that although significant scope for complementarity and co-production exists, local partnerships in Al Haouz province are sporadic, short-term, and dependent on the tutelle authorities in order to become formalized and respected. I found very little evidence of productive day-to-day involvement between commune officials and councilors on the one hand, or village associations on the other, that could constitute the embeddedness needed for synergistic relations. Given that financial, administrative and technical obstacles to partnerships should be relatively easy to overcome, is there a more structural underlying reason for this limited evidence of positive local government– CBO interaction? In this section, I argue that it can be found in the politicized nature of local government– CBO relations, which blur the public– private divide in a developmentally negative way. In the preceding chapter, I noted that several associations were created for purely political purposes, rather than developmental ones. This explains the low levels of CBO activity (almost half of all CBOs in the sample are inactive), and some of the existing mistrust between the jema’at, the population, and the CBOs. In this section, I elaborate on what this means for the nature of local government –CBO relationships. The empirical data shows that the boundary between membership of the commune council and of CBOs is very much

Associations’ degree of politicization

26 13 9 30 22 100

2 7 5 23

Percentage

6 3

Absolute number

Tighedouine

*Due to rounding margins, the total adds up to 99 per cent.

Associations with one (former) councilor Associations with more than one (former) councilor Associations with a (former) civil servant Associations with party members or close to pol. parties/councilors Associations without party members, councilors or civil servants Totals

Table 6.1

23

7

1 1

13 1

Absolute number

99*

30

4 4

57 4

Percentage

Ouirgane

100

26

7 17

41 9

Average percentage

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blurred. Table 6.1, above, demonstrates that in Tighedouine, although only six associations include a (former) council member, three associations have more than one councilor on their committees, and seven associations include party members or those close to political parties and councilors. In Ouirgane, 13 of 23 associations have or had at least one former or current councilor on their committees, one has more than one, and one is known to be close to political parties or councilors. On average, only about a quarter of the 46 associations for which data is available do not have any connections with party members, councilors or civil servants.10 This relatively high level of CBO political affiliation was confirmed in the interviews with the councilors: in Ouirgane, all 11 councilors had either been members of associations in the past (3) or are currently members (8). The council President is even a member of three associations simultaneously. In Tighedouine, six councilors are members of the two AWUAs, five are members of regular village associations, two are members of both an AWUA and a regular association, and three are members of two or three associations simultaneously.11 Given the relatively high proportion of councilors that are in some way involved in the local associations, their own assessment of the associations is at first rather surprising. When asked how they perceive the associative movement in their communes, the general perception on the part of the councilors was that there may be many associations on paper, but only very few are active, and they do not constitute an “associative movement” (interviews TC02, TC09, TC15, TC18, TC19, OC02, OC07, OC11, OS03). Only a few councilors gave positive assessments of the local associations. One opposition councilor in Ouirgane (and former vicepresident of a local association) argued that the associations work better than the commune in terms of providing basic infrastructure (interview OC01). Similarly, one councilor in Tighedouine (TC07) praised the achievements of the associations in building roads, and said that he encourages the population to be more involved in associations since the government cannot do everything. In Tighedouine, the AAZ in particular was cited as an example of one of a few active associations, both by those that are members and/

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or are politically close to it (TC10, TC16) and those that are not (TC08, TC09, TC11, TC12, TC13), as well as by commune staff (TS02, TS03, TS08). The Yagour association also received a few favorable mentions (TC04, TC17, TS06). Councilors explained the CBOs’ low level of activity mainly by referring to the lack of funding, both from the government administration and external donors (interviews OC10, TC03, TC05, TC08, TC09, TC11, TC12, OS04). Only a few blamed the lack of personal initiatives, suggesting that the provincial authorities provide training days and grants but that the leaders of the associations do not take advantage of them (OC07, MP02). However, one councilor claimed that these training sessions are only available to those associations that have close relationships with the authorities (such as the caı¨d and council president), who help them to access them (OC11). Others blamed the population for not being sufficiently aware of the possibilities offered by an association (TC01; OC09), or for their lack of “associative spirit” (OC05, TC01). Most importantly, a few councilors explained that the high degree of politicization diverts the associations away from their development objectives: The associations are doing politics; if one wants to do something in one village, another one will do an activity in the same village [i.e. it will become a rival in mobilizing popular support]. The associations need to be liberated from political parties and any political interest, and should work in different villages, not only the ones that they represent in the commune council (interview TC11). Similarly, a councilor of the political opposition in the Ouirgane commune council claimed that “there are personal conflicts which are being transformed on the political level, and which are expressed in the associations” (interview OC01). For example, an association President and opposition councilor accused the commune President of opposing the creation of his association (and of influencing the caı¨d; OA25).

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In Tighedouine, supporters of the AAZ complained that it had been the target of interference on the part of the commune’s councilors.12 A member of the AAZ committee accused the councilors in the political majority of the council of creating their associations with the sole aim of hindering the AAZ’s functioning, i.e. restricting its freedom to choose the villages where it works (interview TA36). Similarly, two opposition councilors (TC18) claimed that “the commune puts obstacles in the way of the AAZ so it doesn’t get far; the council has made a political reading and decided it’s best to stop it [i.e. the AAZ]”. These statements probably refer to the AAZ’s practice of working in several “focus villages”. Indeed, its President explained that at the beginning the association was doing a little bit here and there but in order to maximize the impact we now work on six villages only, apart from two more where we are providing drinking water because we have received a request from them. These villages should become “demonstration” villages so that other villages follow their example [in terms of selfdevelopment]. And then the AAZ will focus on other villages after that (interview TA34). However, comparing the list of villages where the AAZ works with those in the commune councilors’ electoral districts, it turns out that all the villages are either part of the AAZ President’s own electoral district or those of other opposition council members with whom the President is allied in the commune council. Similarly, two association presidents claimed that the villagers who received a solar energy water heater (for mosques) from the AAZ were all in the President’s party or had voted for him (interviews TA29 and TA16). Another association member accused the AAZ President (when he was still council President) of using his alliance with the forest guard to impose fines on people opposing his and his friends’ associations (interview TA33). Another association President claimed that the AAZ president used his positions to enrich himself: “to cover up his work when you asked him ‘where is the money of the association?’, he would say ‘it’s in the commune’ and when you asked him ‘where is

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the money of the commune?’, he would say ‘it’s in the association’”. (TA21). Indeed, there is some evidence that the President of the AAZ used his position as commune President to further the activities of his association. In a council meeting in 1998, he set his association’s request for temporary occupation of forest property in the village of Anza (in order to build a tourist mountain lodge) as the first agenda point. Having praised the achievements of his own association, the president promptly received a majority vote backing his request (October 1998 Tighedouine council minutes). The AAZ also benefited from the outset from having the senior commune technician on its committee, which has meant that it would be very well-informed of needs on the ground. However, in the interview, the President claimed that the AAZ had no relations whatsoever with the commune, and that he had always refused to have relations with it due to the risk of politicization. He further asserted that he had never asked for any funding from the commune (TA34). This is contradicted by the association’s report, which notes that for its project to build a dirt track to the village of Tazegla (completed in 2004) the commune financed the rental of heavy engines and the purchase of petrol. It also notes the contribution of the water and forestry authorities in terms of technical assistance and permission to cross the forest domain.13 Furthermore, the council meeting minutes of October 2001, i.e. shortly after the AAZ President was ousted as commune council President, show that he did indeed ask the commune to increase its funding to associations. He also asked the council to grant associations the right to intervene in council discussions on the draft budget. From the minutes, it seems that the new council President did not want to consider this possibility and simply answered that the funds given to associations were higher than they had been the preceding year. I would argue that this example cannot really be considered an attempt to establish a co-governance mechanism involving civil society in local government affairs, given that the President of the AAZ was, and is still, a council member; it seems more plausible that he tried to find a way to restore some of his influence in the council, via his position as association President. Indeed, a year later

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(October 2002 minutes) he again asked the council to increase the funds allocated to associations, this time using the discourse of the King and the Governor to justify his request. He insisted that “to give funding to the associations would be [responding to] the objective of King Mohamed VI to subsidize civil society; and the governor of Al Haouz has also remarked that the associations in Tighedouine do not have any means, although they have an important role to play in local development”. In the same meeting, the commune accountant explained that the commune had already reserved the sum of DH 30,000 as a subsidy for the associations, but that the financial services refused to transfer this sum. Only very few councilors openly acknowledged that wearing the two “hats” simultaneously (association member and councilor) creates a conflict of interest, which can only be resolved by taking one of them off. A councilor in Ouirgane explained: I was VP in an association but given that there are two lines of work: politics and associative work, I committed to take just one line so as not to confound it with the associative work; it’s like I tried to draw up a line of neutrality. [. . .] That’s what pushed me to tell the citizens that are affiliated with the association that I’m in the commune and I’ll stay there and I won’t confound the two lines. [So last year you decided to step down because you saw that there are problems if you confuse the two? ] The only problem is that you cannot keep your neutrality; the principle of an association is not to do politics; and I would certainly find myself doing politics inside the association, if you understand what I mean (interview OC10). A councilor in Tighedouine, who was a member of one of the newlycreated AWUAs, argued along similar lines: The same people in the council are also in the AWUA. We are councilors and we need to step aside and let the others work; we should be like two football teams, one in the commune and one in the AWUA, and work together. [. . .] I will step down

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[at the next AGM of the AWUA] and I have encouraged the members not to vote for councilors anymore. I explained to them that the councilors already have a job to do and that should be enough. Like this everyone will have their teams and that is democracy (interview TA05). Similarly, a councilor and president of an inactive association argued that in my opinion if you find the president of the commune also as president of the association it’s just to make [the population] vote in the next election. I think that if someone is in the association he should not be allowed to be councilor. Then you will know if he really wants to work [for the public interest] or just to defend his personal interests (interview OA29). Association members are aware of this high degree of politicization. One of them argued that the number of associations had increased due to the State’s failure to develop the area, and that the State had directed the population towards the associations in order to take charge of development in its place. In his words, when the authorities felt that the people lost trust in them, they tried to get the associations to work. [. . . But then] the political parties and authorities felt they could not control what is happening on the ground, so they interfered and supervised the associations. [. . .] If an association wants to work well and independently without being of one political party or another, it won’t get any financing (interview OA08). He concluded that “there is no civil society” (ibid.). Another association President agreed, saying, “with the importance that was given to the associations, the councilors feel as if the carpet is being pulled from under their feet; that’s why the councilors are now also oriented towards the associations, because they want to get back a part of their power” (interview OA07).

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One councilor (and association treasurer) explained the lack of cooperation by referring to rivalry between the commune and the associations in terms of getting credit for projects. He cited an example from 2004, in which an association repaired parts of a road and the commune gave money for petrol for the heavy trucks. In the end, there was a conflict between them since both wanted to take credit for repairing the road. He argued that this explains why the commune does not want to involve the local village association when investing in a village’s infrastructure (interview OC05). The existence of this type of rivalry was confirmed by two further councilors (OC08, OC09), and has been observed elsewhere in Morocco.14 However, the underlying reason for this kind of rivalry is still the same: commune councilors are afraid that the presidents of the local associations will enhance their image with the local population at their expense, and then become strong opposition candidates in the next council elections (TC22). The well-known association in the village of Aı¨t Iktel also faced this problem at the beginning, as its councilors thought that the association members would stand for elections. They put large obstacles in its way, but once the association members explained to them that they had no political intentions, they stopped (NG02). The Amazigh associations have slightly different reasons for wanting to minimize their cooperation with the commune. They fear being spied upon, and disagree in ideological terms with the commune councilors. As the members of an Amazigh association explained (interview TA14), [the commune councilors] invited us to do lots of activities and they helped us with a few things; during the circumcision campaign they gave us materials. But we always ask for our independence so they don’t meddle in our affairs. They wanted to give us a furnished office with computers but we refused because we want our independence. We realized what they want: to meddle and spy. We only trust what we get from NGOs and other associations because in any case we don’t believe in the principles of any political party. We don’t trust them because all Moroccan political parties have an Arab Oriental ideology. [. . .]

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No party in Morocco includes in its program the principle of respect for diversity and defense of the local culture of Morocco. So I don’t want to collaborate with anyone like that or with a councilor that belongs to a political party that doesn’t believe in the Moroccan identity. The findings presented so far suggest that there are very few (formal) partnerships between communes and associations, and the financial amounts involved are negligible. I have argued that the main obstacle to cooperation is the political instrumentalization of the associations by local councilors. It seems that some groundwork needs to be done first. I would agree with this councilor (interview TC15) who suggested that what is needed is that the associations understand their role; why do they exist? Is it really to participate in local development or is it for other reasons? If it’s for other reasons, why then have partnerships? So first we need a sort of selfcritique; also on the part of the commune; the commune needs to understand that to let the associations participate can only be beneficial. [. . .] There are associations and they need to be given responsibilities. They are there and have a legal status. We talk about participation and integrated, sustainable development; we need to give them responsibilities, give them a minimum of tasks and take the necessary time for that. So the two parties are responsible for seeing the point in, and need for, cooperation. It is important to consider the issue of political instrumentalization in light of the capacity constraints, especially in terms of human resources, that I discovered with regard to local government as well as local associations. It seems that there are not enough educated and public service-minded persons to fill the various positions of leadership within the State and civil society. In Morocco as a whole, the number of these positions has increased dramatically, both due to decentralization (through the creation of new communes and the expansion of local government bureaucracy) and to “participatory”

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projects that stimulate the creation of local village and user associations. Improving and scaling up education and adult literacy programs might contribute to a larger number of qualified persons, and hence reduce the (risk of) political instrumentalization of civil society. However, I would argue that in the meantime, greater awareness of this phenomenon (especially among donors) and (at least some form of) regulation is necessary. In the area of co-governance, I studied two experiences in Al Haouz province: the first comprises the local governance programs by the American NGO Catholic Relief Services, which inspired the second experience – namely, the setting up of networks of village associations (so-called espaces associatifs) that can serve as credible interlocutors for local authorities and other development actors in the province. As argued in Chapter 1, co-governance is a more advanced type of local government– CBO interaction than co-production. Co-governance arrangements aim at linking civil society to local government decision making, establishing mechanisms for increased information flow and, ultimately, for strengthening accountability and local government responsiveness.15 There is no space here to present the two aforementioned experiences in detail;16 suffice it to say that they illustrate the challenges involved in strengthening local governance arrangements when the problem of political instrumentalization is not dealt with first. They also point to the continued concern for local order and stability on the part of the Ministry of the Interior, which fits uneasily with the concept of a more developmental role for the State. As mentioned earlier, the Espace Associatif (EA) at the province level is housed in a grand building that was inaugurated by the King in March 2007 and was financed by the INDH, the provincial assembly, and the Social Development Agency (ADS). The creation of this and the other espaces associatifs at the commune and cercle levels (in a rather complex, pyramidal system of direct and indirect representation) seems to have been mostly imposed from above (by the governor), and while it may well increase the opportunities for partnerships with other development actors, I also found that the positions in the EAs were monopolized by a small political elite. Furthermore, a parallel system of coordinators –

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i.e. civil servants at the Ministry of the Interior at various territorial levels – exists, and they collect information on each association. It could thus be argued that an unofficial purpose of the EAs is to provide a framework for the Ministry of the Interior to better monitor and control the associations’ activities, e.g. through the setting up of a database that is partly shared with the intelligence services (HA01). In short, such interventionist approaches to organizing “civil society” illustrate the very fine line between reinforcing authoritarian state control over society along with clientelistic networks, and encouraging “embeddedness” in Evans’ sense.

Conclusion This chapter pointed to several reasons for the limited number of local partnerships between communes and CBOs to date. The most important reason concerned attitudes and levels of trust. I found that in the case study areas, relationships between local government and CBOs are highly politicized. Other experiences with local governance projects illustrate the challenges for outside interventions that attempt to improve local governance arrangements by setting up new structures and processes against this background. In a context in which it is so difficult to keep the actors’ identities separate, there is very limited scope for honest and regular information exchange and responsibility-sharing arrangements. While establishing co-governance mechanisms is hard in most contexts, it is even more difficult when government administrations (such as provincial authorities) do not systematically encourage civil society at the local level as a means of holding local governments to account.17 The findings suggest that there are two distinct priorities for the Moroccan state. On the one hand, there is a strong emphasis placed on maintaining order and stability at the local level. On the other hand, the government has encouraged citizens and communities to take more responsibility for filling the development gap.18 I would argue that the first priority negatively affects the second; in the interest of stability, the government has allowed local councilors to use the associations to keep or accede to political and financial power,

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and has arguably even created new structures in order to co-opt them at the expense of their “developmental” capacities. For example, in many cases, the EAs seem to have reinforced the power of local elites, which very often combine elected office with positions on the associations’ committees. This undermines the autonomy of “civil society”, and therefore also its capacity to oversee and control the actions of local government. I found similar dynamics going on within the INDH.19 Even in the few cases in which associations are not instrumentalized, they face technical and administrative obstacles in interacting with both local government and outside donors and agencies. I believe that what is missing in the Moroccan context is the presence of intermediary NGOs or bodies that could facilitate such interactions. Osborne et al. stress the importance of such intermediary bodies in fostering community involvement in rural regeneration partnerships in the UK.20 Such bodies link the strategic level to the community levels in order to allow an efficient and smooth flow of funds to communities, facilitate accountability for decisions made at the strategic level, and establish routes for community members to develop and operate at the strategic level. They also support key individuals in developing local capacity, provide training, and build skills by direct involvement in projects. Moroccan EAs at the province and cercle levels have begun to play some of these roles, e.g. facilitating funding to local associations and providing training. However, the concern for stability and order on the part of the Ministry of the Interior means that the EAs have been allowed to be co-opted by local elites, rather than ensuring that “the views of the widest available number of communities and community members are fed up to community representatives on regional strategic partnerships and [. . .] that the diversity of views is properly represented”.21 The findings presented here also illustrate the point that in Morocco, the state administration mostly unilaterally organizes the participation of civil society – a state of affairs that can result in manipulation or “reverse vertical accountability”, in which citizens (or village associations) end up being accountable to government officials for their actions.22 This argument is echoed by Jenkins and

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Goetz,23 who argue that the accommodation of civil society within government-led participatory approaches tends to inhibit confrontation with vested, bureaucratic and political interests on key issues, thereby reducing the effectiveness of civil society organizations as a means of tackling corruption or poor performance. In Morocco, the local village associations have little incentive to hold local government accountable in terms of its spending choices and project implementation.24 Apart from a few scattered experiments (such as the CRS governance projects and those implemented in urban areas by ENDA Maghreb),25 there were, at least until the advent of the INDH in 2005 and the new Municipal Charter in 2009, no institutional practices that promoted and valued local village associations by formally associating them with management or decision making in public affairs. The findings presented here confirm those of other studies. Ben Ali, for instance,26 suggests that local development associations are generally seen by elected councilors as instruments for political competition. This means that they try to co-opt them (by presiding over them themselves or reducing them to the appendix of a party), or marginalize them. A round-table discussion among civil society actors27 established that most often, local authorities and political parties give funds to associations for electoral ends or to hide suspicious activities from public scrutiny. This links back to the concepts of complementarity and embeddedness that constitute state– society synergy in Evans’ framework. Such synergy always involves the blurring of public– private boundaries, but the key question is whether the networks that cross this divide can be developmentally valuable repositories of trust rather than instruments of corruption or rent-seeking. Here, the idea of “embedded autonomy” is crucial. Evans introduces it in his explanation for the differential performance of India, Korea, and Brazil in the high technology sector.28 This is an autonomy embedded in a concrete set of social ties that bind the State to society and provide institutionalized channels for the continual negotiation and renegotiation of goals and policies.29 This means that the kind of coherent, cohesive bureaucracy that is postulated in the Weberian

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hypothesis must have a certain degree of autonomy vis-a`-vis society. I would argue that this aspect of “autonomy” is missing in the Moroccan context, given the difficulty in distinguishing between local actors’ “public” and “private” identities (or their membership of “political” and “civil” societies). To conclude, local state– civil society relationships in Morocco, at least until recently, still mostly take the form of (temporary or one-off) co-production arrangements. Due to their political instrumentalization, local associations (especially in rural areas) are for the most part not yet engaged in “societal accountability”.30

CONCLUSIONS

This book set out to examine the extent to which state– society synergies are present in Morocco in the context of decentralization reforms and participatory development policies. It did this by first reviewing the relevant policy and legal framework as well as the nature of state– society relations at the national level, and then providing a thorough analysis of their manifestations at the local level. In particular, the study examined whether local government and local associations – as proxies for decentralization and participatory policies – have the capacity and incentives to engage in developmentally valuable relations based on complementarity and embeddedness (in the form of co-production arrangements or more political co-governance mechanisms). The empirical research focused on the local level, and aimed to answer three clusters of sub-questions related to issues of local governance. First, to what extent have decentralization reforms contributed to local government capacity (administrative, financial, and political), and how have they influenced the traditionally dominant role of the Ministry of the Interior as the tutelle authority? What is the balance of power between local government and provincial delegations of the various government ministries charged with implementing participatory development projects? Furthermore, with regard to political capacity, what is the likely impact of such projects and programs on participants’ political capabilities? Second, what is the influence of such participatory rural development

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programs on the increase in the number of CBOs, their capacities, and their relationships with local government? To what extent are these new CBOs based on the traditional village councils ( jema’at), and what are the implications for the CBOs’ effectiveness and sustainability? Third, what is the current state of co-production partnerships between local governments and local CBOs, and what are the constraints on such partnerships? What lessons can be learned from certain local government and donor-driven experiments with local co-governance and coordination mechanisms? Finally, what are the underlying motives and roles of the Ministry of the Interior in establishing such mechanisms? The main finding of this study is that the conditions for state– society synergy are largely absent in the case of (rural) Morocco. The reasons for this can be found in the nature of the decentralization process, the characteristics of the country’s “civil” and “political” societies, the impact of participatory development programs on local government capacity and political capabilities, and the role of central government representatives (especially those in the Ministry of the Interior). The most important and original finding is that at the local level, the growth of CBOs following “participatory” development projects does not equate with the expansion of a “civil society” that could engage in partnerships with local governments, either for service provision or co-governance. Rather, I find that a high proportion of these CBOs lack the capacities and/or incentives to do so due to their instrumentalization by actors in “political society” for clientelist purposes. In short, the simultaneous implementation of decentralization reforms and “participatory” development programs may lead to increased elite capture and fewer, rather than more, spaces for transformative participation by ordinary citizens. This finding thus challenges many assumptions in the literature and donor policies on decentralization and “participatory” development, as well as the emerging literature on their (positive) interactions. Based on a review of the history of decentralization, I argue that the main driver for reform is the monarchy’s strategy for power maintenance. I further conclude that the political dimension of decentralization remained the weakest throughout the various reforms

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of the Commune Charter, although the powers of tutelle by the Ministry of the Interior have been gradually reduced. The empirical findings from two rural communes show that the provisions allowing for greater administrative autonomy under the Commune Charter have so far not been applied or claimed by the local councilors. This is not only due to the communes’ weak human resource base and lack of visionary leadership but also to the councilors’ (perhaps intentionally) limited awareness of these provisions, and the continued (though more informal) influence of the caı¨d over council affairs. Factors that constrain local government administrative capacity include tensions between councilors and civil servants, and the discursive as well as material constraints imposed by centrally planned, national, basic infrastructure programs. The official local planning process is found to be circumvented in favor of short-term and ad hoc decision making driven by clientelistic and self-interested concerns on the part of the councilors. These conditions influence the communes’ organizational culture in a way that does not facilitate the participation of the communes’ citizens, let alone the establishment of co-governance mechanisms with CBOs – although there are some signs of slow, but positive, change. Similarly, the evidence on the fiscal aspects of decentralization leads me to conclude that the incentives and possibilities for citizen accountability and partnerships with CBOs are limited. This is due to the communes’ dependence on central VAT transfers, low local tax revenues, and the dominance of recurrent (especially wage-related) over capital expenditure. I also argue that while basic infrastructure investments are necessary, their developmental impact is limited due to the absence of complementary investments and cooperation with other local actors. However, the significant end-of-year surpluses observed in both case study communes suggest that the resource constraint on local governments is relative. These factors contribute to low levels of citizen involvement in commune affairs, and are compounded by high illiteracy levels, a lack of identification with one’s commune, and a general distrust of political parties and councilors. The apparent marginalization of the political opposition in the council (partly due to shortcomings in the

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Commune Charter) does not bode well for the prospects of wider societal accountability. Most significantly, I find that the role of political parties in promoting such accountability is limited, and that councilors’ party membership in many cases signifies rent-seeking strategies rather than beliefs and commitments in political ideologies or programs. Local government capacity is further constrained by the way in which participatory development projects are implemented. The communes are in most cases not sufficiently consulted and involved in decision making, due to their weak (financial) bargaining position and the projects’ focus on developing individual villages or irrigation perimeters (and through local associations), rather than the commune as a whole. I observed that the potential impact of such participatory programs on political capabilities is also limited, due to the way in which “participation” is solicited, the lack of measures to mitigate the inevitable elite capture, and the relative powerlessness of the “participants” vis-a`-vis the government administration. These findings thus stand in contrast to the optimistic language of the 2020 Rural Development Strategy, and point to modest progress with regard to earlier “participatory” programs. As for the characteristics of “civil society” in Morocco, I conclude that there are no significant broad-based social movements in rural areas that could mobilize grass-roots organizations to fight for social change, mostly due to a (successful) government strategy of “divide and rule”. Such social movements are, however, slowly emerging now and linking up with those that exist in urban areas; they have indeed contributed to bringing about political change recently, in the context of the protests by the 20 February Movement in 2011. However, I found that many village associations are instrumentalized for electoral reasons. This has important impacts on their capacity and incentives to implement projects. Many are inactive and exist only on paper, and have hardly any ordinary members, weak financial resources, and no interest in cooperating with other associations. Only a few local associations benefit from management-related training provided by certain intermediary NGOs and by government administrations (although most “participatory” projects focus rather narrowly on

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technical skills, if at all). While relations with the Ministry of the Interior have markedly improved over the last decade or so, the legal framework promoting “soft” state control can still be used to harass associations that are perceived to be politically dangerous. Furthermore, I find that the creation of formal associations can negatively affect the political capacity and legitimacy of village organizations, as it can undermine the ability of the traditional village council (jema’a) to mobilize collective action for projects. This is due mainly to a distortion of the concept of “association” in the minds of villagers (because of its political instrumentalization, and allegations of corruption and fraud) and, to a lesser extent, to generational conflicts. With regard to the record of partnerships between local governments and CBOs, I conclude that while there is considerable scope for complementarity, there are only very few instances of embeddedness with regard to civil servants at the commune level. Formal partnerships involving local government subsidies to CBOs are virtually absent due to technical and legal problems, although this is changing with the establishment of the espaces associatifs, the INDH, and multipartite agreements that are imposed (or at least strongly encouraged) by the Ministry of the Interior. Most importantly, the political instrumentalization of the associations by councilors, and the resulting political conflicts and rivalries, hinder most forms of cooperation between them, as well as the prospect of establishing serious co-governance mechanisms. Overall therefore, the evidence in this study points to the as of yet limited scope for synergies between decentralization reforms and participatory approaches in the case of rural Morocco. This is mainly due to the relative lack of “autonomy” and the dominance of “embeddedness” in state– society relations. At the theoretical and conceptual level, this book aims to show how Evans’ concepts of complementarity and embeddedness can help to conceptualize various forms of state– society relationships at the local level. I find the notion of “embedded autonomy” useful as an ideal type of state– society relationship against which to assess the empirical findings. With regard to networks that cross the

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“public– private” divide, Evans’ concept draws attention to the fine line between those that are developmentally valuable repositories of trust and those that are transformed into instruments of corruption or rent seeking. This book also builds on the “state-in-society” perspective and the “polity approach” in order to emphasize that state and society are not self-contained spheres but must be understood in relational terms through the concrete links that exist between civilsociety actors, political society, and state institutions.1 Indeed, I stress the fact that the boundaries of the spheres themselves are characterized by relative fluidity.2 I have complemented these theoretical approaches by highlighting certain practical preconditions – in terms of various forms of capacity – that are needed for state – society synergies to emerge. The findings question the belief that decentralization and participation are necessarily in symbiosis. Olowu and Wunsch, for instance, claim: Other forms of local governance (associations, unions, etc.) can contribute greatly to converting decentralization reforms into effective local governance. They can fulfill the critical role of a civil society partner for local governance, extend the legitimacy and reach of local governments, mobilize individuals into political affairs, and themselves model participatory decisionmaking [sic] processes.3 The evidence presented for the Moroccan case shows that this assumption does not hold true in all situations, and that close attention needs to be paid to the nature and identity of local associations. This book thus represents a critical analysis of how the neo-liberal “good governance” agenda and its “localization” effects transform the local political process. It challenges the agenda’s assumptions that citizen participation consists exclusively of involvement in NGOs and local associations, that this “civil society” can exert organized pressure on autocratic and unresponsive states, and that this is enough to bring about a democracy with substance and depth.4

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Similarly, this study questions the conceptualization of local civil society in the “post-structuralist” (social movement) discourse as a relatively autonomous site of resistance.5 Rather, I suggest that associational life in rural Morocco is undergoing a divisive politicization according to clientelistic party affiliations. This corresponds to Schuurman’s observation that “localization” encourages parochial interests to be expressed and that organizations scramble for local political resources and fail to coalesce into more organized forms of action that could contest state power.6 The nature of the decentralization process in Morocco is partly responsible for this situation, as it encouraged the extension of patronage systems and the elite capture of local governance. By concluding that regime maintenance by the monarchy is the main driver of decentralization reforms, the study confirmed Manor’s assertion that many politicians see decentralization not as an alternative to patronage systems but as a device to extend and renew those systems.7 It therefore seems very plausible that the elite capture of democratic decentralization remains the main obstacle to the possibility that decentralization might result in pro-poor outcomes – at least in the absence of central ruling elites and/or democratic parties that have the political motivation to challenge or circumvent locally powerful conservative groups, and that can give broader external support to anti-elite forces at the local level.8 Furthermore, the decentralization process in Morocco has not (yet) significantly catalyzed associational activity and the development of organizational capacity among groups at the grass roots. Contrary to Manor’s statement, it did not help such groups to learn “lobbying technology”, and generally did not draw increasing numbers of people and groups into lobbying, bargaining, or political participation – any of which would have contributed to their political capabilities. In other words, decentralization was not found to strengthen civil society (defined here as organized interests with a degree of autonomy from the State).9 This is not to deny the fact that decentralization and participatory approaches have tried to build on, and given rise to, a multiplicity of actors and institutions in rural areas – all of whom claim to represent

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the population. These actors include the representatives of the Ministry of the Interior at various levels (governor, super-caı¨d, caı¨d, cheikh, muqaddim); councilors; jema’at; and associations; as well as various, ostensibly open, “participatory” forums. However, I suggest that this multiplicity of actors and institutions constitutes a “polycentric” governance system, in which the population is, in fact, not properly represented by anyone and is not really participating in any formal, institutionalized, political spaces (at least not of the transformative kind). This leaves the State to pursue its top-down policies and ensure control over society. Indeed, with regard to the State, and the Ministry of the Interior in particular, I suggest that its relationships with “civil” and “political” societies could best be seen as instances of “semi-clientelism”, i.e. state–society relationships that fall between authoritarian clientelism and pluralist citizenship rights. Semi-clientelist authorities attempt to condition access to state benefits on political subordination; in contrast to conventional authoritarian clientelism however, their leverage is the threat of the withdrawal of “carrots” without the threat of the “stick”.10 This would seem a useful conceptualization given the changes in the discourse of authority in Morocco and the case study findings presented in this study. Other promising avenues for developing the insights presented here would be to follow Leftwich’s call,11 and examine whether “the alleged tension between the informal institutions of patronage and patrimonialism on the one hand and Weberian meritocratic principles [on the other] always constrain development and growth”. In other words, “can the informal political institutions of patronage sometimes contribute positively? Might there be good (developmentally) patrons and is there any way, politically, that they can be used to promote propoor growth?” Such research would distance itself from the assumption that the presence of political society is always a negative one, but would instead conceive of local political society as a set of institutions, actors, and cultural norms that is often constructively engaged in providing links between “government” and “the public”, as well as in brokering deals and forming patterns of authority that hold those deals in place.12 Such work could be extended to examine the skills and

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competences that actors in political society can bring to bear on development problems and the construction of a sense of citizenship,13 and draw on the literature on brokerage and brokers.14 A related approach, which would enrich our perspectives on clientelism, would be to examine how poor people experience or evaluate clientelistic practices.15 By pursuing this line of inquiry, Evans’ concepts and related approaches could be elaborated further. The major policy implication of this study is that greater attention needs to be given to the (unintended) interaction effects of decentralization reforms and participatory approaches. The Moroccan Government and certain donors are beginning to recognize the tensions between councilors and associations, and the risks that the latter’s political instrumentalization present for the outcomes of local development interventions. It would therefore seem opportune to reinforce the training given to councilors (on the new Commune Charter, local finance law, etc.) and perhaps to sanction the abuse of associations for political gain. This would balance the significant efforts currently undertaken in training members of associations and in their supervision and control, as part of the INDH and other development programs.16 Perhaps the most effective way to improve the situation is to start by clarifying local government’s and the associations’ respective roles and responsibilities, and their planning and decision making procedures. In this way, they would discover the added value of joint work, and coordinate their activities in the framework of dialogue – as started to happen in the PREDEL project.17 The 2009 Commune Charter’s requirement for participatory Communal Development Plans (the PCDs) and the establishment of the new consultative committee for “equity and equal opportunities” in the commune councils would seem to constitute very good opportunities to do so. In addition, strengthening political capabilities is important if cogovernance mechanisms are to be successful. As Cornwall suggests,18 in order to make the most of channels for citizen influence (and “invited spaces” for participation), strategies like popular education, assertiveness training, the building of advocacy skills, informing people about their rights and about the policies that they are being

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consulted on, or mobilizing to apply pressure from “outside” may be required. This would contribute to a rough equality of power between participants, which is needed for the purposes of deliberative decision making.19 Otherwise, as the case studies in this book show, “participatory arenas may simply reinforce relations of power patterned by experiences in other institutional spaces, rather than create viable arenas for democratization”.20 However, strengthening community capacity to demand should be accompanied by strengthening the capacity of local governments to respond.21 As Romeo puts it, “if local governments are effectively bypassed and remain under-funded and institutionally underdeveloped, individual citizens and community groups will have no incentive to engage in the local political process and to demand transparent and accountable management of local public resources. Why bother to participate in a process that cannot deliver?”22 In short, the most effective way of empowering the poor would be to strengthen local governance (public authority) rather than directly funding civil society organizations, and perhaps also to support the development of programmatic political parties.23 On a more practical level, donors need to be more aware of the impact that cash flows into rural villages can have on intra-village solidarity. Similarly to the observations presented here, Bierschenk and de Sardan find (in the case of the Central African Republic) that the most common cause of village conflicts is the accusation of misappropriation of funds by groups and associations: “What may be described as a general ‘economy of suspicion’ is fed by the existence of numerous collective funds in villages, and by ‘community’ forms of management put in place by ‘participatory’ approaches.”24 This is related to the recommendation that strong central state capacity is needed in order to facilitate local synergies. Platteau and Gaspart suggest that decentralized development cannot succeed unless the central government is able and willing to use an effective fraud detection mechanism to control local-level opportunism.25 These observations point to the need for external donors to pay greater attention to the underlying motivations for decentralization and participation policies; as Boone,26 and others, have shown,

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decentralization policies have been used for penetrating and manipulating local political society in order to govern more effectively. Indeed, regimes often promote development programs that seek to build upon local energies because this absolves them of responsibility for welfare provision, and they can place appointees in key positions while earning political capital by apparently being sensitive to local issues.

APPENDIX A: LIST OF INTERVIEWS

In order to protect the informants, all names and some affiliations have been suppressed here.

Tighedouine Interviews with Association Members in Tighedouine

No

Date of interview

1.

4.8.05

2. 3.

14.8.05 15.8.05

4.

23.8.05

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

1.9.05 1.9.05 5.9.05 5.9.05 6.9.05 19.10.05

Place of interview

Code

Igourren, Ait Wiksane perimeter Ait Atman Ain Sidi Ahmed Al-Wafi Ait Ali ou Bdir, Ait Inzal Jabal perimeter Marrakech Marrakech L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine Marrakech L’Arbaa Tighedouine

TA01 TA02 TA03 TA04 TA05 TA06 TA07 TA08 TA09 TA10

APPENDIX A

239

Continued No 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

Date of interview 25.1.06 25.1.06 26.1.06 28.1.06 28.1.06 28.1.06 30.1.06 31.1.06 31.1.06 31.1.06 1.2.06 1.2.06 1.2.06 1.2.06 1.2.06 1.2.06 2.2.06 2.2.06 3.2.06 8.2.06 8.2.06 8.2.06 12.3.06 30.3.06 (semistructured interview; see also TC19 for dates of informal interviews) 8.2.06 5.9.05 (informal conversation)

Place of interview

Code

L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine Marrakech L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine Talatast L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine Tamzillit Marrakech Marrakech L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine Asni Marrakech

TA11 TA12 TA13 TA14 TA15 TA16 TA17 TA18 TA19 TA20 TA21 TA22 TA23 TA24 TA25 TA26 TA27 TA28 TA29 TA30 TA31 TA32 TA33 TA34

L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine

TA35 TA36

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Interviews with Tighedouine Commune Councilors No. Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine Marrakech Marrakech L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine Marrakech Marrakech L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine Talatast L’Arbaa Tighedouine Marrakech Marrakech (except 25.7.05 in L’Arbaa Tighedouine)

TC01 TC02 TC03 TC04 TC05 TC06 TC07 TC08 TC09 TC10 TC11 TC12 TC13 TC14 TC15 TC16 TC17 TC18 TC19

3.8.05 11.8.05 11.8.05 16.8.05 17.8.05 17.8.05 20.8.05 1.9.05 5.9.05 5.9.05 6.9.05 6.9.05 19.10.05 19.10.05 26.10.06 30.1.06 1.2.06 7.2.06 30.4.05, 25.7.05, 6.12.05 (all informal interviews), 14.2.06 (received written answers) 30.3.06 (semistructured interview)

APPENDIX A

241

Interviews with Staff at Tighedouine Commune and caı¨dat No.

Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

56. 57.

15.8.05 (see also TA10) 27.7.05 (semi-structured) and 11.8.05 (informal) 27.7.05, 1.8.05 27.7.05, 28.7.05, 1.8.05, 12.8.05, 15.8.05, 24.8.05, 2.9.05, 7.9.05, 19.10.05, 25.1.06, 29.3.06 (all informal) 15.8.05 7.9.05 26.10.05 14.3.06 8.2.06

L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine

TS01 TS02

L’Arbaa Tighedouine L’Arbaa Tighedouine but mostly in Marrakech

TS03 TS04

L’Arbaa L’Arbaa L’Arbaa L’Arbaa L’Arbaa

TS05 TS06 TS07 TS08 TS09

58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

Tighedouine Tighedouine Tighedouine Tighedouine Tighedouine

Interviews with Farmers No.

Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

4.8.05 4.8.05 4.8.05 25.8.05 26.8.05 26.8.05 26.8.05 26.8.05 27.8.05 28.8.05 29.8.05 29.8.05 29.8.05 29.8.05 29.8.05 4.9.05 5.9.05

Takayya, perimeter Ait Wiksane Tolozine, perimeter Ait Wiksane Igourren, perimeter Ait Wiksane Igoudmane, perimeter Ait Inzal Jabal Ait Whirry, Ait Inzal Jabal Ait Whirry, Ait Inzal Jabal Ait Oughayn, Ait Inzal Jabal Assamrane, Ait Inzal Jabal Taghlayt, Ait Inzal Jabal Ait Ali ou Bdir, Ait Inzal Jabal Taourirt (above Tifist), Ait Inzal Jabal Tifist, Ait Inzal Jabal Tifist, Ait Inzal Jabal Tifist, Ait Inzal Jabal Tafraout, Ait Inzal Jabal Ait Wiksane Ait Athmane, Ait Wiksane

TF01 TF02 TF03 TF04 TF05 TF06 TF07 TF08 TF09 TF10 TF11 TF12 TF13 TF14 TF15 TF16 TF17

242

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

IN MOROCCO

Ouirgane Interviews with Association Members in Ouirgane (and one in Imegdal) No.

Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

82. 83. 84.

25.10.05 (informal) 16.11.05 16.11.05 and 21.1.06 (both informal) 17.11.05 17.11.05 17.11.05 17.11.05 18.11.05 18.11.05 20.11.05 21.11.05 29.11.05 29.11.05 30.11.05 30.11.05 30.11.05 30.11.05 1.12.05 1.12.05 1.12.05 1.12.05 1.12.05 2.12.05 6.12.05 6.12.05 19.1.06 21.1.06 24.1.06 27.1.06 7.2.06 12.3.06

Marigha Ouirgane (center) Ouirgane (center) and Asni respectively Ouirgane (center) Ouirgane (center) Ouirgane (center) Ouirgane (center) Tikhfist Tororde Tassa Ouirgane Ouirgane (center) Asni Tizi Oussem Aid Issa Aguinan Tahliouine Taddert Tizi Zghouart Tiziane Ait Harb Ouagmoute Asserfsen Tassa Ouirgane Marrakech Marrakech Ouirgane (center) Asni Ouirgane (center) Marrakech Marrakech Targa, Imegdal commune

OA01 OA02 OA03

85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

OA04 OA05 OA06 OA07 OA08 OA09 OA10 OA11 OA12 OA13 OA14 OA15 OA16 OA17 OA18 OA19 OA20 OA21 OA22 OA23 OA24 OA25 OA26 OA27 OA28 OA29 OA30 OA31

APPENDIX A

243

Interviews with Ouirgane Commune Councilors No.

Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123.

25.10.05 17.11.05 18.11.05 1.12.05 2.12.05 6.12.05 6.12.05 19.1.06 21.1.06 24.1.06 27.1.06

Marigha Ouirgane (center) Tororde Tizi Zghouart Tassa Ouirgane Marrakech Marrakech Ouirgane (center) Asni Ouirgane (center) Marrakech

OC01 OC02 OC03 OC04 OC05 OC06 OC07 OC08 OC09 OC10 OC11

Interviews with Staff at Ouirgane Commune and caı¨dat No. Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

124. 24.10.05, 21.11.05 (semistructured interview) 24.1.06, 11.3.06 125. 19.1.06 126. 24.10.05; 20.1.06 127. 24.1.06 128. 24.1.06

Ouirgane (center), 11.3.06 in Asni

OS01

Ouirgane (center) Ouirgane (center) Ouirgane (center) Ouirgane (center)

OS02 OS03 OS04 OS05

Interviews with (Female) Farmers in Ouirgane No.

Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

129. 130. 131. 132.

25.10.05 16.11.05 18.11.05 18.11.05

Marigha Agouni Tikhfist Tororde

OF01 OF02 OF03 OF04

244

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

IN MOROCCO

Al Haouz province Interviews with Members of Parliament (MP) and other Politicians in Al Haouz province No. Title 133. Political secretary to the MP of ADL, and vice-president of Ait Faska commune council 134. MP for Mouvement Populaire 135. MP for Union De´mocratique 136. President of the Provincial Assembly

Date of Place of interview interview

Code

25.1.06

Marrakech

MP01

7.2.06 11.2.06 13.3.06

Marrakech Marrakech Marrakech and Tahanout Marrakech

MP02 MP03 MP04

137. President of the Regional council of 6.2.06 Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz (M-T-H)

MP05

Interviews with Staff at Al Haouz Provincial Authorities and Ministerial Delegations

No.

Title

138.

Head of the unit for coordination and cooperation at the Province in Tahanout Chef de la division des collectivite´s locales at Cercle Asni Chef de la division des collectivite´s locales (DCL), Province de Al Haouz

139. 140.

141.

Chef de la division des collectivite´s locales (DCL), Al Haouz province (successor to HA03)

Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

28.4.05, 16.5.05

Tahanout

HA01

28.11.05

Asni

HA02

28.4.05, 12.5.05, 16.5.05, 20.5.05, 2.6.05 7.12.05, 15.11.07

Tahanout

HA03

Tahanout

HA04

APPENDIX A

142.

Staff in the unit of associations in the department for coordination and cooperation at Al Haouz Province

143.

Chef de service de l’eau at Direction Provincial d’Equipement Staff at DCL Coordination and cooperation unit at Al Haouz province, formerly CRS governance projects team member, Al Haouz Province Service des Infrastructures, Direction provinciale d’Equipment Division des Affaires Rurales, Al Haouz Province Provincial coordinator of UNDP program ‘Lutte contre la pauvre´te´’

144. 145.

146. 147. 148.

245

Tahanout

HA05 (not cited)

Tahanout

HA06

14.2.06 15.11.05, 5.12.05, 10.2.06

Tahanout Tahanout

HA07 HA08

5.12.05

Tahanout

HA09

15.11.05, 22.11.05 16.12.05, 10.2.06

Tahanout

HA10

Tahanout

HA11

21.10.05, 15.11.05, 22.11.05, 10.2.06, 30.3.06 28.11.05, 5.12.05

246

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

IN MOROCCO

Interviews with NGO Members (Including the Espaces Associatifs in Al Haouz Province)

No. Title 149. President of CDRT 150. Executive President of Association Ait Iktel de De´veloppement 151. Founder and president of Association Afoulki 152. President of Fondation Marrakech 21 153. President of EA cercle Ait Ourir, former president of provincial EA 154. Coordinator for Espace associatif at CR Asni and also for cercle Asni

Date of interview

Place of interview Code

12.3.05 and 14.3.06 9.3.06

Marrakech NG01 Ait Iktel

NG02

16.5.05, 20.5.05 16.12.05

Tahanout

NG03

15.2.06

Ait Ourir NG05

22.11.05, 28.11.05, 11.3.06, 13.3.06 21.4.05

All in Asni

155. Member of CDRT and Association des Amis du Muse´um d’Histoire Naturelle de Marrakech (AAMHNM) [as well as Professor at the Natural Sciences Faculty Semlalia, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech; and consultant to GTZ] 156. Association Ennakhil pour 17.11.04 la Femme et l’Enfant 157. Responsable du de´partement 4.9.07 mobilization et plaidoyer, Espace Associatif 158. Former Oxfam Que´bec staff 21.3.05 working on PREDEL, now with the Near East Foundation in Ouarzazate

Marrakech NG04

NG06

Marrakech NG07

Marrakech NG08 Rabat – Agdal

NG09

Marrakech NG10

APPENDIX A

247

Case Study Projects Interviews with IFAD Project Staff Place of interview

Code

159. Sociologist

Marrakech

IF01

160. 161.

Asni Marrakech

IF02 IF03

Marrakech Marrakech

IF04 IF05

Marrakech

IF06

Marrakech Marrakech

IF07 IF08

No. Title

162. 163. 164. 165. 166.

Date of interview

17.5.05, 20.10.05 CT Asni 21.1.06 Coordinator Asni 13.3.06, 3.11.05, 1.11.05 Director, DPA 30.3.06 Chef de l’Unite´ de Coordination 17.5.05 du Projet (UCP) Service des ame´nagements, 25.5.05 DPA Training officer 17.5.05 Micro-enterprise officer 17.5.05, and e-mails of 5.11.05, 10.3.06, 14.4.06, 21.4.06, 22.4.06

248

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

IN MOROCCO

Interviews with World Bank DRI-PMH Project Staff and Consultants No. Title 167. Chef du De´partement Hydraulique et Agriculture, SCET Maroc 168. Chef de Projets, De´partement de l’Agriculture et De´veloppement Rural (DADR), SCET Maroc 169. Director of Centre de Travaux (CT), Touama 170. Technician in Centre de Travaux (CT), Touama 171. Consultant for DRI-PMH project 172. Task team leader in charge of preparing the Project Appraisal Document (PAD) for DRI-PMH project 173. Senior Irrigation Specialist World Bank country office in Rabat, and task team leader for DRI-PMH project 174. DAHA in Rabat, Chef de cellule de gestion de projet 175. Consultant with CID 176. Consultant with ADI (in charge of training sessions for WUAs)

Date of interview

Place of interview Code

16.2.05

Rabat

22.8.05

Marrakech WB02

19.4.05, 10.5.05 10.5.05

Touama

WB03

Touama

WB04

27.4.05 14.4.05

Rabat Azilal province

WB05 WB06

4.11.04, 11.2.05, 21.3.06, 4.9.07 24.3.06, 15.2.05 29.4.05 3.12.05

Rabat

WB07

Rabat

WB08

177. Consultant with ADI (in charge of 9.9.05 training sessions for WUAs) 178. Consultant with ADI (in charge of 9.9.05 training sessions for WUAs)

WB01

Marrakech WB09 Marrakech WB10 (not cited) Marrakech WB11 Marrakech WB12

APPENDIX A

249

Interviews with CRS Local Governance Project Participants in Tamesloht and Oulad M’taa, and Consultant

No. Title 179. President of Union of associations in CR Oulad M’taa 180. President of Union of Associations in CR Tamesloht 181. President of commune council in Tamesloht 182. Administrator, ALCO Alternative Consultants

Date of interview

Place of interview

29.3.06

CRS01

7.3.06

Oulad M’taa Tamesloht

7.3.06

Tamesloht

CRS03

22.3.06

Rabat

CRS04

Code

CRS02

Donors, Government Officials and Academics Interviews with Representatives of Bilateral Donors, International Organizations, and Foundations

No. 183. 184. 185. 186.

Title

Friedrich Naumann Foundation USAID Konrad Adenauer Foundation CRS governance projects coordinator 187. Conseiller technique principal GTZ - PRONA-LCD, Rabat 188. UNDP Governance Programme 189. Belgian technical cooperation in Rabat

Date of Place of interview interview

Code

23.2.05 24.11.04 28.10.04 18.2.05

DF01 DF02 DF03 DF04

e-mail of 17.4.06 26.10.04 4.3.05, 27.3.06

190. Consultant to Belgian Technical 16.3.05 Cooperation, in charge of PAGER project in Agadir province

Rabat Rabat Rabat Rabat

DF05 Rabat DF06 Rabat and DF07 Marrakech respectively Agadir DF08

250

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

IN MOROCCO

Continued No.

Title

191.

Regional Representative Maghreb, Oxfam Que´bec Senior Rural development specialist, World Bank country office National Coordinator for UNDP PAL-PDS/SAPAN program Consultant for GTZ NRM project in Toubkal GTZ Director, International Republican Institute (IRI), Casablanca Charge´ de Programmes Genre, Droits Humains, Lutte contre la pauvrete´, UNDP

192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197.

Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

26.4.05

Rabat

DF09

4.11.04

Rabat

DF10

14.5.05

Marrakech

DF11

7.3.06

Marrakech

DF12

5.11.04 19.11.04

Rabat Telephone interview

DF13 DF14

21.2.05

Rabat

DF15

Interviews with other Government Officials

No. Title

Date of interview

Place of interview

198. Manager of the UNDP poverty program, HCP

21.2.05, 27.3.06

GO01

199. Coordinator for local Agenda 21 in Al Haouz province, Regional Inspection MATEE 200. Facilitator in Agenda 21 office in Tahanout 201. Facilitator in Agenda 21 office in Ait Ourir 202. Staff at Agence Urbaine

18.4.05, 15.2.06

Rabat and Marrakech respectively Marrakech

16.5.05

Tahanout

GO03

15.2.06

Ait Ourir

GO04

28.3.06

Marrakech

GO05

Code

GO02

APPENDIX A

251

203. Consultant, Chef de Service, and Technician, all at DPA Tiznit

Tiznit province

GO06

204.

Rabat

GO07

Marrakech

GO08

Rabat Marrakech

GO09 GO10

Marrakech

GO11

Marrakech

GO12

Asni

GO13

Marrakech

GO14

Marrakech

GO15

Marrakech

GO16

205.

206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211.

212. 213.

17.3.05 (Visit to Belgian Technical cooperation project PMH) Chef de la Cellule Centrale du 23.2.05 Projet DRI-GRN (EU-funded natural resource management project in the North of Morocco) Ministe`re de l’Agriculture, Administration du ge´nie rural 16.2.06 Chef de service ame´nagements, Direction re´gionale des Eaux et Forets, in charge of project PALPDS, sub-component ‘bassin versant’, Ourika Cour des Comptes 4.9.07 Communication unit, GTZ 16.2.06 project in DREF (Direction Re´gionale des Eaux et Foˆrets) Director of Toubkal National 6.2.06, Park, DREF 16.2.06 Regional coordinator of 6.2.06 FREPE programme National Park project with 12.3.06 GTZ, DREF Sociologist, Cellule Nationale, 25.5.05 Programme de Formation AUEA, Direction des Ame´nagements HydroAgricoles (DAHA) 24.5.05 Service des ame´nagements, in charge of administration for AUEAs, DPA Agence du Bassin 29.3.06, Hydraulique du Tensift 19.5.05

252

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

IN MOROCCO

Interviews with Academics and Consultants

No. Title 214. Professor of Political Science, Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakech and involved in Agenda 21 215. Professor at the Law Faculty in Sale´, and co-editor of REMALD journal 216. President of Association Maroc Nature et Culture, Professor in Forestry at ENFI-Sale´ 217. Founder of Yahoo-based group on Moroccan Local Finances 218.

219.

220. 221. 222. 223.

Date of interview

Place of interview

Code

17.4.05

Marrakech

AC01

11.11.04, 23.11.04

Rabat

AC02

26.11.04, 23.2.05

Rabat

AC03

Various e-mails Rabat and meeting on 1.9.07 Member of Yahoo-based group E-mail of on Moroccan Local Finances and 13.6.07 rapporteur in the municipal council of Errachidia PhD student in Anthropology E-mail of (Paris and Barcelona), member 12.7.07 (and various of Agdal research project meetings in Marrakech and Tighedouine during 2005 –2006) During field Professor in Forestry and natural 16. – 17.3.05 visits in Souss resources management at IAV region Hassan II in Rabat 25.11.04 Rabat Professor at Law Faculty, University Mohammed V, Rabat-Agdal Consultant to World Bank, 26.4.05 Rabat Helen Keller Foundation et al. 24.11.04, Rabat Professor at Institut National 24.3.06 d’Ame´nagement et d’Urbanisme (INAU)

AC04 AC05

AC06

AC07 AC08 AC09 AC10

APPENDIX A

224. Professor at INAU 225. Facilitator in Ait Bougemez village, Azilal province, for ISIMM research project 226. President of the Centre Marocain de Gouvernance (CMG), Professor at University Hassan II, Mohamedia, and consultant for international donors/organizations 227. Coordinator and Senior Researcher, Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), Institute of Geography, Berne University 228. Member of team drafting the 2020 Rural development strategy and 2005 evaluation; Professor in the Department of Humanities at IAV Hassan II 229. Consultant to IFAD project in Haouz province, founder of ADRAR Maroc and Atlas Ait-Hani assocations in Imilchil valley 230. Geography Professor, University Mohamed V, Rabat 231. Director General, Agro Concept (consultancy) 232. Expert scientifique du projet ISIIMM, IRD, Montpellier

12.11.04, 24.11.04 13.12.05

253

Rabat

AC11

Agadir

AC12

5.9.07 and e-mail received on 18.9.07

Rabat

AC13

9.1.06

Berne, Switzerland

AC14

20.3.06

Rabat

AC15

24.3.06

Rabat

AC16

14.11.05

Marrakech

AC17

26.5.05

Marrakech

AC18

10.5.05

Marrakech

AC19

APPENDIX B: PRIMARY SOURCES

Tighedouine (All in Arabic except where indicated) Council meeting minutes (including budget data) dated: 27 October 1998 26 October 1999 22 August 2000 31 October 2000 5 March 2001 30 October 2001 26 February 2002 30 October 2002 25 February 2003 30 October 2003 27 February 2004 27 October 2004 21 February 2005 27 October 2005 Commune council internal statute (al-nizam al-dakhili) Individual projects files that together constitute the 2000– 4 commune development plan (in French)

APPENDIX B

255

Kingdom of Morocco, Ministry of the Interior, Province of Al Haouz. (2005). Monograph on the rural commune of Tighedouine (July 2005) Fiscal decree, No. 5/1994 PERG information (DCL: Etat d’Avancement des Travaux, Situation du 30/06/2005) PERG agreements between Commune council and ONE (Office National d’Electricite´), Numbers: 1442 (PERG1) 2568 (PERG2) 3963 (PERG3) 5417 (PERG4, 1st tranche) 6363 (PERG4, 2nd tranche) 7042 (PERG4, 2nd tranche List of associations in Tighedouine AAZ (Association des Amis du Zat): Note de pre´sentation, undated

Ouirgane (All in Arabic except where indicated) Council meeting minutes (including budget data) dated: 20 February 2002 (budget and finance commission meeting) 30 October 2002 26 February 2003 (budget and finance commission meeting) 20 October 2003 24 February 2004 26 October 2004 22 February 2005 28 October 2005 Other financial data on hard copy: Etat de report de credit de l’exercice 1999– 2000 a` l’exercice 2000 – 2001 Etat des recettes realise´es du 1.7.2000– 25.12.2001 Recettes realise´es au 31.12.2002

256

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

IN MOROCCO

Etat de report de credit d’investissement de l’exercice 2002 a` l’exercice 2003 Etat des recettes realise´es au 31.12.2003 Etat des recettes realise´es au 31.12.2004 Etat de report de credit d’investissement de l’exercice 2004 a` l’exercice 2005 Situation budgetaire CR Ouirgane au 30.9.05 Commune council internal statute (al-nizam al-dakhili) Canevas directeur indicatif pour la preparation du plan de de´veloppement economique et social (2000– 4 development plan), includes individual project files Official commune monograph (July 2005) Commune monograph in French (undated), written by Mohamed Bouraoud, Coordinator of Espace Associatif at commune Ouirgane Fiscal decree adopted at council session on 28.2.1997 PERG agreements between Commune council and ONE (Office National d’Electricite´), numbers: 1531 (PERG2) 3952 (PERG3) 5404 (PERG4, 1st tranche) Ouirgane dam information sheet from the caı¨dat Ouirgane (undated) List of associations in Ouirgane Various statutes of associations in Ouirgane and Tighedouine communes

Al Haouz Province Financial data: balance sheets for the years 2000/2001 to 2005 (Excel Files and 2004 actual figures in hard copy), DCL: Diagnostic de l’AEP rurale, Fiche 3: questionnaire Communes Rurales, douars relevant des communes, probably 2004 Liste des projets en partenariat avec l’ADS dans la province d’Al Haouz, undated.

APPENDIX B

257

DCL: Evaluation de la politique conventionelle des collectivite´s locales, undated DCL: Evaluation des Conventions CR-ONG, 2002 DCL PowerPoint presentation (2005) and various documents in Arabic on Tahanout commune reorganization Summary sheet of the Economic and Social Development Plan for 2000– 4, for the period 1/7/1999 to 31/12/2003 and Summary monitoring report, Al Haouz Province, Tahanout (both in French) DCL: Situation du programme d’e´lectrification rurale globale (PERG), undated DCL: Electrification rurale: Fiche synthe`se: Programmation et taux de re´alisation, situation du 30.3.05 DCL: Electrification rurale: programmation/re´alisation (as of October 2005) DCL: Etat des credits octroye´s par le FEC pour le de´veloppement local, dated 29.3.05 General Directorate of Hydraulics (DGH): impact study on Ouirgane dam construction DPE: untitled document (on the second phase of the PNRR), version December 2004 Document with data on expenditures by the Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz regional council over the period 2004– 2006 (in Arabic) Personal notes from participant observation in FREPE/ADS meetings Poster in the administrative office in the Dar Al Haouz (Marrakech); visited on 13.3.06

IFAD Project Document entitled Donne´es statistiques sur la situation organisationnelle et financie`re des associations concerne´es dans le projet FIDA, undated All PDDs (Plan de de´veloppement de douar) for the villages in Ouirgane commune as well as examples from other project zones (electronic files) Contrat-Programme annuel au titre de l’exercice 2003 (model contract) List of Associations in project zone 2003

258

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

IN MOROCCO

Royaume du Maroc: Ministe`re de l’Agriculture et du De´veloppement Rural, Direction Provinciale de l’Agriculture de Marrakech, Etude d’ame´nagement hydro-agricole et de topographie des pe´rime`tres de PMH sur une superficie de 375HA relevant de la CR d’Ouirgane – Province d’Al Haouz. Phase II: Etude du diagnostic du re´seau d’irrigation; groupe de pe´rime`tres: Tizi Oussem – Idaissa – Aguinane - Taddarte – Tahliouine (FATH Ingenieurs Conseils, Casablanca); NB: this study is referred to as ‘technical study done by consultants for the IFAD project’ in the main text Research Assistant’s notes from IFAD meeting on 9 December 2005 in Asni.

World Bank Project Personal notes from meetings held during the World Bank DRIPMH mid-term review mission in Khe´nifra, Azilal, and Al Haouz provinces, 11– 15 April 2005 Personal notes from training sessions for Water User Associations attended on 9.9.05, 3.12.05, and 3 –4.2.06 in Marrakech Electronic (Excel) files with project planning and budget information (in French) Various legal documents and contracts related to Water User Associations (AUEAs) in Morocco (in Arabic and French)

CRS Projects Tamesloht: electronic file with list of projets realise´s as of 26.5.06, and poster hanging in the union building Various Partnership Agreements, Oulad M’taa commune

Other Documents Documents on a new part-time Master’s course for local authorities’ staff at the University Mohamed V (UNESCO-GN Chair) in Rabat on Environmental Management and Sustainable Development NGO, Ennakhil pour la Femme et l’Enfant (Marrakech): various documents on their activities

APPENDIX B

259

CDRT: “Charter for Good Governance” for the Marrakech-TensiftAl Haouz region (electronic document received from interviewee NG01) Field visit notes from visit to Aı¨t Iktel in the commune of Abadou for Association Aı¨t Iktel de De´veloppement, 9 March 2006 Papers given at the Ate´lier sur la Strate´gie 2020 de de´veloppement rural: e´tat des lieux, perspectives et problematique de financement, 9 November 2005 at the IAV Hassan II, Rabat (organized by the MADRPM, World Bank, and UNDP)

NOTES

Acknowledgements 1. S. I. Bergh, “Assessing the Scope for Partnerships Between Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations: Findings from Rural Morocco”, International Journal of Public Administration, 33(12–13) (2010), pp. 740–51. 2. S. I. Bergh, “Traditional Village Councils, Modern Associations, and the Emergence of Hybrid Political Orders in Rural Morocco”, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 21(1), pp. 45–53.

Introduction 1. In this book, community-based organizations (CBOs) are distinguished from NGOs (non-governmental organizations). The latter have a broader scope of activities that might assist CBOs and pursue commitments that do not directly benefit NGO members (McLean et al., Exploring partnerships between communities and local governments in community driven development: A framework, report no. 32709-GLB, June 29, 2005 [Washington, DC: Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Network, Social Development Department, Community Driven Development Team, World Bank, 2005], p. 13). Following Uphoff and Krishna, “Civil society and public sector institutions: More than a zero-sum relationship”, Public Administration and Development, 24 (2004), p. 366, the NGO category should be restricted to national and regional organizations in order to distinguish it from grassroots organizations, which are local level and membership organizations. 2. Peter Evans, “Government action, social capital and development: Reviewing the evidence on synergy”, World Development, 24(6) (1996), p. 1119. 3. World Bank, Royaume du Maroc: Strate´gie de de´veloppement rural (1997–2010), rapport de synthe`se (en trois volumes) volume II, rapport principal (rapport no.16303-MOR), 28 mars 1997 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997), pp. 1– 3. 4. D. Craig and D. Porter, Development beyond Neoliberalism? Governance, Poverty Reduction and Political Economy (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 93, 252.

NOTES

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3 –5

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5. H. Blair, “Participation and accountability at the periphery: Democratic local governance in six countries”, World Development, 28(1) (2000), pp. 21–39; E. Bryld, “The technocratic discourse: Technical means to political problems”, Development in Practice, 10(5) (2000), pp. 700–5; M. Andrews and A. Shah, Voice and Local Governance in the Developing World: What is Done, to What Effect, and Why? (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004); P. Keefer, A Review of the Political Economy of Governance: From Property Rights to Voice (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004). 6. W. Meynen and M. Doornbos, Decentralizing Natural Resource Management: A Recipe for Sustainability and Equity? (The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, 2003); Keefer, Review; R. van Klinken, “Operationalising local governance in Kilimanjaro”, Development in Practice, 13(1) (2003), pp. 71 – 82. 7. J. Manor, The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1999). 8. This short review of key concepts has previously been published in: S. I. Bergh, “Democratic decentralisation and local participation – A review of some recent research”, Development in Practice, 14(6) (2004), pp. 781–2, and is based on: A. N. Parker, Decentralization: The Way Forward for Rural Development? (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1995), pp. 19ff.; J. Litvack, A. Junaid and R. Bird, Rethinking Decentralization in Developing Countries (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1998), pp. 4–6; D. Rondinelli, “What is decentralization?”, in J. Litvack and J. Seddon (eds), Decentralization Briefing Notes (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1999), p. 2. 9. P. Heller, “Moving the state: The politics of democratic decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre”, Politics & Society, 29(1) (2001), p. 136. 10. Helling et al., Linking Community Empowerment, Decentralized Governance, and Public Service Provision through a Local Development Framework (Washington, DC: Social Protection and Community Driven Development Teams, World Bank, 2005), p. 67. 11. This summary is based on Bergh, “Democratic decentralisation”, citing: G. Frerks and J. M. Otto, Decentralization and Development: A Review of Development Administration Literature, Research Report 96/2 (Leiden: Van Vollenhoven Institute, 1996), p. 17; Litvack et al., Rethinking, pp. 5, 22; Manor, Political Economy, pp. 47, 88; Rondinelli, “What is Decentralization?”, pp. 4 – 5; Afzar et al., Conditions for Effective Decentralized Governance: A Synthesis of Research Findings (College Park, MD: IRIS Center, University of Maryland, 2001), pp. 6ff.; P. Francis and R. James, “Balancing rural poverty reduction and citizen participation: The contradictions of Uganda’s decentralization program”, World Development, 31(2) (2003), p. 326; and Helling et al., Linking, pp. 21 – 2, 33. 12. The World Bank’s World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People (Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003) argues that people can influence the performance of public services via the “short route of accountability” through “client power” in market and quasi-market arrangements where choice is the source of their power, and via the “long route of accountability” through “citizen power” and political processes (such as elections) in which democratic participation is the source of their power. 13. This summary is based on Frerks and Otto, Decentralization and Development; T. Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve (Washington, DC: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999); Manor, Political Economy; Blair, “Participation and accountability”; C. Johnson, “Local democracy, democratic decentralisation and rural development: Theories, challenges and options for policy”, Development Policy Review, 19(4) (2001); P. Bardhan, “Decentralization of governance and

262

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15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

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development”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16(4) (2002), pp. 185 –205; Francis and James, “Balancing”; T. Vedeld, “Democratic decentralisation and poverty reduction: Exploring the linkages”, Forum for Development Studies, 30(2) (2003), pp. 159–204; and Helling et al., Linking. J. Seddon, “Participation, civil society, and decentralization”, in Litvack and Seddon, Briefing Notes, p. 17; Vedeld, “Linkages”, p. 160; S. Wong and S. Guggenheim, “Community-driven development: Decentralization’s accountability challenge”, East Asia Decentralizes (2005). C. M. Long, Participation of the Poor in Development Initiatives: Taking their Rightful Place (London: Earthscan Publications, 2001), p. 5; N. Nelson and S. Wright, “Participation and power”, Power and Participatory Development: Theory and Practice (London: ITDG Publishing, 1995), p. 1; F. Cleaver, “Institutions, agency and the limitations of participatory approaches to development”, in B. Cooke and U. Kothari (eds), Participation: The New Tyranny? (London: Zed Books, 2001), p. 37. A. Wahlberg, “The teleology of participation”, Anthropology in Action, 10(1) (2003), p. 6; Nelson and Wright, “Participation and Power”, p. 3. Long, Participation of the Poor, p. 1. A. Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). J. C. Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed (London: Yale University Press, 1998). A. O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). M. W. Cernea, Putting People First: Sociological Variables in Rural Development (New York: Oxford University Press and World Bank, 1985). E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). A. K. Sen, Commodities and Capabilities (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1985); A. K. Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf Press, 1999). G. Mansuri and V. Rao, Community-Based and -Driven Development: A Critical Review (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004), pp. 8– 9. Ibid., pp. 10 –11. R. Chambers, “Participatory rural appraisal (PRA): Challenges, potentials and paradigm”, World Development, 22(10) (1994), pp. 1437–54; R. Chambers, “Paradigm shifts and the practice of participatory research and development”, in N. Nelson and S. Wright (eds), Power and Participatory Development: Theory and Practice (London: ITDG Publishing, 1995), pp. 30– 42. A. Krishna, Partnerships between Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations: Exploring the Scope for Synergy (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004), pp. 15 –16. Helling et al., Linking, pp. 36 – 8, 69; Krishna, Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations, p. 2; Mansuri and Rao, Community-Based, p. 11. Helling et al., Linking, pp. 38, 71; Hildyard et al., “Pluralism, participation and power: Joint forest management in India”, in Cooke and Kothari, New Tyranny, pp. 56–71; G. Mansuri and V. Rao, Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013). Helling et al., Linking, p. 72. Ibid., pp. 38, 71. Ibid., p. 72.

NOTES TO PAGES 9 –12

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33. Cooke and Kothari, New Tyranny, pp. 4, 14. 34. See J. Platteau and F. Gaspart, The “Elite Capture” Problem in Participatory Development (Namur: Center for Research on the Economics of Development [CRED], Faculty of Economics, University of Namur, 2003). 35. Cooke and Kothari, New Tyranny, p. 8. 36. Mansuri and Rao, Community-Based, p. 11 – citing J. R. Bowen, “On the political construction of tradition: Gotong royong in Indonesia”, Journal of Asian Studies, 45(3) (1986); and J. C. Ribot, African Decentralization: Local Actors, Powers and Accountability, Paper No. 8 (Geneva: UNRISD, 1995). 37. A. Cornwall, Beneficiary, Consumer, Citizen: Perspectives on Participation for Poverty Reduction (Stockholm: Sida, 2000), p. 62. 38. J. Gaventa and A. Cornwall, “Challenging the boundaries of the possible: Participation, knowledge and power”, IDS Bulletin, 37(6) (2006), p. 126. 39. D. Mosse, “‘People’s knowledge’, participation and patronage: Operations and representations in rural development”, in Cooke and Kothari, New Tyranny, pp. 16–35. 40. G. Williams, “Evaluating participatory development: Tyranny, power and (re) politicization”, Third World Quarterly, 25(3) (2004), p. 567. 41. Krishna, Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations, p. 22. 42. See A. Fiszbein, “Public-Private Partnerships as a Strategy for Local Capacity-Building: Some Suggestive Evidence from Latin America”, in P. Collins (ed.), Applying Public Administration in Development: Guideposts to the Future (Chichester and New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), pp. 163–77, for mostly urban examples; A. H. J. Helmsing, “Local economic development: New generations of actors, policies and instruments for Africa”, Public Administration and Development 23:1 (2003), pp. 67–76; A. Joshi and M. Moore, “Institutionalised coproduction: Unorthodox public service delivery in challenging environments”, Journal of Development Studies, 40(4) (2004), pp. 31–49; Uphoff and Krishna, “Zero-sum”; and R. Batley, “Engaged or divorced? Cross-service findings on government relations with nonstate service-providers”, Public Administration and Development, 26 (2006), pp. 241–51. 43. See, for example, D. Porter and M. Oynach-Olaa, “Inclusive planning and allocation for rural services”, Development in Practice, 9(1&2) (1999), pp. 56 –67; Meynen and Dornboos, Natural resource management; A. Baviskar, “Between micro-politics and administrative imperatives: Decentralisation and the watershed mission in Madhya Pradesh, India”, The European Journal of Development Research, 16(1) (2004), pp. 26–40; A. M. Larson and J. C. Ribot, “Democratic decentralisation through a natural resource lens: An introduction”, European Journal of Development Research, 16(1) (2004), pp. 1–25; J. Manor, “User committees: A potentially damaging second wave of decentralisation?”, European Journal of Development Research, 16(1) (2004), pp. 192–213; P. Wassenich and K. Whiteside, CDD Impact Assessments Study: Optimizing Evaluation Design Under Constraints (Washington, DC: Social Development Family, The World Bank, 2004); J. C. Ribot, “Choice, Recognition and the Democracy Effects of Decentralization”, Working Paper No. 5, Swedish International Centre for Local Democracy (ICLD), 2011 (available at: www.icld.se/pdf/ICLD_wp5_printerfriendly.pdf; accessed 16 December 2015); and S. Lange, “The depoliticisation of development and the democratization of politics in Tanzania: Parallel structures as obstacles to delivering services to the poor”, Journal of Development Studies, 44(8) (2008), pp. 1122–44. 44. L. G. Romeo, “The role of external assistance in supporting decentralisation reform”, Public Administration and Development, 23 (2003), p. 93; K. Kuper, Community-Driven Development in Local Government Capacity Building Projects: Emerging Approaches in Africa (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004), p. 2.

264

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45. See J. Gaventa, “Strengthening participatory approaches to local governance: Learning the lessons from abroad”, National Civic Review, 93(4) (2004), pp. 16 –27; and the contributions in A. Cornwall and V. S. Coelho (eds), Spaces for Change? The Politics of Citizen Participation in New Democratic Arenas (London and New York: Zed Books, 2007). 46. J. S. Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 7–17. 47. Ibid., p. 15. 48. P. Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). 49. Ibid., p. 12. 50. Evans, “Government action”. 51. Migdal et al., State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 3. 52. Ibid., pp. 24 –6. 53. J. S. Migdal, “The state in society: An approach to struggles for domination”, in ibid., p. 26. 54. Migdal, State in Society, p. 63. 55. P. P. Houtzager, “Introduction: from polycentrism to the polity”, in P. P. Houtzager and M. Moore, Changing Paths: International Development and the New Politics of Inclusion (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005), pp. 1– 31. 56. Migdal et al., State Power, p. 3; Evans, Embedded Autonomy, p. 19; C. Lund, “Twilight Institutions: An Introduction”, Development and Change, 37(4) (2006), p. 679. 57. A. F. Robertson, People and the State: An Anthropology of Planned Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Scott, Seeing like a State; R. Mongbo, “Politics and the making of local state in Benin: Decentralization from an actor-oriented perspective”, in P. Hebinck and G. Verschoor (eds), Resonances and Dissonances in Development: Actors, Networks and Cultural Repertoires (Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2001), pp. 219–35. 58. F. N. Pieke, “Contours of an anthropology of the Chinese state: Political structure, agency and economic development in rural China”, unpublished manuscript, 2004. 59. S. B. Ortner, “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26(1) (1984), p. 142. 60. J. Mooij, “The black box of the state: Studying the politics of food distribution policy”, in B. Harriss-White (ed.), Agricultural Markets from Theory to Practice: Field Experience in Developing Countries (Basingstoke, New York: Macmillan, St. Martin’s Press 1999), pp. 323–47. 61. See L. Auclair and M. Alifriqui (eds), Agdal, patrimoine socio-e´cologique de l’Atlas marocain (Rabat: Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe [IRCAM] and Institut de Recherche pour le De´veloppement [IRD], 2012. Available at: horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/ pleins_textes/divers13-07/010059469.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015). 62. See S. I. Bergh, “Assessing local governance innovations in Morocco in light of the participatory budgeting experience in Brazil: The case of ‘Civil society’ federations (espaces associatifs) in Al Haouz province”, Journal of Economic and Social Research, 12(1) (2010), pp. 113– 38. 63. The total number of interviews includes cases in which two separate interviews were conducted with the same interviewee when the latter was active in more than one association. 64. The monographs were prepared by a team from the provincial directorate of the Ministry of the Interior in July 2005, as part of preparations for the National Human Development Initiative (INDH).

NOTES

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65. The following meeting minutes were used (23 meetings in total). For Tighedouine: October 1998– 2005, February 2001 –5, and August 2000 and August 2005 (participant observation notes). For Ouirgane: October 2002 –5, and February 2002–5 (for 2002 and 2003, it was only possible to obtain the reports of the budget and finance commission). See Appendix B for a list of primary data used. 66. Most of the works consulted and documents obtained in Morocco are in French; all quotations in this book are my own translations. For the translation of documents in Arabic, I relied on my own (intermediate level) knowledge of the language and my translators. 67. For example, V. Maher, Women and Property in Morocco: Their Changing Relations to the Process of Social Stratification in the Middle Atlas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); S. S. Davis, Patience & Power: Women’s Lives in a Moroccan village (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Books, 1983); M. S. Dechavannes and Z. Chattou, “Savoir et savoir-faire des femmes rurales en milieu steppique de missour”, in M. Mahdi (ed.), Mutations sociales & re´organisation des ´espaces steppiques (Casablanca: Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2002), pp. 185 – 209; M. Kerzazi and T. Agoumy, Structures sociales et femme rurale au Maroc (Rabat: Royaume du Maroc, Universite´ Mohammed V – Agdal, Publications de la Faculte´ des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, 2004) – but see also L. H. Skalli, “Women and poverty in Morocco: The many faces of social exclusion”, Feminist Review (69) (2001), pp. 73 – 89; and A. Damamme, “Le genre a` l’e´preuve du de´veloppement au Maroc: Discours et pratiques concernant la place des femmes dans les projets”, PhD thesis, University of Orle´ans, 2005. 68. See B. Venema and A. Mguild, “The vitality of local political institutions in the Middle Atlas, Morocco”, Ethnology, 41(2) (2003), pp. 103– 17. 69. Evans, Embedded Autonomy; Evans, “Government action”. 70. Helling et al., Linking, p. iii; see also D. Olowu and J. S. Wunsch, Local Governance in Africa: The Challenges of Democratic Decentralization (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Rienner, 2004), pp. 1–4. 71. See Vedeld, Linkages; R. C. Crook and A. S. Sverrisson, “Does decentralization contribute to poverty reduction? Surveying the evidence”, in Houtzager and Moore, Changing Paths, pp. 233–59. 72. A. Arce and N. Long, “The dynamics of knowledge”, in N. Long and A. Long (eds), Battlefields of Knowledge: The Interlocking of Theory and Practice in Social Research and Development (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 211 – 46; C. Shore and S. Wright, “Introduction: Policy: A new field of anthropology”, in C. Shore and S. Wright (eds), Anthropology of Policy: Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 3 – 42.

Chapter 1 Development Synergies 1. Helling et al., Linking, pp. i, 2. 2. Evans, “Government action”, p. 1119. 3. G. Mohan and K. Stokke, “Participatory development and empowerment: The dangers of localism”, Third World Quarterly, 21(2) (2000), pp. 247–68; S. Hickey and G. Mohan, “Towards participation as transformation: Critical themes and challenges”, in S. Hickey and G. Mohan (eds), Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Exploring New Approaches to Participation in Development (London and New York: Zed Books, 2004), pp. 3–24.

266

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4. Krishna, Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations; Helling et al., Linking; McLean et al., Community Driven Development. 5. But see the recent comprehensive and critical study by Mansuri and Rao, Localizing Development, which gives ample attention to the importance of the local political context and the need for radical change involving a confrontation with local elites in order for participatory development to succeed. 6. McLean et al., Community Driven Development, p. 16. 7. Mohan and Stokke, “Dangers of localism”. 8. Williams, “Evaluating participatory development”, p. 568. 9. M. Moore and J. Putzel, Thinking Strategically about Politics and Poverty (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 1999), cited in ibid., p. 567. 10. See also S. Hickey, Capturing the Political? The Role of Political Analysis in the MultiDisciplining of Development Studies (Oxford and Manchester: Global Poverty Research Group [CPRG] and Economic and Social Research Council [ESRC], 2006), p. 5. 11. Moore and Putzel, Thinking Strategically, p. 13. 12. Sen, Development as Freedom. 13. J. Gaventa, “Finding the spaces for change: A power analysis”, IDS Bulletin, 37(6) (2006), pp. 26–7. 14. Gaventa’s “power cube” framework assesses the possibilities of transformative action in various “participatory” spaces: ibid.; see also A. Cornwall, “Spaces for transformation? Reflections on issues of power and difference in participation in development”, in Hickey and Mohan (eds), Tyranny to Transformation, pp. 75–91. See S. Pellissery and S. I. Bergh, “Adapting the capability approach to explain the effects of participatory development programs: Case studies from India and Morocco”, Journal of Human Development, 8(2) (2007), pp. 283– 302 for applied examples. 15. Mohan and Stokke, “Dangers of localism”. 16. Helling et al., Linking. 17. Williams, “Evaluating participatory development”; Heller, “Moving the state”. 18. Heller, “Moving the state”. 19. See also Farrington et al., Reluctant Partners? Non-Governmental Organizations, the State and Sustainable Agricultural Development (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); J. Clark, “The state, popular participation, and the voluntary sector”, World Development, 23(4) (1995), pp. 593–601; C. Mercer, “NGOs, civil society and democratization: A critical review of the literature”, Progress in Development Studies, 2(1) (2002), pp. 5–22; Uphoff and Krishna, “Zero-sum”. 20. Evans, “Government action”, p. 1119. 21. Manor, “User committees”, p. 208. 22. World Bank, State-Society Synergy for Accountability: Lessons for the World Bank (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004), p. i. 23. McLean et al., Community Driven Development, p. 42. 24. Evans, “Government action”, p. 1119. 25. Ibid., pp. 1, 120, citing J. B. Nugent, “Between state, market and households: A neoinstitutional analysis of local organizations and institutions”, World Development, 21(4) (1993), pp. 623 – 32; see also J. Tendler, Good Government in the Tropics (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 26. Social capital refers to “features of social organization, such as trust, norms and networks that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions”: R. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (New Haven, CT: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 167.

NOTES

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267

27. See, for example, Tendler, Good Government; Das Gupta et al., “State-community synergies in community-driven development”, Journal of Development Studies, 40(3) (2004), pp. 27– 58. 28. Evans, “Government action”. 29. E. Ostrom, “Crossing the great divide: Coproduction, synergy, and development”, World Development, 24(6) (1996), pp. 1073–87. 30. Ibid., pp. 1073–4; see also McLean et al., Community Driven Development, p. 2n1. 31. Krishna, Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations, pp. 8–9; see also A. Krishna, “Partnerships between local governments and community-based organisations: Exploring the scope for synergy”, Public Administration and Development, 23 (2003), pp. 361–71, and McLean et al., Community Driven Development, pp. 14–15. 32. Krishna, Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations, p. 10. See also A. Joshi and M. Moore, “Institutionalised co-production: Unorthodox public service delivery in challenging environments”, Journal of Development Studies, 40(4) (2004), pp. 31–49 for the related concept of “institutionalized co-production” and practical examples. 33. Evans, “Government action”, pp. 1, 126. 34. Clientelism refers to the existence of bosses on different levels who have the capacity to deliver patronage in return for services and votes; see Harriss et al., “Introduction: The new local politics of democratization”, in J. Harriss, K. Stokke and O. To¨rnquist (eds), Politicising Democracy: The New Local Politics of Democratisation (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 20. 35. McLean et al., Community Driven Development, p. 16. 36. Krishna, Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations, pp. 20–2. 37. McLean et al., Community Driven Development, p. 18. 38. Another term for similar examples of “deliberative decision making” is “empowered participatory governance”; see A. Fung and E. O. Wright, Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (London: Verso, 2003), cited in J. Gaventa, Triumph, Deficit or Contestation? Deepening the “Deepening Democracy” Debate (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies [IDS], 2006). There is also an emerging literature on “social accountability”. 39. J. Ackerman, “Co-governance for accountability: Beyond ‘Exit’ and ‘Voice’”, World Development, 32(3) (2004), p. 450. 40. Helling et al., Linking, pp. 34, 68. 41. See Bardhan, “Decentralization of governance and development”, pp. 202 –3. 42. Krishna, Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations, pp. 4, 20, 22; Das Gupta et al., “State-community synergies”. 43. Ackerman, “Co-governance”, p. 455. 44. Helling et al., Linking, pp. iii, 6, 13, 17. 45. Based on RTI, Diagnostic de la capacite´ locale pour la bonne gouvernance (Rabat: USAID and Ministry of Interior, Direction Ge´ne´rale des Collectivite´s Locales, Morocco, 2001); RTI, Le mouvement associatif au Maroc (Rabat: USAID and Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Direction Ge´ne´rale des Collectivite´s Locales, 2002); and Romeo, “External assistance”, p. 90. 46. P. Morgan, The Concept of Capacity, Draft Version (Maastricht: European Centre for Development Policy Management [ECDPM], 2006), pp. 6–7. 47. Fiszbein, “Public-Private Partnerships”, pp. 171 –2. 48. Helling et al., Linking, p. 24. 49. McLean et al., Community Driven Development, p. 24. 50. Ibid., pp. 4, 24.

NOTES TO PAGES 36 – 41

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51. Krishna, Elected Local Governments and Community-Based Organizations, pp. 5, 21; M. McNeil and M. Woolcock, Capacity Enhancement for Social Development: Building on Local Context and Process (Washington, DC: World Bank, World Bank Institute, 2004), p. 6; Helling et al., Linking, pp. 45, 54. 52. See J. C. Ribot, Waiting for Democracy: The Politics of Choice in Natural Resource Decentralization (Washington, DC: World Resources Institute, 2004), pp. 43–4. 53. Bardhan, “Decentralization of governance and development”, p. 194; and McLean et al., Community Driven Development, p. 48. 54. McLean et al., Community Driven Development, pp. 45–7. 55. Bastiaensen et al., “Poverty reduction as local institutional process”, World Development, 33(6) (2005), pp. 979 –93; McLean et al., Community Driven Development, p. 20. 56. Gaventa, Triumph, p. 15n3.

Chapter 2

State –Society Relations and Popular Participation in Morocco

1. Heller, “Moving the state”, p. 136. 2. Madani et al., The 2011 Moroccan Constitution: A Critical Analysis (Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2012), p. 34. 3. M. Darif, “Morocco: A reformist monarchy?”, Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 3(1) (2012), pp. 82– 103. 4. For analysis of the speech and a more detailed history of regionalization in Morocco, see the contributions in Saint-Prot et al., Vers un mode`le marocain de re´gionalisation – Etat, territoire et de´veloppement dans un pais emergent, “The`mes actuels”, 67th edn (Rabat: REMALD, 2010). 5. World Bank, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and International Development Association: Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Grant from the MENA Transition Fund in the Amount of US$ 4.55 Million to the Kingdom of Morocco for a Local Government Support Program (PACT), 25 November 2013, Report No. 76135-MA; Urban and Social Development Unit, Sustainable Development Department, World Bank (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013). 6. Madani et al., 2011 Moroccan Constitution, p. 34. 7. Seven economic regions were created in 1971, but remained mainly on paper only. The region was recognized in the constitutions of 1992 and 1996 as a decentralized and deconcentrated authority. In 1997, 16 regions were established by law, with an indirectly elected assembly presided over by both the president of the regional assembly/council and the governor (wali) appointed by the king. The official objectives of creating the 16 regions were first to reduce regional inequalities; second, to transcend once and for all the idea of the French Protectorate division of the country into a “useful” and a “useless” Morocco (Maroc utile and Maroc inutile); and third, to use certain techniques such as regional development planning (ame´nagement du territoire) at a more appropriate level. Another major reason for the promotion of regional decentralization was to allow for the full integration of the Western Sahara into the kingdom – see S. Piriou-Sall and J. Sallier, Chapter 3: “De´centralisation et de´veloppement rural au Maroc”, Report no. 16303-MOR: Royaume du Maroc: Strate´gies de de´veloppement rural (1998–2010), rapport de synthe`se (en trois volumes) volume 3 annexes (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1998), p. 11; and E. Jensen, Western Sahara: Anatomy of a Stalemate (London and Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005), p. 50. A more recent issue has been the need to accommodate growing calls for a federal state and regional autonomy from

NOTES

8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

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NGOs defending the Berber/Amazigh cause (M. Boudarham, “Amazighite´: Le CMA re´ite`re sa position”, Aujourd’hui le Maroc, 27 June 2006). For more information on regional decentralization in Morocco, see J. R. Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation in Morocco”, Journal of Modern African Studies, 21(3) (1983), p. 491; Piriou-Sall and Sallier, “De´centralisation et de´veloppement”, p. 12; R. Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques de de´centralisation au Maroc: Ou en sommes-nous?”, REMALD, 51–52 (2003), p. 14; M. Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc (Rabat: Confluences, 2005), pp. 63–4, 151; M. Benyahya (ed.), La question re´gionale au Maroc: Se´lection d’e´tudes et documents (Rabat: REMALD, 2006); and A. Harsi and M. El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre conceptuel, le´gislatif et re´glementaire des processus de de´centralisation et de re´gionalisation au Maroc (2006), pp. 182, 190–1, 196, 207. See Article 146 of the 2011 Constitution. See Conseil e´conomique, social et environnemental (CESE), “New Development Model for the Southern Provinces, October 2013”. Report available at: www.cese.ma/ Documents/PDF/Report-New%20development%20model%20for%20the%20s outhern%20provinces.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015) A. Bouachik, “La re´gionalisation: Un nouveau mode de gouvernance territorial”, in C. Saint-Prot, A. Bouachik and F. Rouvillois (eds), Vers un mode`le marocain de re´gionalisation – Etat, territoire et de´veloppement dans un pais emergent, “The`mes actuels”, 67th edn (Rabat: REMALD, 2010), p. 12. Madani et al., 2011 Moroccan Constitution, p. 34. M. El Yaagoubi, “Le bilan de la de´centralisation provinciale au Maroc”, in A. Bouachik (ed.), The`mes actuels: La de´centralisation administrative au Maroc: Projets de re´forme et exigences du de´veloppement: Actes de la journe´e d’e´tude organise´e par la pre´fecture de Sale´-medina et l’association marocaine de sciences administratives le 21 juillet 2001 (Rabat: REMALD, 2001), p. 9. For more information on decentralization at the provincial level, see Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, p. 491; M. El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle des collectivite´s locales dans le de´veloppement e´conomique et social au Maroc (Rabat: REMALD, 2000), p. 105; El Yaagoubi, “Le bilan”, pp. 7–9, 11–12, 19, 114–15; Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Direction Ge´ne´rale des Collectivite´s Locales (DGCL), Collectivite´s locales en chiffres 2002 (Rabat: Centre de Documentation des Collectivite´s Locales, 2004), p. 38; Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, pp. 182, 188ff., 202–3; and A. Harsi, “De´centralisation et de´concentration administrative: Instruments de la proximite´ administrative”, in M. Benyahya (ed.), L’administration de proximite´: Concept et implications: Actes du colloque maghre´bin organise´ par la REMALD et l’Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) avec le concours de la Fondation Hanns-Seidel d’Allemagne les 24 et 25 novembre 2005 a` Rabat (Rabat: REMALD, 2006), pp. 21–35. Madani et al., 2011 Moroccan Constitution, p. 35. Ibid., p. 34. A. Bouachik, “La gouvernance locale a` la lumie`re de la nouvelle charte communale”, in Bouachik (ed.), The`mes actuels, p. 104. See M. J. Willis, Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (London: Hurst & Company, 2012), p. 273. See Catusse et al., “Decentralisation and Its Paradoxes in Morocco”, in B. Drieskens, F. Mermier, and H. Wimmen (eds), Cities of the South: Citizenship and Exclusion in the Twenty-first Century (London: Saqi Books, 2007), pp. 125–7 for details. See ibid., pp. 113– 35 for an excellent review of urban decentralization in Morocco. This section is based on D. Basri, La de´centralisation au Maroc: De la commune a` la region (Paris: Nathan, 1994), pp. 13–21 and Piriou-Sall and Sallier, “De´centralisation et de´veloppement”, pp. 7–8 unless indicated otherwise.

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20. The word makhzen literally means treasury, i.e. the place in which all the state revenues are deposited; starting with the Saaˆdian dynasty (1554–1660), the term came to denote the Moroccan Government as a whole (Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques”, p. 12). Today, makhzen refers to the power structures surrounding the monarchy (M. Willis, “Political parties in the Maghrib: The illusion of significance”, Journal of North African Studies, 7(2) (2002), p. 7). 21. In the following, the term collectivite´ locale is translated as “local authority”. It refers to the decentralised levels of government i.e. the communes, provinces and regions. The term should be distinguished from the term autorite´ locale which could also be translated with “local authority” but in fact refers to the agent d’autorite´ or agent of authority, i.e. the civil servants at different levels representing the deconcentrated Ministry of the Interior, and specifically the position of caı¨d. 22. D. M. Hart, “The tribe in modern Morocco: Two case studies”, in E. Gellner and C. Micaud (eds), Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1973), p. 42 notes that clans were inappropriately called “fractions” by the protectorate governments – an error that persists today. 23. R. E. Dunn, “Berber imperialism: The Ait Atta expansion in southeast Morocco”, in Gellner and Micaud (eds), Arabs and Berbers, p. 107 argues that “the shopworn themes of rural dissidence and makhzen debility should be de-emphasized in favor of a more fruitful study of the makhzen’s role in tribal politics as both mediator and manipulator”. 24. R. Leveau, Le fellah marocain: De´fenseur du troˆne (Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1985), p. 11; A. El Glaoui, Le ralliement: Le glaoui, mon pe`re: Re´cit et te´moignage, 2nd edn (Rabat: Editions Marsam, 2004); J. Shoup, “Are there still tribes in Morocco?”, in D. Chatty (ed.), Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Entering the 21st Century (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2006), pp. 129, 133. 25. In the same year, the treaty of Madrid set up a Spanish sub-protectorate with its capital in Tetouan, covering 20,000 sq. km in northern Morocco and 23,000 sq. km in the far south. Its administrative machinery was similar to the French one, and for the purpose of simplifying the account here, reference is made to the French Protectorate only. C. R. Pennell, Morocco Since 1830: A History (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 116. 26. R. Bidwell, Morocco Under Colonial Rule: French Administration of Tribal Areas 1912–1956 (London: Frank Cass, 1973); V. Maher, Women and Property; L. Rosen, Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community (London: University of Chicago Press, 1984); B. Casciarri, “Coping with shrinking spaces: The Ait Unzar pastoralists of south-eastern Morocco”, in Chatty (ed.), Nomadic Societies, pp. 393–430. 27. M. Gershovich, French Military Rule in Morocco: Colonialism and its Consequences (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000), p. 207. 28. Willis, Politics and Power in the Maghreb, p. 205. 29. K. L. Brown, “The impact of the dahir berbe`re in Sale´”, in Gellner and Micaud (eds), Arabs and Berbers, pp. 201 – 15; K. L. Brown, People of Sale´: Tradition and Change in a Moroccan City, 1830 – 1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976); M. Naciri, “Territoire: Controˆler ou de´velopper, le dilemme du pouvoir depuis un sie`cle”, Maghreb-Machrek (164) (1999), pp. 21ff. 30. D. M. Hart, “The tribe in modern Morocco: Two case studies”, in Gellner and Micaud (eds), Arabs and Berbers, pp. 40ff. 31. D. E. Ashford, Political Change in Morocco (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 357ff. 32. Hart, “The tribe”, pp. 41–2.

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33. Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 26. 34. Basri, De la commune, p. 66; F. Vaillancourt, “Morocco and Tunisia: Financing local governments – the impact on infrastructure finance”, in R. M. Bird and F. Vaillancourt (eds), Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 154; for changes in the administrative boundaries and their effects in 2008, see J. Clark, “The 2009 Communal Charter and Local Service Delivery in Morocco”, Working Paper No. 2, Yale Program on Governance and Local Development, 2015, pp. 27ff. Available at: campuspress.yale.edu/pgld/files/2015/03/JanineClarkAcknowledgements-Included-233fh0l.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015). 35. J. Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite – A Study in Segmented Politics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), p. 284. 36. A. Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 30. 37. Hammoudi’s argument echoes that of Leveau’s seminal 1985 study on local elites. Leveau’s, Le fellah marocain shows convincingly how the monarchy restored the power of local elites in order to ensure its support in rural areas. 38. J. Chiapuris, The Ayt Ayash of the High Moulouya Plain: Rural Social Organization in Morocco (Ann Arbor, MI: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1979), p. 110. 39. Shoup, “Are there still tribes”, p. 135. 40. Mehdi Ben Barka, cited in D. E. Ashford, Political Change in Morocco (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 362. 41. D. E. Ashford, National Development and Local Reform: Political Participation in Morocco, Tunisia and Pakistan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 46– 7. 42. In the north of the country, the rebellion in the Rif in 1958–9 was heavily suppressed by the makhzen. This left a deep legacy of apprehension and distrust on the eve of the creation of the communes. D. Seddon, Moroccan Peasants: A Century of Change in the Eastern Rif 1870–1970 (Folkestone: Wm Dawson & Sons Ltd, 1981), p. 292. 43. I. W. Zartman, Destiny of a Dynasty: The Search for Institutions in Morocco’s Developing Society (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1964). See also Chambergeat’s and Basri’s accounts of these elections, in which 10,000 councilors were elected: P. Chambergeat, “The Moroccan communal elections”, in W. I. Zartman (ed.), Man, State, and Society in the Contemporary Maghrib (London: Pall Mall Press, 1973), pp. 260–6; Basri, De la commune, pp. 80ff. See also Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 27. 44. Basri, De la commune, pp. 82 –3, 102, 105. 45. Leveau, Le fellah marocain, p. 53. 46. Ibid., pp. 32, 38; M. Brahimi, “La loi communale de 1976 a` l’epreuve de la pratique”, De´centralisation et pratiques locales du de´veloppement (Casablanca: Universite´ Hassan II, Ain Chock, Faculte´ des Sciences Juridiques, Economiques et Sociales; De´partement des Sciences Politiques, 1996), p. 25. 47. Waterbury, The Commander, p. 284. According to Basri, De la commune, p. 33, and S. Chikhaoui, “Dimension de la de´centralisation au Maroc: Entre le poids du passe´ et les contraintes de l’avenir”, International Conference Globalization – Sustainable Development – Local Government: Challenges of the 21st Century, Workshop II: The Mediterranean – a Region of Bright Prospects: Local Government Structures in some Selected Mediterranean States, 13–14 September 2000, Berlin, the Municipal Charter of 1960 was inspired by the French law on decentralization of 1884, which featured equally tight oversight mechanisms. 48. The word tutelle is borrowed from the body of civil law on incapacities, and is defined as the totality of the following procedures, which can be divided into two categories: the tutelle over persons (tutelle sur les personnes) consists of individual or collective suspension,

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49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

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dismissal of the councilors, or dissolution of the council; whereas the tutelle over council decisions (tutelle sur les actes) consists of approval, annulment, or substitution (El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, p. 243; and J. Chabih, “Re´flexions sur le pouvoir financier local au Maroc ou la nature de la re´partition constitutionelle des compe´tences financie`res entre l’e´tat et les collectivite´s locales”, REMALD, 54–55 (January–April 2004), p. 124. The tutelle over decisions can be further defined as belonging to one of two types. The tutelle de legalite´ occurs when the Ministry of the Interior decides whether a council decision conforms to the legal framework in place. The tutelle d’opportunite´, on the other hand, means that the Ministry of the Interior decides whether a decision is “opportune” or appropriate. Arguably, only the tutelle de legalite´ respects the principle of decentralization, since the tutelle d’opportunite´ implies a real discretionary power on the part of the Ministry of the Interior. The fact that the central authority can refuse to approve perfectly legal decisions has been qualified as both anti-democratic and anticonstitutional (M. El Yaagoubi, “La tutelle de l’opportunite´ entre de´mocratie locale et de´veloppement au Maroc”, REMALD: The`mes Actuels: De´mocratie Locale et De´veloppement, 15 (1998), p. 116; Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 40. Basri, De la commune, pp. 33, 47. Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, p. 181. Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, pp. 497–8, citing World Bank data. Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, pp. 30, 51. Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, p. 494; Basri, De la commune, p. 24; A. M. Maghraoui, “Democratization in the Arab world? Depoliticization in Morocco”, Journal of Democracy, 13(4) (2002), p. 29; Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques”, p. 14; Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, p. 182. Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, p. 486. Ibid., pp. 485 –7. Basri, De la commune, p. 34; Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, p. 182. El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, p. 93. El Yaagoubi, “La tutelle”, pp. 115, 121; Ministe`re de la Pre´vision Economique et du Plan (MPEP) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Etude sur la re´forme de l’administration en relation avec les processus de de´centralisation et de de´concentration” (Rabat: Ministe`re de la Pre´vision Economique et du Plan, Direction de la Programmation, Programme National de Gouvernance et de Renforcement Institutionnel, and UNDP, 2002), pp. 68, 74, 123. See Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, p. 492; and El Yaagoubi (2004: 60) for details. Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 45. Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, p. 493. Ibid., p. 494. The secretary general’s (SG) tasks are: to coordinate the commune services; prepare the deliberations of the council; supervise all the administrative tasks, such as the preparation of the budget, the invitation for tenders, and the award of procurement contracts; and liaise with the provincial directorates of the other administrations (El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, pp. 93–4). Given these wide-ranging responsibilities, it is not surprising that the SG was, and still is, often marginalized by council presidents who are jealous of his authority (Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 94). Basri, De la commune, p. 233. Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, pp. 494–6; El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, pp. 179ff. Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, pp. 499–504. Vaillancourt, “Morocco and Tunisia”, p. 157.

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68. El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, pp. 121–2. 69. Basri, De la commune, pp. 190 –1; Piriou-Sall and Sallier, “De´centralisation et de´veloppement”, p. 33. 70. Maghraoui, “Democratization”, p. 29. 71. Basri, De la commune, pp. 85 –8. 72. This is also true for the communal elections of 1983 and 1992 (see ibid., pp. 87 –94). 73. Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques”, p. 16. 74. See Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, pp. 191 –2, including citations; see also the contributions in M. Benyahya (ed.), Le nouveau concept de l’autorite´: Actes de la journe´e d’e´tude organise´e par l’Ecole nationale d’administration et l’Association marocaine des sciences administratives, le 25 novembre 2000 (Rabat: Revue Marocaine d’Administration Locale et de De´veloppement, 2001). 75. DGCL, Rapport relatif aux projets de re´forme, de la de´centralisation et de la de´concentration (Rabat: DGCL, 2001). Interestingly, Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, p. 177, point out that neither the 1962 Constitution nor subsequent ones (1970, 1972, 1992, 1996) used the term “decentralization”, but rather the more symbolic term “democratic management” (gestion de´mocratique) of local affairs. Indeed, the 1996 Constitution carefully avoided any mention of the principle of local autonomy or free exercise of power by the local authorities (B. Zyani, “De´centralisation et re´forme administrative au Maroc”, paper presented to the 4th Mediterranean Development Forum, Amman, 2002). The same seems to be true of the 2011 Constitution. 76. Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques”, pp. 22–3. 77. The protests and uprisings (referred to by some as “Intifada”) in Western Saharan towns in 1999 led the Moroccan leadership to conclude that a referendum would be too risky. This signaled the shift in the Moroccan strategy towards the 2001 Framework Agreement, which outlined autonomy for the Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty. T. Shelley, Endgame in the Western Sahara: What Future for Africa’s Last Colony? (London and New York: Zed Books 2004), pp. 147ff. 78. M. El Yaagoubi, “La nouvelle conception du roˆle du conseil communal a` la lumie`re de la loi N8 87.00”, REMALD, 56 (2004), p. 60. 79. DGCL, Charte Communale, 2nd edn (Rabat: Centre de Documentation des Collectivite´s Locales, 2004). 80. Groleau et al., La Gestion des Finances Locales au Maroc: Diagnostic et Recommendations, Version Finale, Mars 2010, consultancy report as part of the “Projet de Gouvernance locale au Maroc (GLM)” (Quebec: CRC Sogema for Agence Canadienne de De´veloppement International [ACDI] and DGCL, 2010). 81. For more details on the 2009 charter, see Clark, “2009 Communal Charter”, pp. 13ff. 82. Y. Saad Alami, “Gestion locale, charte communale: L’Inte´rieur coache les e´lus. Entretien avec Noureddine Boutayeb, wali directeur ge´ne´ral des collectivite´s locales”, E´conomiste, No. 3,150, online edition of 16 November 2009. Available at: www.leconomiste.com/article/ gestion-locale-charte-communale-l-interieur-coache-les-elusbrientretien-avec-noureddinebout (accessed 16 December 2015). For details, see Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Direction Ge´ne´rale des Collectivite´s Locales, Direction de la Formation des Cadres Administratifs et Techniques (DFCAT), Rapport sur le service de l’Etat ge´re´ de manie`re autonome (SEGMA) de la Direction de la Formation des Cadres Administratifs et Techniques du Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, 2009–2013 (Rabat: DGCL, 2013). 83. Clark, “2009 Communal Charter”, p. 41. 84. See the vast amount of resources produced during the Local Governance Project (Projet de Gouvernance Locale au Maroc, GLM) funded by the Candian International Development

274

85.

86. 87. 88.

89. 90.

91. 92.

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Agency during 2006–12. Some of these are available on the National Portal of Local Authorities website; see www.pncl.gov.ma/fr/Pages/default.aspx (accessed 16 December 2015). Alami, “Gestion locale”; A. Filali-Ansary, “Comment fonctionnera la commune de demain”, Vie ´economique, electronic version of 6 July 2009. Available at: lavieeco.com/ news/politique/comment-fonctionnera-la-commune-de-demain-14193.html (accessed 16 December 2015); S. I. Bergh, “‘Inclusive’ neoliberalism, local governance reforms and the redeployment of state power: The case of the national initiative for human development (INDH) in Morocco”, Mediterranean Politics, 17(3) (2012), pp. 410–26; Clark, “2009 Communal Charter”. Bergh, “‘Inclusive’ neoliberalism”. See DGCL, Guide Juridique des Collectivite´s Locales, Code Tome 1–2 (Rabat: Direction des Affaires Juridiques, des Etudes, de la Documentation et de la Coope´ration, Service du Bulletin Officiel des Collectivite´s Locales, 2010). A. Filali-Ansary, “L’Etat ne veut pas s’immiscer dans la gestion locale, son seul souci: la bonne gouvernance”, Vie ´economique, electronic version of 6 July 2009: lavieeco.com/ news/politique/letat-ne-veut-pas-simmiscer-dans-la-gestion-locale-son-seul-souci-labonne-gouvernance-14194.html (accessed 16 December 2015). Groleau et al., “La Gestion des Finances”. See the GLM project mentioned in note 84, and: USAID’s 3-year program (2001–4), “Support for Strengthening Decentralization and Local Democracy”, which worked mainly in the Agadir area (Interview DF02 and see Research Triangle Institute (RTI): various years); USAID also co-financed the “Platform for Dialogue between Citizens and his/her Commune” as part of its Local Governance Program (2010–14) in Morocco, again implemented by RTI. Other examples are the support for the Strategic Plan to Promote Decentralization in Morocco, co-financed by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID); ART GOLD, co-financed by the United Nation Development Program (UNDP), which focused on local development plans; the French-sponsored e4.6 million Projet d’accompagnement du processus de de´centralisation (PAD) with the DGCL (J. Lanteri and M. Poissonnier, “Dossier: De´centralisation & de´veloppement local: Le projet d’accompagnement du processus de de´centralisation, emble`me du nouveau partenariat franco-marocain”, La lettre de la coope´ration franc
aise au Maroc, 18 (July 2005), p. 16; and DGCL, “PAD Maroc: Projet d’Accompagnement du processus de De´centralisation”, special edition of La Lettre des Collectivite´s Locales: Bulletin d’Information Trimestriel de la Direction Ge´ne´rale des Collectivite´s Locales (Rabat: Centre de Documentation des Collectivite´s Locales, 2005). Other donors, NGOs and political foundations, including the Konrad Adenauer and Hanns Seidel foundations and ENDA Maghreb, are also active in this area (Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 169, DF03, DF15; World Bank, “Project Appraisal Document”, p. 10). The new organic law governing the communes was published in the Bulletin Officiel in July 2015 in Arabic and in February 2016 in French, see http://81.192.52.100/BO/FR/ 2016/BO_6440_Fr.pdf (accessed 1 March 2016). Cited in Otayek et al. (eds) Les socie´te´s civiles du sud: Un e´tat des lieux dans trois pays de la ZSP – Cameroun, Ghana, Maroc (Paris: Centre d’e´tude d’Afrique noire, Institut d’e´tudes politiques de Bordeaux and Direction Ge´ne´rale de la Coope´ration internationale et du De´veloppement, Ministe`re des Affaires e´trange`res, 2004), p. 56; and A. Herzenni, “Evolutions du partenariat et modalite´s de pilotage et de gestion du de´veloppement humain”, in 50 ans de de´veloppement humain au Maroc et perspectives pour 2025, (Rabat: Cinquantenaire de l’inde´pendance du Royaume du Maroc, 2006), p. 250. Available at:

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98. 99.

100.

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103. 104.

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www.albacharia.ma/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/31456/1252Evolutions_du_ partenariat_et_modalites_de_pilotage_et_de_gestion_du_developpement_humain_% 282006%297.pdf?sequence¼1 (accessed 16 December 2015). K. Chammari, “Etonnant Maroc”, Jeune Afrique, 17 September 2006. Cited in UNDP and F. Pe´rier, Etude sur le be´ne´volat et le volontariat au Maroc (Rabat: UNDP, 2005), p. 12. See also the online database of Moroccan NGOs and CBOs at www. tanmia.ma (accessed 16 December 2015). For a more comprehensive and historical treatment of civil society in Morocco, see J. N. Sater, Civil Society and Political Change in Morocco (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). F. Cavatorta, “Civil society, Islamism and democratisation: The case of Morocco”, Journal of Modern African Studies, 44(2) (2006), pp. 203–22. R. El Houdaigi, “La socie´te´ civile au Maroc”, paper presented at Se´minaire conjoint CAFRAD/OFPA sur la clarification des missions de l’Etat, de la socie´te´ civile et du secteur prive´ dans la gouvernance economique et la lutte contre la pauvrete´ en Afrique, Tangiers, 24–27 May 2004, pp. 2–3; Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, pp. 227–8; F. Pe´rier, Etude sur le be´ne´volat et le volontariat au Maroc (Rabat: UNDP Morocco 2005), pp. 10–12. T. Lacroix, Les re´seaux marocains du de´veloppement: Ge´ographie du transnational et politiques du territorial (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2005), pp. 168–9. The Associations Reconnues d’Utilite´ Publique (ARUPs) are officially recognized as beneficial to the public at large. This status is given by decree after a lengthy vetting process. In return, these associations can apply for public funds once a year without prior permission (according to Article 9 of the 2002 Law no. 75–00), and receive tax exemptions. R. Filali Meknassi, Etude sur le cadre juridique et institutionnel des associations au Maroc, unpublished paper dated 28 March 2002, World Bank Morocco Country Office, p. 23; M. Ben Youssef, Le financement des associations par les pouvoirs publics au Maroc (Rabat: Espace Associatif, 2003), p. 4. J. Santucci, “Les associations re´gionales marocaines, un nouveau cadre pour le cliente´lisme?”, in C. Lacoste and Y. Lacoste (eds), L’e´tat du Maghreb (Casablanca: Editions le Fennec, 1991), pp. 354– 5; E. M. Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte de l’association citoyenne (Rabat: Publications de la Faculte´ des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Universite´ Mohammed V, 2001), p. 25; Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, p. 130. D. Ben Ali, Civil Society and Economic Reform in Morocco; ZEF Project: Verbesserung der Wirtschaftsgesetzgebung in arabischen La¨ndern (Bonn: Center for Development Research [ZEF], University of Bonn, 2005) pp. 9ff. Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, p. 114; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Fundacio´n para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dia´logo Exterior (FRIDE), Arab Political Systems: Baseline Information and Reforms – Morocco (Washington, DC and Madrid: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and FRIDE, 2006), pp. 15– 16; M. Cherkaoui and D. Ben Ali, “The political economy of growth in Morocco”, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 46(5) (2007), pp. 751–2. Ben Ali, Verbesserung, pp. 6ff. S. Hegasy, Staat, O¨ffentlichkeit und Zivilgesellschaft in Marokko: Die Potentiale der soziokulturellen Opposition (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1997); R. Naciri, The Women’s Movement and Political Discourse in Morocco, Occasional Paper No. 8 (Geneva: United Nations Development Programme and United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1998); Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles; UNDP Maroc, Fiche de projet: Gouvernance et de´veloppement humain. “Mise en œuvre et accompagnement du processus agenda 21 local dans les provinces du sud du royaume” (2006 – 2009) nume´ro de programme: 00052564 (last updated on 12/09/2006), 2006, pp. 65ff.

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105. Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, pp. 72–3, 112. 106. See S. I. Bergh, “Constraints to strengthening public sector accountability through civil society: The case of Morocco”, International Journal of Public Policy (Special Issue on “Emerging Accountability Mechanisms and Stakeholders in the Governance of Public Service Delivery”), 4(3/4) (2009), pp. 352ff.; for more on the human rights groups, see A. Layachi, State, Society and Democracy in Morocco: The Limits of Associative Life (Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1998), p. 55; Carnegie Endowment and FRIDE, Arab Political Systems, pp. 15 – 16; Sater, Civil Society and Political Change; J. M. Gonza´lez Riera, “Des anne´es de plomb au 20 fe´vrier: Le roˆle des organisations des droits humains dans la transition politique au Maroc”, Confluences Me´diterrane´e, 78 (Summer 2011), pp. 35 – 48. 107. See E. Dalmasso, “Surfing the democratic tsunami in Morocco: Apolitical society and the reconfiguration of a sustainable authoritarian regime”, Mediterranean Politics, 17(2) (2012), pp. 217– 23. 108. See M. Said Saadi, “Water privatization dynamics in Morocco: A critical assessment of the Casablancan case”, Mediterranean Politics, 17(3) (2012), pp. 376–93. 109. Layachi, State, Society and Democracy, pp. 57 –8. 110. See P. Silverstein and D. Crawford, “Amazigh activism and the Moroccan state”, Middle East Report, 233 (Winter 2004), pp. 44–8. 111. M. Emperador Badimon, “Does unemployment spark collective contentious action? Evidence from a Moroccan social movement”, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 31(2) (2013), p. 195. 112. Ibid. 113. Ibid., p. 208. 114. See Hegasy, Staat, p. 335; Naciri et al., De´veloppement de´mocratique et action associative au Maroc: Ele´ments d’analyse et axes d’intervention (Montreal: Rights & Democracy [Canada] and Espace Associatif [Morocco], 2004), p. 123. 115. Dalmasso, “Surfing”, p. 221. 116. J. N. Sater, “The dynamics of state and civil society in Morocco”, Journal of North African Studies, 7(3) (2002), p. 108; Naciri et al., De´veloppement de´mocratique, pp. 93, 115–16, 129 –32, 143; Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, p. 133; Cavatorta, “The case of Morocco”, p. 16; H. Malka and J. B. Alterman, “Arab reform and foreign aid: Lessons from Morocco”, Significant Issues Series, 28(4) (2006), p. 71. 117. I. Ferna´ndez Molina, “The monarchy vs. the 20 February movement: Who holds the reins of political change in Morocco?”, Mediterranean Politics, 16(3) (2011), p. 437. 118. T. Desrues, “Mobilizations in a hybrid regime: The 20th February movement and the Moroccan regime”, Current Sociology, 61(4) (2013), p. 416; A. Hoffmann and C. Ko¨nig, “Scratching the democratic fac
ade: Framing strategies of the 20 February movement”, Mediterranean Politics, 18(1) (2013), pp. 1–22. 119. Ferna´ndez Molina, “Who holds the reins”, pp. 436–7; Hoffmann and Ko¨nig, “Democratic fac
ade”; M. Darif, “Le parent pauvre de la politique au Maroc”, Gazette du Maroc, 31 July 2002. 120. S. Errazzouki, “Morocco’s 20 February movement: Two years later”, 7 March 2013. Available at: www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10514/moroccos-20-february-movem ent_two-years-later (accessed 16 December 2015). 121. Hoffmann and Ko¨nig, “Democratic fac
ade”, p. 18; see also S. I. Bergh and D. RossiDoria, “Plus c
a Change? Observing the Dynamics of Morocco’s ‘Arab Spring’ in the High Atlas”, Mediterranean Politics, 20:2 (2015), pp. 198 – 216.

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122. A. Benchemsi, Islam and the Spread of Individual Freedoms: The Case of Morocco, Policy Analysis No. 778 (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 20 August 2015), pp. 13 –14. 123. Ibid., p. 14. 124. See H. De Haas, “Migration and development in southern Morocco: The disparate socioeconomic impacts of out-migration on the Todgha Oasis valley”, PhD thesis, Catholic University of Nijmegen, 2003, pp. 368ff.; Z. Daoud, Marocains de l’autre rive: Les immigre´s marocains, acteurs du de´veloppement durable (Paris and Casablanca: E´ditions ParisMe´diterrane´e and Tarik E´ditions, 2004); Naciri et al., De´veloppement de´mocratique, pp. 103–4; Lacroix, Les re´seaux marocains. 125. See Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte, pp. 92ff.; C. Chaize, “L’e´conomie sociale et solidaire au Maroc – les conditions de son de´veloppement (licence professionnelle ‘accompagnement et coordination des actions de solidarite´ internationale et de de´veloppement durable’)”, professional memoir, Bordeaux Montaigne University, 2003, pp. 48–9; Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, pp. 92ff.; Naciri et al., De´veloppement de´mocratique, p. 98; Damamme, “Le genre”, pp. 306ff.; UNDP Maroc and F. Pe´rier, Etude sur le be´ne´volat et le volontariat au Maroc (Rabat: UNDP, 2005), p. 29; F. Mourji, “Le financement semi formel du secteur informel au Maroc: Le micro-cre´dit, une alternative a` l’impasse?”, paper presented at Global Development Network: Seventh Annual Global Development Conference, “Institutions and Development: At the Nexus of Global Change”, 14–23 January 2006, St. Petersburg; UNDP Maroc, Rapport de de´veloppement humain 2005: Femmes et dynamiques du de´veloppement (Rabat: UNDP, 2006), pp. 73ff.; Cre´pon et al., “Impact of microcredit in rural areas of Morocco: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation”, working paper for Centre de Recherche en E´conomie et Statistique, 31 March 2011. Available at: www.crest.fr/ckfinder/userfiles/files/pageperso/Impact_of_mi crocredit_in_rural_areas_of_Morocco_2011_04.pdf 126. Ministe`re du Tourisme, de l’Artisanat, et de l’Economie Sociale, Office du De´veloppement de la Coope´ration (OCDO), Donne´es statistiques, Nombre total des coope´ratives pour la province EL HAOUZ, 2006. Available at: http://www.odco.gov.ma/rubrique.php?rub¼3 (accessed on 17 December 2006). At the end of 2011, due to encouragement by the INDH and other initiatives, there were 9,046 cooperatives. See www.odco.gov.ma/index.php?option¼com _content&id¼135&Itemid¼316&lang¼fr (accessed 16 December 2015). 127. See Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte, pp. 21ff.; M. Mahdi and K. Allali, “Les coope´ratives de la re´forme agraire trente ans apre`s”, Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc (BESM): Rapport du Social (2001), pp. 109 – 25; M. Mahdi, “Le roˆle de la socie´te´ civile dans la gestion des mutations au niveau local au Maroc”, in M. Elloumi (ed.), Mondialisation et socie´te´s rurales en Me´diterrane´e (Tunis and Paris: IRMC-Karthala, 2002), p. 476; A. Ait Haddout and M. Jaouad, “L’e´conomie sociale au Maroc: Approche me´thodologique et acteurs en presence”, in D. Khrouz (ed.), Le de´veloppement local et l’e´conomie solidaire a` l’e´preuve de la mondialisation (Casablanca: Fondation du Roi Abdul-Aziz Al Saoud pour les Etudes Islamiques et les Sciences Humaines, 2003), p. 23; Chaize, “L’e´conomie sociale”; Damamme, “Le genre”; Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, p. 231; B. Turner, “Neoliberal Politics of Resource Extraction: Moroccan Argan Oil”, Forum for Development Studies, 41(2) (2014), p. 227. 128. A sizeable proportion of local associations work on urban regulation, rather than rural development. Given the dramatic growth of slums and illegal settlements (quartiers clandestins), estimated at 4 million people or 24 per cent of urban households, neighborhood associations have been created to deal with the ensuing problems of basic infrastructure, cleanliness, security, and ownership rights. Otayek et al (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, pp. 95–6; M. Zouiten, “Les syste`mes de solidarite´ et les politiques d’inte´gration

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137.

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143.

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sociale”, in 50 ans de de´veloppement, p. 144. Available at: http://www.albacharia.ma/xmlui/ bitstream/handle/123456789/31433/1208Les_systemes_de_solidarite_et_les_politi ques_d_integration_sociale_(2005)4.pdf?sequence¼ 1 (accessed 11 January 2016). See J. Bourjeois and H. El Kam, Etude pre´alable au Programme Concerte´ Maroc (Rabat: Programme Concerte´ Maroc, 2000), p. 20. Naciri et al., De´veloppement de´mocratique, pp. 126– 7. See also Bergh, “‘Inclusive’ neoliberalism”. Desrues, “Mobilizations”, pp. 413– 14; Gonza´lez Riera, “Des anne´es de plomb”; Sater, Civil society and political change. Dalmasso, “Surfing”, p. 226. Ibid. Ferna´ndez Molina, “Who holds the reins”; Desrues, “Mobilizations”; Hoffmann and Ko¨nig, “Democratic fac
ade”. See Madani et al., 2011 Moroccan Constitution; and S. I. Bergh, “Governance reforms in Morocco: Beyond electoral authoritarianism?”, in A. Kadhim (ed.), Governance in the Middle East and North Africa: A Handbook (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 435–50. M. Ottaway, “The new Moroccan constitution: Real change or more of the same?”, commentary, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 20 June 2011. Available at: carnegieendowment.org/2011/06/20/new-moroccan-constitution-real-change-or-moreof-same/5l (accessed 16 December 2015); Madani et al., 2011 Moroccan Constitution. See E. Dalmasso, “Apolitical Civil Society and the Constitutional Debate in Morocco”, in L. Anceschi, G. Gervasio and A. Teti (eds), Informal Power in the Greater Middle East: Hidden Geographies, Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Democratization and Government (London and New York: Routledge, 2014) pp. 145–58; and Benchemsi, “Islam and the Spread” for a discussion on the role of Moroccan human rights organizations in the negotiations during the drafting of the new constitution. Bennani et al., ‘Il l’a fait!’ Telquel, 12– 18 March 2011, p. 18. Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, p. 136. Ibid., p. 55; Cavatorta, “The case of Morocco”, p. 216. However, all constitutions from 1962 onwards established the freedom of association as a constitutional right (Filali Meknassi, Etude sur le cadre, p. 7). Layachi, State, Society and Democracy, p. 43; T. Louissi, “Roˆle de la socie´te´ civile dans le de´veloppement re´gional”, Master’s thesis in Regional Economy, Faculty of Law, Economics and Social Sciences, Mohamed I University, Oujda, 2001, pp. 59ff.; Filali Meknassi, Etude sur le cadre, p. 15; Forum Euro-Me´diterrane´en des Instituts Economiques (FEMISE), Profil pays Maroc (Marseilles: Institut de la Me´diterrane´e, France; Economic Research Forum, Egypt, and Femise coordinators, 2004), p. 192; Carnegie Endowment and FRIDE, Arab Political Systems, p. 9; Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, p. 227. Piriou-Sall and Sallier, “De´centralisation et de´veloppement”, p. 24; Bourjeois and El Kam, Etude pre´alable, p. 9; K. Elbayar, “NGO laws in selected Arab states”, International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law, 7(4) (2005). For the text of the 1958 Dahir as amended by various legal texts, including Law 75-00 in 2002, see: www.sgg.gov.ma/Portals/0/associ ation_pdf/rec_lib_pubM_fr.pdf?ver¼2014-11-10-112908-800 (accessed 16 December 2015). Apart from the ARUPs, there are separate laws for Agricultural Water User Associations and micro-credit associations (Filali Meknassi, Etude sur le cadre, p. 11). Another form of association is the groupement d’inte´reˆt ´economique (economic interest group), which can be used to pool material resources (Ibid., p. 24).

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144. This provision was changed in 2009 by Law 07 –09, which deleted the provision that founding members had to submit copies of their criminal record. Instead, it added: “The public authorities which receive the founding declaration of an association can conduct further inquiries and obtain file No. 2 of their criminal record ‘casier juridique’ of the persons in question.” (Bulletin Official No. 5714, 5 March 2009, p. 374; see www.sgg.gov. ma/Portals/0/association_pdf/lib_pubN_Fr.pdf?ver¼ 2014-11-10-112908-800 (accessed 16 December 2015). 145. Filali Meknassi, Etude sur le cadre, pp. 26–8; Research Triangle Institute (RTI), Le mouvement associatif, p. 3; World Bank, “Note sur la gouvernance et la socie´te´ civile”, unpublished document for World Bank, Morocco Country Office, 2003. 146. D. Abbadi, “Roˆle des associations dans la gestion locale”, in Espace Associatif (ed.), Quelle contribution associative a` la re´duction du de´ficit de la de´mocratie locale? Tables rondes 2002 (Rabat: Espace Associatif and Fondation Friedrich Ebert, 2003), pp. 49–56. 147. Filali Meknassi, Etude sur le cadre, pp. 22 –3. 148. Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte, p. 78; RTI, Mouvement associative, p. 8. 149. T. A. El Farah, “Loi sur les associations: une re´forme qui risque d’eˆtre houleuse”, Vie e´conomique, 12 September 2014. Available at: lavieeco.com/news/politique/loisur-les-associations-une-reforme-qui-risque-detre-houleuse-30975.html (accessed 16 December 2015). 150. Sater, “The dynamics of state”, pp. 104 –6. 151. M. Willis, “Political parties in the Maghrib: Ideology and identification. A suggested typology”, Journal of North African Studies, 7(3) (2002), p. 23. 152. D. Axtmann, Die gesellschaftliche Anbindung der marokkanischen Parteien (Hamburg: German Institute of Global and Area Studies, 2003), pp. 19 – 20. 153. Ibid., p. 16; see also J. Liddell, “Notables, clientelism and the politics of change in Morocco”, Journal of North African Studies, 15(3) (2010), pp. 315 – 31, DOI: 10.1080/1362938090317543. 154. Willis “The illusion of significance”, p. 14. 155. A new law on political parties, which entered into force in February 2006, prohibits the changing of party affiliation during an MP’s mandate (O. Bendourou, “La nouvelle loi marocaine relative aux partis politiques”, L’anne´e du maghreb, e´dition 2005–2006 [Paris: CNRS E´ditions, 2007], pp. 293–301). The 2011 Constitution stipulates that MPs can be discharged if found guilty of this practice (Madani et al, 2011 Moroccan constitution, p. 41). 156. Willis, “The illusion of significance”, pp. 13 –15; Axtmann, Die gesellschaftliche Anbindung, pp. 12–14. 157. J. Santucci, Les partis politiques marocains a` l’e´preuve du pouvoir: Analyse diachronique et sociopolitique d’un pluralisme sous controˆle (Rabat: REMALD, 2001), p. 86. 158. Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2010 – Morocco country report (Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2009), p. 11; F. Boussaid, “The Rise of the PAM in Morocco: Trampling the Political Scene or Stumbling into it?”, Mediterranean Politics, 14(3) (2009), pp. 413–19; M. Monjib, “The USFP and the Moroccan Monarchy: the Power of Patronage”, Arab Reform Bulletin, 4 May 2010, available at: www.carnegieendowment.org/arb/?fa¼ show& article ¼ 40732 (accessed 16 December 2015); I. Szmolka, “Party system fragmentation in Morocco”, Journal of North African Studies, Vol. 15 No. 1 (March 2010), pp. 13–37; M. Tozy, “Reorganisation of the Moroccan Political Landscape”, Mediterranean Yearbook 2009 (2009), pp. 190–6, available at www.iemed.org/anuari/2009/aarticles/a190.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015); F. Eibl, “The party of authenticity and modernity (PAM): trajectory of a political deus ex machina”, Journal of North African Studies, 17:1 (2011), pp. 45–66.

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159. S. I. Bergh, “Morocco case study”, in A. van de Pas, S. Rottenberg and K. Hassan (eds), Beyond Orthodox Approaches: Assessing Opportunities for Democracy Support in the Middle East and North Africa (The Hague: NIMD/HIVOS, 2010), pp. 18–19. See also, UNDP Maroc, Rapport de De´veloppement Humain, p. 77 and National Democratic Institute (NDI), “Final Report on the Moroccan Legislative Elections, November 25, 2011”, pp. 17, 22, available at: www.ndi.org/files/Morocco-Final-Election-Report-061812-ENG.pdf on women’s lists in legislative elections (accessed 16 December 2015). 160. Bergh, “Morocco case study”, p. 19. 161. US Embassy in Rabat: ‘Morocco’s Managed Mayoral Elections May Strengthen PJD’, WikiLeaks Cable Reference ID: 09RABAT607, Created 2009-07-15 10:10, Released 2010-12-11 21:09, accessible at http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/07/09RABAT607.html (accessed on 18 February 2011). 162. L. Rosen, Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community (London: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 163. A. Claisse, “Rapport de synthe`se: Repre´sentation, gestion, de´veloppement: Les trois fondements de la de´centralisation”, REMALD, 22 (January– March 1998), p. 16. 164. Willis, “Ideology and identification”, p. 15. 165. M. Darif, “Le parent pauvre de la politique au Maroc”, Gazette du Maroc 275, 5 August 2002; NDI, Moroccan Legislative Elections. 166. Chiapuris, The Ayt Ayash, p. 112. 167. See Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc; and Willis, “Ideology and identification”. 168. But see NDI, Moroccan Legislative Elections, p. 16: “The 2011 Law on Political Parties calls for strengthening internal democratic mechanisms, stronger participation by women and the youth, and the formation of a committee on candidacies and a committee on parity and equal opportunity. However, the law does not provide specific definitions for the ‘internal democratic mechanisms,’ or define penalties for noncompliance. Regulatory functions rest with the Ministry of Interior; the law did not establish an independent oversight body.” 169. Axtmann, Die gesellschaftliche Anbindung, p. 6; A. Hamzawy, The 2007 Moroccan Parliamentary Elections: Results and Implications, web commentary, Middle East Program, 11 September 2007 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007), p. 1, available at: carnegieendowment.org/files/moroccan_parliamentary_ elections_final.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015). 170. Bergh, “Morocco case study”, p. 19. 171. NDI, Moroccan Legislative Elections, p. 7. 172. UNDP, Arab Human Development Report 2004: Towards Freedom in the Arab World (New York: UNDP, Regional Bureau for Arab States, 2005), p. 132. 173. See A. D. Alaoui, “Sondage sur les marocains et la politique: De´sinte´ressement total”, Maroc Hebdo International, 5, 30 November– 6 December 2001; and Axtmann, Die gesellschaftliche Anbindung, p. 8. 174. P. Pascon, “Les rapports entre l’etat et la paysannerie”, in P. Pascon (ed.), Etudes rurales: Ide´es et enqueˆtes sur la campagne marocaine (Rabat: Socie´te´ Marocaine des Editeurs Re´unis [SMER], 1980), pp. 13–26. 175. Lacroix, Les re´seaux marocains, p. 141. 176. W. D. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages: Agrarian Dreams and Deceptions, 1912–1986 (London: I.B.Tauris, 1988), pp. 155ff. 177. T. Desrues, “Governability and agricultural policy in Morocco: Functionality and limitations of the reform discourse”, Mediterranean Politics, 10(1) (2005), p. 61n2.

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178. Ministe`re de l’Agriculture, du De´veloppement Rural, et des Peˆches Maritimes (MADRPM), Recensement ge´ne´ral de l’agriculture (Rabat: MADRPM, 1996). 179. Swearingen, Moroccan Mirages, p. 164. 180. Ibid., pp. 164ff., 182; and Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, pp. 228–9. 181. World Bank, Project appraisal document on the proposed adaptable program loan in the amount of 3.8 billion yen to the Kingdom of Morocco for the irrigation-based community development project in support of the first phase of the irrigation-based community development program, No. 22002MOR (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001), p. 68; UNDP Maroc, Rapport de de´veloppement, p. 70; Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, pp. 231–2. 182. Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, p. 113; FEMISE, Profil pays Maroc, pp. 191 –2; Ben Ali, Verbesserung, p. 17; C. Pe´rez Beltra´n, Proyecto de investigacio´n: Sociedad civil, derechos humanos y democracia en marruecos, SEC2001–3100 (Granada: Instituto de la Paz y los Conflictos / Dpto. Estudios Semı´ticos [Facultad de Filosofı´a y Letras], Universidad de Granada and Direccio´n General de Investigacio´n, Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologı´a, undated). Available at: www.ugr.es/, eirene/investigacion/proyectos_item3.html (accessed 16 December 2015). 183. See UNDP Maroc, “Rapport de De´veloppement”. 184. See Royaume du Maroc, Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP), Etude du suivi de l’initiative 20/20: Rapport national sur la situation des services sociaux essentiels (Rabat: HCP, 2000; UNDP Maroc, Rapport de de´veloppement, pp. 28– 9; Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, pp. 235, 246; Zouiten, Les syste`mes de solidarite´; Ministe`re de la Pre´vision e´conomique et du plan, Direction de la Programmation, Le plan de de´veloppement economique et social 2000–2004, volume 1: Les orientations et les perspectives globales de de´veloppement e´conomique et social (Rabat: Ministe`re de la pre´vision e´conomique et du plan, undated). 185. Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte, pp. 48ff.; Otayek et al. (eds), Les socie´te´s civiles, p. 121. 186. See evaluation report for Al Haouz province: Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP), Direction de la Planification, Programme de De´veloppement Humain Durable et de Lutte Contre la Pauvrete´, Etude d’e´valuation de l’impact des realisations du premier programme de priorite´s sociales (BAJ1), province: Al Haouz (Rabat: HCP, 2005). 187. UNDP, Etude d’e´valuation des experiences de participation des populations dans le de´veloppement au Maroc (Rabat: UNDP 1993); World Bank, “Note sur la gouvernance”, p. 14; E. H. El Mansouri and M. Souafi, “Services de base et conside´rations spatiales”, in 50 ans de de´veloppement, available at: www.albacharia.ma/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/ 31450/1237Services_de_base_et_considerations_spatiales_%282006%291.pdf?s equence¼ 1 (accessed 11 January 2016), pp. 25, 30; Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, pp. 242, 252; M. Zirari, Approches participatives au Maroc: Bilan de l’expe´rience et recommandations pour la mise en oeuvre de l’initiative nationale de de´veloppement humain (INDH), janvier 2006 (Rabat: World Bank, 2006), p. 4; Zouiten, Les syste`mes de solidarite´, p. 141. 188. Ministe`re de l’Agriculture et da la Mise en Valeur Agricole (MAVA), Administration des Eaux et Foreˆts et de la Conservation des Sols, Projet pilote d’ame´nagement des bassins versants: “Approche participative de la planification et de la gestion”, rapport de la premie`re phase, bassin versant de la Tassaout, composante socio-spatiale et institutionnelle (ve´rsion provisoire) [known as Project MOR/93/010] (Rabat: Direction du De´veloppement Rural, Institut Agronomique et Ve´te´rinaire Hassan II, 1995); A. Gour, “La de´centralisation et le de´veloppement local: L’expe´rience marocaine”, paper presented to Atelier International: De´centralisation et de´veloppement local en zones arides: quelles synergies, quelles solidarite´s? (organized by the Me´canisme Mondial de l’UNCCD (Initiative “SolArid”) and the Haut Commissariat aux Eaux et Foreˆts et a` la Lutte contre la De´sertification du Maroc), 13 –16 April 2006, Marrakech.

282

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189. Zirari, Approches Participatives, pp. 4–5. 190. See UNDP, Etude d’e´valuation des experiences de participation des populations dans le de´veloppement au Maroc (Rabat: UNDP, 1993), pp. 32ff.; Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, p. 234. 191. The development of the Ouneine Valley (in the south-western High Atlas Mountains) by a team of academics at the Institut Agronomique et Ve´te´rinaire Hassan II in Rabat and other institutions (led by Paul Pascon until his death, and continuing under the NGO Targa-Aide) constitutes a “laboratory” from which significant lessons for participatory projects can be learned (see UNDP, Etude d’e´valuation, pp. 37ff.; M. Tamim, “Territoire et territorialite´: Exemple de l’Ounein dans le Haut-Atlas du Toubkal”, in A. Sedjari (ed.), La revanche des territoires (Rabat: L’Harmattan-GRET, 1997), pp. 235–50; Interviews AC10, AC11, AC15, DF03, Appendix A). See UNDP Maroc, Rapport national sur le de´veloppement humain 1998– 1999: Approche participative et de´veloppement rural (Rabat: Ardecom, 1999), pp. 21ff. for more examples of participatory natural resource management and PMVB projects. 192. Zirari, Approches Participatives, pp. 6–7. 193. See M. R. Doukkali, “Water institutional reforms in Morocco”, Water Policy, 7 (2005), pp. 71–88. 194. The 2020 Strategy was based to a large extent on the World Bank’s rural development strategy for Morocco. The latter argued that “only a participatory approach can be effective and viable in Morocco”. (World Bank 1997b: 96; see also MARA 1993; WB06). 195. MADRPM, Projet de mise en valeur en bour: Evaluation des re´alisations et de l’approche adopte´e. rapport de synthe`se (Rabat: MADRPM, Direction de la Programmation et des Affaires Economiques, Division du Suivi et de l’Evaluation, 1999). 196. N. Akesbi, “Une nouvelle strate´gie pour l’agriculture marocaine: Le ‘Plan Maroc Vert’”, New Mediterranean, vol. 11 No. 2 (June 2012), pp. 12–23. 197. Ibid. 198. The timing of this circular is significant, as it came very soon after the 16 May 2003 terrorist bombings in Casablanca. 199. Ben Youssef, Le financement. 200. A. Chaker, Etude sur l’interme´diation financie`re au be´ne´fice des associations (synthe`se) (Rabat: Forum des Alternatives Maroc, 2006), p. 11. It is difficult to establish the correct figure of total state funds to civil society organizations due to the lack of a detailed budget nomenclature. Furthermore, a realistic assessment would have to include not only direct funding from other government agencies (such as the Ministry of Agriculture and regional development agencies) but also tax exemptions and indirect aid in the form of training, technical assistance and the provision of materials, venues and staff (See Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re des Finances et de la Privatisation, Direction du Budget, Division des secteurs sociaux, Etat/associations: Les balises d’un partenariat pe´renne et solidaire (Rabat: Ministe`re des Finances et de la Privatisation, Direction du Budget 2002); and Chaker, Etude sur l’interme´diation, p. 10). 201. Chaker, Etude sur l’interme´diation, p. 13. 202. M. Kasriel, “Exclusion sociale, pauvrete´, analphabe´tisme: Processus d’exclusion”, in 50 ans de de´veloppement, p. 85; and Interview AC16, see Appendix A. 203. See the ADS’ Annual Report 2013. Available at: www.ads.ma/fileadmin/Ads Docutheque/FrDocuments/Rap_Annuel_2013_Version_20Fran_C3_A7aise.compress ed.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015). 204. Observatoire National du De´veloppement Humain (ONDH), “Projet d’Etude: Perceptions de l’INDH, Rapport d’enqueˆte et d’analyses des re´sultats”, undated,

NOTES

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206. 207. 208.

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84 –90

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p. 100; and I. Bono, “‘L’INDH n’ache`te que des vaches!’ Mobilisation de ressources et notabilite´ a` l’e´preuve du de´veloppement au Maroc”, in C. Abu-Sada and B. Challand (eds), Le de´veloppement, une affaire d’ONG? Associations, E´tats et bailleurs dans le monde arabe (Paris: Karthala, 2011), pp. 125–55. Bergh, “‘Inclusive’ neoliberalism”; see also Y. Berriane, “The Complexities of Inclusive Participatory Governance: The Case of Moroccan Associational Life in the Context of the INDH”, Journal of Economic and Social Research, 12(1) (2010), pp. 89– 111; Bono, “‘L’INDH n’ache`te que des vaches!’”; Clark, “2009 Communal Charter”, pp. 33ff. World Bank, “Note sur la gouvernance”, p. 11; Chaker, Etude sur l’interme´diation. A. Chaker, “De´veloppement local et participation communautaire”, in Espace Associatif (ed.), Quelle contribution, pp. 70–1; Mansuri and Rao, Localizing Development. See also G. Lazarev, “Politiques de de´veloppement et gouvernementalite´”, Critique e´conomique, no. 27 (Winter–Spring 2011), pp. 43–62.

Chapter 3 Local Government Administrative Capacity: Evidence from Two Rural Communes 1. The main sources for this section are Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Province d’Al Haouz, Province d’Al Haouz: Monographie en chiffres (Tahanout: Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, 2002); Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Wilaya de Marrakech, Province d’Al Haouz, Notes sur la province d’Al Haouz (Marrakech: Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, undated); and Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Re´gion Tensift Al Haouz, Province d’Al Haouz, Cellule de Coordination Provinciale, Note me´thodologique pour l’e´laboration du plan communal de de´veloppement, 1e`re tranche (PowerPoint presentation, undated). 2. Since February 2015, the province is part of the new “Marrakech-Safi” region. See: www. bladi.net/maroc-nouvelles-regions,41159.html (accessed 16 December 2015). 3. UNDP Maroc, Rapport de De´veloppement Humain, p. 49. 4. World Bank, Kingdom of Morocco: Poverty Report: Strengthening Policy by Identifying the Geographic Dimension of Poverty, Report No. 28223-MOR, Social and Economic Development Group, Middle East and North Africa Region (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004), p. 87. Al Haouz province has a poverty headcount of almost 25 per cent, vulnerability of 56.6 per cent, and an average annual expenditure of DH 7,464 – i.e. about e740 (ibid.). This vulnerability reading reflects the percentage of the population falling under a level of consumption that is 50 per cent higher than the poverty line (ibid., p. 19). 5. Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de la Pre´vision Economique et du Plan (MPEP), and UNDP, Programme de de´veloppement humain durable et de lutte contre la pauvrete´, plan d’action provincial de lutte contre la pauvrete´, province d’Al Haouz (Rabat: MPEP and UNDP, 1999), p. 10; and census data from Royaume du Maroc, Haut Commissariat au Plan (HCP), Recensement ge´ne´ral de la population et de l’habitat 2004 (Rabat: HCP, 2004). 6. P. Pascon, Le Haouz de Marrakech: Tome premier (Rabat: Centre Universitaire de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut Agronomique et Ve´te´rinaire Hassan II, 1983), pp. 299ff. 7. World Bank, Project appraisal document. 8. IFAD, Report and recommendation of the president to the executive board on a proposed loan to the Kingdom of Morocco for the rural development project in the mountain zones of Al-Haouz province, No. EB2000/71/R.24/Rev.1, Agenda Item 9 (e) (ii), Executive Board – 71st session, 6– 7 December 2000, Rome.

284

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9. Premier Ministre and UNDP, Programme de de´veloppement. 10. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), “President’s report: Proposed loan and grant to the Kingdom of Morocco for the Agricultural Value Chain Development Project in the Mountain Zones of Al-Haouz Province”, Document: EB 2011/104/R.34/Rev.1 Executive Board – 104th Session, 12–14 December 2011, Rome. 11. The main source of information for this and the following section are the commune Monographs. 12. Pascon, Le Haouz de Marrakech, pp. 168ff. 13. HCP, Recensement ge´ne´ral. According to the census data 2014, the population is now 22,971. See “Population le´gale d’apre`s les re´sultats du RGPH 2014 sur le Bulletin officiel No. 6354”. Available at: rgph2014.hcp.ma/file/167576 (accessed 16 December 2015). 14. See P. Dominguez, “Une approche holistique de l’Agdal du Yagour dans le Haut Atlas de Marrakech. Le poids de l’herbe et le poids de la culture”, in Auclair and Alifiqui (eds), Agdal, pp. 299–333 for a detailed discussion of transhumance practices on the Yagour. 15. DCL: Diagnostic de l’AEP rurale, Fiche 3: questionnaire Communes Rurales, douars relevant des communes, with 2004 data. 16. There are also 51 Koranic schools (Royaume du Maroc, Premier Ministre, De´partement de la pre´vision e´conomique et du plan, Direction de la statistique, Re´sultats de l’enqueˆte sur les e´quipements communaux 2000–2001: Donne´es communales: Milieu rural (Rabat: Premier Ministre, De´partement de la pre´vision e´conomique et du plan, 2002). 17. DCL, Situation du programme d’e´lectrification rurale globale (PERG), undated; DCL, Electrification rurale: Fiche synthe`se: Programmation et taux de re´alisation, situation du 30.3.05; DCL, Electrification rurale: programmation/re´alisation (as of October 2005); and Official commune monograph for Tighedouine (July 2005). 18. DPE untitled document version December 2004, and interview TC01. 19. According to the census data 2014, the population is now 7,727 (see ‘Population le´gale d’apre`s les re´sultats du RGPH 2014 sur le Bulletin officiel No. 6354’, available at: rgph2014.hcp.ma/file/167576, accessed 16 December 2015). 20. F. Gebrati, “La mobilisation territoriale des acteurs du de´veloppement local dans le HautAtlas occidental”, PhD thesis in geography, Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble I: Science and Geography, 2004, p. 64. 21. See A. Belemlih, Programme Afrique du Nord phase II, rapport final du Maroc (Gland: World Conservation Union [IUCN], 2001); Gebrati, “Mobilisation territorial”. 22. Ouirgane dam information sheet from the caı¨dat Ouirgane (undated); interviews HA06 and GO16. 23. DCL, Diagnostic de l’AEP rurale, with 2004 data. 24. HCP, Recensement general. 25. The data for Al Haouz province is from DGCL, PAD Maroc: Projet d’accompagnement du processus de de´centralisation, special edition of La Lettre des Collectivite´s Locales, pp. 14–26. 26. The falsification of primary school certificates in the run-up to the 2003 elections was widely practiced. The strict enforcement of Article 28 in the 2002 Charter regarding the president’s minimum education level led to 155 court appeals and legal annulments of the president’s election in 42 communes (as of mid-September 2004; N. Zarrouk, “Difficulte´ de concilier entre la de´mocratie et les exigences de la bonne gouvernance: L’article 28 de la charte communale”, La Lettre Des Collectivite´s Locales, 11 [2004], pp. 4 – 5). 27. Sources for the national level data are: Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur: Elections 2003: Statistiques ge´ne´rales; and DGCL, “Les Collectivite´s Locales en Chiffres 2011”. Available

NOTES

28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

TO PAGES

97 –102

285

at: www.pncl.gov.ma/fr/Publication/Statistique/Documents/collectivit%C3%A9s% 202011.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015). For figures covering 1976–97, see El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, p. 233; and Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques”, p. 24. M. Ait Hamza, “E´lite locale: Enjeux et strate´gies (sud Maroc)”, in M. Kerzazi and M. Lakhal (eds), Dynamique des espaces agricoles au Maroc (Rabat: Publications de la Faculte´ des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Mohammed V University, 2005), pp. 9 – 114; see also M. Ait Hamza, “Le re´veil du local dans le sud marocain”, in M. Berriane and P. Signoles (eds), Les espaces pe´riphe´riques au Maroc et au Maghreb a` l’heure de la mondialisation (Rabat: Publications de la Faculte´ des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Mohammed V University, 2000), pp. 225 – 42. For studies of urban elites in Morocco, see A. Al-M. El Iraki, Notables du Makhzen a` l’e´preuve de la “gouvernance”: e´lites locales, territoires, gestion urbaine et de´veloppement au Maroc (cas de trois villes moyennes de la Re´gion Nord-Ouest) (Rabat: Institut National d’Ame´nagement et d’Urbanisme and Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003); and A. Abouhani, “Etats, syste`mes municipaux et pouvoirs locaux dans le monde arabe”; “Chapitre I: Structures et e´volution des pouvoirs locaux au Maroc”; and “Chapitre II: Les nouvelles e´lites urbaines: Le roˆle des notables et des cadres associatifs dans le syste`me politico-administratif local” – all in A. Abouhani (ed.), Pouvoirs locaux et syste`mes municipaux dans le monde arabe (Rabat: Institut National d’Ame´nagement et d’Urbanisme (INAU) and Centre Robert Schuman pour les Etudes Avance´es, 2006). Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques”, p. 180 argues that the role of local elites has not changed since Re´my Leveau’s 1985 study Le fellah marocain, i.e. to serve as support for the central power while maintaining the strategies of clientelism and alliances. See also Bastiaensen et al., “Poverty reduction”; D. Lewis and D. Mosse (eds), Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2006). Ait Hamza, “E´lite locale”; see also M. Tamim and M. Tozy, “Politique des marges et marges du politique – Les logiques du vote collectif a` Ouneine (Haut-Atlas, Maroc)”, in M. Tozy (ed.), Elections au Maroc: Entre partis et notables (2007–2009) (Casablanca: Konrad Adenauer Foundation and Moroccan Center for Social Sciences, 2010), pp. 107–60. Ait Hamza, “E´lite locale”. A database exists at the DCL office in Tahanout for about 900 staff in the province, but it was incomplete as of June 2005 (interview HA03). During a debriefing between a JICA official, the technicians, and the JICA volunteer in February 2006, it emerged that the technical skills transfer from the Japanese volunteer to the Moroccan technicians was still very limited, even though he was nearing the end of his two-year period (and despite the fact that he was already the third such volunteer to work in Tighedouine). This was confirmed during my numerous visits to the technical office; only the Japanese volunteer knew how to use the computer for civil engineering planning purposes, and the technicians admitted not having learnt much from him due to language barriers and lack of interest. A new volunteer arrived in the spring of 2006. See also UNESCO, “Se´minaire me´thodologique: Re´fe´rentiel des compe´tences et des me´tiers: Document de synthe`se”, E´laboration d’un re´fe´rentiel des compe´tences et des me´tiers en vue de la formation d’agents de de´veloppement local dans un contexte marocain, 19 –21 March 2001 (Rabat: UNESCO, 2001); UNDP Maroc, Rapport de de´veloppement, p. 58. Basri, De la commune, pp. 130–41; A. Mecherfi, “L’inadaptation de la fonction publique locale aux exigences de la de´centralisation”, REMALD, The`mes Actuels: De´mocratie Locale et

286

36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45. 46. 47.

48.

NOTES

TO PAGES

102 –108

De´veloppement, 15 (1998), p. 84; El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, p. 235; DGCL, Rapport relatif 2001: 15ff.; Hammam et al., “Morocco: Municipal management and decentralization”, World Bank draft paper (unpublished manuscript), 2001, p. 24; DGCL, Collectivite´s Locales en Chiffres 2002; A. Harsi, “La gouvernance locale au Maroc: Entre la de´centralisation et la de´concentration”, REMALD, The`mes actuels 46 (2004), p. 81; Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 37; DGCL 2011, “Collectivite´s Locales”, p. 51. DGCL 2001, Rapport relatif, p. 15. DGCL, Collectivite´s Locales en Chiffres 2002, pp. 27, 29; F. Chahid, Territorialisation des politiques publiques (Rabat: REMALD, 2005), p. 103; DGCL, “Collectivite´s Locales”, p. 49. M. Chaoui, “Plus de 130.000 fonctionnaires analphabe`tes!”, E´conomiste, 19 April 2007. See interviews with HA03, Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Interieur, Re´gion Tensift Al Haouz, Province d’Al Haouz, Division des Collectivite´s Locales (DCL), De´marche qualite´: Mise en place du plan d’ame´lioration 2005, PowerPoint presentation, 2005, as well as documents in Arabic on Tahanout commune reorganization – see Appendix B: Primary Sources. However, there were also several councilors (interviews TC16, TC17, OC05, OC07, OC09, OC11) who did not have any opinion on relations with the province or the DCL, arguing that these are the prerogative of the council president. DGCL, Collectivite´s Locales en Chiffres 2002, p. 32. El Yaagoubi, “La tutelle”, p. 117; MPEP and UNDP, Etude sur la re´forme, p. 81; Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 99. The 1996 Constitution established the cours re´gionales de comptes, aimed at ending the seemingly rampant financial irregularities and corruption in the management of local finances that had been exposed by the national media since the early 1990s. The ex-post accounting audit by the courts fills a gap in the administrative tutelle of the Ministry of the Interior, which mainly intervenes before the budgets, procurement contracts, etc. are executed. Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, pp. 199–200. See M. Brahimi, “Les relations internationales des pouvoirs locaux et l’expe´rience marocaine de coope´ration decentralise´e”, in A. Sedjari (ed.), La revanche des territoires (Rabat: L’Harmattan-GRET, 1997), pp. 253–79; A. Abouhani, “La coope´ration de´centralise´e: Un espoir pour les villes du sud? Le cas du Maroc”, paper presented at Seminar on the State of the Art in Development Research: “Towards A European Perspective?” 18– 19 November 2004, Paris, p. 2; J. Lanteri and M. Blanquet, “Dossier: De´centralisation & de´veloppement local: Coope´ration internationale et ‘diplomatie locale’”, interview with Najat Zarrouk, La lettre de la coope´ration franc
aise au Maroc, 18 (July 2005), p. 14; Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, pp. 168ff.; E. van Ewijk, “Between local governments and communities: Knowledge exchange and mutual learning in Dutch-Moroccan and Dutch-Turkish municipal partnerships”, PhD thesis, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, 20 November 2013, available at: dare.uva.nl/ document/2/129540 (accessed 16 December 2015). Bardhan, “Decentralization of governance and development”, pp. 202 –3. El Yaagoubi, “La tutelle”, p, 120. I only found out about the existence of the councils’ internal rules (al-nizam al-dakhili) some way into the fieldwork; hence, the councilors were not asked whether they knew about them. According to a commune staff member (interview TS03), the Ministry of the Interior gives out a model document to the communes, which they can adapt. See also Zyani, “De´centralisation et re´forme”; Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, pp. 212–13.

NOTES 49. 50. 51. 52.

53.

54.

55. 56. 57. 58.

TO PAGES

108 –110

287

DGCL, Collectivite´s Locales en Chiffres 2002, p. 33. Mecherfi, “L’inadaption”, pp. 87–8. See DGCL, “Collectivite´s Locales”, pp. 59ff. J. Ferrie´, “La gifle: Sur la mise en place d’un espace public ‘municipal’ au Maroc”, Politique Africaine: Espaces Publics Municipaux, 74 (June 1999), p. 78; M. Catusse, Affaires, scandales et urnes de verre a` Casablanca. Les ambiguı¨te´s de la “de´mocratie locale” a` l’e`re de la “bonne gouvernance” (Florence: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute 2002), p. 13; P. Meagher and C. Zinnes, The use of interjurisdictional competition to strengthen the investment climate: A field guide and application to Morocco. Prepared for UNIDO-IPO for the project on promoting sustained growth in investment through domestically driven institutional change (College Park, MD: IRIS Center, University of Maryland, 2004), p. 15. This conflict of roles is illustrated in Article 46 of the charter, which stipulates that the president cannot chair a council meeting during which the executed account (compte administratif) is debated and must leave the chamber during the vote. Note also that the president acts on behalf of the State when exercising his powers as registry officer (Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 9). A. Zanane, “De´centralisation et de´mocratie locale: Opportunite´s et limites du dispositif juridique”, in Espace Associatif (ed.), Quelle contribution, p. 22. During the fieldwork, I observed numerous indications and allegations of conflicts of interests and fraud involving councilors (sometimes with the support of the caı¨d) and the commune budget. To protect my interviewees, I do not mention them in detail here. Suffice it to say that there were some (plausible) allegations that certain councilors did not have any other income than “living off” the commune budget. The fact that my re-calculations of the recurrent surplus often differed from those in the executed accounts might be another indication of fraud, but it was not possible to investigate this further. For measures to combat corruption at the national level, see A. Chankou, “Le ministe`re de l’inte´rieur audite les comptes des collectivite´s locales: Les communes dans la tourmente”, Maroc Hebdo International, 16 – 22 June 2000; Catusse, Affairs, scandales; and Jafri, “Un code d’e´thique pour les e´lus en preparation”, E´conomiste, 2 January 2007. For a major corruption scandal in Rabat, see “Un rapport accablant sur la gestion de la ville de Rabat”, Vie ´economique, 18 May 2007. Meagher and Zinnes, Inter-jurisdictional competition, p. 15. Before the new charter, the commune president was dismissed in this way in 28 rural commune councils in 2001, and in 23 in 2002 (DGCL, Collectivite´s Locales en Chiffres 2002, p. 26). Brahimi, “La loi communale”, pp. 33ff.; M. ‘Abidi, “La de´mocratie locale au Maroc: du dispositif juridique au cadre conceptual”, in Espace Associatif (ed.), Quelle contribution, p. 36. It was not possible to establish the precise reason for the ousting of the then-President (a member of the USFP Party) in 2001. Some councilors argued that the caı¨d was behind this move, since the President refused to participate in the caı¨d’s corrupt schemes; others emphasized that the conflict had to do with a clash of personalities and ideas, or the fact that the President was also the president of the AAZ, the most active and best-endowed development association in the valley. In any case, the result was that 16 councilors were excluded from the USFP Party and hence stood for the new party, the “Alliance of Liberties” (ADL), in the 2003 elections, thereby becoming the new majority in the council against a USFP minority of seven, including the ousted President.

288

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TO PAGES

110 –121

59. See also A. Herzenni, “Leaders locaux et reseaux sociaux: Cas d’un village du Haut Atlas central”, in Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc (ed.), Rapport du social 2000 (Rabat: OKAD, 2000), pp. 153–69. 60. Participant observation in the council meeting of August 2005, and meeting minutes. 61. This practice goes back to the first commune elections of 1960, according to Basri, De la commune, p. 82; see also ibid. pp. 99 –101. 62. D. Abbadi, “Interpre´tation du ‘nouveau concept de l’autorite´’”, in M. Benyahya (ed.), Le nouveau concept, p. 14; M. El Yaagoubi, “Les grandes particularite´s du nouveau concept de l’autorite´”, in ibid., pp. 17–29. 63. Naciri, “Territoire”, pp. 30ff.; A. Bouachik, “Rede´finition du roˆle de l’etat et nouveau concept de l’autorite´”, in Benyahya (ed.), Le nouveau concept, pp. 43– 51; El Yaagoubi, “Les grandes particularite´s”; A. Harsi, “Le respect de la le´galite´ et le nouveau concept de l’autorite´: Les phases d’une evolution”, in Benyahya (ed.), Le nouveau concept, pp. 31–6; A. Jazouli, “Le nouveau concept de l’autorite´ ou la reconstruction territoriale de l’action publique”, in ibid., pp. 37 –42. 64. Some respondents gave more or fewer than three development priorities. 65. See A. Waterston, Planning in Morocco: Organization and Implementation (Baltimore, MD: Economic Development Institute, IBRD, Johns Hopkins Press, 1962) for an early history of development planning in Morocco. 66. Rousset, De´mocratie locale au Maroc, p. 117. 67. At the aggregate level for all 39 communes though, according to the financial data, 90 per cent of the DH 136 million in committed funds had been issued by the end of the plan in order to finance a total of 271 projects. See summary sheet of the Economic and Social Development Plan for 2000–4, for the period 1/7/1999 to 31/12/2003 and summary monitoring report, both from the DCL, Al Haouz Province, Tahanout – see Appendix B: Primary Sources. At the national level, 57 per cent of all planned projects were financed and implemented, and over half went to urban communes. In all, 63 per cent of all investments were financed by local authorities’ budgets (M. Ameur, “Plan de de´veloppement economique et social des collectivite´s locales (2000–2004): Partie 1: Les re´alisations”, La Lettre Des Collectivite´s Locales, 13 (2005), pp. 10– 15. 68. Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, p. 213. 69. UNDP Maroc, Rapport de de´veloppement, p. 86; HCP, Etude d’e´valuation, pp. 75ff. 70. It was not possible to map the investment expenditure on the electoral districts for all years, as not all minutes contained specific place names. 71. DGCL, Guide Juridique, p. 150. 72. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the 2009 Municipal Charter established the commission for “equity and equal opportunities” (commission de la parite´ et de l’e´galite´ des chances). 73. See Bergh, “‘Inclusive’ neoliberalism”. 74. Iguerfrouane is one of five rural communes in Morocco selected to be part of this UNICEF program. See Ministe`re de l’Interieur, Note me´thodologique; and Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Province d’Al Haouz, Commune rurale d’Iguerfrouane, Brochure: Plan de de´veloppement communal en faveur de l’enfant 2004–2006, undated. 75. See also Basri, De la commune, p. 155. 76. El Yaagoubi, “La nouvelle conception”, pp. 62–3. 77. See Ministe`re des Affaires Ge´ne´rales du Gouvernement (MAGG), USAID, & The Services Group, Acquisition ou occupation temporaire du domaine des eaux et foreˆts (Rabat, undated) for the procedure. An analysis of the minutes for a total of 23 council meetings over 1998– 2005 in both communes reveals that a great deal of the councils’ time was spent discussing various applications for temporary occupation of forest property. This is an

NOTES

78. 79.

80. 81.

82. 83.

84. 85.

86. 87.

TO PAGES

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289

encouraging sign in terms of investments for tourism, mining, and residential buildings. However, the special status of most of the two communes’ land also presents them with a considerable challenge in providing the public services for which they are responsible – such as providing drinking water, and disposing of solid and liquid waste – since they require the same kinds of lengthy applications (i.e. those for temporary occupation of forest land) to the Water and Forest Administration for special usage permissions. M. S. Ben Youssef, Minutes from the “Journe´e d’e´tudes sur le projet de re´forme de la fiscalite´ locale marocaine”, organized by the Centre Marocain de Conjoncture on 19 January 2007. Deconcentration (i.e. central government ministries’ delegation of responsibilities for certain services to its regional or provincial branch offices) can be considered as the corollary to decentralization in as far as it allows the decentralized local authorities to receive technical assistance from competent local interlocutors in accomplishing their tasks. However, in Morocco, deconcentration has not kept pace with decentralization, and this has hindered the latter’s progression. See Zyani, “De´centralisation et re´forme”; N. Zarrouk, “Le renouveau de la de´concentration”, REMALD, 48–49 (2003), pp. 44–9; Harsi, “La gouvernance locale”, p. 79; A. Mecherfi, “Quelle gouvernance pour le de´veloppement des zones arides au Maroc?”, in A. Bouachik (ed.), The`mes actuels, p. 53; and Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, pp. 181–3. Piriou-Sall and Sallier, “De´centralisation et de´veloppement”, p 13; World Bank, Project Appraisal Document, pp. 76–7. K. Ben Osmane, Etude sur les secteurs prioritaires de re´forme de l’administration publique au Maroc (Rabat: UNPAN [United Nations Online Network in Public Administration and Finance] 2004), p. 4 notes that 29 government departments are represented by 631 provincial delegations and 115 regional delegations, but that this number is still not sufficient nor are their activities well-coordinated. See also MADRPM, Projet de mise; Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Agriculture, du De´veloppement Rural, et des Peˆches Maritimes (MADRPM), Programme d’action du secre´tariat d’e´tat charge´ du de´veloppement rural (Rabat: MADRPM, 2005), p. 73. See Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Agriculture, du De´veloppement Rural, et des Peˆches Maritimes, Direction Provinciale de l’Agriculture de Marrakech (DPA Marrakech), Programme de de´veloppement rural inte´gre´ centre´ sur la petite et moyenne hydraulique DRI-PMH (preˆt 4607-MOR). Province d’Al Haouz: Rapport de suivi-evaluation a` mi-parcours (2005); and Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Agriculture, du De´veloppement Rural, et des Peˆches Maritimes, Direction des Ame´nagements Hydroagricoles, Cellule Centrale de Gestion du Projet (CCGP), Projet de de´veloppement rural inte´gre´ centre´ sur la petite et moyenne hydraulique DRI-PMH, rapport d’e´valuation a` mi-parcours, rapport principal, mars 2005 (Rabat: CCGP, 2005). MADRPM et al., Programme d’action, pp. 73ff.; Zirari, Approches Participatives, pp. 4–5. The total cost of the IFAD project was US$30.2 million (of which an IFAD loan covered US$18.0 million), over the period 2002–8. The project activities aimed to benefit 210 villages (out of a total 456) in 17 rural communes in Al Haouz province (IFAD, Report and recommendation, p. v). The total cost for the World Bank project was US$42.4 million (of which US$32.57 million as a World Bank loan), with activities in Azilal, Khenifra and Al Haouz provinces, from 2001 until 2008. See also DPA Marrakech, Programme de de´veloppement rural inte´gre´ centre´, p. 56. According to the handbook on participatory programming in the DRI-PMH project (Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Agriculture et du De´veloppement Rural, Direction des Ame´nagements Hydro-Agricoles (DAHA), Projet de de´veloppement rural integre´ centre´

290

88. 89.

90. 91.

NOTES

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sur la petite et moyenne hydraulique (DRI-PMH): Elaboration d’un guide de la programmation participative (GPP) pour les activite´s du projet DRI-PMH. mission 2: Guide de la programmation participative du projet DRI-PMH, contrat n83/2002/AGR/DAHA/DP/DRIPMH, conseil inge´nierie development (Rabat: DAHA, 2004), file no. 8), there is only one meeting at the commune, with the purpose of preparing the invitations to farmers that are to constitute WUAs, sent out by the local agent of authority. This stands in contrast with the statement in the World Bank’s project appraisal document (World Bank, Project appraisal document, p. 74) that “the rural communities [sic] will be the major players in the system”, although it notes that the PICs do not have any “contractual force in the civil or commercial sense” (ibid., p. 71). See also MADRPM and World Bank, Programme de de´veloppement des zones “bour”: Le partenariat dans le cadre du programme DRI-MVB, ve´rsion finale, fe´vrier (Rabat: MADRPM and World Bank, 2002) and World Bank, Implementation Completion and Results Report (IBRD-46070) on an Adaptable Program Loan in the Amount of Yen 3.8 Billion (US$ 32.6 Million Equivalent) to the Kingdom of Morocco for the Irrigation Based Community Development Project in Support of the First Phase of the Irrigation Based Community Development Program, 2 June 2009, Report No: ICR0000109, Sustainable Development Department, Middle East and North Africa Region, World Bank (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009). Research assistant’s notes from IFAD meeting on 9 December 2005 in Asni. IFAD, Report and recommendation, p. 9. At the time of fieldwork, the World Bank PMVB project, covering several provinces in Morocco, was being launched. It also works with communal investment plans and is, at least on paper, more advanced than the DRI-PMH project in terms of commune participation (see World Bank, Project appraisal document on a proposed loan in the amount of e 25 million (US$26.8 million equivalent) to the Kingdom of Morocco for the rain-fed agriculture development project, Report No. 25916-MOR; Water, Environment, Social and Rural Development Department; Middle East and North Africa Region (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003); and interview AC18). M. S. Grindle and M. E. Hilderbrand, “Building sustainable capacity in the public sector: What can be done?”, Public Administration and Development, 15 (1995), pp. 444, 455 –60. Evans, “Government action”, p. 1126. See also Evans, Embedded Autonomy; J. E. Rauch and P. B. Evans, “Bureaucratic structure and bureaucratic performance in less developed countries”, Journal of Public Economics, 75 (2000), pp. 49–71.

Chapter 4 Local Government Fiscal Autonomy and Political Participation: Evidence from Two Rural Communes 1. McLean et al., Community Driven Development, pp. 4, 24. 2. Some changes in budget nomenclature make a detailed comparison between the two years difficult. Unfortunately, comparable data for 2009 was not available (see DGCL, “Collectivite´s Locales”). See also Basri, De la commune, pp. 142–56; Hammam et al., Municipal Management; and J. Chabih, Les finances locales des collectivite´s locales au Maroc: Essaie d’une approche globale des finances locales (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005) for comprehensive accounts of local finances in Morocco. The urban tax (taxe urbaine), the supplementary urban tax (taxe d’e´dilite´), and the business tax ( patente) are assessed and collected by central government, which transfers them to local authorities. In addition,

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4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

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until the new law on local taxes in 2007, there were over 35 other (locally determined and collected) taxes and fees. They include market taxes and administration fees, forestry income (in rural communes), and real estate revenues. See El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, pp. 208ff.) for a list of local taxes. For details on the 1989 tax reform and the 1996 changes in the VAT transfer formula, see Vaillancourt, Morocco and Tunisia and DGCL, Rapport relatif. Unlike the data in Tables 5.1 and 5.2, the data analyzed in Table 5.3 does not include investment revenues, which consist of the surplus of recurrent revenues over expenditures (in addition to that carried over from previous years) and investment subsidies from central government to pay for the PERG and PAGER programs. Ahmad et al., Decentralization and Service Delivery (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005), p. 8. M. Moore, “Death without taxes: Democracy, state capacity, and aid dependence in the fourth world” in G. White and M. Robinson (eds), Towards a Democratic Development State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), cited in O. Fjeldstad, “Taxation, coercion and donors: Local government tax enforcement in Tanzania”, Journal of Modern African Studies, 39(2) (2001), p. 290 and K. Juul, “Decentralization, local taxation and citizenship in Senegal”, Development and Change, 37(4) (2006), p. 825. According to a commune staff member (interview OS01), the Ouirgane commune council decided in its February 2006 meeting to allocate DH 100,000 of the current surplus towards building the road to Azzaden. See also Kingdom of Morocco, Ministry of the Interior, Province of Al Haouz, Monograph on the Rural Commune of Tighedouine (translated from Arabic) – see Appendix B: Primary Sources; and Basri, De la commune, pp. 122 –9. A decree dating from 22 September 1976 allocates the total forest revenues to the communes, but under the condition that they reinvest 20 per cent of them back into forest development. In reality, less than 1.5 per cent is reinvested. A. Laouina, “Le de´veloppement des espaces pe´ri-forestiers”, in Berriane and Signoles (eds), Les espaces pe´riphe´riques, p. 176; see also M. Aderdar, “Espaces forestiers et ame´nagement des zones de montagne: Le cas du Haut Atlas de Marrakech”, doctoral thesis in geography, Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble I, 2000, pp. 145 and 362ff.; MAGG et al., Acquisition. This contrasts with the explanation of a senior official in the Ministry of the Interior, who hinted at the possibility of illegal logging. It was not possible to examine whether the non-payment of these fees could be understood as one of many “quiet strategies of resistance in the form of economic noncompliance” on the part of the population. A. M. Tripp, Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalisation and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), p. 154, cited in Fjeldstad, “Taxation, coercion”, p. 295. See N. Sqalli, “Fiscalite´ locale: Dix taxes en moins”, E´conomiste, 4 May 2007; T. Qattab, “Fiscalite´ locale: Re´forme ou re´formette?”, E´conomiste, 19 March 2007; DGCL, Guide Juridique, pp. 192ff. The information in the fiscal decree confirms this figure. See Fjelstad, “Taxation, coercion”, pp. 297ff. for similar findings in Tanzania. Vaillancourt, Morocco and Tunisia, pp. 165 –6, 170; R. M. Bird and M. Smart, “Intergovernmental fiscal transfers: International lessons for developing countries”, World Development, 30(6) (2002), p. 899. Claisse, “Rapport de synthe`se”, p. 17; Chabih, “Re´flexions”, p. 122.

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16. DGCL, Collectivite´s locales en Chiffres 2009, p. 169. 17. Ibid., pp. 32, 170.; this trend has continued during 2009–13, see Cour des Comptes, Rapport d’activite´s relatif a` l’exercice 2013, Volume II Book I (Rabat: Cour des Comptes, 2013), pp. 22 – 3. Available at: www.courdescomptes.ma/upload/MoDUle_20/Fi le_20_168.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015). 18. The 1996 reform in the VAT transfer formula gave an incentive to local communes to curtail their recurrent expenditures and direct the savings to capital expenditure (either in the form of gross savings, to cover annual loan repayments, or net savings). Hence, local communes can freely decide on whether to use the VAT transfers for current or capital expenditures (personal communication from interviewee AC04). 19. Note that the exce´dent pre´visionnel (the forecasted surplus mentioned in the original source table (DGCL, Collectivite´s locales en chiffres 2002, p. 40) was not included in recurrent expenditure for 2001, as it is only meaningful for accounting purposes (it represents the surplus of current revenue over current expenditure, and is therefore equal to capital expenditure). Additionally, different budget nomenclatures were used in 2006, which makes comparison difficult. The fact that total expenditure seems to have more than doubled in the period needs further investigation. 20. The data for Tighedouine in 2003 shows a dramatic and sudden reversal of the ratio between recurrent and capital expenditures. I observed a similar reversal in the expenditure by the regional council (of the Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz region) over the period 2004–6 (Data received from the President of the regional council, interview MP05). It was not possible to examine the underlying reasons for these two reversals. 21. It is difficult to compare this data directly with the national and province-level data, as no information is available as to which exact budget lines they include. Staff-related expenses include salaries, pension fund contributions, and other salary compensations. Operating expenditures consist of up to 50 separate budget lines in the various years. The most important items are transport and fuel costs, electricity fees, and the purchase of office materials. 22. The Fonds d’e´quipment communal (FEC) was created in 1959, and functions as a development bank for infrastructure projects. Historically, the FEC made loans mainly to the wealthiest, more urbanised communes, due partly to their generally superior creditworthiness but also because of their skilled staff who were able to submit attractive proposals (Nellis, “Tutorial decentralisation”, pp. 499, 501). Few banks have examined credit opportunities to local governments, despite their large liquidity and comparative financial advantages over the FEC (Hammam et al., Municipal Management, p. vii). See M. S. Ben Youssef, Fiscalite´ et ame´nagement du territoire: Taˆche 2 (Groupement Ingerop-Sud, 2004) and Royaume du Maroc, Fonds d’Equipement Communal (FEC), “Rapport d’Activite´ 2012”, available at: www.fec.org.ma/Rapports/RapportFEC2012_FR.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015) for the FEC’s latest annual report. 23. It was possible to constitute unions of communes already under the 1960 and 1976 municipal charters. The 2002 Charter opens union membership up to the provinces and regions. It also introduces changes in terms of board representation, as membership has become proportional to financial and material contributions. El Mouchtaray, Le roˆle, p. 75; DGCL, Collectivite´s Locales en Chiffres 2002, pp. 85–6; Harsi and El Yaagoubi, Rapport sur le cadre, pp. 195, 206. 24. Unfortunately, it was not possible to examine the reasons for this variation in more detail. 25. Obtained from the commune accountants in both communes, and translated from Arabic.

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26. My own calculations based on data “Etat des credits octroye´s par le FEC pour le de´veloppement local” from DCL, Tahanout, dated 29 March 2005. 27. Neither Tighedouine nor Ouirgane communes received any funds from the regional council (data received from the President of the regional council, interview MP05, 6 February 2006). 28. S. Jones, “Infrastructure challenges in east and south Asia”, Parallel Group 2C, Topic Paper 1, presented to “Challenges and risks to development in Asia”: Session 2 of ASIA 2015 Conference: “Promoting Growth, Ending Poverty”, 6–7 March 2006, London, p. 1. 29. Operations Evaluation Department (OED), Morocco – Socioeconomic Influence of Rural Roads: Fourth Highway Project, Impact Evaluation Report No. 15808, Project ID: P005408, dated 28 June 1996 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996); World Bank, Project appraisal document on a proposed loan in the amount of euro 25 million (US$26.8 million equivalent) to the Kingdom of Morocco for the rain-fed agriculture development project, Report No. 25916-MOR; Water, Environment, Social and Rural Development Department; Middle East and North Africa Region (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003); OECD, Promoting pro-poor growth: Agriculture (extract from the publication Promoting pro-poor growth: Policy guidance for donors) (Paris: OECD, 2006), p. 38. 30. J. Hine, Are Social Benefits the Missing Component of Road Appraisal? (Addis Ababa: Planning and Programming Division, Ethiopian Roads Authority, 2003), p. 9; T. R. Leinbach, Social Aspects of Rural Accessibility and Changing Development Context (Crowthorne: Framework for the Inclusion of Social Benefits in Transport Planning, TRL Limited, 2003), p. 7; S. Jahan and R. McCleery, Making Infrastructure Work for the Poor: Synthesis Report of Four Country Studies – Bangladesh, Senegal, Thailand and Zambia (New York: Poverty Group, United Nations Development Programme, 2005), pp. 23, 46 –8; Buerli et al., “Institutions compensate for lack of infrastructure to access markets: Evidence from the Moroccan High Atlas”, paper presented to International Symposium: “Towards Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystems in Mountainous Regions”, 7 –9 March 2006, Chiang Mai; H. Hettige, When do Rural Roads Benefit the Poor and How? An InDepth Analysis Based on Case Studies (Manila: Operations Evaluation Department, Asian Development Bank, 2006), pp. 24ff.; OECD 2006, Agriculture, pp. 12– 13, 28, 33. 31. Jones, “Infrastructure challenges”, p. 11. 32. There are no carry-over surpluses in the recurrent expenditures of the budget as the amounts are annulled if not used in the same year. The investment surpluses fall into three categories. First, allocated resources (cre´dits ouverts), which are not committed (engage´s) yet; second, committed resources, which have not yet been issued (cre´dits engage´s non encore mandate´s); and third, “free” resources, which will be allocated the following fiscal year after the approval of accounts (personal communication from interviewee AC04). 33. F. Agoumi, “9% du Budget de l’Etat en veilleuse”, Vie ´economique, 1 February 2010. Available at: lavieeco.com/news/edito/9-du-budget-de-letat-en-veilleuse-15675.html (accessed 16 December 2015). See also L. Achy, Morocco’s Experience with Poverty Reduction: Lessons for the Arab World, Carnegie Papers No. 25 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Middle East Center, 2010), pp. 17–18. 34. This is compounded by the fact that VAT transfers used to arrive at the communes up to seven months into the fiscal year. Thanks to a faster procedure in place since 2005, VAT transfers arrive at the latest in February (interviews HA03 and HA04). 35. See also World Bank, “Project Appraisal Document” (2013), p. 3, on the issue of urban local governments: “the low indebtedness/cash surplus conjunction points to delivery

294

36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

41.

42. 43.

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capacity issues, more than financing issues, as a key cause of insufficient investment in local services”. In addition, the fact that the budget is approved in October but the executed accounts are only discussed in February means that the council cannot analyse and learn from the gaps between budgeted and issued amounts, thus repeating estimation errors from one budget to the next: KPMG Fiduciaire de France, Rapport de synthe`se: Administration et gestion financie`re (draft), 28 fe´vrier 1996 (KPMG, Collectivite´s locales – Secteur Public, 1996), p. 5. See also N. Fassi, “Communes: 11 milliards de DH d’exce´dent budge´taire”, E´conomiste, 17 August 2003, p. 3. In terms of women’s voting decisions, the President of Tighedouine (interview TC01) believes that the vast majority vote according to their husband’s choice. As a first in the region however, the NGO Ennakhil pour la Femme et l’Enfant in Marrakech organized training seminars throughout 2003 for female candidates for the 2003 municipal elections, as well as for young adults in order to increase their political participation (NG08 and documents received). Such activities increased before and after the 2009 local elections, in which there was a special women’s list that amounted to a quota system (see Y. Berriane, “The micropolitics of reform: gender quota, grassroots associations and the renewal of local elites in Morocco”, Journal of North African Studies, 20(3) (2015), pp. 432–49). See also Zanane, “Opportunite´s et limites”, p. 24. See also R. Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les e´lites locales face a` la de´centralisation”, in N. Sraı¨eb and A. El-Messaoudi (eds), Anciennes et nouvelles elites du Maghreb (Aix-en-Provence: Institut de Recherches et d’E´tudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman [INAS/CE´RE`S/EDISUD], 2003), p. 171. It is widely known that local elections in Morocco, at least until 1997, involved widespread vote buying, though rigorous academic studies are lacking (an exception is M. Hamimaz, Elections et communication politique dans le Maroc rural: Une investigation dans une re´gion du Moyen Atlas (Ribat El Kheir) [Rabat: Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2003]). See ibid., pp. 164ff. and L. Haddad, Le re´siduel et l’e´mergent: Le devenir des structures sociales et traditionnelles (le cas de la tribu hors et dans la ville) (Rabat: Mohammed V University, Faculte´ des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, and Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2001), pp. 75ff. for the use of ‘ar, a ritual anchored in tribal customs, and the idea of ‘ahd, or covenant, to extract promises from voters. Basri, De la commune, p. 69; A. Amahan, Mutations sociales dans le Haut Atlas: Les Ghoujdama (Paris and Rabat: Editions de la maison des sciences de l’homme and Editions la porte, 1998), p. 144; DGCL, Recommendations du VIIe`me colloque national des collectivite´s locales (Rabat: Centre de Documentation des Collectivite´s Locales, 1999), pp. 8–9; MPEP and UNDP, Etude sur la re´forme, pp. 84–5; Ojeda Garcı´a, “Les politiques”, p. 25; H. Rachik, Symboliser la nation: Essai sur l’usage des identite´s collectives au Maroc (Casblanca: Editions Le Fennec, 2003), pp. 117ff. Hamimaz, Elections et communication, p. 178. O. Graefe, “L’eau du ciel et l’eau de l’Etat: La naturalisation du politique dans une valle´e du Haut Atlas. Enjeux et de´fis de l’approvisionnement en eau potable au Maroc”, paper presented at Colloque international: Devenir de la socie´te´ rurale, de´veloppement e´conomique et mobilisation sociale (en hommage a` Paul Pascon), 8–10 December 2005, Rabat, De´partement des Sciences Humaines, Institut Agronomique et Ve´te´rinaire Hassan II, argues that the difference in access to drinking water between villages in the commune of Tidili (in the province of Ouarzazate) can be partly explained by local councilors’ clientelist behavior affecting the commune’s spending decisions. Herzenni,

NOTES

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46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

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“Leaders locaux”, shows how local elections can trigger a process of intra-village segmentation and conflicts. Venema and Mguild, “The vitality”, pp. 113ff. present similar findings for the Middle Atlas. In Tighedouine, many USFP councilors were banned from the party in the 2003 elections due to their role in ousting the council President in 2001, and joined the ADL. The President of Tamesloht commune admitted that “We are not convinced partisans, we just choose a party when it comes to the elections so as to be legal, since we are not allowed to be without political affiliation [Sans Affiliation Politique – SAPs ] anymore” (interview CRS03). It was also suggested that the MP distributes cement or money so that his company qualifies for a lower corporate tax bracket (interview GO02). The Political Secretary of the MP for the ADL in Al Haouz province vehemently denied any cement distribution, although he did say in a general manner that vote buying had taken place in the 1990s, but that now it is practically impossible due to strict accounting laws for political parties (MP01). However, the MP is also the president of an important association in the province, so it is possible that the cement is distributed through his association. However, none of the councilors mentioned the name of the association, only the name of the party. Together with my research assistant, I made numerous requests during January–May 2006 for details of the association’s activities, but they were left unanswered. However, the association does seem to have been engaged in a major school construction and literacy project in partnership with the Ministry of National Education (NG05, OA30, TA28). There were also allegations that this cement is being used in defrauding the commune budget: the councilors can claim that the cement was bought from the commune budget in order to build some infrastructure – but in fact they themselves use the cement that they received from the MP, and pocket the commune money. Lacroix, Les re´seaux marocains, p. 175 mentions the case of an MP in the province of Taroudannt who uses his membership of various development NGOs in order to favor certain villages that constitute his electoral base. See G. P. Denoeux and H. R. Desfosses, “Rethinking the Moroccan Parliament: The Kingdom’s Legislative Development Imperative”, Journal of North African Studies, 12(1) (2007), pp. 82– 3. RTI, Diagnostic de la capacite´, pp. 128 –9. Ait Hamza, “E´lite locale”. To put this finding in historical perspective, based on data collected in the 1960s, Seddon, Moroccan Peasants, pp. 283–4, observes that due to the control exerted by the local agents of authority such as the caı¨d, cheikh, and muqaddim, “there was virtually no discussion of ideological differences or the respective programs for social and economic change associated with the various parties”. My findings also confirm those by Hamimaz, Elections et communication, pp. 130, 169, for the Middle Atlas. The projects’ training components for the associations are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. MADRPM, Projet de mise, p. 92. Ibid., p. 181. Ibid., p. 187. A. Nefzaoui and Y. Saadani, “Les me´thodes participatives pour la gestion locale des ressources naturelles”, paper presented to Atelier me´thodologique et de programmation: Projet de recherche sur l’autonomisation des ruraux pauvres et les politiques de de´veloppement en Afrique du Nord et au Moyen Orient, 24–25 November 2004, Hammamet, Tunisia, p. 3.

296

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58. MADRPM, Projet de mise, pp. 187, 249. 59. IFAD, Report and Recommendation, p. 13. 60. I was unable to investigate a rumor that the animators were paid DH 1,000 per PDD that they delivered, but it would explain the concern for quantity rather than quality (interview WB07, WB08). 61. Similarly, the PDD for the village of Tikhfist (with a population of 238 people in 24 households) contains 17 activities. Similar ratios of activities/population can be found in the other PDDs (according to the electronic files received from interviewee IF03). 62. Article 7 in ‘Contrat-Programme annuel au titre de l’exercice 2003’. 63. Article 8, ibid. 69. 64. World Bank, Project Appraisal Document (2013), pp. 3, 7. 65. Given that most of the committee members reside in urban areas rather than on the irrigation perimeters themselves, a parallel can be drawn between this case study and that presented in Bastiaensen et al., “Poverty reduction”. In both cases, the project agency (the Ministry of Agriculture in our case study, an NGO in that by Bastiaensen et al.) is predominantly in contact with those members of the elite that can be characterized as “brokers”, operating at the rural – urban interface. My field observations are confirmed by those made by others with regard to the DRI-PMH project in the province of Azilal. Only the notables were invited to create the WUAs, although some have in the meantime been replaced on the committee. The canals that will be cemented are those that constitute a priority for the notables who accompanied the consultants. (Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Agriculture, du De´veloppement Rural, et des Peˆches Maritimes, Direction des Ame´nagements Hydro-agricoles, Cellule Centrale de Gestion du Projet (CCGP), Projet de de´veloppement rural inte´gre´ centre´ sur la petite et moyenne hydraulique DRI-PMH, rapport d’e´valuation a` mi-parcours, rapport principal, mars 2005 (Rabat: CCGP, 2005), annex 11). See also J. Riaux, Dynamiques des innovations sociales et institutionnelles de l’irrigation dans une vallee´ du Haut Atlas au Maroc, valle´e des Aı¨t Hakim, Aı¨t Bougmez (stage collectif GSE 2003) (Association des Aı¨t Bougmez pour le de´veloppement et la coope´ration, Institut agronomique et ve´te´rinaire Hassan II, and Centre national d’e´tude agronomique des re´gions chaudes [CNEARC], 2003); Riaux, “Logiques locales, logiques globales: Aspects anthropologiques de la gestion participative de l’irrigation dans la Valle´e des Aı¨t Bou Guemez (Haut Atlas, Maroc)”, paper presented to 4e Se´minaire International du PCSI: “Coordinations Hydrauliques et Justices Sociales”, 25 – 26 November 2004, Montpellier; and Riaux, “La gestion participative de l’irrigation, exemple d’un cas d’intervention de l’e´tat dans une valle´e montagnarde du Haut Atlas marocain”, paper presented to Les 15e`mes Journe´es de la Socie´te´ d’Ecologie Humaine: du Nord au Sud, le recours a` l’environnement, le retour des paysans?, 11 – 12 December 2004, Marseilles. 66. It seems that the DRI-PMH project, at least in Al Haouz province, did not carry out any studies on the social stratification, which could have helped to realistically assess the population’s capacity to contribute financially to the required 10 per cent of total investment costs, and the subsequent operational and maintenance expenses. L. Auclair et al., Programme agdal, rapport final: Les agdals du Haut Atlas (Maroc): Biodiversite´ et gestion communautaire de l’acce`s aux ressources forestie`res et pastorales (Marseilles: Laboratoire Population Environnement De´veloppement, Universite´ de Provence, Institut de Recherche pour le De´veloppement [IRD], 2006), p. 107, found great income disparities in Tighedouine: the poorest farmers earn approximately e625 per year, while the richest, with larger sheep and goat herds – and who have expanded their businesses to transport and shop keeping – earn up to e5,200 per year. The project also did not conduct any

NOTES

67.

68.

69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78.

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study on marketing channels for various products and the current role of middlemen, such as that done by Buerli et al. for the Anougal valley (Buerli et al., “Institutions compensate”; “Marketing opportunities of mountain products from the High Atlas in Morocco for the rural poor”, paper presented to EFARD Conference: “Agricultural Research for Development: European Responses to Changing Global Needs”, 27–29 April 2006, Zurich). The risk of elite capture is mentioned however in the World Bank’s Implementation Completion Report (World Bank, “Implementation Completion and Results”). M. Tozy, “Des tribus aux coope´ratives ethno-lignage`res: Histoire d’une mutation en cours sur les hauts plateaux de l’Oriental”, in M. Mahdi (ed.), Mutations sociales & re´organisation des e´spaces steppiques (Casablanca: Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 2002), pp. 17 – 38. D. Rossi-Doria, “Irrigation-Based Community Development: Technocratic Approaches, Hybrid Governance and Spaces of Participation: An Analysis of the unintended outcomes of the project”, MA thesis in Development Studies, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, December 2012. Available at: thesis.eur.nl/ pub/13298 (accessed 16 December 2015). See Kadiri et al., “L’eau d’irrigation et les e´lections communales au Moyen Sabou: l’association des irrigants comme espace de compe´tition politique”, in Tozy (ed.), Elections au Maroc, pp. 199 – 227, for an interesting case study of the linkages between an AWUA and commune politics. See also L. Bekkari and I. Ye´pez del Castillo, “L’appropriation du mode`le d’association d’usagers de l’eau par une communaute´ villageoise du Moyen Atlas au Maroc”, Cahiers Agricultures, vol. 20, No. 1 – 2 (January – April 2011), pp. 73 – 7, who report the successful adaptation of the AWUA model by a community in the Middle Atlas in order to improve the traditional irrigation system. MADRPM, Projet de mise, p. 217. See notes from meetings held during the World Bank DRI-PMH mid-term review mission, 11– 15 April 2005, and CCGP, Projet de de´veloppement, p. 7. As part of the IFAD project, the DPA implements so-called actions facilitatrices in order to bridge these delays, thanks to a UNDP-managed, quick-disbursing fund (interview IF05). See also CCGP, Projet de de´veloppement, p. 20; DPA Marrakech, Programme de de´veloppement, p. 46. See UNDP Maroc, Rapport de de´veloppement, p. 73; Zouiten, Les syste`mes de solidarite´, p. 140. UNDP Maroc, Fiche de projet, p. 35. See Premier Ministre, Secretariat d’Etat a` la population and UNDP, Programme de de´veloppement humain durable et de lutte contre la pauvrete´: Etude monographique de la province d’Al Haouz (Rabat: Premier Ministre, Secretariat d’Etat a` la population and UNDP, 1997); MPEP and UNDP, Plan d’action. A large part of the IFAD project funds are used for training the DPA and Centre de Travaux (local extension offices) staff in participatory planning and technical aspects (interview IF03). See also DPA Marrakech and Fath Ingenieurs Conseils (FIC), Etude d’ame´nagement hydroagricole et de topographie des pe´rime`tres de PMH sur une superficie de 375ha relevant de la CR d’Ouirgane, province d’Al Haouz, Phase II: Groupe de pe´rime`tres: Tizi Oussem, IdAissa, Aguinane, Taddarte, Tahliouine. Marche´ 10/2002 (comprising three separate studies entitled: E´tude de la situation actuelle; e´tude du diagnostic du re´seau d’irrigation; e´tude du de´veloppement agricole) (Marrakech: DPA Marrakech and FIC, undated).

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79. Due to space constraints, I am not able to include here my findings on the Toubkal National Park’s “participatory” management by the forestry services, but they point to similar conclusions. 80. See Millennium Challenge Compact, “Millennium Challenge Compact between the United States of America acting through the Millennium Challenge Corporation and The Government of the Kingdom of Morocco” (signed on 31 August 2007. Available at: assets.mcc.gov/agreements/compact-morocco.pdf (accessed 16 December 2015) and: assets.mcc.gov/agreements/compact-morocco.pdf and www.mcc.gov/where-we-work/ program/morocco-compact (all accessed 16 December 2015) for general information on the program. 81. Ferrie´, “La gifle”, p. 83.

Chapter 5 The Capacity of Local Associations 1. Premier Ministre, Secretariat d’Etat a` la population and UNDP, Programme de de´veloppement humain durable, pp. 200ff. 2. Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur, Province d’Al Haouz, Monographie en chiffre, p. 40. 3. The OCDO statistics (OCDO, Donne´es statistiques) show that there are 83 cooperatives in Al Haouz province, of which 77 are in the agricultural sector. 4. Notes from the meeting during the DRI-PMH mid-term evaluation mission, 15 April 2005. On the associations in the city of Marrakech, see O. Ibourk and H. Rafik, “Les acteurs de l’e´conomie solidaire a` Marrakech”, Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc (BESM): Rapport du Social (162) (2003), pp. 85 – 95. The growth of such associations is even more astonishing as in the late 1990s, only 130 village associations in the whole country were recorded: UNDP Maroc, Rapport national sur le de´veloppement humain 1998 – 1999: Approche participative et de´veloppement rural (Rabat: Ardecom, 1999), p. 46. 5. See lematin.ma/journal/2015/al-haouz_remise-de-subventions-a-une-quarantaine-dassociations/217406.html (accessed 16 December 2015). 6. See Bergh, “‘Inclusive’ neoliberalism”. 7. Apart from the governor’s personal drive and the influence of various donors, another contributing factor may have been a circular of 18 June 2003, which the Ministry of the Interior sent to all the walis and governors encouraging them to stimulate the growth of local associations (Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, p. 251n4). 8. See also F. Mernissi, “Voices from Marrakech: Towards competitive and caring societies in the Middle East and North Africa. Social capital in action: The case of the Ait Iktel village association”, paper presented to Mediterranean Development Forum I: “Knowledge and Skills for Development in the Information Age”, 12 –17 May 1997, Marrakech; Mernissi, ONG rurales du Haut-Atlas: Les Aı¨t-De´brouille (Rabat: Editions Marsam, 2003); and A. Amahane, “Le village des Aı¨t Iktel”, in 50 ans de de´veloppement. 9. See its website at: www.cdrtmarrakech.org. 10. This was at times hard to establish with absolute certainty, due to recall difficulties on the part of interviewees. In these cases, the available data in the province list, the monograph, and the interviews were triangulated. In one case (Anza), all three interviewees gave the founding year as the end of the 1990s but in the lists it is 2000, so it could be that it was not officially registered before then. As for some of the parent and teacher associations, although the schools have existed since the 1970s and 1980s, the founding year for the

NOTES

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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associations was taken to be 2000 and 2003 respectively as it seems that they have only been active since then (interviews OA11 and TA19). An IFAD project information sheet entitled “Donne´es statistiques sur la situation organisationnelle et financie`re des associations concerne´es dans le projet FIDA” states that 92 per cent of the 133 associations in the project were created “with” the project, in 2002–3, and only 8 per cent before the project, i.e. prior to 2002. Lacroix, Les re´seaux marocains, p. 145. The choice of an association’s name can also reveal the underlying aspirations for its creation. While most of the associations were simply named after the village concerned, some also chose the Arabic or Tamazight name of particularly important mountains or rivers – or symbolic names such as “Horizon” (which also alludes to the well-known national association, AFAK; see interview OA12); “lightning” (Tifaoute, OA24); “fertility” (Imdghass, TA15); and “satisfaction” (Arrida, OA05). A. Charfi, “Table ronde: Secteur associatif et de´veloppement local: L’organisation interne des associations de de´veloppement en milieu rural”, in A. Chaker (ed.), Bulletin e´conomique et social du Maroc (2002); Charfi, “Le management des associations de de´veloppement rural au Maroc”, doctorate in economics, Mohamed V University, 2005. Mahdi, “Le roˆle de la socie´te´ civile”, p. 476, notes that agricultural cooperatives created as part of “participatory” development projects also become spaces for competition between local elites when electoral stakes are involved. The same problem exists also for the drinking water association created under MEDA in Talatast (interview TA17), and the parent and tutor associations (TA28). This legal limitation on the range of activities that they are allowed to pursue contributes to the proliferation of local associations (i.e. two or three associations exist in the same village), which does not seem an effective use of limited human and financial resources, and reduces the associations’ ability to represent the population of the village vis-a`-vis the government (Lacroix, Les re´seaux marocains, p. 165). Rossi-Doria, “Irrigation-Based”. DPA Marrakech, Cellule de Projet, Programme de re´paration des de´gaˆts des crues dans la province d’Al Haouz: Bilan physique et comptable, au 31 mars 1999, anne´e 1998/1999) (Marrakech: DPA Marrakech, 1999). This project was part of the DPA’s program to repair the severe damage caused by catastrophic flash floods in seven valleys in Al Haouz province on 17 August 1995. See Note de pre´sentation received from interviewee TA34 by email on 26 September 2006. See N. Boumaza, “Crise, affectation et mutations: Le Haut-Atlas marocain et les effets d’une programmation du tourisme”, Revue de Ge´ographie Alpine, 84(4) (1996), pp. 25–36 for more examples of tourism-induced intra and inter-village conflicts in the Atlas Mountains, due mainly to the upheaval of existing social hierarchies. I have not included here all the projects that were proposed as part of the IFAD program, as these lists can be very long and it is not really clear how realistic or serious these priorities are for the associations concerned. R. Alsop and B. Kurey, Local Organizations in Decentralized Development: Their Functions and Performance in India (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005), p. 38. See Note de pre´sentation document, cited earlier, received from interviewee TA34. See M. Roque, “L’e´mergence d’une socie´te´ civile au Sud du Maroc: La re´gion du Souss”, in M. Roque (ed.), La socie´te´ civile au Maroc: L’e´mergence de nouveaux acteurs de de´veloppement (Paris: Editions Publisud and Institut Europe´en de la Me´diterrane´e, 2004), pp. 247–317. Several members mentioned their attendance at commune-level meetings on the IFAD project, at meetings of the Espace Associatif, or personal visits to other associations, but this was not counted here as training (interviews OA02, OA04, OA09, OA17, TA29).

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25. See also World Bank, Project Completion Report: Morocco: Small and Medium Scale Irrigation Project (loan 2253-MOR), Report No. 14676; Agriculture Operations Division, Maghreb and Iran Department; Middle East and North Africa Regional Office (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1995); and World Bank, Implementation Completion Report: Kingdom of Morocco: Second Small and Medium Scale Irrigation Project (Loan 2954-MOR), Report No. 16601; Natural Resources and Environment Division, Maghreb and Iran Department, Middle East and North Africa Region (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997); Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Agriculture et du De´veloppement Rural, Administration du Ge´nie Rural, Direction des Ame´nagements Hydro-Agricoles (DAHA) and Kreditanstalt fu¨r Wiederaufbau (KfW), Programme de formation des associations des usagers d’eaux agricoles (A&F 93117): Phase d’exe´cution; ate´lier de pre´paration du 25/10/2000: Dossier d’information (Rabat: DAHA and KfW, 2000); A. Elbouari, “Conception participative de l’irrigation collective: De´roulement des e´tudes de re´habilitation de la PMH au Maroc”, paper presented to Se´minaire Euro-Mediterrane´en: “La Mode´rnisation de l’agriculture irrigue´e dans les Pays du Maghreb”, 19– 21 April 2004, Institut Agronomique et Ve´te´rinaire Hassan II, Rabat, p. 6. 26. I attended the sessions on 9 September 2005, 3 December 2005, and 3–4 February 2006. 27. See also M. Bzioui, “L’approche participative dans le PAGER”, paper presented to Journe´es de concertation sur le programme de de´veloppement rural inte´gre´, 8 – 10 October 2002, Afourer, Morocco; P. Koenig, “Urban-rural disparity in water supply in Morocco”, Waterlines, 18(3) (2002), pp. 20 – 3; see also DGCL and Royaume du Maroc, Ministe`re de l’Equipement, Direction Ge´ne´rale de l’Hydraulique (DGH), PAGER: Programme d’approvisionnement groupe´ en eau potable des populations rurales: Guide de l’animateur, TCP/MOR/6613 (Rabat: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO], undated) for the provincial, mobile participation team’s handbook. 28. The Projet eau et de´veloppement local (PREDEL), implemented by Oxfam Que´bec, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Direction de l’Eau et de l’Assainissement (DEA) of the Ministry of the Interior remedied some of these shortcomings in the PAGER program by training drinking water user associations in 112 villages in the Souss-Massa-Draˆa and Oriental regions. 29. Note that the membership numbers on the official lists obtained from the provincial authorities differ widely from those obtained in the interviews. The official numbers seem completely random, as they are neither systematically over nor underestimating those given by the individual associations’ members. 30. In the neighboring Souss-Massa-Draˆa region, the PREDEL project encountered only one female committee member in the 190 villages visited, and in only four villages were there women members entitled to vote at the AGMs of the associations. Oxfam Que´bec, Rapport de fin de projet: Projet eau et de´veloppement local (PREDEL) – Maroc; presente´ a` l’Agence Canadienne de De´veloppement International (ACDI) & la Direction Ge´ne´rale des Collectivite´s Locales, Direction de l’Eau et l’Assainissement, Ministe`re de l’Inte´rieur (Maroc), de´cembre 2005 (Rabat: Oxfam Que´bec, 2005), p. 19. 31. I acknowledge the kind help of Professor Harry Stroomer at Leiden University, who confirmed this translation by referring to J. Berque, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas (suivi de retour aux Seksawa), 2nd edn (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978), pp. 325 and 502; personal communication, 23 January 2007. 32. A solution to the problem of losing valuable knowledge with the departure of a committee member is found in the WUAs, at least in theory. Their statutes stipulate that every two years, only two of an association’s members change, so as to preserve the

NOTES

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

42.

43. 44. 45.

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knowledge gained during the trainings and allow for continuous peer training (interview TA09). This is in line with similar findings by Bourjeois and El Kam, Etude pre´alable, p. 13; Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte, pp. 108ff.; RTI, Mouvement associative, p. 7; Naciri et al. De´veloppement de´mocratique, p. 141; and UNDP and Pe´rier, Etude sur le be´ne´volat, p. 36. Note that the interviews did not ask about the new accounting framework for associations that was introduced in 2003 (see Ben Youssef, Le financement, p. 14). The coordinator in the Agenda 21 office in Ait Ourir also observed this practice of copying internal statutes (interview GO04). Alsop and Kurey, Local Organizations, p. 32. This is comparable to a study of local associations by A. Chaker, Etude sur l’interme´diation financie`re au be´ne´fice des associations (synthe`se) (Rabat: Forum des Alternatives Maroc, 2006), p. 7, who notes that of the 100 associations in his sample, 76 per cent have incomes of less than DH 10,000 per year in membership fees, even though these associations have a much stronger human resource base than those in my sample. Auclair et al., Programme agdal; Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte, p. 44; Gebrati, “Mobilisation territorial”, pp. 91 – 4; Damamme, “Le genre”, p. 249. Although as we shall see in Chapter 6, this practice has also been linked to political strategizing on the part of the AAZ’s President rather than neutral “developmental” objectives. Filali Meknassi, Etude sur le cadre, p. 5; UNDP and Pe´rier, Etude sur le be´ne´volat, p. 13. For example, A. Lahlimi, “Les collectivite´s rurales traditionnelles et leur evolution”, Etudes Sociologiques sur le Maroc, Publication du Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc (BESM) (1971), pp. 17–41; P. Pascon, “De´sue´tude de la jmaa dans le Haouz de Marrakech”, Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc (BESM): 30 Ans de Sociologie du Maroc (Textes Anciens et Ine´dits) (155–156) (1986), pp. 185–94; A. Amahan, “Structures sociales et de´veloppement e´conomique local”, in D. Khrouz (ed.), Pour une approche alternative de l’analyse du de´veloppement (Casablanca: Fondation du Roi Abdul-Aziz Al-Saoud pour les e´tudes islamiques et les sciences humaines, 1999) pp. 115–20; Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte, p. 20; Chaize, “L’e´conomie sociale”, pp. 29ff.; Lacroix, Les re´seaux marocains, p. 139; Herzenni, Evolutions du partenariat, p. 224; Zouiten, Les syste`mes de solidarite´, p. 124ff. See Bourjeois and El Kam, Etude pre´alable, p. 14n33 for a more detailed description of various types of jema’a. Tamim, “Territoire et territorialite´”, p. 245 argues that we need to understand how local solidarities evolve and what they are based on if we want to use them as bases for participatory projects. He also highlights the importance of the mosque for the “crystallization of the jema’a’s communitarian being”. P. Petrzelka and M. M. Bell, “Rationality and solidarities: The social organization of common property resources in the Imdrhas Valley of Morocco”, Human Organization, 59(3) (2000), pp. 343–52 show that forms of solidarity can change from one village to the next, e.g. it is possible to find twiza (generalized reciprocity; exchange without expectation of direct equal return) in one village, and direct reciprocity (expectation of equal return) in another. Damamme, “Le genre”, pp. 256–7, citing B. Hibou and M. Tozy, “Une lecture d’anthropologie politique de la corruption au Maroc: Fondement historique d’une prise de liberte´ avec le droit”, Revue Tiers Monde, 161 (2000), p. 36; M. El Yaagoubi, “Histoire de l’e´tat et des institutions au Maroc: Essai de synthe`se”, REMALD (1999), p. 95. H. Rachik, “Jma’a, tradition et politique”, Hespe´ris-Tamuda, 39(2) (2001), p. 151. M. Kasriel, “Exclusion sociale, pauvrete´, analphabe´tisme: Processus d’exclusion”, in 50 ans de de´veloppement, p. 68. UNDP and Pe´rier, Etude sur le be´ne´volat, p. 13.

302

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46. Chaize, “L’e´conomie sociale”, p. 59; UNDP and Pe´rier, Etude sur le be´ne´volat, p. 14. 47. N. Bouih, “Le mouvement associatif dans le domaine du de´veloppement local: Cas des associations de la zone d’action du projet de de´veloppement des zones montagneuses de la province d’Al Haouz”, BA thesis in Agronomy, Institut Agronomique et Ve´te´rinaire Hassan II, 2004, p. 106, found that 80 per cent of the 37 associations that she studied and that are part of the IFAD project in Al Haouz province still function according to the laws and rules of the jema’a. 48. However, when creating a formal association with fixed committee positions, the advantage of the flexible membership that characterizes the jema’a (where members were selected according to the nature of the issue at hand) is lost (interview AC17). 49. The AWUAs have tried to include representatives from the jema’at of the villages on the perimeter in the committee. As one member put it (interview TA11): “we are just there to represent them; we cannot do anything without consulting the jema’a”. In order to understand this relationship in a more concrete way, the question was posed with regard to who would, from now on, impose fines for damaging the irrigation networks, a role that was traditionally reserved for the jema’a. This yielded contradictory replies, reflecting the fact that these WUAs were still very recent at the time of fieldwork (TA07, TA08, TA09). According to a staff member at the Ministry of Agriculture (IF06), the “president” of the jema’a sometimes becomes president of a new WUA, but in any case, the jema’a is always there behind the scenes. As he expressed it, during his visits, “it is the paper that speaks [i.e. the AWUA members] but when I’m gone it is the jema’a”. 50. See F. A. Akalay and A. Abouhani, “Helen Keller international, mouvement associatif et de´veloppement communautaire dans la valle´e du Draaˆ: Le cas de Taliouine”, in D. Khrouz (ed.), Le de´veloppement local et l’e´conomie solidaire a` l’e´preuve de la mondialisation (Casablanca: Fondation du Roi Abdul-Aziz Al Saoud pour les Etudes Islamiques et les Sciences Humaines, 2003), pp. 147–63, for a discussion of the changing relationships between a group of young teachers (who founded an association in order to implement projects with Helen Keller International) and members of the jema’a in a village in the Draaˆ Valley. 51. A. Chaker, “Communaute´s de base traditionnelles et modernes dans la valle´e du Draaˆ”, Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc, Rapport du Social: Communaute´s de Base et Changements Sociaux (Rabat: Editions OKAD, 2004), pp. 28ff. 52. See Chadli, La socie´te´ civile ou la queˆte, p. 63; RTI, Mouvement associative, p. 4; Abbadi, “Roˆle des associations”, p. 53; A. Ibourk and F. Sahli, “La promotion des actions du mouvement associatif au Maroc: Des re´alisations appre´ciables a` e´valuer”, in P. G. Xuereb (ed.), Euro-Med Integration and the “Ring of Friends”: The Mediterranean’s European Challenge (Msdia: University of Malta European Documentation and Research Centre, 2003), pp. 266ff.; Gebrati, “Mobilisation territorial”; and Damamme, “Le genre”, p. 163. 53. Bourjeois and El Kam, Etude pre´alable, p. 13. 54. See G. Kratochwil, “Die Berberbewegung in Marokko: Zur Geschichte der Konstruktion einer ethnischen Identita¨t (1912–1997)”, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 247 (2002); P. A. Silverstein, “The pitfalls of transnational consciousness: Amazigh activism as a scalar dilemma”, Journal of North African Studies, 18(5) (2013), pp. 768–78; Bergh and Rossi-Doria, “Plus
ca Change?”. 55. “Political society” is understood here as “that loose community of recognized political parties and their operatives, local political brokers and councilors, and perhaps even lower-level public servants who depend upon the grace and favour of politicians” (Corbridge et al., Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 189).

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Chapter 6 Local Governments and Village Associations: Limited Embeddedness and Political Instrumentalization 1. Joshi and Moore, “Institutionalised co-production”, pp. 39–41. 2. See S. I. Bergh, “Assessing local governance innovations in Morocco in light of the participatory budgeting experience in Brazil: The case of ‘Civil society’ federations (espaces associatifs) in Al Haouz province”, Journal of Economic and Social Research, 12(1) (2010), pp. 113– 38 for details. 3. Evans, “Government action”, pp. 1, 123. 4. This situation illustrates a more widespread problem with the PAGER program at the national level, which is based on such tripartite agreements. It seems that in most cases, the communes and the drinking water user associations were unable to contribute the required percentage to the total cost of the PAGER program. Other problems included the uncertain legal status of the drinking water user associations, and their insufficient training in technical and financial management, as noted in Chapter 5 (interviews AC09; GO16; Chaker, “De´veloppement local”, p. 69; Lacroix, Les re´seaux marocains, pp. 163–4; El Mansouri and Souafi, Services de base, p. 31). The PREDEL project recognized that, in many cases, the underlying difficulty lies in the conflictual relationships between the communes and the associations. There is no space here to discuss this innovative project in detail, but there is evidence that it has significantly contributed to building complementarity and embeddedness into local government–CBO relations in the 26 communes that it targeted in three southern provinces (Chtouka Ait Baha, Tiznit, and Tata). See E. H. Arejdal, Le PREDEL, e´valuation apre`s cloˆture No. 13 (Rabat: Centre de Documentation des Collectivite´s Locales, 2005); Oxfam Que´bec, Rapport de fin de projet; DEA, Agence Canadienne de De´veloppement International (ACDI) and Oxfam Que´bec, Guide de gestion des points d’eau en milieu rural (projet eau et de´veloppement local -PREDEL) (DEA, ACDI, and Oxfam Que´bec, undated), pp. 20ff.; interviews DF08, DF09, NG10. 5. A parents’ association in Ouirgane was told that it could not receive any funds from the commune since it did not have a bank account (interview OA04). 6. I obtained an Excel file entitled “Evaluation de la politique conventionnelle des collectivite´s locales” from the DCL in Tahanout on 20 May 2005. However, according to the official (interview HA04), this data is incomplete as other departments at the provincial administration also concluded such agreements with commune councils and associations. The official considers these agreements as “illegal” since they were not approved by his office (the DCL). In total, the file lists 27 agreements between communes and other organizations – apart from the 17 agreements with associations, three are with the provincial health delegation, one with the provincial education delegation, one with the Ministry of Land Planning in the context of Agenda 21, one with the ADS, one with ANAPEC, one with Marrakech University, and two with province-wide associations (i.e. not local associations). It also lists five agreements between communes and private businesses, which I have not included in the total number. 7. Two agreements concerning the management of the female boarding houses include four and three communes respectively, i.e. they are multipartite agreements. 8. According to the Coordinator of Agenda 21 in Ait Ourir, only seven or eight associations in the cercle of Ait Ourir have concluded partnerships with the communes (interview GO04). 9. These fears may not be unfounded. According to a report from the Regional Audit Court, in 2004, the municipal council in Rabat gave DH 6.6 million in subsidies to associations

304

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

NOTES

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without adhering to any eligibility criteria or audit control. Several beneficiary associations had local councilors on their committees. “Un rapport accablant sur la gestion de la ville de Rabat”, Vie ´economique, 18 May 2007. Available at: lavieeco.com/ news/politique/un-rapport-accablant-sur-la-gestion-de-la-ville-de-rabat-5679.html (accessed 16 December 2015). Charfi, “Table ronde”, p. 298 found that half of the 61 associations in his sample had local councilors on their committees or as members. In Tighedouine, only one councilor said he was not a member of any association, one had been a member in the past, and one is a member of an association outside the commune. Data is missing for four councilors out of the total 23. As noted earlier, the AAZ President was commune President until 2001, when he was ousted by a two-thirds majority. At the time of fieldwork, he was a member of the minority/political opposition in the council. He was elected President (Mayor) again in the 2009 local government elections. See Note de pre´sentation received from the President by email on 26 September 2006 (interviewee TA34). Charfi, “Table ronde”, p. 298 found that out of the 61 local associations in his sample, a quarter live in permanent conflict with the commune councilors. Helling et al., Linking, p. 68. See Bergh, “Assessing local governance innovations”. Morocco is no exception among developing countries. For example, only one out of six case study countries studied by Blair (“Participation and accountability”, p. 29) showed “signs of a civil society that is an effective instrument of public accountability at the local level”. G. Denoeux and R. Payne, Democracy and governance assessment of Morocco, final report. Work conducted under USAID contract no. AEP-I-00-99-00041-00 general democracy and governance analytical support and implementation services indefinite quantity contract, 15 June 2003 (Burlington, VT: ARD, Inc. for USAID/Morocco, 2003), p. 56. See Bergh, “‘Inclusive’ neoliberalism”. Osborne et al., Community Involvement in Rural Regeneration Partnerships in the UK: Evidence from England, Northern Ireland and Scotland (Bristol: The Policy Press for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2002), p. 26. Ibid., p. 29. World Bank, State-Society Synergy, p. 10. R. Jenkins and A. M. Goetz, “Constraints on civil society’s capacity to curb corruption: Lessons from the Indian experience”, IDS Bulletin, 30(4) (1999), pp. 39– 49. D. Abbadi, “Appui des associations a` la gestion locale”, in Espace Associatif (ed.), Quelle contribution, p. 107. I refer here to the RENFCAP project, which started in 1998 in the urban commune of Oulme`s and later expanded to Sale´ and Essaouira. It seems to have had serious problems in engaging the municipal councilors (see ENDA Maghreb, “Appui au processus de de´centralisation et de de´veloppement durable”, Bulletin Economique et Social du Maroc (BESM): Rapport du Social (159) (2000), pp. 83–8; ENDA Maghreb, Programme RENFCAP: Renforcement des capacite´s des acteurs locaux pour la promotion d’une citoyennete´ active et d’une gouvernance participative au Maroc; rapport narratif de la troisie`me anne´e, pe´riode du 1er novembre 2004 au 31 aouˆt 2005 (Rabat: ENDA MAGHREB, 2005); ENDA Maghreb, La lettre du RENFCAP, bulletin de liaison du programme de renforcement des capacite´s des acteurs locaux pour la promotion d’une gouvernance participative au Maroc no. 2, juillet 2005 (Rabat: ENDA Maghreb 2005); and Programme Concerte´ Maroc (PCM), Expe´riences de

NOTES

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

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de´veloppement local au Maroc: Document de capitalisation d’expe´riences re´alise´ dans le cadre de la composante de´veloppement local du programme concerte´ Maroc (2002 – 2005) (Rabat: PCM, 2005). Ben Ali, Civil society, pp. 4–5. Espace Associatif (ed.), Quelle contribution associative. Evans, Embedded Autonomy. Ibid., p. 59. For a definition of this term, see E. Peruzzotti and C. Smulovitz, “Societal accountability in Latin America”, Journal of Democracy, 11(4) (2000), pp. 147– 58, cited in Ackerman, “Co-governance”, p. 450.

Conclusions 1. G. Mohan and K. Stokke, “The politics of localization: From depoliticizing development to politicizing democracy”, in Cox et al., The SAGE Handbook of Political Geography (London: SAGE, 2008) p. 557. 2. Mitlin et al., “Reclaiming development? NGOs and the challenge of alternatives”, World Development, 35(10) (2007), pp. 1, 702. 3. Olowu and Wunsch, Local Governance in Africa, p. 22. 4. Such a conception negates the role of political competition or conflict between social groups and classes, and represents an increasingly unconstitutional, de-institutionalised and de-politicised form of democracy (Harriss et al., “The new local politics”, p. 8). See also O. To¨rnquist, Politics and Development: A Critical Introduction (London: SAGE Publications, 1999); R. Abrahamsen, Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa (London: Zed Books, 2000), pp. 52ff.; Houtzager, “From polycentrism”; Gaventa, Triumph; Hickey, Capturing the Political?; Mohan and Stokke, “Politics of localization”. 5. K. Stokke and G. Mohan, “The convergence around local civil society and the dangers of localism”, Social Scientist, 29(11/12) (2001), p. 14. 6. F. Schuurman, “The decentralisation discourse: Post-fordist paradigm or neo-liberal culde-sac?”, European Journal of Development Research, 9(1) (1997), pp. 150–66, cited in Mohan and Stokke 2008: 548. 7. Manor, Political Economy, p. 44; see also Parker, The Way Forward, p. 27. 8. Crook and Sverrisson, “Does decentralization contribute”, p. 254. 9. Manor, Political Economy, p. 47. 10. J. Fox, “The difficult transition from clientelism to citizenship: Lessons from Mexico”, World Politics, 46(2) (1994), pp. 151 –84; Fox, “How does civil society thicken? The political construction of social capital in rural Mexico”, World Development, 24(6) (1996), p. 1092. 11. A. Leftwich, “The Political Approach to Institutional Formation, Maintenance and Change: A Literature Review Essay”, Discussion Paper Series Number 14, Research Programme Consortium on “Improving Institutions for Pro-Poor Growth”, October 2007, Manchester, p. 28. 12. Corbridge et al., Seeing the State, pp. 190–1. 13. Moore and Putzel, Thinking Strategically; see also Manor, Political Economy, p. 66. 14. D. Lewis and D. Mosse, “Theoretical approaches to brokerage and translation in development”, in Lewis and Mosse (eds), Development Brokers, pp. 1–26.

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INDEX

20 February Movement, 62, 64– 7, 69, 70, 73, 230 and elections, 77 2020 Rural Development Strategy, 1, 81, 123, 155– 6, 161, 230 AAZ see Association des Amis du Zat Abdullah of Jordan, King, 56 accountability, 3 – 5, 9, 33, 36 administration, 4, 5, 36, 37, 53 – 4, 229 and boundaries, 48 and fees, 135 advanced regionalization (re´gionalisation avance´e), 41 – 2 Advisory Committee on Regionalization, 41, 69 advocacy associations, 63 AFAK, 175, 176, 182 African Charter on Popular Participation (1990), 7 agricultural cooperatives, 67 Agricultural Water User Associations (AWUAs), 81, 168, 172, 218– 19 see also Water User Associations (WUAs) agriculture see farmers AIDS, 174

Aı¨t Iktel, 166– 8, 220 Alliance of Liberties (ADL) party, 74, 151–2, 154 Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (MALI), 65 Amazigh, 64, 66, 72, 195, 197, 220–1 and village associations, 171, 175 amghar, 45 animation rurale, 6 annual general meetings (AGMs), 187–8 anthropology, 14 – 15 Arab Spring, 65 Arabs, 45, 46 ARUPs see Associations Reconnues d’Utilite´ Publique Asni, 94, 96, 133, 183, 208– 9 Al-Assad, Bashir, 56 Association Aı¨t Iktel de De´veloppement, 166, 167– 8 Association des Amis du Zat (AAZ), 166, 173, 175, 178, 179, 182 and finance, 190, 192 and local government, 214– 15, 216– 18 and village partnerships, 193, 194 Association Fes Saı¨ss, 62 Association Ribat Al Fath, 62

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associations, 5, 70 – 3 see also village associations Associations Reconnues d’Utilite´ Publique (ARUPs), 68, 168, 275 associations of unemployed university graduates, 64 – 6, 59 Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), 74 – 5 AWUAs see Agricultural Water User Associations Azzaden River, 94 Basri, Driss, 55 bee-keeping, 178, 180 Belgian Technical Cooperation (CTB), 16 Ben Barka, Mehdi, 49 beneficiaries, 6, 10, 20 Berber(s), 45, 46, 64, 66 see also Amazigh Brazil, 12, 28, 225 bureaucracies, 33 caı¨d, 45 – 8, 50, 71 – 2 and councilors, 229 and Al Haouz, 109– 10, 111– 13, 127, 128, 194 capacity, 35 – 7 Casablanca bombings, 69 Catholic Relief Services (CRS), 15 – 16, 222 CBOs see community-based organizations central government, 5, 19, 20, 34, 228 and budget, 146 and protectorate, 46, 47 Central Middle Atlas project, 81 Centre de De´veloppement de la Re´gion de Tensift (CDRT), 168 cercles, 44, 48 Chambers, Robert, 7, 8 cheikh, 45, 47, 50 children, 120

IN MOROCCO

civil servants, 100– 3, 107, 126 civil society, 2, 20, 34, 35, 37 – 8, 233–4 and Al Haouz, 165– 6 and makhzen, 68– 9 and political parties, 73 – 4, 77 and social movements, 230, 232– 3 and the State, 14, 83 – 5, 219, 222– 6, 228 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), 60– 5, 72 clientelism, 33, 151, 153– 4, 228, 234, 235 co-governance, 33 – 4 co-production, 31 – 2, 33 colonial era, 6, 46 – 7 Commune Charter see Municipal Charters communes, 42 –5, 47 – 51, 52 – 5, 56– 7, 58 – 9 see also local government communications, 96 communism, 2 community-based organizations (CBOs), 1, 8–9, 11–12, 19, 20, 67 and capacity, 35, 37 and Al Haouz, 93, 166 and local government, 30, 31 –4, 211, 212– 24, 231 and participation, 228 community-driven development (CDD), 9 complementarity, 30– 2, 225 Constitution of Morocco (2011), 21, 41, 69 –70, 72 consultative responsibilities, 110, 121 cooperatives, 176– 7 “coordinations”, 64, 65 –6 corruption, 5, 55, 236 council meetings, 16 –17, 147–8 councilors, 97 – 100, 102– 4, 107– 12, 126–7, 128, 229 and CBOs, 214– 16, 218– 20, 221, 223– 4

INDEX and development, 114–20, 121–2, 124, 125 and party politics, 152–3, 154, 230 and public participation, 147– 51 and training, 235 crafts, 91, 96, 176– 7 CSOs see Civil Society Organizations dahir, 70 – 1 dams, 92, 94 – 5 decentralization, 1 –2, 3– 6, 24 – 5, 28 – 9, 40 – 5, 228– 9 and civil society, 233– 4 and democratic, 4, 12 and Al Haouz, 103– 6, 122– 4 and reforms, 18 – 19, 21 deconcentration, 3 democracy, 3, 6, 56, 232 Department of Local Authorities (DCL), 59 – 60, 102, 104– 6, 107, 146, 210 Department for Management Training (DFCAT), 54, 58 despots, 45– 6 devolution see decentralization donors, 2, 9, 60, 84 – 5, 90, 160– 1 and funds, 21, 37, 65, 125 and reforms, 108 and training, 184 and village associations, 167, 169, 171, 236 douar, 45, 81, 156– 7, 161 DPA see Ministry of Agriculture DRI-PMH see Irrigation Based Community Development drinking water, 32, 62, 72, 80, 197 and Al Haouz, 90, 91, 92, 96, 116, 121– 2, 124 and local government, 208 and Marrakech, 95 and project training, 185 and revenue, 191 and village associations, 175

335

East Asia, 2, 31 Economic, Social and Environmental Council, 41 education, 32, 53, 80, 180, 222 and civil servants, 100– 1 and councilors, 97 see also schools El Glaoui, A. 46, 90 elections, 20, 21, 37, 74 – 5, 153– 4 and communes, 49 – 50, 54 – 5 and voting, 76 –7 electricity, 72, 80, 179 and Al Haouz, 90, 93, 116, 119, 121– 2, 139, 143, 144, 145 elites, 5, 9, 10, 17 – 18, 19 – 21 and associations, 62 – 3 and CBOs, 224 and Al Haouz, 98 – 100, 126 and local government, 233 and the monarchy, 73 and rural, 49, 50 embeddedness, 31, 32 – 3, 225– 6, 231–2 emigrants, 183 employers’ federation (CGEM), 63 empowerment, 6, 7, 25 environment, the, 175– 6 espaces associatif, 16, 63, 201, 209, 212, 222 European Union (EU), 81 expenditure, 10, 17 – 18, 36, 136– 47, 162–3, 207 Family Code, 63, 175 farmers, 10, 31, 53, 91, 161 and cooperatives, 67 and councilors, 98 and crops, 82, 143, 144 and irrigation, 79 and land, 78 fiscal framework, 4, 9, 36, 37, 51, 59 see also expenditure; revenue Five-Year Plan, 52, 80, 95, 117– 18, 123, 127

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Fondation Marrakech 21 (FM21), 168 food, 82 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 81 forced labor, 10 forests, 135, 175– 6, 177, 216– 17 foyer fe´minin, 176– 7, 186 freedom of speech, 62 French Protectorate, 46 – 7 fruit trees, 162, 177–8 gender, 17, 58 General Directorate of Hydraulics (DGH), 94 German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), 16, 94, 169, 175– 80, 194, 206 Global Environmental Facility (GEF), 16 good governance agenda, 2– 3 Goundafi, 46, 90, 94 Green March (1975), 51, 73 Al Haouz province, 15 – 17, 87 – 8, 89, 90 – 7, 125– 8 and CBOs, 214 and civil servants, 100– 3 and civil society, 165– 8 and councilors, 97 – 100, 149– 51 and decentralization, 103– 6 and development, 114–25, 160 and finance, 130– 5, 137– 45, 189– 90 and income generation, 176– 9 and jema’a, 195–201 and local government, 205– 12 and Municipal Charter, 107– 14 and party politics, 152 and training, 183– 6 and village associations, 168– 75, 179– 83 and village partnerships, 193– 4 Hassan II, King, 51 – 2, 55, 69, 73 – 4, 78, 149 health care, 54, 80, 93, 96, 173– 4

IN MOROCCO

High Atlas Mountains, 15, 46, 88 al-Himma, Fouad Ali, 74 – 5 Horizon 2015, 59 – 60, 120 human rights, 62, 63, 64, 69, 113–14, 127 illiteracy, 53, 59, 91, 96, 100, 147 and civil servants, 102 and councilors, 126 and village associations, 181– 2 income-generating projects, 176– 9, 180–1 INDH see National Human Development Initiative India, 28 infrastructure, 31, 59, 84, 229 and expenditure, 137, 139, 143– 4 and Al Haouz, 114, 116, 119, 127 and village associations, 169, 175 Institut de Recherche pour le De´veloppement (IRD) “Agdal” project, 15 International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), 81, 90, 94, 124, 125, 185 Mountainous Areas project, 15, 124, 155– 8, 159, 161 internet, 192 Interregional Solidarity Fund (Fonds de solidarite´ interre´gionale), 41 irrigation, 31, 32, 78 –9, 81, 175 and Al Haouz, 91, 94 Irrigation Based Community Development Project (DRI-PMH), 15, 90, 124, 155, 158– 9, 160 Islam, 46, 62, 65, 68, 77 Istiqlal Party, 54 – 5 Itinerant Commission, 48 Jamiat al-Adl wal-Ihsan, 62, 65 jema’a, 19, 45, 47, 50, 195– 201 and Al Haouz, 167, 173, 187 Justice and Development Party (PJD), 75, 77

INDEX khalifa, 45 labor unions, 63 land tenure, 17, 46, 78, 82, 178– 9 and revenue, 133, 135 Law on Public Liberties, 63, 70 –1 leadership, 35 legislation, 4, 37 line ministries, 121, 122 literacy, 62, 174, 222 see also illiteracy livestock, 178, 180 loans, 139, 143 local government, 2, 3, 4, 18, 21– 2, 42 – 5 and capacity, 34 – 8, 87 – 8 and CBOs, 11 – 12, 19, 20 – 1, 30, 31 –4, 212–24, 231 and central government, 229 and expenditure, 136– 47 and participation, 230, 235, 236 and revenue, 130– 6 and the State, 28 – 9 and village associations, 205–12, 225 local knowledge, 8, 10, 31 makhzen, 45, 46, 51, 52, 55 and civil society, 68 – 9 and CSOs, 65 and political parties, 74 and tribes, 77 – 8 Marrakech, 88, 95 mayor(s), 4, 42, 58, 75, 97 MEDA program, 169, 172, 175, 185, 208 media, the, 5 Members of Parliament (MPs), 153, 154 Mesfioua tribe, 90 – 1 migrant associations, 61, 67 Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), 162 Ministry of Agriculture, 81, 82, 123, 158, 162

337

Ministry of the Interior, 18, 19, 34, 222, 224 and 2002 reform, 56 and associations, 71 – 2 and clientelism, 234 and communes, 53, 58 – 9 and CSOs, 62 and Al Haouz, 107– 8 and local representatives, 37, 42 – 3 and tutelle, 229 Ministry of Social Development, Family and Solidarity, 83 – 4 Mohamed V, King, 49 Mohamed VI, King, 40, 41, 55 – 6, 57, 74 –5 and civil society, 68– 9, 70 and development, 84, 116 monarchy, the, 60, 62, 69 –70, 76, 86 and power, 228, 233 see also Hassan II, King; Mohamed VI, King Morocco and government, 40 – 5 and history, 45 – 57 “Morocco Green Plan” (PMV), 21, 81–3 mosques, 175, 178, 183, 196, 197 Municipal Charters, 42 – 3, 50, 51 –3, 57– 8, 229 2002, 1 19, 55 – 7, 60, 87, 97, 101, 104, 107– 10, 147, 149, 209 2009, 60, 108, 116, 120, 210, 225, 235 and Al Haouz, 107– 14, 126 Municipal Development Plans (PCDs), 58– 9, 108, 116, 120, 127, 235 muqaddim, 45, 47, 50 N’Fis River, 94 National Human Development Initiative (INDH), 21, 59, 68– 9, 84, 108, 120, 123, 142, 142, 167, 222, 224– 5, 231, 235 nationalist movement, 46, 51

338

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

Native Affairs system (Service des Affaires Indige`nes), 46 natural resources, 175 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 2, 37, 61, 64 – 5, 67 – 8, 224 and village associations, 201, 202 Northern Rif Mountains, 15 Oued Lakhdar project, 81 Ouirgane, 15, 88, 90, 93 – 7, 104 and CBOs, 214, 215, 218 and civil servants, 101 and councilors, 98, 100, 149, 150 and development, 117, 120, 125, 157 and expenditure, 137, 140– 3, 145 and fruit trees, 162 and income generation, 176, 177, 178 and local government, 207, 208– 9 and revenue, 130– 1, 133–5 and training, 184 and village associations, 168– 9, 175, 182 and village partnerships, 193– 4 Oxfam Que´bec, 16 PAGER see drinking water PAM see Authenticity and Modernity Party participation, 1 – 2, 3, 6 –11, 20, 27, 228 and Al Haouz, 15 and local government, 230 and politics, 154– 62, 163– 4 and the public, 147– 51 and social, 25– 6, 28 and synergies, 24 – 5 and women, 17 Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), 8, 10 partnerships, 35, 36, 57 patronage, 5, 19 – 20, 233, 234– 5

IN MOROCCO

PCDs see Municipal Development Plans peasantry see farmers phosphate, 52 PJD see Justice and Development Party police, 42, 64 politics, 4, 28 – 9, 37, 55 and CBOs, 228 and participation, 11, 147– 51, 154– 62, 163– 4 and parties, 73 – 6, 77, 151– 4, 230 and village associations, 170– 1, 172 poor, the, 6, 7, 80, 81, 236 and politics, 26, 29 Popular Movement party, 153, 154 prisoners, 62 protests, 64 – 6, 69 Provincial Forum for Development Associations (Espace provincial des associations de de´veloppement), 166 provincial technical committees (CTPs), 122 public services, 4, 18, 59 publicity, 192 Rain-fed Agriculture Development Projects (PMVB), 81 Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA), 8 Regional Development Plan (SRAT), 120 rent-seeking activity, 9 revenue, 130– 6 rewards, 33 riots, 51, 63– 4 roads, 80, 175, 197 and Al Haouz, 90, 93, 94, 96, 116, 121– 2, 139, 143– 4 Royal Institute for Amazigh Culture (IRCAM), 64 rural development programs, 78 – 83 salaries, 33 salt mines, 96 sanitation, 31, 32, 72 and Al Haouz, 93, 119, 122, 180

INDEX schools, 54, 93, 96, 168, 174, 208– 9 sewage see sanitation Social Development Agency (ADS), 83 – 5, 183, 222 Social Development Strategy, 80 social expenditure, 139– 40 Social Funds, 12 Social Improvement Fund (Fonds de mise a` niveau sociale), 41 social media, 65, 66, 77 social services, 83, 175 Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) Party, 54– 5, 153 Souss, 67, 183, 195– 6 State, the, 2, 12 – 15, 30 – 1, 42, 71 – 2 and civil society, 83 – 5, 219, 222, 223– 6, 228 and local government, 28 – 9 and tribes, 77 – 8 see also central government subsistence agriculture, 91 sultans, 45 synergies, 24 – 5, 30, 37 – 8, 225 Tahanout, 90, 102 taxation, 54, 72, 130– 3, 135– 6, 147– 8, 229 technology, 5 terrorism, 69 Tighedouine, 15, 20, 88, 90 – 2, 105, 106 and CBOs, 214– 16, 218– 19 and councilors, 97, 98, 100, 107, 110, 111– 13, 149, 150– 1, 152 and development, 120–1, 122, 124 and expenditure, 137, 140– 3, 145 and fruit trees, 162 and local government, 207– 10 and politics, 163 and revenue, 133– 5, 136 and textiles, 176 and training, 184

339

and village associations, 166– 9, 171, 172, 175 –6, 182 and village partnerships, 193– 4 Toubkal National Park, 94, 175 tourism, 91 – 2, 95 – 6, 145, 191, 192 and village associations, 170, 175, 178– 9, 181 transhumance, 46, 91 transparency, 5, 9 Treaty of Fes (1912), 46 tribes, 45, 46, 47 – 8, 49, 50 and identity, 149 and the State, 77 – 8 tutelle (tutelage), 50 – 1, 52, 53, 56, 57 and Al Haouz, 104– 6, 126, 128 and Ministry of the Interior, 229 and village associations, 210 twiza (solidarity), 196– 8 unemployment, 64 – 5 UNICEF, 120 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 81, 90, 91, 101, 160, 169, 176, 183, 200 Urban Planning Agency, 120 user committees, 12, 30 USFP see Socialist Union of Popular Forces VAT see taxation village associations, 2, 18, 67, 235– 6 and caı¨d, 194– 5 and development, 157– 8, 161 and finance, 189– 92 and governance, 186– 9, 202– 3 and Al Haouz, 97, 165– 75, 179– 83 and jema’a, 195– 201 and local government, 205– 12, 225 membership, 186– 8, 190– 1 and politics, 230– 1 and training, 183– 6, 201– 2 violence, 64, 69, 73

340

THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

“War on Terror”, 69 water services, 135, 139, 143, 169, 180 see also drinking water Water User Associations (WUAs), 67, 81, 158– 9, 184– 5 Weber, Max, 12 – 13 welfare state, 2 Western Sahara, 42, 51, 52, 56, 63, 73 women, 6, 17, 63, 186 and cooperatives, 67

IN MOROCCO

and education, 174– 5 and elections, 75 and textiles, 176– 7, 180 World Bank, 7, 12, 15, 30, 81 see also Irrigation Based Community Development World Conservation Union, 94 youth organizations, 62, 73 Zat River, 90, 92, 93, 119, 173