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Wüst, Andreas:
Re-Branding Moroccan Identity : Cultural Policies and the Stabilisation of Monarchic Power.
Bayreuth
,
2025
. - 697 S.
(
Dissertation,
2025
, Universität Bayreuth, Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies - BIGSAS)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15495/EPub_UBT_00008537
Volltext
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Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung |
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Abstract
Studies into political stability have multiplied with the popular uprisings and the toppling of regimes in the MENA region since 2011. Similar to other linchpin monarchies like Jordan, the striking resilience of the Alawid dynasty in Morocco has attracted a lot of academic attention over the last decade, especially considering its limited rent distribution potential. This thesis inscribes itself in this strand of literature. It traces the genesis of and the reasoning behind royal identity projects and examines how they are deployed to bolster the king’s grip on power and the maintenance of Morocco’s monarchical regime. Building upon theoretical considerations, this book concentrated on three main elements of culture which are of particular significance in forging, communicating and reproducing (national) identity, i.e. religion, language and historicity. A combination of authoritarian upgrading and legitimation theory allows to analyse how the Moroccan monarchy recurs to cultural policies to ensure the persistence of its rule. Even beyond the king’s traditional religious authority, the identity discourse under Mohammed VI has become essential to the monarchy’s stability. This study argues that, after some years of discursive opening, the monarchy under Mohammed VI has managed to re-monopolise the Moroccan identity debate. While, compared to Hassan II’s time, this debate is more inclusive about its references adding the Amazigh and Jewish component to the traditional Arab-Muslim identity narrative, it is not necessarily more participatory or less top-down. For sure, civil society actors can place their demands in relative freedom as long as they respect the authority of the king. Whether they fall on fertile ground, however, still hinges on the autocratic decision of the royal palace and its willingness to give in to social grievances. The regime’s reform efforts to include the Imazighen and Jewish or actively address the cultural identity of the people in the northern provinces, the Atlas region or the Western Sahara have never been about opening discourse for a meaningful moral value update. The rationale behind restructuring the religious, language and heritage field has rather been to react to domestic and international pressure and curb contestation from marginalised parts of society, curtail the effects of radical and extremist thoughts while avoiding producing new enemies on the more conservative or liberal fronts. Morocco’s highest-ranking decision makers in both the palace and the government seem to have identified cultural policies as a useful means to boost the monarchy’s image and enlarge its support base within the domestic population. This study provides empirical support to the idea that monarchs are able to create a sentimental attachment to the regime if they use cultural policies wisely, i.e. in an ostentatious but also contextualised way. It also clearly demonstrates that autocratic rulers engage in more than mere emulation of their oil-rich, megalomaniac counterparts from the Arab Peninsula. Next to prestigious cultural projects similar to those in the Gulf states, the king of Morocco also creatively invests in the very cultural sectors that have the highest political and economic potential to appeal to both the domestic public and the international community. The regime’s wording of democracy seems to recall popular buzzwords employed by Morocco’s Western partners. Such cultural window dressing is part of the monarchy’s soft power strategy to attract foreign tourists and investments and garner international support for Morocco’s claims on Western Sahara. In sum, the evidence presented in this book suggests that, eventually, the nature of the respective autocrat matters more than policy design or the autocrat’s readiness to use cultural policies for regime maintenance. Cultural policies are easier to use for kings and yield better stabilising results in monarchies as they are enshrined in the very character of their system of domination. While this study captures the population’s reaction to the regime’s approach only in as far as some cultural policies are designed as a direct response to contestation and popular unrest, the study design paves the way for a future sociological survey that could evaluate the level of public opposition, indifference, or support for the state’s cultural policies. This will help to measure how effectively the different modes of authoritarian upgrading in Morocco’s cultural policy field bolster the monarchy’s legitimacy. It also prepares the field for an extensive comparative examination of cultural policies as a means of power maintenance across regime types within and beyond the MENA region.
Abstract in weiterer Sprache
Studies into political stability have multiplied with the popular uprisings and the toppling of regimes in the MENA region since 2011. Similar to other linchpin monarchies like Jordan, the striking resilience of the Alawid dynasty in Morocco has attracted a lot of academic attention over the last decade, especially considering its limited rent distribution potential. This thesis inscribes itself in this strand of literature. It traces the genesis of and the reasoning behind royal identity projects and examines how they are deployed to bolster the king’s grip on power and the maintenance of Morocco’s monarchical regime. Building upon theoretical considerations, this book concentrated on three main elements of culture which are of particular significance in forging, communicating and reproducing (national) identity, i.e. religion, language and historicity. A combination of authoritarian upgrading and legitimation theory allows to analyse how the Moroccan monarchy recurs to cultural policies to ensure the persistence of its rule. Even beyond the king’s traditional religious authority, the identity discourse under Mohammed VI has become essential to the monarchy’s stability. This study argues that, after some years of discursive opening, the monarchy under Mohammed VI has managed to re-monopolise the Moroccan identity debate. While, compared to Hassan II’s time, this debate is more inclusive about its references adding the Amazigh and Jewish component to the traditional Arab-Muslim identity narrative, it is not necessarily more participatory or less top-down. For sure, civil society actors can place their demands in relative freedom as long as they respect the authority of the king. Whether they fall on fertile ground, however, still hinges on the autocratic decision of the royal palace and its willingness to give in to social grievances. The regime’s reform efforts to include the Imazighen and Jewish or actively address the cultural identity of the people in the northern provinces, the Atlas region or the Western Sahara have never been about opening discourse for a meaningful moral value update. The rationale behind restructuring the religious, language and heritage field has rather been to react to domestic and international pressure and curb contestation from marginalised parts of society, curtail the effects of radical and extremist thoughts while avoiding producing new enemies on the more conservative or liberal fronts. Morocco’s highest-ranking decision makers in both the palace and the government seem to have identified cultural policies as a useful means to boost the monarchy’s image and enlarge its support base within the domestic population. This study provides empirical support to the idea that monarchs are able to create a sentimental attachment to the regime if they use cultural policies wisely, i.e. in an ostentatious but also contextualised way. It also clearly demonstrates that autocratic rulers engage in more than mere emulation of their oil-rich, megalomaniac counterparts from the Arab Peninsula. Next to prestigious cultural projects similar to those in the Gulf states, the king of Morocco also creatively invests in the very cultural sectors that have the highest political and economic potential to appeal to both the domestic public and the international community. The regime’s wording of democracy seems to recall popular buzzwords employed by Morocco’s Western partners. Such cultural window dressing is part of the monarchy’s soft power strategy to attract foreign tourists and investments and garner international support for Morocco’s claims on Western Sahara. In sum, the evidence presented in this book suggests that, eventually, the nature of the respective autocrat matters more than policy design or the autocrat’s readiness to use cultural policies for regime maintenance. Cultural policies are easier to use for kings and yield better stabilising results in monarchies as they are enshrined in the very character of their system of domination. While this study captures the population’s reaction to the regime’s approach only in as far as some cultural policies are designed as a direct response to contestation and popular unrest, the study design paves the way for a future sociological survey that could evaluate the level of public opposition, indifference, or support for the state’s cultural policies. This will help to measure how effectively the different modes of authoritarian upgrading in Morocco’s cultural policy field bolster the monarchy’s legitimacy. It also prepares the field for an extensive comparative examination of cultural policies as a means of power maintenance across regime types within and beyond the MENA region.