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

Since the mid-1990s, Morocco has sought to present itself as a model of genuine and gradual reform, with decentralisation as a key tenet of this. Here, Sylvia Bergh investigates the dynamics of popular participation and local governance, testing the extent to which the current structure builds local capacity, or whether it is, in fact, a tool for 'soft' state control. She narrates the realities of local administration and civil society to shed critical light on questions of democratic transition in North Africa. Her assessment of decentralisation and participatory development projects in rural Morocco, and the legal and policy frameworks in which they operate, leads to the conclusion that they have generally not yet led to an expansion of a civil society able to build local capacity or enhance bottom-up empowerment. Grounded in an approach of the 'anthropology of policy', this book makes an important contribution to literature on the democratisation, development and governance in North Africa.

Sylvia I. Bergh is Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. She completed her D.Phil. in Development Studies and her M.Phil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, having obtained an M.A. in Arabic and International Relations from the University of St. Andrews. Bergh has published in Mediterranean Politics, the Journal of North African Studies and the International Journal of Public Administration and has edited the book The Redeployment of State Power in the Southern Mediterranean. She has worked at the World Bank, both in the President's Office in Washington D.C. and in the Morocco Country Office.