14 - “Dans ses Frontières Authentiques”?

Summary

Morocco melded its advanced regionalization initiative into a constitutional reform process launched to head off local Arab Spring protests. The literature has approached these reforms from a governance perspective. The initiative has enhanced the democratic legitimacy of regional councils and modestly increased their powers and resources, but without disturbing the state’s established administrative structure, wherein appointed governors shadow elected officials at every level. This chapter examines advanced regionalization with particular focus on its implications for the fate of Western Sahara. Internationally, Morocco has sold advanced regionalization as evidence that it remains committed to a political resolution based on its Autonomy Plan, which offered a special status of asymmetrical autonomy for Western Sahara in its constitutional order. The chapter argues that advanced regionalization instead underpins Morocco’s two-pronged strategy: a hardening external position on Western Sahara coupled with internal efforts to minoritize and folklorize Sahrawi identity. The goal of this strategy is to disassociate the question of Western Sahara from the decolonization/self-determination paradigm and reframe it as a matter of Sahrawi linguistic-minority rights and cultural preservation.