Delimitation and Objectives of the Thesis

This study will highlight the most recent, and still ongoing, contention in

Tunisia and Morocco. Furthermore, it will focus on the mostly secular, youth-led

mobilization for political liberalization and improved economic opportunities that

has taken place. It will only mention other forms of contention, such as Islamist

protests, when these are relevant to the main objectives. The research puzzle

concerning mobilization under an authoritarian state compels us to ask two

questions, which are interlinked.

• First, why did contentious politics materialize in the recent socio-economic

and socio-political contexts in both cases observed?

• Second, how did mobilization attain various degrees of intensity and impact

in Tunisia and in Morocco?

The claims made by protesters obviously reflect their sense of grievance and

injustice about current socio-economic and political conditions. The first objective

must therefore be to map out major developments that have undermined the status

quo (or the ancien régime in the case of Tunisia). The first empirical section of the

study traces and compares the socio-economic troubles of Tunisia and Morocco all

the way back to deficient policies in the 1970s and 1980s.

Secondly, this thesis will investigate how these grievances were translated

into action. In order to address this puzzle, theories on contentious politics will be

applied, looking at political opportunities and constraints/threats, the generation of

collective action frames, and the relationship between regimes and protest

movements. These concepts will also help clarifying why protests in Tunisia and

Morocco evolved along quite different paths.

I.2 Methods of the study

This study will employ mostly qualitative research methods, and will be

based on primary sources in the form of interviews, and secondary sources such as

scholarly articles, books, web logs (blogs), and analytic and journalistic material

retrieved online.

I.2.1 A Comparative Approach

A comparative study begs that I define accurately the concepts that are being

studied and compared. Our two Maghreb cases share numerous cultural, historical,

societal and religious characteristics. I argue in this thesis that their regimes and civil

societies also share relevant features, despite the apparent differences between a

traditional monarchy like Morocco and Tunisia’s republican regime. Moreover, the

two countries can be compared to the rest of North Africa or the Middle East, and the

surge in protests across the region during the spring of 2011 points to the fact that

many countries in the region have similar social, economic and political problems.

Tunisia and Morocco are comparable because they do not have significant oil rent,

unlike many Arab countries. Their political economies have therefore developed

differently from neighboring Algeria, for instance. The lack of rentier states would

seem to indicate that the Tunisian and Moroccan regimes are less immune to repeated

societal pressures and economic crises. In comparison with other Middle Eastern

regimes, Tunisia and Morocco have remained remarkably stable until recently, and

their regimes have maintained a pro-Western orientation since independence (Pfeifer

1999).

I opt for a flexible comparative design inspired by the Most Similar Systems

research design (MSSD) (Landman 2003). Due to a lack of space I will not elaborate

further on background and control variables such as cultural, linguistic, historical and

other features which Tunisia and Morocco share. The research design used here

focuses on finding one or more independent variables which vary across the cases

and may explain a given dependent variable, given that other dimensions are

approximately similar. Although a complex dimension in itself, the outcome I want

to focus on here is the degree of contention. A more specific conceptualization of

this dimension will be given later.

The research design should allow for a study of how contentious politics in

one country inspired protests in another, while differences in state-society relations

and the articulation of grievances conditioned the outcomes of protests. I will single

out both general dimensions and more specific factors that appear to explain some of

the variance between our cases, but I will not claim that these determine any

outcomes, or that they are the sole relevant variables to the comparison. The

numerous processes studied here are highly nuanced, and a thesis cannot do them all

justice. Besides the differences, we shall also explore the similarities between the

countries, which pertain particularly to our question of why protests have erupted.

When undertaking qualitative analysis based on survey data and socioeconomic

database materials, it is important to keep in mind the possible shortcomings of such

data sets, especially when they concern developing countries (Richards and

Waterbury 2008, 10, 134, 274). Collection of accurate data in such settings is often

very difficult, and available data might have been distorted for political purposes.

I.2.2 Interviews: A tool for exploratory research

For the second main empirical chapter of this thesis, I chose to conduct

semistructured interviews with activists, bloggers and protest organizers in main

cities in Tunisia and Morocco (Tunis, Sousse, Rabat, and Marrakesh). The interview

guide (please refer to Annex III) contained the main questions and themes that I

wanted to touch upon, but the interviews did not have to adhere strictly to this guide;

as the interviews proceeded, I sometimes wanted to follow up on interesting points

with additional questions, and the interviewees were quite free to elaborate on

themes they found important. As a minimum, however, I sought to ensure that all

topics were covered at each interview – this to permit that a proper comparison could

be made and common trends in the material analyzed.

Time and resource constraints, limitations on the availability of information

about individual activists and their role, and geographical distance, set restrictions on

the ways I could find suitable persons to interview. I cannot claim that the activists I

talked to were representative of the larger population of activists in each country, and

even less that they are representative of the crowds of protesters who joined them in

Tunis, Casablanca, Rabat, and elsewhere.

A small sample size (20) and the unknown degree of representability in turn

affected the reliability of the results obtained. One may also discuss critically the

validity of any inference derived from in-depth interviews. One should always reflect

on whether interviewees will use a different discourse and emphasize different things

when they talk to researchers than when they interact with their own social

environment. The interview setting is a specific social setting which affects the

content and form of communication between interviewer and interviewee, and the

data retrieved are in essence subjective narratives conveyed by the interviewee.

Finally, the wording of questions will inevitably affect the responses obtained, both

in terms of the content and the discourse used to convey the content (Silverman

2010, 128, 225; Roulston, de Marrais, and Lewis 2003, 654).

II - Conceptual Framework and Theory Review

II.1 State-society relations and the authoritarian corporatist

order

In order to study the recent surge in contentious politics in the Middle East, it

is necessary to define key concepts and develop a theoretical framework. The

fundamental argument that contentious politics “emerge from groups in society

which advance claims against the state” (Goldstone 2001, 142) begs a further study

of how regimes in Tunisia and Morocco related to their respective societies, and

more specifically, to organized civil society: to labor unions, professional

associations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), among others. Both

regimes used co-optation, manipulation, repression and subjugation alternatively and

in varying doses to control major organized groups in society. These mechanisms

have worked in slightly different ways in monarchic Morocco and republican

Tunisia, but I argue in line with Eshteshami and Murphy (1996, 757) that the two

political orders have been comparable nonetheless.

Both represent varieties of a Middle Eastern authoritarian corporatist state,

and scholars argue further that these are examples of states ruled by means of an

“authoritarian bargain”. This means that civil society has mostly remained

acquiescent and loyal to the regime, which has provided a degree of social justice,

economic security, and development in return. The concept of an “authoritarian

contract” or “ruling bargain” in Middle Eastern states has been shared widely among

analysts (Al Sayyid 1995, 139; Brumberg 1995, 233; Paczynska 2010, 36). This

notion has also been contested, but I adopt it here with the knowledge that it requires

substantial contextualization and nuance to be useful. In the Middle East, Kamrava

(2007, 202) argues that the authoritarian bargain has been characterized by intra-elite

conflicts, leading to the prevailing elite creating a direct link to the masses. Such

populist authoritarianism (Brumberg 1995, 233) built on a pervasive ideology, which

claimed that society constituted an “organic whole”, where the various components

are obliged to function together in harmony. As we shall see, the Moroccan

government has never espoused this ideology formally, but it has used corporatist

mechanisms and a substantial public sector to develop the country and retain its grip

on power (Richards and Waterbury 2008, 198-201). Middle Eastern regimes have

typically developed special relationships with certain constituencies within the state,

for instance organized labor, civil servants or state-owned enterprises, and offered

them considerable side-payments for their loyalty (Kamrava 2007, 202). The

objective of corporatism has been to tone down class politics and other horizontal

loyalties, which rulers have perceived as disruptive. It is clear that many Middle

Eastern governments have preferred to institutionalize vertical bonds between the

state and sectors of social and economic life, in order to control potentially rival loci

of power (see Schmitter 1974, 93-94, 106). In republics such as Tunisia, the one-

party state embodied the corporatist model. Leaders and cadres of the single party

controlled the state, and used internal channels to mediate with different interest

groups (Anderson 1986, 232-250). Society was organized along economic sectors,

and the segmentation of workers into different, and often rivaling, unions, which

were kept under tight political control, prevented potential class mobilization.

Challenges to this order were denounced as undermining national cohesion, and were

swiftly suppressed (Eshteshami & Murphy 1996, 755). As the vertical ties

between the state and certain constituencies deepened, the two became increasingly

dependent on each other, which further kept challenges to the state's dominance in

check. The establishment of such ties often happened in informal ways: The

extension of a patrimonial system emanating from the executive has been a typical

feature of Middle Eastern regimes. Clientelistic networks were often twinned with

more overt political control of associations, such as in Tunisia, or they thrived as

informal bonds between the regime and organizations that were seemingly

autonomous, such as in Morocco.

In the case of Moroccan politics, analysts have underlined the importance of

the Makhzen as the “backbone” of the state. The concept of Makhzen has become

synonymous with central power in contemporary Morocco. This network is clearly

clientelistic, and links the monarchy to various individuals, associations and

institutions, while “controlling power networks, patrimonial exchanges, and

distribution of wealth” (Layachi 1998, 31). The Makhzen also includes much of

associative life, and Brumberg (1995) concludes that authoritarian corporatism,

clientelist largesse, and a weak and subordinate civil society are all complementary

and reinforcing phenomena.

II.1.1 Civil society under authoritarian corporatism

There has been a lively debate concerning whether the term “civil society”, in

its liberal, Lockean sense, can be applied in the Middle Eastern context at all. Locke

and de Tocqueville represent the tradition where autonomous organized interests are

viewed as posing a necessary and useful counterweight to the state (Layachi 1998,

13-14). From a liberal view, civil society is commonly viewed as the “organization of

society at the level between the family and the state” (Brynen, Korany and Noble

1995, 11).

Moreover, observers who approach Middle Eastern societies from a liberal

perspective will typically include an aspect of “civility” in their definition of civil

society: Organizations only form part of this vision of “civil society” if they adhere

to principles of pluralism, moderation, and tolerance of different views. Hence, many

analysts have tended to exclude Islamist associations in the Middle East from their

notion of civil society, because they have perceived the latter as authoritarian and

intolerant (Zubaida 1992, 3). This exclusionary categorization can be problematic,

because Islamist organizations have typically been much more successful than other

movements in the Middle East (Sater 2007). The liberal view is of course that a

modern, vibrant and pluralistic civil society is a necessary vehicle to advance

political liberalization and democratization in authoritarian states.

There have been diverging views on the actual influence of liberal civil

society organizations in the Middle East. Especially organizations working on human

rights, political liberalization, and democratization issues, have more often than not

been described as weak, fragmented, and numerically few, although their conditions

have improved over the years. They have also been characterized as “disconnected”

from large segments of the population in the respective countries. Due to the difficult

conditions for advocacy organizations under repressive conditions, it is also typical

that some of the most successful organizations in the region have been de-politicized

charities (Kandil 2010, 48-49).

Different explanations have been suggested for why Arab civil society is

weak. From our discussion of authoritarian corporatism above, it is clear that the

state has sought to tie all economic and social sectors of the country to itself in a

hierarchical fashion, which has weakened the autonomy of the associative sphere.

Especially organizations representing organized labor, students, lawyers and other

key political forces have been co-opted, and regimes tried for decades to negotiate

special relationships with resourceful constituencies of the middle classes,

constituencies which could otherwise challenge the current order and lead regime

change. Additionally, of course, regimes such as the Tunisian and Moroccan ones

have always been able to wield a variety of economic, legal, and police tools against

any elements of civil society viewed as challenging the status quo.

There are Orientalist scholars who have argued that authoritarian corporatism

and its accompanying docile civil society constitute the “natural” socio-political

order in Middle Eastern societies, because it conforms to the essence of the region’s

Islamic culture. However, these arguments carry an essentialist bias, and disregard

historical path-dependent developments such as colonialism, the weakness of the

indigenous capitalist middle class, and super power meddling in domestic affairs

during the Cold War, which were not conducive to the founding of liberal

democracies on the “Western” model (Zubaida 1993, 123).

II.1.3 Economic order and economic reform under authoritarianism

The recent protests in Tunisia and Morocco reflect the economic grievances

of an increasing number of people, grievances that are echoed by calls for political

reform. Arab states have been compelled to liberalize their economies over the last

three decades, and this in turn has made them less able to deliver on their end of the

authoritarian bargain (Paczynska 2010, 37).

The authoritarian corporatist order is fundamentally economic as well as

political, and the ambitious development plans and socioeconomic visions that were

adopted by most Middle Eastern states after World War II led to a heavy statist

involvement in their respective economies. Middle Eastern regimes typically

mobilized around an ideology of economic redistribution and social justice, and they

therefore also dismissed the private sector as a reliable partner in the development

venture. In any case, indigenous entrepreneurial classes were usually small and

relatively weak in financial terms, and perceived as too closely tied to foreign

commercial interests as well as too reminiscent of colonial times, to play any great

role in the newly independent states (Richards and Waterbury 2008, 181).

Along with the state’s predominant role in the economy came its authoritarian

political program of corporatist bargains and the rally around the national interest,

with political liberalization put on hold indefinitely. This statist involvement was

almost as extensive in the traditional Middle Eastern monarchies as in the fledgling

republics (Ibid, 202). State-led development was generally flawed, however:

Importsubstitution industrialization (ISI), centralized price and import controls, and

the exponential expansion of the public sector engendered major structural

deficiencies (Brumberg 1995, 234). Countries across the region were often financing

expensive welfare and education programs, while subsidizing the prices of some

staple foods and key commodities. Import substitution industrialization, for its part,

turned into a daunting logistical and technological challenge that required

considerable imports.

State interventionism in the economy proved inefficient and conducive to

worsening corruption and clientelism. Public sector officials engaged in rent-seeking

rather than achieving greater productivity. Due to the fact that authoritarian systems

legitimized their rule with a populist program of employment and development, and

in reality used massive clientelism to buy political acquiescence, regimes across the

Middle East were loath to enforce major changes in this system (Farsoun and

Zacharia 1995, 262). Ultimately, though, countries across the board ran into

balanceof-payments crises, and had to request loans from the international monetary

institutions. With these loans came demands for economic austerity and structural

adjustment of their economies (Richards and Waterbury 2008, 220). Structural

adjustment normally entailed the following points: Fiscal discipline, tax reform,

liberalization of interest rates, the streamlining of exchange rates, trade liberalization,

encouragement of foreign direct investment (FDI), privatization, deregulation and

securing property rights (Williamson 1990, cited in Richards and Waterbury 2008,

229).

As Richards and Waterbury (Ibid. 221) point out, this process was inevitably

painful. The standards of living for people on fixed incomes declined, unemployment

soared – even among the highly educated, and groups that had enjoyed corporatist

privileges under the old system found themselves under aggravating economic and

social pressures (Farsoun and Zacharia 1995, 263). This pertained increasingly to the

middle class groups – civil servants, employees of state-owned corporations and so on

– which were so crucial to the authoritarian bargain from the outset.

Unemployment soared among recent graduates who had expected to be incorporated

into the existing structures. This led to repeated crises and social unrest in all

countries concerned, to which regimes increasingly answered with repression.

Leaders adopted a discourse of economic and political transformation in response,

but the restructuring did not lead to genuine democratization in any Arab country.

Elections were held in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Jordan, and censorship of the

press and restrictions on forming associations were relaxed in several countries.

Observers tended to believe that Arab countries would join the “Third Wave of

Democratization” that was simultaneously taking place in Latin America,

Eastern Europe, and elsewhere (Albrecht and Schlumberger 2004, 373-374).

However, reforms were quickly abandoned and authoritarian practices

reasserted in all these countries, except maybe Morocco. Part of explaining the

different outcomes on our dependent variable must be exactly to contrast these

regime mechanisms between Tunisia and Morocco. More generally, Eshteshami and

Murphy (1996, 763) argue that the brief democratic interlude was only intended to

defuse political tensions while painful economic reforms were carried out. As

Luciani stated, “countries revert to democratic rule in times of economic crisis,

including IMF-imposed structural adjustment packages” (1988, 463). Ultimately, the

new, liberalized economic order has not been mirrored by enduring political

liberalization.

As a result, regime legitimacy has declined over time, as the successes of

Islamist groups, and the surge in riots observed across the Middle East, testify to.

The failed political liberalization in Algeria from 1988 to 1992, and riots in

Moroccan cities, such as in Fes in 1990, has also been the focus of French

scholarship on the Maghreb. LeSaout and Rollinde (1999) discuss the prevalence of

riots in their Émeutes et Mouvements sociaux au Maghreb. They see riots as

symptoms of a growing opposition and as “safety valves” for people to let off anger

against increasingly exclusionary forms of authoritarianism and economic liberalism.

Conceptually, they view riots as a “language” of contention in closed political

systems where no other meaningful channel for expressing grievances exists.

The French authors also emphasize the limited scope of riots: The reach and duration

of the latter are limited, and rioters most often mobilize around basic economic

grievances such as the price of bread. Hence, the Maghreb regimes have grown

accustomed to these disturbances, and have developed the repressive capacities to

quell them (Gallisot 1989). Le Saout and Rollinde (1999, 28) concur with Gallisot

(1989) that the nationalist development project in the Maghreb has broken down. The

regional states have turned into predatory apparatuses at the disposal of the new

bourgeoisie of business, bureaucrat, and police/army elites, which they label l’État-

policier and l’État-business. The question then becomes how the 2010-2011 protests

could move from riots to “revolution”, for which the North

African governments were not prepared.

II.2 Theory Review on Contentious Politics

To understand how widespread and sustained mobilization actually

materialized in Morocco and Tunisia, I need to add an extra dimension to our

conceptual framework. The socio-economic decline I sketched above resulted in

economic and political grievances, but this does not tell us how it was possible to

bring people out to contest these conditions. Sidney Tarrow (1998, 142), a theorist of

social movements, defines a cycle of contention as follows: “a phase of heightened

conflict across the social system; (…) the creation of new or transformed collective

action frames, a combination of organized and unorganized participation; and

sequences of intensified information flow and interaction between challengers and

authorities”. It is clear that the sudden rise of protest movements in the Arab world

since December 2010 represents such a cycle. Social movement studies, an

interdisciplinary sub-field of the social sciences, suggest tools to approach and

dissect these complex processes. This diverse sub-field draws upon political science,

political psychology, and sociology, among others.

Marxist works have undoubtedly influenced strands of social movement

studies, but the main approaches that I apply in this thesis all have a liberal

inclination. In fact, the studies of collective behavior that predated social movement

studies placed much emphasis on individual rationality and self-interest. Mancur

Olson (1965) posited that the classic “free-rider” problem made it an apparent

paradox that rational individuals would organize into social movements in the first

place, and he ended up suggesting a new framework for understanding how such

organization could occur (DeFay 1999, 19). Inspired by Olson, theorists forged what

became known as the resource mobilization approach. The theory kept the

assumptions and precepts of methodological individualism, but scholars tended to

use decisions made at the organizational level as starting point for analysis (Tarrow

1998, 16; DeFay 1999, 20).

The resource mobilization model was soon criticized for making problematic

assumptions about rational individuals and the dynamics of organizations, and for

ignoring the importance of ideology and collective identity for mobilizing people.

New approaches such as social constructivism, post-positivism, and the general

“cultural and linguistic turn” in the social sciences inspired a new generation of

academics. Charles Tilly, although not a social constructivist himself, was one of the

prominent social movement theorists who singled out the unsolved conceptual

challenge of determining whether external causal mechanisms, or rather purposive

agency, drove contention forward (1978, 6).

Social constructivism focused especially on the importance of framing:

Frames are interpretative schemes that people use to make sense of events and to

guide collective action (Snow 1986). McAdam (1982, 51) stated: “before collective

action can get underway, people must collectively define their situations as unjust”.

When people are going through such a collective process, one observes the

generation of a mobilization potential (Kriesi et al. 1995, 5). social constructivists

have further suggested that social movements strive to achieve frame alignment –

which means that they make use of collective frames that resonate with the

individual frames of people they try to mobilize (Snow 1986).

Frame production and alignment are clearly discursive and intersubjective

processes. Intersubjectivity refers to shared meanings constructed by people in

interaction with each other, and the process by which these shared meanings are

continuously contested and renegotiated within a group. Formulating the concept of

intersubjectivity was arguably an attempt to move beyond the methodological

individualism of Olson and others (Melucci 1995, 45).

Dutch researcher Bert Klandermans suggested that these shared beliefs form

the basis for a two-step mobilization process (1984, 586). Consensus mobilization is

the process whereby a movement or a cluster of organizations attempts to gain as

much support as possible for the collective good they seek to promote. Action

mobilization is Klandermans’s term for the act of calling people up to protest, and it

presupposes that consensus mobilization has taken place beforehand. The

Political-Opportunity-Structure (POS) approach is a different model, owing in part

to the path-breaking work of Charles Tilly (1978), and later Doug McAdam (1981).

Tarrow (1998, 19-20) specifies that the POS model focuses on changes in political

opportunity structures external to the social movement itself, but accepts that it is

complementary to the social constructivist paradigm, which he also treats at length.

Tarrow purports that “people engage in contentious politics when patterns of

political opportunities and constraints change”. Political opportunities are defined as

a perceived set of clues for when contentious politics will emerge: “consistent (…)

dimensions of the political struggle that encourage people to engage in contentious

politics.” The constraints are defined as “factors – like repression, but

(cited in Klandermans 1997, 142).

(4 continued): In our cases, the concept of multi-organizational fields can be brought in to

analyze the cohesiveness and effectiveness of civil society pertaining to the protests.

also like the capacity of authorities to present a solid front to insurgents – that

discourage contention” (Ibid, 20). Briefly, Tarrow enumerates the general

opportunity changes he finds most important: 1) Increased political access, mostly by

means of elections – 2) deepening divisions among elites, – 3) political realignments

strengthening the protest movement– 4) influential elite groups defect to protesters’

camp – and 5) repression is moderate or inconsistent (Ibid, 77-80). However, he

admonishes that these are contingent dimensions, and that other dimensions may be

more relevant in other empirical cases than his own. Opportunity changes may occur

either before or simultaneously with the protest cycle, but Tarrow’s model also brings

in more stable aspects of opportunity-constraints: State strength and repression (Ibid.

81).

Our empirical study will endeavor to ascertain whether Tarrow’s political

opportunities for contention actually did open in Tunisia and Morocco before protests

erupted, or whether other political opportunities or constraints must be identified.

Alternatively, contention flared up under a stable authoritarian system. In the case of

Tunisia, the latter narrative has been presented in most media and early analyses of

the events. Kuran (1991) illustrates that when collective action does break out under

depressed conditions of organization, “(...) it turns from a trickle into a torrent as

people learn for the first time that others like themselves have taken to the streets.”

This is reminiscent of the cycle of contention in Tunisia, as we shall see. A

preliminary reading on Morocco, on the other hand, seems to indicate that political

opportunities had indeed opened there throughout the decade of King Mohamed VI’s

rule, and that the state had become much more tolerant of protests. The question

remains to what extent the most recent wave of contention represents a qualitatively

new phenomenon also in Morocco.

II.2.1 Consensus as the groundwork for collective action

Shared action frames and identities may arguably empower restive, repressed

societies in relation to their authoritarian masters. For this process to take root,

however, I need a more specific model of how collective action frames are generated.

Gamson (1995, 89-90), a prominent theorist of collective action, identifies three key

factors that must be present for a consensus to become a plausible platform for such

action:

• The injustice factor is usually defined as outrage over the way the

government is treating a social problem, most often originating from a feeling

of illegitimate inequality or a feeling that key moral principles are being

violated (see Klandermans 1997, 38). Gamson highlights the emotional side

of injustice, and its potential as a driving force for participation (1995, 8991).

Strong media images might often produce compelling emotional reactions of

this kind. Melucci mentions that mobilization cannot simply be reduced to a

cost-benefit calculation, because adherents have to be emotionally attached to

their cause (1995, 45; see also McAdam 1982, 51).

• The shared identity aspect, which Melucci described as indispensable (1995,

44-47; Klandermans 1997, 41). Shared identity is a ubiquitous phenomenon,

but is only politically relevant if one is able to define a concrete “us” in

opposition to a clearly defined target for protest, “them”, which could be the

government, for instance. The inverse is also true: If the target of a grievance

is too abstract or too diffuse, or not known, people will not move (Gamson

1995, 90).

• The agency dimension - People need to believe that something “can be done”

about an issue. A dissemination of the belief that collective action can be

successful is related to a perceived opening of political opportunities

(Klandermans 1997, 42). Under authoritarian conditions, agency will often be

hindered by passivity and fear. State media will echo the regime’s discourse

of quietism, law and order, and portray mobilization as a dramatic breach of

social stability (Gamson 1995, 96). However, when there are media images of

successful action readily available, people find it easier to join a cause and

identify the target (Ibid, 104). Gamson concludes that agency should be

treated as a “dormant characteristic” in human beings, and as something one

should try to awaken (Ibid, 106).

II.2.2 Media resources for collective action frame generation

The aforementioned dimensions beg a study of how media resources could be

used by activists during the uprisings in the Arab world in the spring of 2011. Both

Klandermans (1997) and Gamson (1995) are quick to highlight the role of the media

in disseminating certain discourses and generating action frames. The introduction of

the Internet to the Middle East has been the most momentous step towards a

fundamental media transformation in the region, which has enabled an

unprecedented potential for connectivity, notably through new social media

(Abdullah 2010, 70-75). The region was previously known for its low scores on all

indices of globalization. Kamrava (2007, 204) posits that Middle Eastern regimes

have shown little interest in increasing transparency, opening information flows and

easing restrictions on civil society – prerequisites of globalization which would

threaten the regimes. However, new communication technologies have slowly

become available to at least strata from the middle-classes upwards.

Cottle (2011, 648) argues that these new media have been fused directly into

political processes within the recent Arab uprisings. In societies where there are no

real ways of political claims-making outside the regime, social media create a new,

highly inclusive, and informal space for exchanging opinions and engaging in

politics (Dahlgren 2009, cited in Cottle 2011). Online, new identities can be created,

shared, and transformed, and new interests and demands identified by a large number

of individuals. Such live communication helps to embolden formerly passive

individuals, for instance by appealing to the emotional aspect Gamson (1995) noted.

Aspects of collective identity, and a sense of who the “enemy” is, can clearly be built

and sustained online, and images of protests and of successful regime changes in other

countries nourishes the agency aspect for increasing numbers of individuals (Cottle

2011, 654). At the same time, regimes have not hesitated to set strict controls on online

content (Ibid. 653). Bloggers and activists have been harassed and arrested, and their

pages shut down, e.g. in Tunisia. Nevertheless, a challenge for regimes has been the

basic fact that cyberspace is not confined to actual geography: Leading online militants

are often located abroad, or in unknown locations, as an “offshore” democratizing

force.

The use of media and Internet also draws attention to the transnational impact

of the ongoing events in the Maghreb: The revolution in Tunisia has undoubtedly had

direct bearing on the occurrence of unrest in the rest of the Middle East over the last

months. Tarrow can remind us that as long as the target of contention is the domestic

regime, contention itself is not transnational – but ideas about contention, and the

prospect of successful regime change, amount to a transnational diffusion of ideas

and agency which alter calculations of opportunity and threat in similar settings

(1998, 185).

II.2.4 Synthesis of the Conceptual Framework and hypotheses

To sum up the theoretical works above, I will suggest dependent and

independent variables which must be examined and compared and the tentative

relationship between them presented as a set of hypotheses. Our dependent concept is

degrees of contention, and under this label I will examine the speed and size of

demonstrations (action mobilization) and the “radicalism” (revolutionary or

reformist) of protesters' demands. As indicated earlier, the dependent variable is not

regime change per se, although it is natural to touch on this in the Tunisian case. The

state's response to contention constitutes an integral part of the conditions for protest.

From the general theories and preliminary readings reviewed above, one might

suggest the following independent variables:

• Extent and impact of economic liberalization, also within cases across time

(the last three decades).

• Extent and impact of political liberalization, also within cases across time (the

last three decades).

• Legitimacy of the regime/perception of injustice

• Strength and cohesiveness of civil society

• Access to Internet and media resources

• Literacy and education levels

• Extent of consensus mobilization

• Perception of agency

These variables are all qualitative phenomena, so again one must be

reminded that they are not necessarily discrete, exhaustive or possible to gauge

with precision. Especially the importance of perceptions is difficult to assess. The

purpose of this study is precisely to explore recent events with the ambition of

detecting new factors and relationships. Thirdly, these factors do not correspond

or pair up neatly with the dependent variables; rather, they impinge on each other

and might function as intervening variables etc. in a system which cannot be fully

defined and extricated here.

Based on these theoretical tools and preliminary insights I present the

following general model of contentious politics in Tunisia and Morocco,

containing four sub-hypotheses:

1. The “authoritarian bargain” is undermined as regimes renew their hold on

power in different ways, while socio-economic and demographic changes

affect increasing numbers of Tunisians and Moroccans negatively.

2. People use communication technologies to disseminate a consensus about

grievances and injustice.

3. A triggering event sparks protests, which echo widely because of the widely

shared sense of grievances – the pre-existing consensus. The intensity of

grievances affects the intensity of protests.

4. The transnational diffusion of ideas becomes the “spark” in neighboring

countries, and the cycle of contention spreads across borders.

III – Socio-economic Changes and Authoritarian

Stagnation

III.1 Economic crises and structural adjustment

Our two cases, Tunisia and Morocco, both engaged in economic reforms and

structural adjustment in the 1980s. These countries felt the disadvantages of their

previous statist economic policies quite early: Tunisia effectively pioneered the

Infitah reform package (which is better known from Egypt (Richards and Waterbury

2008, 239)) in the early 1970s, and Morocco followed suit with timid attempts at

stabilization in 1977 (Ibid, 243). However, changes were restricted to improving the

already state-dominated economy, with the government still in control of prices,

credits and foreign exchange.

Neither country was able to prevent the misallocation of resources due to

state control over the economy, and both wanted to avoid reneging on promises about

salary rises in the public sector and further growth in investments intended to create

jobs. Being politically paralyzed, both the Moroccan and the Tunisian governments

believed they could “grow through” the compounded shocks of falling oil and

phosphate prices, international economic recession in the early 1980s, rising interest

rates on international loans, drought, and, for Morocco, the costs of the war in

Western Sahara (Richards and Waterbury 2008, 240, 243; Layachi 1998b, 57). This

unwarranted optimism enticed both regimes to continue to borrow heavily from

abroad, resulting in severe balance-of-payments crises.

Morocco, one of the most vulnerable economies in North Africa, had to bow

to the pressure and accept structural adjustment in 1983. Tunisia followed suit in

August 1986, after having proudly resisted for a long time (Richards and Waterbury

2008, 240). The leadership of aging Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba had become

more and more erratic, and the coup d’état of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on November

7, 1987 was partly driven by the need for a predictable, pragmatic course in the

country’s economic policy. Thence, Ben Ali was committed to reforms, as was King

Hassan II in Morocco.

The adjustment packages they signed on to included classical measures such

as devaluating currencies, promoting exports, reducing tariffs and import protection,

deregulating the banking sector, raising real interest rates, privatization, and reducing

budget deficits (Beau and Tuquoi 1999, 147). Typically, the IMF and the World Bank

wanted governments to have deficits no higher than 4% of GDP (Ibid, 220; Layachi

1998b 58-60). Subsidies were to be removed or reduced to a minimum (Perkins

2004, 170).

Unlike most other Middle Eastern and North African countries, Morocco and

Tunisia were seen as very compliant with IMF conditionality. Both followed a

conservative budgetary policy in the end of the 1980s, with Moroccan budget deficits

falling to around 2% of GDP in the early 1990s (Richards and Waterbury 2008, 244).

In both countries, real interest rates were positive and inflation reduced to a

manageable 2-3%, in line with international recommendations. The World Bank

praised Morocco for its impressive results in 1992, and Ben Ali’s technocratic

government has also cooperated closely with the international financial institutions in

implementing macro-economic orthodoxy (Ibid, 239, 244). From 1987-1992, private

investment grew to 51% of the total, and by 1997 foreign investment in Tunisia was

at $500 million (Alexander 2010, 81). GDP growth also accelerated in both

countries: For the period 1987-1992 it rose from 2.8% to 4.3% in Tunisia, and it

stabilized at around 4% in Morocco (Richards and Waterbury 2008, 240). Later,

Moroccan growth has been sluggish however, hovering around 2-3 percent for most

of the 1990s and early 2000s (Ibid, 245).

Both countries persisted on continuing their reforms throughout the same

decades. As the macro-economic indicators have come under control, the focus has

shifted to the more challenging task of dealing with deregulation, rationalizing the

public sector, increasing revenue, and finalizing institutional reforms. Fiscal

measures were streamlined to favor investment rather than consumption, and efforts

were made to ensure that private investors could obtain unfettered profits from their

projects (Pfeifer 1999, 24).

In order to achieve the structural goals, Morocco and Tunisia also wanted to

adhere to free-trade arrangements (Alexander 2010, 82; Bertelsmann Stiftung Online

2006). Morocco became associated with the General Agreements on Tariffs and

Trade (GATT) in 1987, and Tunisia followed suit in 1990. Especially important were

the comprehensive free trade agreements Tunisia and Morocco negotiated with the

European Union, their main trading partner, in 1995 and 1996 respectively. The two

countries were the first on the Mediterranean’s southern shore to be granted this

privileged access to European markets and money (Alexander 2010, 84; Pfeifer

1999, 25). These free trade agreements were only politically acceptable because the

transitional phases were long; it was envisaged that the removal of Tunisian tariffs

would take place incrementally over 12 years, with full implementation in 2008

(Murphy 1999, 148). Moroccan non-tariff protection measures remained high until

well into the early 2000s. In 2006 the World Bank conceded that “the degree of

import protection left Morocco with a not very open economy” (2006a, 99). This

entailed that leading political and economic actors in Morocco continue to seek rent

as well.

Tunisia has maybe been more successful at economic integration. In 1996,

the European Union (EU) entered a ten year-agreement with the Ben Ali regime to

upgrade Tunisian businesses and ameliorate both the quality of products and

efficiency of production – the so-called mise à niveau-program (Alexander 2010,

83). This support was coupled with further loans from international and bilateral

lenders – in 2005, Tunisia had a new debt of $19.2 billion, a large amount for an

economy of its size (Ibid.).

Important challenges remained, and Richards and Waterbury highlight that

the overall scorecard on reform is mixed for both countries (2008, 24, 245).

Reducing budget deficits was not done by increasing revenue collection or widening

tax collection, but by slashing public consumption and subsidies, and capping

salaries and employment figures in the public sector. Both countries achieved great

short-term income from privatization, but such revenue must be reinvested to add

value. In most cases, this did not happen (Denoueux 2001, 75).

Privatization stagnated for a long time for political reasons in both countries –

regimes preferred to preserve existing jobs and add new ones, albeit redundant, to

stem the tide of unemployment (King 1994, 117). Tunisia started privatizing more

strategic sectors over the last decade, but as we shall see, this process was not

transparent. The same was the case in Morocco; when privatization of state

enterprises finally took place, allegations ensued that the sales benefited the

politically well connected (Sater 2010, 103; interview with Younes M’Jahid,

President of the Moroccan Journalists’ Union 2011). Second, trade unions have

resisted privatization ferociously, strikes and protests have slowed down productivity,

and investors have often been reluctant to salvage these companies (Richards and

Waterbury 2008, 245).

Beyond the agreements and macro-economic policies enumerated here, the

institutional reforms associated with economic liberalization have been limited in

both countries. Although evaluations by the IMF, the World Bank, and the EU have

been full of praise, and the macro-indicators point in the desired direction, critics

such as Hibou (2011) find that populism, clientelism, and statist interventions are still

abundant. Under new economic conditions the special relationships between the state

and key constituencies have been renegotiated and relabeled: Crucially, regimes are

now closely tied to small private business elites in each country, private businesses

have been sold to regime members, and we shall see that this new entanglement has

damaged their legitimacy considerably.

On the other hand subsidies, cheap access to credit, and other populist

measures to the middle classes were never cut entirely. Corporatism has been

dismantled in a piecemeal fashion, especially in Tunisia where Ben Ali's regime was

always compared to Bourguiba's. Tunisians expected education and services to be

maintained. However, perceived inequalities grew as a result of the reforms, and

especially the bulging cohorts of youth felt excluded from economic life. The same

problem affected Morocco, but there a larger segment of the population had never

been integrated into the statist economy, and they expected less from the authorities.

III.2 Unemployment and the challenge of educational reform

It is interesting to note that Morocco has been much less successful than

Tunisia at developing its human capital. While Tunisia performed best in the region,

with the highest enrollment ratios in secondary and higher education, Morocco’s

ratios are only one third of Tunisia’s, and the former was ranked as one of the worst

in the MENA region (Harmak 2008, cited in Boukhars 2011, 34). This is a crucial

contrast to include in our further discussion of the difference between consensus

mobilization and protests in Tunisia and Morocco. Illiteracy levels in Morocco are

high among a population that is still relatively poor and rural, and the education

system is old-fashioned. The result is an educational system which also produces

graduates with degrees the economy does not need – there is a disconnect between

the labor market and the educational system that has tremendous social consequences

(Boukhars 2011, 31; Richards and Waterbury 2008, 119).

The situation in Tunisia was also problematic. Murphy (1999, 157-163)

claims that education had spiraled into crisis already in the 1990s. Among other

problems, it had become gradually more important for students and parents to nurture

good connections with the ruling party Rassemblement Constitutionnel

Démocratique (RCD) to secure access to stipends, elite schools, and sometimes even

high grades (Ibid.). In short, regime reforms and privatization had contributed to

aggravating social disparities within the education system.

When Tunisian students graduated, they also found an economy that could

not absorb them. Even though Tunisia has marketed itself as a host country for

advanced industries, most of the economic expansion has taken place in traditional

sectors and tourism, and there has been little demand for graduates – only 7.4% of

those hired by manufacturing actually have higher education (Haddar 2010, 66).

Similar structural problems are apparent in Morocco, where as many as 45% of new

graduates are unemployed (Boukhars 2011). In certain urban areas such as

Casablanca the numbers may reach 70%, (in 2002, USAID estimated that total

unemployment was 20%, and urban unemployment 36%, and levels increase with

levels of education, and among women (cited in Boukhars 2011). Even before the

uprisings of the Arab spring, authors labeled the unemployment problem a major

potential source of political instability. And the ripples on the surface were already

showing; in Morocco, organized unemployed graduates stormed the headquarters of

the Istiqlal party in Casablanca in 2007 because they were required to take another

competitive exam to get jobs. In Rabat, daily sit-ins demanding the “Right to Work”

have been held for years. The government has dealt with the problem in its own

piece-meal, patronizing manner: 1000 graduates were given jobs in 2007, on the

condition that they refrained from militancy in the streets (Badimon-Emperador

2007: 5). Similarly, the King and his technocrats have taken responsibility for highly

publicized job-generating development projects, reinstating a new form of royal

populism in the process (Boukhars 2011, 36). One must consider that the Monarchy

has been able to follow this strategy because unemployed graduates, though an

articulate group in Morocco, are relatively fewer than in more developed Tunisia.

The variations in the numbers of graduates correspond with the disparities in

education levels and the size of the middle classes, where Tunisia has a larger middle

educated class than Morocco. All these factors in turn impinge levels of mobilization,

as we shall see.

III.3 The rhetoric of reform and the reality of authoritarian

renewal

Both Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hassan II in Morocco adopted a language of

political reform while steering the course of economic adjustment. Ben Ali had to

legitimize his rule in new ways, because Bourguiba’s authoritarian bargain had come

under threat. The result was the National Pact of 1988, where civil society and

opposition parties were included (Murphy 1999, 174). The pact was intended to

embody a new consensus around liberal values, but the specific promises were few.

Interestingly, the pact expressed a commitment by the government to honor human

rights and civil and political freedoms (Ibid, 175). The “Tunisian Spring” was short-

lived, however; Ben Ali used the Islamist threat from the Al-Nahda (“Renaissance”)

Movement as a pretext for building a new security state, and for curbing these

liberties in practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Ibid, 202). As the years went

by, it was apparent to everyone that Ben Ali’s rhetoric concerning constitutional

safeguards and liberal democracy had only been window-dressing in a transitional

phase (Alexander 2010, 54, 62-66).

Notably, the Ben Ali regime has manipulated electoral rules before every

election; for example, by setting aside a few seats to opposition parties while at the

same time making the latter irrelevant in the larger political context. The secular

opposition has never had a chance to grow and reach out to the electorate, so it

grudgingly accepted this form of co-optation in 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009. At most,

these arrangements at the mercy of the executive granted the opposition a 25% share

of the 212 seats in the Lower Chamber of Parliament (Ibid). Secondly, parties were

encouraged to compete over these few seats, and the ensuing “divide-and-rule”

arrangement benefited only the hegemonic RCD (Alexander 2010, 62-66). In

Morocco, the reassertion of authoritarianism has occurred in more subtle ways, and

therefore deserves a more detailed treatise here. Since the 1990s, it has become clear

that the regime tolerates the emergence of civil society, and that fundamental

freedoms such as freedom of association and freedom of expression have been

gradually accommodated both in law and practice (Layachi 1998, 69-73). Another

noteworthy development has been the easing of repression – King Hassan II set free

political prisoners at the end of his reign, and Mohamed VI has acknowledged the

human rights abuses that happened during the années de plomb in the 1960s and

1970s. In this regard, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up already in

King Hassan’s days to investigate human rights abuses (Storm 2007). This is a very

notable difference from the Tunisian context.

Opposition groups were allowed to form and work in Morocco, civil society

expanded, and elections have been held regularly since the 1990s (1993, 1997, 2002,

2007) - all to ease the pressures ensuing from economic transformation, population

growth, rural-urban migration, unemployment, and other crises which compounded

each other.

Morocco’s political party system has roots from decades back, and is

composed of a wide specter of groups and coalitions. Analysts are quick to

emphasize the shortcomings of this party landscape. First of all, many political

parties have been set up by the Makhzen itself, and represent only the interests of the

regime and the administration (Layachi 1998, 100). Secondly, all parties can be

evaluated as organizationally weak and missing active constituencies that they can

mobilize to create any real counterweight to the executive or to each other (Boukhars

2011, 61). Parties are based on corporatist loyalties and personal connections.

There is also a very problematic disconnect between the parties and their political

platforms: Ideology plays no role when electoral alliances and coalitions are

negotiated, something that confuses voters. Indeed, the liberalization of the party

system was a slow process led “top-down” by the Monarchy, and the parties are still

deferential to the Palace (Sater 2010, 83).

Boukhars claims that the King does not hesitate to exercise his powers. There

are many anecdotes about him overturning ministerial recommendations, or issuing

Dahirs (decrees) concerning key civil servant appointments, etc. on which the

Ministers are not consulted. The same applies to new political initiatives, which

originate rather with the King and his close advisors than with party politicians.

Under Hassan II, the government functioned as a committee, the role of which was to

implement projects emanating from the King, his private coterie of technocratic

advisors, and the Makhzen. This purely managerial role has continued under

Mohamed VI, even though he claims that his role only complements that of the

Council of Ministers (Sater 2010, 83).

The secluded group of royal councilors effectively constitutes a shadow

government that has much more influence than the official government. Mohamed

VI has recruited many of the best technocrats and administrators in the country to his

councils, and these people have often produced viable and forward-looking plans for

further economic and administrative reforms and improvements. The problem

remains, of course, that this group is completely exempt from any public

accountability or scrutiny, and that decision-making procedures are opaque

(Boukhars 2011, 51-53).

Furthermore, these technocratic elites, which now head all major government

institutions, have been co-opted by the Makhzen, and if they ever advocated any

systemic changes, they almost always acquiesce after having been offered

administrative influence, prestigious jobs, and high salaries (Sater 2010, 75). In some

ways, then, the technocratic apparatus around King Mohamed VI resembles the

administration that surrounded Ben Ali in the 1990s – the latter was seen as

surrounding himself with a circle of managers who could implement reforms while

being shielded from criticism. In addition, Ben Ali prevented any technocrats from

emerging as leading personalities of their own, and he constantly shuffled them from

position to position in order to ensure that they did not build their own patronage

networks or constituencies (Murphy 1999, 217-218).

This was a contrast to his predecessor Habib Bourguiba, who had enjoyed

being an arbiter among competing interests and networks – an open “game of

divideand-rule” was surely Bourguiba’s leadership style (Ibid). Bourguiba was an

expert at people management (Alexander 2010, 115), while Ben Ali ruled by means

of a centralized, insulated technocracy (Ibid). Perhaps the Moroccan King has been

able to do some of both - he also enjoys a role as “supreme arbiter” among

competing factions and interests, which he keeps tied to him at the same time (Sater

2010, 8586). In Tunisia, Ben Ali's increasingly insular regime lost some of its

alliances with key interests, meaning that it also lost legitimacy over time.

The Moroccan Parliamentary system I mentioned above is an example of

Monarchic influence over the polity. The Parliament provides an arena for competing

interests, but the King retains ultimate decision-making prerogatives (Zerhouni 2008,

219-220). Parties are kept weak because they fight each other, while the Assembly

mostly serves as a “rubber stamp” to approve initiatives from the Palace without debate.

Moroccans call it a Chambre d’enregistrement, which derogatorily means that it only

makes records of, and adds legitimacy to, the King’s wishes (Boukhars 2011, 44, 74).

A de-legitimization of Parliament and elected politicians has only served the Makhzen,

and underpinned the Monarch’s popularity (Zerhouni 2008, 217- 219).

One case where the Makhzen might have seen its power curtailed was under

the gouvernement d'alternance of Prime Minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi from

1998 onwards. Youssoufi had been a long-standing opponent of King Hassan, and the

latter appointed him to attenuate the authoritarian image of his regime. However,

Youssoufi's power was still severely restricted by Royal prerogatives, and he had to

rely on political forces straddling the political landscape to secure a coalition. In

other words, this effort to “bring the Leftists to power” was unable to break with the

democratically deficient system of the past, and King Mohamed appointed several

technocratic Prime Ministers during the early 2000s, limiting the political legacy of

alternance (Ibid.).

The main difference from Tunisia's short-lived liberalization was still that the

Moroccan Monarchy had renegotiated its relationship with key constituencies in a

subtle way, and without reverting to repression. This capacity to adhere to a reformist

discourse might have shored up the King's legitimacy among important groups, while

Ben Ali on his part was increasingly seen as aloof and corrupt.

III.4 The worsening Problem of Corruption

Of course, corruption has been an endemic problem both in Tunisia and

Morocco at all levels of society. In Morocco, corruption has been a widespread

problem throughout, and Transparency International (TI) saw Morocco dip on its

global rankings from 45th place in 1999 to 80th in 2008 (Boukhars 2011, 26). A large

majority of Moroccans acknowledge that corruption is deeply embedded into the

workings of public institutions, and they find the government’s efforts against it to be

completely ineffectual (Ibid, 27). Some will even concede that they do not think

corruption is dysfunctional – it is just the way the Moroccan system “works” (Hibou

and Tozy 2000).

According to TI again, Morocco is one of the hardest hit countries (if not the

worst) in the entire Arab World. In 2007, the Cour des Comptes (Audit Court)

published a much-publicized report indicting the country’s governance and

corruption culture. It listed the paying of bribes, the recruitment of personnel based

on connections rather than competence, waste of public funds, absenteeism among

public officials, political and bureaucratic corruption, and clientelism of all sorts. The

report, produced by 200 magistrates under the King’s control, testifies to the

importance the King seemingly assigns to dealing with this dysfunctional

administrative culture (Ibid, 26; Sater 2010, 80).

Acknowledging these problems might fuel sympathy towards the King’s

reform-oriented rhetoric and enshrine his image as a paternalistic leader that wants

the best for his country. This is in contrast to Ben Ali, who was viewed as enriching

himself personally at the people’s expense (Beau and Tuquoi 1999). However, in the

Moroccan case one must also ask whether the Makhzen, the parties, and other key

groups have an actual will or even ability to combat corruption. Mechanisms of

patronage are assuredly at the very core of how the Makhzen runs the country.

Privatization and deregulation of economic life has not helped, with well-positioned

businessmen and regime figures being able to reap company shares at low prices, and

securing access to new licenses, privileged access to credit, etc. (Sater 2010, 103;

Younes M’Jahid, interview 2011).

In Tunisia, the stories about corruption multiplied over the years. Especially

French works dig into the successive scandals in which the Ben Ali regime was

implicated (Lamloum and Ravenel 2002, Beau and Tuquoi 1999, Beau and Graciet

2009). The Neo-Destour party, and its successor the RCD, had always been

clientelistic structures gravitating around the President and tying various

constituencies and regions to his regime. In fact, some observers advance the

contested notion that Ben Ali had merely recreated former President Habib

Bourguiba’s populist system.

Observers also notice that the Tunisian authoritarian system has always been

more populist than corporatist, meaning that the RCD, trade unions, and other key

organizations were never intended to represent corporatist interests “upwards” in any

way, but just to channel patronage and commands from the “top down” (Alexander

2010, 113; Interview with Mamdouh, NGO chairman, 2011). Even though this

conclusion is probably too categorical, Ben Ali’s populist ideology gradually became

more and more pervasive. Since the days of the National Pact in 1988, the Ben Ali

regime had underlined the importance of a national consensus benefiting the entire

social body, and this notion became one of several tools to tie people to the

paternalistic figure of the President. Additionally, incrementalism and a political

culture of moderation were portrayed as the “Tunisian way”, thus restricting the

public space for legitimate contention or pluralistic politics (Hibou 2011, 60).

The President, just like the Moroccan King, launched social development funds that

were under his personal control. While the money doled out to orphanages, schools,

women’s leagues, et cetera as part of Ben Ali's mass politics was appreciated by

large numbers of Tunisians, people realized that Ben Ali's state distributed less than

what the previous regime had done before liberal reforms began. But most

importantly, stories of corruption within Ben Ali’s inner circle proliferated and

punched holes in the official discourse about a “welfare state” in Tunisia. While the

RCD party and the corporatist system came under pressure from a banal populism,

the informal circle of families around Ben Ali was monopolizing political and

economic power.

This clique was popularly called “Les Trabelsi”, even though they

included more people than just the family of Leila Trabelsi, Ben Ali’s wife. She

became a symbol of the regime’s greed, however, and at the end her family’s

reputation was damaged beyond repair. Notably, the families were implicated in

cases of outright theft, smuggling, and money laundering, which awarded them

the nickname of “mafias” (Reem, Ahmed, Saida, interviews 2011; Kirkpatrick

2011). The liberalization of the economy was one process they managed

to manipulate: Few companies were privatized in Tunisia without someone from

the

“clans” obtaining inside access to shares in profitable ventures, or to lucrative

commercial licenses, or even key corporate board positions (Beau and Graciet 2009).

Banks, infrastructure, and media were privatized in turn, always under a veil of

neoliberal rhetoric which foreign donors and observers tended to accept at face value,

but with assets de facto still controlled by a family that did not distinguish between

their private finances and those of the state (Nawaat Online 2010, 34). And,

Tunisians were aware of this – already in 1997, a secret anonymous tract had

circulated in Tunis denouncing “tentacular corruption” (Sadiki 2002, 68). To a larger

extent than in Morocco, economic wealth was assembled on a few hands, and the gap

between the very rich and the increasingly poor became more and more blatant.

Regardless of how pervasive the manipulation of the economic sphere in

Tunisia actually was, investors became gradually more reluctant to participate in new

projects because the ruling families were incessantly extorting concessions and side

payments, and because the overall investment climate turned more and more

politicized (Haddar 2010, 64). In economic terms then, the authoritarian bargain was

replaced by a parasitic system in Tunisia. The authoritarian bargain was of course

never an even deal, but most people had accepted economic security in return for

loyalty since Bourguiba’s days. Crucially, one observes that Ben Ali lost important

alliances with the business elites and upper classes, and that he based his rule on a

gradually narrower group of close individuals. This isolation was not balanced out by

Ben Ali's token charitable activities, and the fact that his closes aides were widely

resented by the people hurt his position even further.

At times Ben Ali leaned towards mitigating some of the negative effects of

his own neo-liberal reforms. Hibou (2011, 182) argues that Ben Ali’s regime

functioned as a “security pact” more than a bargain – the pact was issued and

enforced unilaterally by the regime over society. The security pact entailed that the

state would protect the people against all dangers, be they political or social. It was

first of all intended to stem the rise of Islamism, which had become the ultimate

rationale for developing the security state. And the security forces grew

exponentially during Ben Ali’s term, as did their surveillance powers (Hamadouche

and Zabir 2007, 268). Commentators described the whole country as one big

Commissariat de Police (Sadiki 2002, 68). In fact, the country had as many police

officers as France, a country with six times its population (Schraeder and Derissi

2011, 6).

While the Ben Ali regime and its ruling families were privatizing the

economic sphere, they were also viewed as “privatizing the state,” (Hibou 2006, 196;

Mamdouh, interview 2011) this did not just mean a delegation of regulatory or

administrative functions. Increasingly, the traditional administrative hierarchy was

supplanted by an informal, personal structure embedded within pre-existing

institutions and RCD party cells. In ways reminding us of the Moroccan Makhzen, a

new clientelist network emanated from the ruling family clique, with agents placed

all over the official administrative apparatus. This shadowy structure equaled a “state

within a state”, and arguably included a private police, a “private justice system”, and

private intelligence agencies at the exclusive disposal of the inner circles of Ben Ali.

Unlike the neo-Makhzenian institutions of Mohamed VI, Ben Ali’s private apparatus

did not have a recognized existence and public purpose, which could have assigned

them at least a slight degree of legitimacy. Additionally, even though this parallel

structure was probably intended to pre-empt any challenges and counterbalance a

lack of support outside it, it is obvious in retrospect that it was not solid enough to

repress the unexpected popular wave of January 2011.

If Ben Ali's “shadow state” turned him into an arbiter between various group

interests and patronage networks, he did not succeed in handling this role as well as

the Moroccan Kings usually have. They are more accustomed to facing a pluralistic

configuration of economic interests, regional groupings, social classes, and

bureaucratic and political circles. Indeed, the late King Hassan II was seen as a

master of this kind of rule – he shielded the Moroccan Army from civilian meddling,

protected his clients in the traditional Moroccan bourgeoisie, patronized the country’s

small Jewish community, etc. (Richards and Waterbury 2008, 312-313). Even though

the arbitrage itself was not always successful, this political dynamic ensured that the

King remained the keystone in this structure. Mohamed VI continues to enjoy the

same role today (Boukhars 2011, 54).

The problems of corruption in Tunisia and Morocco were markedly different,

and it will be interesting to see how these differences informed the intensity of

grievances and degrees of discontent. In Morocco, corruption was broadly seen as a

grave but rather diffuse societal malaise. Corruption is thought of as commonplace at

all levels, and people tend to blame highly visible senior politicians and officials.

Nonetheless, the Monarch himself is rarely accused of direct implication in it, and

accusations against him gain limited popular support. Thus, the King's popularity and

prestige have been more shielded than that of the Tunisian President. Not only did

Ben Ali not draw upon the same traditional authority as the King – people quickly

associated him personally, and the people around him, with an unscrupulous and

targeted exploitation of public assets. It is clear that allegations of corruption

dramatically undermined Ben Ali's popular support.

III.5 Limitations on civil society in Tunisia and Morocco

We have seen how both Ben Ali and the Moroccan Kings proudly embraced

liberal reforms that – in theory – granted an increased role to political parties, and

maneuvering space to the opposition. This rhetoric was also embracing one of the

fundamental pillars of political liberalization: The emancipation of organized civil

society. Especially Morocco reveled in being labeled “a liberal Arab state”

(Maghraoui 2008, 198).

Tunisia’s relapse into authoritarianism in the early 1990s was obvious. Media

rights were constricted after a few years, and experts found evidence of human rights

abuses. The regime clearly found human rights activists to be a nuisance, and

promulgated a new Law of Associations in 1992. This law exposed civil society to

infiltration by state agents, and restricted its activities (Murphy 1999, 206). The law

succeeded in stymying much of the autonomous associational movement in Tunisia.

Ben Ali continued to embrace a human rights discourse, but activists were

increasingly being harassed, arrested, and targeted in other ways (Ibid. 202, 207;

Sadiki 2002, 69-71). The Political Police and plain-clothed agents from various

Mukhabarat agencies broke into activists’ homes, tapped their telephones,

confiscated their passports and strove to exclude them from normal social life in as

many was as possible (Hibou 2006, 188-189). For instance, the Tunisian Human

Rights Association Ligue Tunisienne pour la Défense des Droits de L’Homme

(LTDH) held its last Congress in 1994, because persecution of its members had

become so preponderant.

The majority of journalists have also reverted to auto-censorship in order to

avoid any friction with the authorities. This was not only the case for state-owned

media corporations; private Tunisian media were also confined within a system of

political interests and ownership structures that conditioned any editorial policies

(Sadiki 2002, 71; Marwa, interview 2011). Self-censorship is a familiar feature in the

Moroccan media landscape as well (Younes M’Jahid, interview 2011).

The Ben Ali regime, on its side, continued to display its organizations, and

boasted that Tunisia had almost 10,000 registered NGOs in the last years before

2011. These were mostly sports clubs, youth associations, women’s leagues and other

non-politicized organizations, and they remained, in fact, tightly controlled and

monitored by the RCD and the state. These associations served a variety of purposes

for the regime: They disseminated regime discourse on key issues such as women’s

rights, children’s rights, economic development, and so on, and in reality they

glorified Ben Ali and his initiatives (Hibou 2011, 96-98). Moreover, associations

were useful tools for surveillance of any active individuals. This is demonstrated by

the state’s efforts to keep accurate databases on associations and their membership.

Finally, the state saw civil society as a useful intermediary to ensure that its programs

of economic liberalization and rationalization progressed, maybe with civil society

replacing some of the service provisions of a “retreating state” (Ibid.).

The organizations which continued to defend their autonomy, and which

dared being critical of the regime, were exceedingly few: The LDTH, the Conseil

National des Libertés de la Tunisie (CNLT), the Bar Association, the Journalists’

Syndicate and the independent Magistrates were all quite marginal. The trade union

federation Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT) was a different story: It

has always been the single most important organization in Tunisian public life, and it

has maintained financial autonomy. Politically, however, the UGTT has always kept

an ambiguous relationship with the regime. The trade union federation is too

important for the regime to ignore or antagonize, but Ben Ali and the RCD have

striven to co-opt and control it as much as possible, or to undermine it indirectly with

a discourse of liberal reforms, privatization, and conformity with the demands of

global competitiveness (Cavallo 1998, 242-246).

According to Hibou (2011, 124), the Ben Ali regime had mostly succeeded at

this effort, at least at the central level of the organization. Direct conflicts between

the trade union and the RCD became rarer over the years, and the UGTT was seen as

another machine implementing the President’s policies, and working to ensure social

peace. In return for the acquiescence of rank-and-file workers, cadres were enmeshed

in the patronage networks of the regime (Ibid.). I shall return to why this assessment

of the UGTT was fundamentally misinformed.

The conclusion is that Ben Ali’s Tunisia had a very marginal civil society,

which was seemingly incapacitated from representing particular interests, advocating

any rights and political liberties, or addressing social, economic and political issues

with autonomy. This seems in contrast to Morocco, where civil society has been

portrayed as much more vibrant since the 1990s.

In fact, Hassan II and Mohamed VI understood that civil society could act as

a safety valve for societal pressures, and Moroccan society has also witnessed a

proliferation of NGOs working on local development projects, charitable assistance

to housing, advocating women’s rights and education, promoting improved care for

children, advocating recognition of Amazigh (Berber) cultural rights and a host of

other domains. Albeit, a vast majority of these associations are either charitable and

depoliticized, or working within the confines of regime approval just like in Ben

Ali’s Tunisia (Maghraoui 1998, 198; Layachi 1998, 97-98).

Many NGOs have been set up by regime actors, and are not autonomous.

Rather, the Makhzen uses these NGOs to renew its own image, conform to an

international liberal agenda, and appropriate funds from international donors (Sater

2007, 22). In the same vein, Moroccans typically perceive the secular and liberal

NGOs as an elite project, and the poor prefer to revert to Islamic foundations for

livelihood support (Ibid, 23). Formally accredited NGOs have also been set up by

members of the professional classes or the new socioeconomic groups that have

emerged in the wake of economic reforms, but who have felt left out from traditional

Makhzen networks. These new organizations have therefore not prioritized reaching

out and becoming mass movements, at least not until 2011 (Ibid, 23, 91).

Denoueux and Gateau (1995) argue further that the emergence of civil society

in Morocco was an attempt by the Makhzen to pre-empt any uncontrollable

challenges in the public domain. Slowly, public debate has been opened up and new

issues can now be broached, but the modes of contestation and action are still strictly

limited. Certainly, regime agents monitor the sector closely, and in particular those

organizations that refuse co-optation. Some organizations that have been perceived as

detrimental to regime interests took a long time to receive accreditation – one

example being Transparency Maroc, which is the country branch of TI (Sater 2007,

92). Even organizations that have succeeded at remaining independent have found

themselves confined to a playing field defined by the regime in their dealing with the

latter, and this amounts to a subtle form of co-optation as well.

Moreover, Sater (Ibid, 150) affirms that the Moroccan state uses another

classical co-optation mechanism: Resourceful people, who receive public attention

and have “discursive power” on a certain topic, are being brought closer to the

discussion-making center at the expense of losing their autonomy. This is an

integrative strategy, and NGOs have frequently been asked to join consultative

bodies, roundtable conferences, Royal Commissions, and so on. These bodies can

then manage the deliberations on a sensitive issue, or remove it from public debate

altogether and confine it to the Ministries in Rabat (Ibid, 153). For instance, the

human rights organization L’Association Marocaine des Droits Humains (AMDH) is

known for its recalcitrance and its refusal to fall for the Makhzen’s game. Even so,

the regime set up a Ministry for Human Rights, which threatened to turn the AMDH

into a junior partner in discussions on human rights issues (Ibid. 125; Maghraoui

2008, 204-205).

Human rights issues are some of the most sensitive domains for any

authoritarian regime, and the Moroccan regime has, in contrast to Tunisia, handled

this issue with more diligence in the latter years. Precisely by conceding that

violations had taken place, and by taking the initiative on human rights reform, the

state assumed control of the direction of the human rights debate in Morocco (Sater

2007, 123-128). The state-controlled councils eventually declared the file of unlawful

disappearances to be “closed”, and shifted the focus towards minor grievances. The

deep-seated corruption in the judiciary, the lack of checks and balances on executive

power, media censorship, and limitations on the freedom of assembly are among the

topics that the state deliberately ignores.

In the same way as Tunisia, the Moroccan regime has preferred to emphasize

its achievements pertaining to social, economic and cultural rights, thus downplaying

the core political and civil rights of the liberal human rights paradigm (Ibid, 126). By

focusing attention on achievements in the socio-economic fields, the authoritarian

state has also brought back the implicit “authoritarian bargain” or “security pact”, to

justify its unceasing grip on power. The Moroccan government has let social

movements appear only within the confined policy domains of local development,

women’s issues, Amazigh issues, and a few other issues. The Moroccan regime has

also, in ways evocative of Ben Ali’s Tunisia, promoted a political ideology of

countrywide, close-knit consensus, of moderation, and the ideal of the “law-abiding

citizen”. This has circumscribed the repertoire of legitimate contention that

organizations may use, something that more militant organizations have paid a high

price for.

The general picture, though, is certainly that the Moroccan regime has

adopted a more flexible approach to emerging civil society than Ben Ali ever did.

The Moroccan regime has been prepared to absorb new tensions and issues, and as

long as it remains the hegemonic actor in society, it has been willing to renegotiate

the content of that hegemony on select matters (Sater 2007, Sater 2010). Mohamed

VI's regime features prominent non-democratic features, but it has struck a new

balance with emerging social forces in a way that Ben Ali's authoritarian state was

never able to equal.

III.6 The recent economic crisis and accumulated socio-

economic pressures

It is clear that the global economic downturn since 2008 has affected Tunisia

and Morocco negatively, as it came on top of accumulated social and economic

pressures. The Moroccan government claims that repeated reforms have strengthened

the country’s ability to meet such crises. Morocco’s GDP grew despite the crisis, but

this can also be explained by high agricultural outputs (Paciello 2010, 78). Good

crops do not remedy the fact that Morocco has remained highly dependent on food

imports throughout the economic downturn; with food price inflation as high as 6.8

% in 2008. This is a bad figure, and the hike in the cost of living resulted in a surge

of rioting and strikes in various locations countrywide. As I noted above, increased

disenchantment equaled increased repression, for the Makhzen does not want to

weaken its grip on society (Ibid, 94).

The Moroccan regime has been faced with daunting challenges related to the

economic downturn, but it does not have a general solution for solving the multiple

issues. The Moroccan exports sector remains vulnerable to external shocks; because

as much as 76% of all exports go to only a few EU countries – mostly France and

Spain - and decreased demand in these markets have an almost immediate effect on

the local economy. In 2009, the value of exported goods overall fell by 28.1 % (Ibid.

77). Furthermore, a global economic recession affects remittances from Moroccans

living abroad, which constitute an important economic input (Maghraoui 2008,

202203). One study concluded that remittances are so important that if these flows

dried up, an additional one million Moroccans would fall below the poverty

threshold (Paciello 2010, 93).

The short-term results of the recession have been to worsen pre-existing

problems such as unemployment. The country needs to create 200,000 jobs a year to

keep apace with annual additions to the labor market, but in 2009 for example, only

95,000 jobs were created. An unknown number of jobs were lost, notably in

important sectors such as textiles. In addition, the figures do not count jobs lost in the

informal sector, which might represent the majority of the losses.

The effects of the demographic youth bulge, unemployment, and rural-urban

migration all mean that the informal sector has grown exponentially, and the regime

has mostly tolerated its existence to ensure social peace. The economic problems

over the last three years have also forced more people into this marché parallèle,

where there is no legal or social protection for employees (Ibid, 90).

Lastly, the regime’s response to the crisis betrays the continued democratic

deficiencies of the regime. As is often the case, the King and his advisors moved first

to deal with the situation. All the policies drafted and decreed in response to the crisis

emanated from this narrow circle, while civil society, and even Parliament, were

excluded from the discussions (Ibid, 95). The Makhzen had set up a Higher Council

for Economic Intelligence to monitor the crisis and reach out to the businesses that

were the hardest hit, but key economic actors such as the trade unions were not

invited to give input (Ibid.).

For Tunisia, the crisis also had severe effects, and further undermined

economic growth predictions. As many as 45% of graduates could not find work, and

unrecorded figures were much higher. Recession in Europe lead to reduced

remittance flows, which are crucial to the economy just as in Morocco. Soaring food

prices also hurt lower and lower middle class families who felt the economic

squeeze: In 2008, a Tunisian family on average spent 36% of their income on basic

foodstuffs, which is a high figure for a country boastful of its solid middle class and

advanced levels of development (Schraeder and Derissi 2011, 7-8). Surveys showed

that an increasing number of Tunisians viewed their economic situation as

deteriorating, and especially the marginalized interior regions of the country were

suffering more than usual (Ibid, 7). And even more than in Morocco, people did not

see Ben Ali dealing with the crisis in any credible manner, or having the legitimacy

to do so.

Just as in Morocco, the informal sector had become a livelihood for those

who could not find other jobs. This sector was vulnerable to police abuse, and control

by businessmen who enforced mafia methods. Street vendors have had to pay the

police to be left in peace; the criminal networks that control the sector have extorted

bribes and commissions, and so on. There are indications that the ruling “Trabelsis”

endeavored to monopolize the informal sector and that this further undermined their

support among elite factions who used to profit from the same illegal activities

(Mamdouh, interview 2011). In Morocco, the Makhzen and the police forces have

actually left the informal sector alone after the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, to

avoid any protests from originating in the streets (Hari, Tel Quel 2011, 43). The

image of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi immolating himself in Sidi Bouzid proved

a very powerful symbol, and the Makhzen wants to forestall similar actions.

III.7 New discourses and popular responses to perceived

injustice

The economic transformations that I have analyzed at length here have

compounded the growing inequalities associated with economic liberalization and

deregulation. They have especially hurt the lower and lower middle classes, and

splintered the middle classes into upwardly and downwardly mobile subgroups

(Farzoun and Zacharia 1995, 275; Karim and Magnus 2008 Online). However, the

young generations of all social groups in Middle Eastern countries have been raised

in a new political and media reality, with new sources of information and new arenas

for debate.

Some scholars argue that globalization and the emerging neo-liberal

economic paradigm have been twinned with a liberal political discourse concerning

democratization and human rights, and that this discourse has been propagated more

fervently than before. Global media have played a role in this regard, by parading

examples of democracy, human rights, accountability and transparency before their

audiences (Cottle 2011, 650). Therefore, the argument runs, people in Middle Eastern

countries, and especially the youth, have a deeper knowledge of these ideals than

ever before, and they are aware of the shortcomings of their own authoritarian

systems. The simple fact that authoritarian leaders increasingly strive to maintain a

liberal façade in their interactions with donors and “Western” powers is interpreted as

evidence that liberal democratic values have gained prominence as the new global

standard. In addition, there is a new set of global institutions and organizations that

promote and enforce human rights with more power than before. The International

Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), for instance,

represent this new paradigm (Koo and Ramirez 2009; Howard-Hassmann 2005).

Both Ben Ali and Mohamed VI claimed that they had brought their countries into the

era of liberal democracy, human rights, and socio-economic rights and entitlements.

The examples treated at length above demonstrate that this has been rhetoric with

little or no real impact, but it has nonetheless put authoritarian presidents like Ben Ali

in a dilemma. A contrasting claim made in the debate over democratization prospects

in the Middle East is that “Western” powers, i.e. the USA and the European Union,

have refrained from exerting much pressure on Arab states, worrying more about

their own strategic interests and maintaining alliances with “friendly autocrats” than

calling for genuine political reform (Kherigi 2011). Howbeit, the ascendance of a

global paradigm on human rights has also trickled down to key groups in the Arab

world. Such a discourse has arguably had an uneven impact: The uneven access to

resources such as Internet in the region has limited its expansion. The distribution of

such resources typically correlates with disparities in levels of education and income

as well.

Table I. Percentage of Individuals using the Internet in Tunisia and Morocco

2009-2010

Country /Year

2009

2010

Tunisia

41.3

Morocco

34.1

36.8

Table II. Literacy Rates and Gross Enrollment in Tertiary Education in Tunisia

and Morocco

Totalt Adult Literacy Rate

Youth (15-24)

Literacy Rate

Gross Enrollment

Ratios

Country/Unit

Tunisia

77.9

Morocco

96.8

A different perspective altogether is that people did not need a thorough

cognizance of human rights or democracy to experience a deep sensation of

humiliation from years of enduring corruption, repression, and marginalization. As

we shall see, activists in Tunisia thought there was an inherent need and natural

desire to do something about their situation (Ahmed, interview 2011).

Another inference to keep from my argument so far is that the picture of

North African countries transforming their economies and undercutting sidepayments

to domestic groups and thus breaking off the authoritarian bargain could be more

nuanced than first envisaged. At least in Tunisia economic growth has been

impressive in a regional context, and observers should keep in mind that perceptions

of a decline in regime legitimacy there could flow from certain perceptions of

corruption and power abuses, and a lack of fundamental rights and freedoms, just as

well as from purely economic grievances.

III.8 Laying the groundwork for protest: A Summary

To sum up all the preceding pages, one can compare the situation in Morocco

and Tunisia and outline similarities and differences. The regimes have dealt with

economic restructuring for decades, but despite the self-congratulatory rhetoric and

positive statistics, results have been mixed. Macroeconomic stability has not been

combined with thorough institutional reform, with transparent privatization, or

successful attempts to relieve the aggravating socio-economic pressures which

rationalization, increasing economic competition, the demographic explosion, and

inadequate education systems have brought on the most vulnerable sectors in society.

More precisely, neo-liberal reforms have in particular affected the middle classes that

used to enjoy corporatist privileges under the previous economic order. The

disenchantment of this politically crucial class should ring the alarm bells of any

regime. In both Tunisia and Morocco, social unrest in the 1980s and 1990s

inaugurated an era of political liberalization, at least on paper. Morocco did install

genuine reforms and saw a gradual opening of its political space to various voices

and grievances. At the same time, the rates of development of the Moroccan

economy remained weaker than in Tunisia, where the Ben Ali regime could

legitimize its authoritarianism with a discourse of promoting economic growth and

fighting Islamists. The paranoid Tunisian regime labored relentlessly to stifle all

kinds of dissent and eradicate an autonomous civil society from the early 1990s

onwards.

The Moroccan regime also used a discourse of consensus and royal populism

to restrain civil society. It permitted debate on new issues, but kept a monopoly on

defining the ways in which the debate was to take place, and how to implement

eventual reforms. Moroccan society has seen a number of new organizations, parties,

economic and social interests emerge, while the regime has inscribed a sphere of

“tolerated criticism” from which the Monarch and his Makhzen network are exempt.

All in all, I argue that Morocco took a markedly different path than Tunisia in the

1990s, and that its interaction with contentious actors reduced the potential for

intense conflict between the regime and challenging forces at a later stage. Besides,

the Tunisian regime suffered more than the Moroccan one from popular resentment

at its corruption and power abuse: People saw a distorted mirror image of their own

grievances in the opulent lifestyle of the Trabelsi family. With few or no channels for

meaningful claims-making, street action has frequently been the last option for

aggrieved groups. In 2010-2011 people in both countries took to the streets again in

protest, but this time discontent proved to be of an unprecedented magnitude.

IV – Mobilization under adverse conditions

IV.1 Articulating grievances and mobilizing consensus

The preceding sections demonstrated that the first hypothesis of our

conceptual model on mobilization is valid – social and economic problems had

accumulated in Tunisia and Morocco over the last decades, while reform was stifled

by authoritarian regimes intent on preserving the political status quo at all costs. The

way from this situation to a full-scale eruption of protests is a complex one, however,

and the following pages shall map out and compare how these processes took place

in Tunisia and Morocco, and help us assess our other hypotheses. Doug McAdam

(1981, 51) has ascertained that grievances have to be collectively expressed and

defined in order to form a basis for collective action. Authoritarian and repressive

regimes usually nurture a “political culture of fear”, which is obviously not

conducive to the public expression of political opposition. It follows that in Tunisian

and Moroccan societies, the act of sharing grievances has been mostly low-key,

subtle, and restricted in scope.

Needless to say, substantial groups in both countries have felt socio-economic

problems affect their daily lives in the form of unemployment, pauperization, rise in

the cost of living, and so forth. People who have experienced this deterioration as

unjust will seek recognition and confirmation of their problems in discussions with

others; in cafés and marketplaces, in mosques and on the streets, and at the family

table. Naturally, the higher the concentration of people concerned, the more likely it

is that the people affected will interact, and the larger the mobilization potential is.

Klandermans (1997, 20) echoes other political sociologists who have confirmed that

interpersonal interactions between family, friends and colleagues play an essential

role in the appropriation of collective beliefs. People usually seek to validate their

own beliefs in interaction with significant others – who are often likeminded

individuals. Such informal discourse will inevitably be contingent on local

circumstances and the idiosyncratic grievances and interests of people involved, and

in both Tunisia and Morocco several steps had to be accomplished to go from shared

discourse to street action. Moreover, it is very hard to detect and gauge the extent of

such everyday interaction by unemployed people, street vendors, and café patrons,

and this can explain why the unrest came as such a surprise for both political leaders

and Western onlookers. In other words, the people sharing this discourse might

gradually embolden each other to act, while people outside it remain unaware of this

relative strengthening of segments of the public.

In both Tunisia and Morocco, interview respondents acknowledge that these

processes of collective framing were taking place prior to the winter of 2010/2011,

although the political circumstances were different in each country. As we noted

earlier, it is easier to construct a shared identity in opposition to an “adversary” when

this adversary is clearly known (Gamson 1995, 90). In Tunisia, the political regime

revolved around Ben Ali and the cult of his person and political initiatives. It was

therefore natural for people to hold Ben Ali responsible for how things went in the

country.

Ben Ali had been in power for over two decades, and he was an old man. As

an interview respondent affirmed, there was a growing understanding that the

political situation in the country had to change (Amir, interview 2011). Saida, a

journalist and street activist in Tunis, agreed that there was disquiet concerning who

would inherit power at the Palace in Carthage, because Ben Ali had no heir apparent

(Interview 2011). In particular, people feared that Laila Trabelsi herself would

maneuver to control the selection process for a new leadership. In Morocco, on the

other hand, King Mohamed VI had been in power for merely a decade when protests

erupted, and he is still considered to be a young and dynamic leader by many

Moroccans.

We have already touched upon the differences in how corruption was

perceived in both countries. A prominent political analyst and NGO chairman,

Mamdouh, attested to the impression that Ben Ali was directly implicated in

corruption of all sorts, and that his wife, Leila Trabelsi, was a leading crony

(Interview 2011). The popular discourse about her was especially pungent.

Respondents ranging from UGTT secretaries to journalists portray Trabelsi as a

vehemently disliked icon of greed and rapacity, heading a dynasty viewed as “out of

control”. The outrage felt by most Tunisians at this corruption demonstrates how

unjust people felt such practices to be. To revert to Klandermans (1997, 38), there

was both indignation at the illegitimate (and growing) inequality between the Ben

Ali/Trabelsi clans and the rest of society, and at the totally immoral ways in which

their wealth had been accumulated. Tunisians perceived a deepening corruption in

their society, and more decisively, they perceived that the President himself was more

responsible than anyone for facilitating it.

Corruption has been plaguing Morocco as well, but it is less associated with

the uppermost echelon of power than in Tunisia. Younes M’Jahid concurred with

Transparency Maroc that privatization has been skewed in favor of the politically

well connected, and that rentier practices have not been abolished (Interviews 2011).

Fundamentally, economic reform has only created new forms of dependence between

the state and society in Morocco. However, the monarch himself is perched above the

scandals of the Moroccan regime. Protesters have often brought pictures of the King

with them to sit-ins and have begged him to solve their problems, since politicians

have been unable to do so (Ibid). The King is widely respected and his position is

founded on a strong traditional imagery and religious authority which shields him

from criticism.

The Monarchy deflects accusations of corruption and mismanagement to the

higher levels of politicians, and bypasses a discredited executive in order to nurture

its support directly with the people. Hence, the King skillfully blurs the fact that he is

in the last instance responsible for nominating the government and intervening in

lucrative business deals (Interviews 2011). Even though corruption and

mismanagement have added to a discourse of alienation between Moroccan society

and a predatory state, the demands for change have been more limited and more

diffuse than they ever were in Tunisia – in large part because the authorities of Ben

Ali and Mohamed VI have been perceived so differently.

Moving on, we must also keep in mind that although collective

understandings on socioeconomic and political problems were widespread

throughout the Tunisian and Moroccan societies, their impacts were different across

different social classes, and many people actually never shared these interpretations.

Representatives from Transparency Maroc and other Moroccan activists conceded

that the regime had been able to “buy” poor people’s acquiescence with cheap bread,

Ramadan meals, and other populist initiatives (Interviews 2011). On the other hand,

the case of Tunisia illustrates that members of the higher classes had just as often

abstained from any political activism prior to the mass mobilization of January 2011.

Our informant Saida, a journalist with an upper-middle class background, put it like

this:

“I believed in Ben Ali’s regime, I believed in the propaganda. I thought

Tunisia was doing well, we were a very successful country, but we were not

ready for democracy. Like most Tunisians, I was part of the passive, silent

majority. We were disconnected from reality until Sidi Bouzid happened.

December 17, 2010 was a shock for me” (Interview 2011).

In other words, one must be careful not to believe that all parts of

society were brewing with discontent. Some did not have the resources to

participate, while others benefited from the status quo. In a country such as

Tunisia, with high literacy and education rates and less poverty, one can assume

that a higher proportion of the population was politically conscious than in

poorer Morocco. Before the protests, however, the Ben Ali regime was adept at

stifling critical thought. Amira, another journalist and former social worker,

meant that “we were asphyxiated, for regime collaborators monitored everyone

else”. The regime had quenched any form of autonomous expression, be it in

the arts, the academy, the media, or in politics: “There was a war on ambition

and free thinking” (Amira, interview 2011).

The unemployed of Tunisia, and in particular unemployed youth,

represented a “Generation X” that both the regime and society had neglected (Ibid.)

Together with the downwardly mobile segments of a middle class under pressure,

and the outright poor, they amounted to a large and varied group with multiple

social and economic problems. Seeing no hope, they were often underemployed

street vendors, beggars, delinquents, and even criminals. This situation was

especially severe in the interior and the south of Tunisia, which have always been at

the country’s economic and political periphery. People in these strata and

regions have typically advanced specific claims for jobs and bread, reminiscent of

the demands of Morocco’s poor. Such demands might have appeared limited to

immediate economic and social concerns, but in fact they were more politically

powerful than that. Street activists Reem, Amira, and others stressed the fact that

these groups had had to endure a deeply felt humiliation derived from their

situation, and from the way they were treated by the state (interviews 2011). Of

course they wanted formal jobs, because jobs ensure at least some degree of

economic security, personal dignity, and autonomy, both from family members and

the state.

Instead, the unemployed, informally employed, and underemployed all

remained at the margins of their societies (Amira, interview 2011). Ironically,

these marginalized strata actually encompassed the majority of people in many

poor towns and neighborhoods, and their frustration added to the growing

mobilization potential. Governments were of course worried about the

possibility for unrest, and sometimes used employment programs to co-opt

graduates. As Hibou (2011, 192) states for the case of Tunisia, such Chantiers de

Travail only succeeded in reinforcing the feeling of dependency of the youth

(and hence their sense of humiliation) on the authoritarian state. Driven by the

state’s incessant need to control these groups, the police treated them abusively,

frisked them, and beat them (Hanafi 2011 Online; Amira, et al. interviews July

2011). Altogether, these groups were profoundly dehumanized. The

mortification resulting from this relation to the state added to the humiliation of

not having work in the first place, and of being ignored or considered of lesser

worth, which turned into an explosive mix that drove Mohamed Bouazizi to

commit suicide, and many people to identify with his desperation (Kefi 2011).

In the least, this has become the dominant narrative of how grievances

accumulated among numerous Tunisians, and how one man saw no other way

out than to enact an extreme form of protest. Soon, people in the periphery, the

unemployed, and in particular the youth, descended on the streets demanding

Dignity! (Reem, et al. 2011). This was a momentous development: Asking for

dignity arguably entailed the wholesale rejection of an entire set of illegitimate

power practices and social and economic relations, escalating in a matter of

weeks to an outright rejection of the Ben Ali regime. Maha, a member of the

human rights organization CNLT in Tunis, emphasized how the slogan “bread,

water, and Ben Ali out!” had appeared only a few days after December 17.

Others were quick to underline that Tunisians label their uprising “La Révolution

de la Dignité” (Maha, Reem, et al., interviews 2011).

We now understand how a certain consensus had been propagated

incrementally in Tunisia and Morocco, founded on fundamental economic and

socio-political problems. The discourse led to a convergence of understandings –

a sort of alignment of individual frames and the gradual emergence of shared

frames. As the journalist Ramzi insisted, the process had been individual and

“psychological” as well as collective (Interview 2011). Innumerable

interpersonal interactions fostered discourses, shared by a few people at a time,

which confirmed the hardships felt by their members. Typically, these local

groups consisted of people with shared social backgrounds, which in turn

facilitated the creation of shared identities (Klandermans 1997, 20). The fact that

the grievances of these people were so basic (for instance jobs and cheaper food)

made consensus generation easier. Interestingly, I have noted that in the Tunisian

context the many local, particularistic discourses revolving around the need for

employment and food could easily be embedded into a larger frame, calling for

the restoration of dignity for all. Crucially, this rallying cry did not gain the same

momentum in Morocco as it did in Tunisia, and we shall see that this has had

consequences for mobilization there.

Mass protests do not arise in a political vacuum, and one must not forget

that both Tunisia and Morocco had histories of riots. In Morocco, riots occurred

intermittently throughout the country in the 1990s and early 2000s, and people

were accustomed to them as a local, contingent way of expressing grievances. In

Tunisia, the effects of harsher repression, tighter regime control over

information, and higher economic growth, meant that reported incidents of riots

were few until the early 2000s.

However, more than one Tunisian interviewee highlighted that the unrest

in the mining town of Gafsa in 2008 turned out to be a groundbreaking event,

paving the way for the 2011 mass protests (Amir, interview 2011). The Gafsa

riots were a response to the nepotism of local mining company officials, and were

met with heavy repression. When asked why the Gafsa riots did not set off

countrywide protests, respondents pointed out that it was more difficult to relay

information from the area back then. For instance, Facebook and Twitter were not

commonly used at the time (Reem, Amir, interviews 2011). Furthermore,

members of the trade union UGTT and lawyers from the Tunisian Bar

Association stated frankly that although their members mobilized in Gafsa, there

were few attempts to mobilize elsewhere in sympathy (Interviews 2011). Gafsa

ultimately failed, but Amir and other activists recognize that it set an example for

others, and that it helped cracking the “wall of fear” that the

Tunisian regime had erected (Interviews 2011).

Gafsa left Tunisia simmering with tension, and fed into the oppositional

collective frames already existing. Although many were not aware of what was

going back in 2008, interviewees concur that Gafsa was an important example,

which means that its story must have circulated in Tunisia in the years following

the events. Narratives such as that of Gafsa surely helped to enhance people’s

shared understanding that they were united in their plight, and that some had the

courage to rise up.

Even Tunis City experienced its own acts of resistance before Bouazizi,

curiously with soccer hooligans playing a big role. Dating back to around 2006,

gangs named “Les Ultras” were battling the police at sports events, and they mostly

managed to keep the security forces at bay. Blogger Reem and journalist Ramzi

both credited these groups for dismantling the image of an “invincible” police, and

showing people that street action was indeed feasible (Interviews 2011). This

process undoubtedly contributed to the agency – factor - the allimportant

conviction that something could be done. In the dense urban quarters of Tunis, the

narratives about the Ultras’ achievements flowed easily into other narratives about

popular resistance, slowly altering people’s perceptions of political opportunities

and laying the groundwork for contention. The riots at Gafsa and the running

battles at soccer matches in Tunis were localized eruptions of anger, often with

targets immediately present, and restrained by the limited resources of protesters.

For a nationwide awareness to gain momentum, protesters needed communication

tools to spread their message quickly. As we have already seen, conventional media

such as television, radio, and newspapers were in no way able to disseminate the

discourse of grievances and protest. However, people were getting their

information from other sources, notably from international satellite broadcasters

and the Internet. When as many as one in five Tunisians were maintaining a profile

on Facebook, and one out of two were having regular access to the Internet,

unfiltered news, and knowledge about the malpractices of Ben Ali’s regime, could

be distributed instantly (Schraeder and Redissi 2011, 11). Interviewees

highlighted how the use of social media evolved, turning them into political forums

around the time when protests first broke out. The Tunisian government ran the

infamous Ammar404 censorship technology, one of the most restrictive in the

world at the time (Mhenni 2008, Online). Already in early 2010 a loosely

organized movement of bloggers had demonstrated against Internet censorship in

Tunisia, using music, T-shirt logos, and other innovative expressions of protest

(Maha, interview 2011). Two bloggers were arrested, but their fledgling freedom of

expression movement got a lot of attention. Many “tech-savvy” Tunisians, who

even had middle-class backgrounds and had benefited from Tunisia’s liberalized

economy, understood that there was an urgent need to deal with Ben Ali’s

censorship, oppression and power abuses. In other words, Tunisia’s mobilization

potential increased sharply.

In addition, activist Saida recognized that scandals revealed by

Wikileaks had added to the simmering resentment. US Ambassadors had written

frankly about the rampant corruption and dictatorial practices of the Ben Ali

regime (Nawaat Online 2010). One thing was to hear stories in cafés and

rumors among friends – getting these stories confirmed by official American

correspondence made people more confident in their collective beliefs (Saida,

interview 2011). Again, one realizes that the alienation between regime and the

rest of society amounted to a kind of political opportunity change, albeit a

change that was difficult to detect. Tarrow (1998, 77) generally dismisses

opportunity changes that pass unnoticed. I argue that in this case changes were

not structural or external to the actors involved, but pertained to their individual

experiences and intersubjective frames. This had consequences for people’s

sense of injustice, agency and shared identity. These were emboldened, but the

enduring stability of the Ben Ali regime made a major revolt seem unlikely to

most observers.

IV.2 Mobilization online and mobilization in the streets

On December 17 2010, Tunisia was ripe for protest. The following

pages will attempt to give an overview of these events. It is important to keep in

mind that revolutions can never be accurately predicted, and that there was

nothing inevitable about the ways events actually unfolded. Structural problems

had piled up all over the Middle East and North Africa, and finally, one spark

was enough to set the country ablaze.

Mohamed Bouazizi’s hometown Sidi Bouzid was shaken by riots on the

first few days after December 17, and crucially, neighboring towns started to

mobilize in support. At the village and town level, the strong bonds of

communal solidarity and shared identity made local riots and sit-ins quite easy to

organize. However, police brutality began immediately, and fear was evidently a

major hurdle to the sustaining of protests. One must keep in mind that these

communities had collective memories of earlier contention, and they were well

aware of the risks.

There are somewhat divergent narratives concerning how mobilization

gained momentum, and these narratives can generally be grouped into two

categories. The first interpretation, adhered to especially by the young and the

cyber-activists, emphasizes how new social media, and in particular Facebook,

functioned as a “press agency”, and a convenient tool for coordinating the dates and

locations of demonstrations, inviting people to join, and disseminating antiregime

discourse in general. People subscribing to this narrative highlight that

Facebook was only a tool to relay information – no one was able to successfully assume

leadership of the online movement. With its horizontal and inherently democratic

structure, Facebook functioned to coordinate what was a close approximation to a

“leaderless, spontaneous” community. However, it proved an invaluable resource, a

fact which signs in Tunis saying “Merci Facebook”

testify to.

We have already seen how great the reach of online social media in

Tunisia was, and local communities and circles of friends could transmit

information to those who were not directly connected. This amounts to what

Denoueux (1993) calls informal mobilization, a process that typically occurs in

times of crisis, when people are mobilized not by formal organizations but by

networks existing at the workplace, in neighborhoods, or among friends. In his

book Urban Unrest in the Middle East, Denoueux illustrates this concept with

examples from Beirut and Cairo.

The spreading of protests from Sidi Bouzid to neighboring towns was a

pivotal first step in drawing the entire country’s attention to local events. In the

town of Kasserine, police responded to demonstrations with shocking brutality.

Hundreds were killed over the space of a month – more than fifty were killed on

the weekend of 8-10 January alone, as the police targeted funeral processions in

particular. They placed snipers on rooftops and shot at women and children

indiscriminately, while the Ministry of Interior called the police violence “acts of

self defense” against attackers and looters (The Telegraph 2011). Maha, the

CNLT member, explained that the regime paid casseurs, or vandals, to break

shops and sow chaos, providing the security forces with an excuse to attack

anyone who dared leave their homes (Interview 2011).

From the very first clashes in Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine, video clips,

pictures, “Tweets”, and Facebook updates were posted, providing a live feed of

horrifying, poignant images. Ramzi and other informants found it difficult to

explain precisely why people continued to take to the streets under these dire, life-

threatening conditions, but they all made reference to the instinctive impact of

emotions (Interviews 2011; Miladi 2011)

Arguably, people did not make a calculated rational decision as to

whether they should march in the streets or not. The videos of police brutality

posted on Facebook and YouTube became a spectacle to which people could not

stay neutral. Shaken by anger and desperation, they kept returning to the streets

despite the risks (Maha, interview 2011). Tarrow’s (1998, 83) models

acknowledge this mechanism of mobilization: Ruthless repression paradoxically

facilitates outrage, which might drive protests. With repression and humiliation

becoming so palpable, many felt that they had little to lose as individuals; while

conversely, the stakes for their communities were becoming higher by the day.

Saad, member of the LTDH, suggested: “The regime was dressed down,

exposed as totally tyrannical against its own people. Some of us had known this

for a long time...for others, the violence was a wake-up call” (interview 2011).

Maha’s argument is similar: “there was a human sentiment – an emotional

aspect (…), and Facebook was a platform for provoking and expressing these

feelings” (Interview 2011). Referring to Kriesi et al. (1995, 5). I see that

audiovisual media helped politicalize more of the already existing mobilization

potential in the country. People who had no previous experience with

expressing their grievances in public gathered in front of the Ministry of the

Interior in Tunis, crying: “You are killing the people, killing the youth!” (Saida,

interview 2011).

Harking back to our model, I clearly see that disproportionate repression

fueled an intense feeling of injustice. The rupture between regime and society

was total, and it was easy for people to identify Ben Ali and his system as their

adversary, the concrete target of anger. After mobilization first accelerated, this

process became a rapid, self-reinforcing phenomenon, with people finding

safety in numbers. The spreading of protests increased people’s feeling of

agency, invigorating the shared belief that they could accomplish something as a

collective (Klandermans 1997, 42).

Online social media were fused directly into all these processes. When

information was relayed across the country, more people were touched by

highly emotional narratives and images, and more people felt that they too had a

stake in the collective of protesters. The activists I interviewed commonly

believed that the situation had reached a sort of nationwide “tipping point” that

had made people descend into the streets almost simultaneously. However, I

must point out the evident fact that not everyone joined the protests from the

start. Reem and Saida both exemplify how mobilization spread by example:

Activists who were more aware of the unrest and its causes, who felt a strong

emotional impact from repression, or were simply committed to supporting the

movement early on, pioneered by posting images, status updates, and blog posts

online.

These cyber-activists were braving a certain risk of being monitored,

harassed, or even detained, and a few among them also experienced this.

Among others, the regime arrested Lina Ben Mhenni, Slim Amamou, and

Yassine Ayari, whose influence it found worrying. These bloggers had been

active online and in the freedom of speech movement for some time. They had

begun the campaign to draw attention to the fledgling unrest in December 2010

and mobilize in sympathy (Cyberdissidents.org 2011). Arrests also conferred a

symbolic role on detained individuals (Reporters sans Frontières 2011). Despite

the salient public profile of these activists, they did not lead the movement:

Rather, committed citizens at all levels played an invaluable role in initiating and

spreading mobilization.

Saida, who had a substantial audience due to her radio shows, recalled:

“(...) in December, when I broke the silence about the repression, people started

being afraid of being my friends on Facebook!” (Interview 2011). Fear of the

regime had not lost its grip just yet. According to Reem, when her friends saw

that she was not punished for her online activity, that she was not arrested and her

accounts not hacked, they followed in her footsteps (Interview 2011).

Importantly, these activists acted as opinion leaders in their respective social

milieus.

In a matter of weeks, even the “passive majority” in Tunisia was stirred.

Many were initiated into the action frame of grievances and humiliation for the first

time, and went through the steps of consensus mobilization (awarenessraising) and

action mobilization only in a matter of days. The fundamental character of the

popular demands made it possible to construct the necessary shared identity around

them, spanning gender, age, socio-economic, and cultural differences. Online social

media made it possible for people to feel part of a new nationwide community,

beyond their face-to-face interactions with friends and neighbors. Particular

grievances at the level of towns and villages were actively renegotiated and

assembled into a nationwide political frame.

The Tunisian protests of December and January 2010/2011 are arguably

a qualitatively new phenomenon, in that online social media played such a key

role. According to one account, “people protested in the streets during the day,

and shared information online at night” (Mandraud 2011). The mise en scène of

a protest movement had become easier than ever before (Zekry, interview 2011).

Networks of online activists working under oppressive conditions also had the

advantage of not having a clear center or headquarter which the regime could

target and paralyze. (Al Saffar 2011).

It might appear that coordination online substituted for the need to set up

a coherent, organized movement on the ground, as Social Movement Theories

normally presuppose (e.g. Kriesi et al. 1995; Tarrow, Tilly and McAdam 2001).

Kriesi et al. purport that a mobilization potential (i.e. people sharing awareness

about shared grievances) needs a framework of both formal organizations and

informal personal networks in order to actually mobilize (1995). Facebook, on the

other hand, permitted the creation of loosely bound communities that could be

created and dissolved in an instant, removing constraints of time and space, and

making communication virtually effortless. Youth with no political experience could

thus transform into activists overnight.

A lot of the youth were also careful to claim that they were not “political

in the traditional sense”, and that online coordination had not created a lasting

political movement (Reem, Ahmed, et al. interviews 2011). Further, youth

activists and journalists that I interviewed argued unequivocally that traditional

Tunisian NGOs had not initiated the wave of protests, but had merely tried to

catch up with, and control, its development (Ibid. 2011).

Reem for instance, claimed that she did not want to be associated with

any particular activist collective, and that this was not a necessary precondition to

“make a difference” online (Interview 2011). Interestingly, several other

interviewees were also skeptical of the more highly profiled activists and their

agendas. Facebook clearly allowed people to maintain their strong sense of

individuality and to converge selectively around a few topics, rather than the

deeper cultural and social integration which activism in more “traditional”

organizations arguably requires (Wanous, Rechers and Malik 1984, 671).

IV.3 Civil society and the popular movement in Tunisia

This is where I must introduce the other narrative on how mobilization

occurred, the narrative proposed by members of “traditional” and formal civil

society, such as the UGTT and the Tunisian Bar Association. Arguably, the

ephemeral collective identities nurtured on Facebook were not sufficient to sustain

widespread street action in the face of relentless repression.

For example, UGTT members claimed that their cadres in Sidi Bouzid

and elsewhere were among the first to call for protests (UGTT Sousse,

interviews 2011). They were proud of the UGTT’s tradition as a counterweight

to the regime, and as a force the regime could not ignore. According to its

representatives in Sousse, the UGTT had consistently advocated freedom of

association, freedom of expression, and workers’ rights for many years.

External observers have asserted that the UGTT had been suffering from a

deepening division between its activist local branches and the more

accommodationist, i.e. co-opted, central bureau over the last few years (Ryan

2011). However, it is important not to let the passivity of the central level

overshadow the important role played by the lower cadres during the uprising.

Some accounts also perceive a deliberate two-pronged strategy of the UGTT

during these critical days: The UGTT central bureau was negotiating with Ben

Ali, while the regional offices were adding pressure on him in the streets. The

local sections of the UGTT could also take the initiative because they were

further removed from the regime’s coercive capacities and closer to problems

“on the ground” (UGTT Sousse, interviews 2011; Hanafi 2011). Overall, the

activism of the UGTT during the pre-January 14 unrest proves in any case that

the organization had never been totally co-opted by Ben Ali. Critics who argued

otherwise had overlooked both the size of the organization and its historical

role. The UGTT was indeed older than the Tunisian state structure itself, and a

lot of the Tunisian leadership had acquired political training within its ranks

(Perkins 2007). If the rest of Tunisian civil society was weak, the UGTT was

strong and could become the backbone for protests.

In contrast with the riots in 2008, this time the UGTT cadres were ready

to mobilize in sympathy all over the country. Branch offices were well

connected and well coordinated, and collaborated also with smaller groups such

as the lawyers and the LTDH. The UGTT was effectively a well-established

mass movement, with its own organizational resources, its massive rank-andfile

of more than 500,000 members, sharing an identity that was conducive to

supporting popular socio-economic and political demands. Lastly, its cadres

were already skilled at organizing demonstrations. Therefore, the UGTT

claimed that it had been able to “frame and supervise” the mass protests when

they erupted (Ibid). It used text messages, notices, and improvised outdoor

meetings to rally supporters, and marches in major cities typically began at

UGTT offices.

For the trade unionists, protesting was a “duty”, even though repression

continued to be horrendous, and the casualties were many (Ibid). Joining the union

members at the forefront of demonstrations were the lawyers, easily recognizable

in their black robes. Zekry, a member of the Bar Association in Tunis, emphasized

how Tunisia’s lawyers had been advocating the rule of law and fair trials for a

century, and detailed how Ben Ali had always sought to undermine the profession

and its guild (Interview 2011). The Bar Association embodied a strong ethos of

opposition to Ben Ali’s unfettered autocracy, and because of its standing in

Tunisian society and its esprit de corps, its members had dared critique Ben Ali

more openly than most. In retaliation, outspoken lawyers had received threats,

been harassed by police, and thrown in jail (Ibid). The lawyers also shared an

acute sense of representing a resourceful, cultivated leadership in Tunisian society,

and a competent avant-garde to the January protests.

The Bar’s local branches had taken the initiative to rallies in

collaboration with the trade unionists and other groups. The Bar Association’s

Head Office in Tunis knew what was stirring at any time, and approved street

action. On December 30, thousands of lawyers decided to wear black mourning

bands to commemorate the victims of police brutality. The police responded by

harassing them in the streets, and Zekry himself believed this had been a wakeup

call for many ordinary Tunisians (Ibid). From then on, the lawyers symbolized

the opposition to the regime. On January 3, when schools and universities were

supposed to have opened after New Year, protests flared up far and wide.

Encouraged by the level of participation, thousands of lawyers observed a

general strike on January 6. All courts in Tunisia stopped functioning, which

showed that state authority itself was being undermined (Aljazeera English

Online 2011).

When faced with these accounts of the role of established organizations, most

young cyber-activists and journalists admit that these organizations did play a

noteworthy role (Amir, Saida et al. interviews 2011). Traditional forms of mobilization

were important, but NGOs had of course cooperated and coordinated successfully with

the youth groups and cyber-activists. Small groups of human rights activists,

intellectuals, illegal political groups and highprofiled exiles had spent years advocating

their own agendas, and jumped onto the opportunity for protests when it came.

However, it was only the masses and the youth that could provide a “body” and critical

mass to this political force (Saad, interview 2011).

Arguably, there was a generational as well as a cultural difference

between NGO activists and the crowds that thronged the streets. Saad from the

LTDH pointed out that this was not just a “revolution of the young”. He conceded

that the LTDH had not been able to recruit any members since 1994 due to

regime constraints, and this indicates that the regime had succeeded in alienating

the youth from oppositional organizations (Ibid). Conversely, the independent

associations had not been adept at integrating youth, and hence the youth had

looked for new spaces to express their own discourses and culture – eventually

finding such spaces online (Ghorbal 2011).

We understand that to listen exclusively to the “Facebook narrative”

gives us a too narrow understanding of how mobilization took place in Tunisia.

Despite decades of authoritarianism and corporatism, the country had a strong

union and a few associations with the capacity to act against the regime. The

organizational ethos of formal organizations such as the UGTT crystallized the

shared identity of their members. Their organizational resources and established

chains of command (and political weight in the case of the UGTT) accentuated

their sense of agency, so these variables were greatly strengthened as contention

developed. And last, but not least, the long and troubled relationship between

NGOs and the regime itself made it easy to mobilize around shared feelings of

injustice and a clear picture of whom their antagonist was.

The sudden mass movement in Tunisia could therefore rely on a rather

small, but unified and supportive multi-organizational field (Curtis and Zurcher

1973, 53). If this multi-organizational field was fragmented before the protests,

NGOs from across the spectrum merged their efforts when the speed and scale of

mobilization became apparent. These formal organizations might not have

initiated the mass movement or encompassed all its participants, for this

movement far surpassed what the rather small Tunisian NGOs could harness.

However, they acted in alliance, encouraged sustained protests, and provided

logistical support. Again, I emphasize that they subsumed their own

organizational identities under the larger cause of regime change, enabling the

creation of a “national front” against the regime.

To sum up, I appreciate the analysis by interviewee Maha from the

CNLT (Interview 2011). She stated that three collective actors had come

together during the December-January rallies:

• Formal organizations such as the UGTT, which should not be underestimated

for all the reasons listed above.

• The new cohort of cyber-activists, whose networks flourished thanks to

online social media. This was a new phenomenon, and the activists had little

organization. They either mobilized based on their own grievances, or relayed

information from others.

• “The masses”, which came from all walks of life, and who rallied to the ranks

of the first two. The momentum of protests, and the emotional impact of

repression, compelled more and more people to join. To echo Terchek (1974,

cited in Klandermans 1997, 144), I can conclude that the “indifference

quotient of the general public” was very low, and further - “the trickle soon

turned into a torrent” (Kuran 1991). In accordance with Tarrow’s definition of

cycles of contention, I can add that there was a high rate of both organized

and unorganized participation (1998, 142).

We cannot draw clear boundaries between these three collective actors.

Internet activism, for instance, blurred the distinction between the masses and the

cyber-activists. A more interesting inference seems to be that online mobilization

lowered the threshold for mobilization in the streets for everyone. Ultimately,

however, one was not dependent on Internet access to mobilize: One could rely on,

and align with, “traditional” civil society activists in the streets.

I observe that although Tunisian civil society was largely overlooked as

potential agents of change before the protests, they were stronger than originally

thought, or could mobilize dormant resources quickly. The variable strength of civil

society is essential, and we should not become blinded by the “new social

media”paradigm in this case. The variables perception of agency and extent of

consensus mobilization appear to increase in tandem. I prefer to view these two as

intervening factors, closely related with preceding basic variables such as rates of

Internet access and strength of civil society. The variable perception of injustice is

another fundamental factor, mirrored by its opposite, the question of regime

legitimacy. Legitimacy, although a complex notion, is invariably linked to regime

practices, and it is to these practices and interactions with contenders that we must

now turn.

IV.4 The Response of the Ben Ali Regime

Contrary to what Sidney Tarrow (1998) purports, repression in Tunisia

did not have to be moderate or inconsistent to enable people to protest. As I have

elaborated on previously, the inverse mechanism materialized. Beyond

repression, however, the regime’s responses were muddled and inconsistent.

Amir and Mamdouh are among the analysts who observed how the Tunisian

authorities had no convincing way of dealing with the crisis (Interviews 2011).

The worst repression was allegedly carried out by the security forces that Ben

Ali and Trabelsi kept under their personal control, while other agencies acted

more restrained. For the regime’s part, harsh repression also proved to be a

mistake. My interviewee Mamdouh made the analogy with the way Chairman

Mao Zedong and his wife had led the Cultural Revolution in China: When no

one could check the power of the leading families, the outcome was disastrous

(Interview 2011).

The RCD Party, which had been “holed out” and sidelined by Ben Ali’s

fragmentation of the state, was also unable to respond to the crisis. All in all, the

authorities lacked competent advisors and ideologists who could have devised a plan

to stem the tide of demands and retake the initiative. The President’s concessions

came too late and belittled the popular demands, and his speeches to the nation only

radicalized the protesters (Ibid; Miladi 2011).

Already before December 17, there was unease among certain business

elites and party figures about the regime and its privatization of power. These

nascent disagreements could have amounted to a small step towards the

“deepening divisions among elites” that Tarrow classifies as a changing political

opportunity (1998, 77-80). However, it was not publicly visible, and a real elite

secession only occurred on the very last days prior to Ben Ali’s flight on

January 14. It is also interesting to note that one does not observe the other

dimensions suggested by Tarrow: Political access was not increased before the

protests, political realignments did not strengthen the protest movement except

at the level of ordinary people, and influential elites only defected to the

opposition in the final phase. Political opportunities rather changed because

ordinary citizens shared a rejectionist discourse, and acquired the networks

required for action mobilization. One thus understands that Tarrow’s dimensions

must be complemented with a social constructivist study, to fully comprehend

how action frames were generated, and how people were empowered to rise up

against a seemingly monolithic, hegemonic authoritarian regime.

Mobilization continued unabated during the second week of January,

even though the regime’s response remained the same: Police brutality. After

100,000 people had gathered in Sfax on January 12, Tunisians started realizing

that the point of no return had been attained. The momentum then spiraled

upwards again, and the regime was overtaken by events. On January 14, the

UGTT called a general strike. The country’s leadership was already paralyzed.

Ben Ali fled the same afternoon, defeated by a movement his intelligence

apparatus clearly had been unable to foresee (Al Jazeera English Online, 2011).

Tarrow (1998, 81) characterizes centralized states with a high capacity for

policy implementation as “strong states”. The Ben Ali regime prior to December

17 2010 appeared relatively strong compared to other Arab states, with a

seemingly hierarchic power apparatus and quite well developed administrative –

especially coercive – resources. This offered demonstrators with a centralized

target. As I have noted, the regime’s strength was twinned with its insulation

from societal pressures: In Kriesi’s terminology, Ben Ali’s state was highly

exclusionary (1995, 40-44). In short, the state had become so unresponsive to

the grievances of Tunisian society, that it was unprepared for the crisis.

Paradoxically, these regime features amounted to an advantage for protesters

(see Tarrow 1998, 82).

Ben Ali's regime had not grasped how its flawed rule had undermined its

own power, and I want to highlight that the popular perception of responsibility

for corruption has emerged as a major variable in my study. As we have seen

repeatedly, the regime had, in contrast to the Monarchy in Morocco, been totally

inflexible in its encounters with domestic resistance. Ben Ali relied

overwhelmingly on force and saw no need to open his political system, not even

to pre-empt challengers like King Mohamed VI did. A second key independent

variable is emerging here, which I associate closely with regime type: Regime

rigidity/adaptability – the regime's capacity and willingness to compromise

with or co-opt challenging forces in order to survive. Korany (2012,

forthcoming) employs the same variable in his analysis of the “Arab Spring” of

2011.

IV.5 The February 20 Movement and mobilization in

Morocco

In Morocco, the processes of mobilization were evidently quite

different. First, the successful toppling of Ben Ali in Tunisia directly inspired

protests in Morocco. The Arab uprisings of the spring of 2011 are prime

examples of transnational diffusion of contentious politics, as Tarrow (1998)

labels it. Again, the fact that independent media and new social media networks

are unbound by state boundaries entails that information flows much more

freely than before, and that ideas, discourses and action frames can be

appropriated by actors in comparable situations in various locations. This is

exactly what happened in Morocco. International media conveyed compelling

images to Moroccans who had access to them. Youths and activists on Facebook

started discussing whether the country could, and should, experience something

similar to Egypt’s and Tunisia’s ousting of their leaders a few weeks earlier

(Selma, interview 2011). It follows from this that the regional precedents

changed people’s perceptions of what could be done. Here too, their sense of

agency was awakened.

We immediately observe that Facebook, just like in Tunisia, allowed for

a decentralized, inclusive, and nationwide discourse among youth and activists.

It is important to keep in mind, however, that the reach of new social media is

more limited in Morocco than in Tunisia. Generally, the Moroccan population is

more scattered, less resourceful, and consists in large part of an uneducated rural

population and urban proletariat (Boukhars 2011, 31). Therefore, online

mobilization was restricted to those who had access to the technology, and who

were susceptible to support the cause. It is significant that the first circle of

people who planned protests in Morocco were activists in the Rabat area with a

middle-class background (Nizar, Nadia, et al. interviews 2011).

Moroccan NGOs did not initiate the protest movement on Facebook.

Their influence on popular discourse was arguably limited. I have already stated

that Morocco suffered from multiple economic and social problems in recent

years just like Tunisia, and interview respondents confirmed that popular

discourse among many Moroccans was centered on similar economic and social

grievances, such as unemployment and the rising cost of living. Selma, a member

of the February 20 protest Movement, confirmed that people had been

complaining, but that they had been doing it informally, and mostly among

families and friends (Interview 2011). “Bread riots”, strikes, and other forms of

contentious politics had occurred across the country for years, with a wave of

unrest peaking after the financial crisis (Paciello 2010, 94). These were

symptoms of a widespread political malaise in Morocco, although the targets of

contention were probably not defined as unequivocally as in Tunisia.

Nevertheless, the perception of injustice was strong enough to unclench waves of

protests. Due to the less repressive circumstances in Morocco, oppositional

discourses could be nurtured more openly, but I shall elaborate on why these

discourses turned out to be less potent than their Tunisian counterparts.

The legitimacy of the Moroccan political system has been dropping

during recent years. Significant strata of the Moroccan population had arguably

lost patience with corrupt and inept politicians and weak parliamentarians and

ministers, who were unable to solve the country’s pressing problems. This

national mood spurred several Moroccans to follow events in Tunisia and Egypt

closely, and individuals to start Facebook groups such as “Democracy Now” and

“Moroccans who want dialogue with the King” (Nizar, interview 2011). The

regime's concessions in the 1990s and early 2000s had not been sufficient to

assuage the grievances of those who had lost out from flawed reforms.

Liberalism had undercut state-run programs and affected vulnerable businesses,

without creating promised economic growth.

Thus far, the Moroccan situation resembled Tunisia in several ways. The

discourses were oftentimes the same, although people had more experience with

open contention in Morocco. As I have mentioned, the country had seen its

political opportunity structure change in formal terms since the 1990s, notably

with easier political access for the citizenry by means of elections and the right

to organize political rallies. Anyways, I have noted previously that these reforms

had entailed little de facto improvements in popular influence on decision-

making (Boukhars 2011).

One major difference between Tunisia and Morocco was of course the

conditions under which civil society could operate. Moroccan NGOs had

experienced attempts at co-optation, divide-and-rule, and infiltration by the Makhzen,

but in general they were considerably less constrained than civil society in Tunisia.

Interestingly, adherents to the February 20 Movement had divergent interpretations

of the roles various NGOs had played in the Movement’s founding and operation. As

in Tunisia, some interview respondents argued consistently that the protest

movement had emerged from communities set up online, first and foremost on

Facebook. The information they had shared online had permitted the creation of

collective action frames inspired by Tunis and Cairo. These online discourses had

been compelling enough to inspire people to proceed to planning street action.

Notably, the first members of the February 20 group online set up a manifesto, and

then permitted people to discuss freely what they wanted to omit or include in the

network’s charter and list of demands. The end result was a set of political, social,

economic, human rights, and cultural (Amazigh) demands (Selma, interview 2011).

The founders of the February 20 Movement did not vet the list of participants in any

way and their contributions were extremely eclectic, so consensus could only be built

around a “lowest common denominator” of demands. Selma, Nizar, Amin and other

February 20 Movement members all recounted how the first small group of activists

had made a video where they explained why they wanted to protest, and posted this

video online. The video was credited as a huge success, arguably illustrating that

such simple tools were sufficient to coordinate a mass movement (Interviews 2011).

Just as in Tunisia, the narrative about “spontaneous” protests

coordinated online is a forceful one, and it reflects the perceptions activists have

of themselves as independent from narrow sectorial interests, political parties, or

formal NGOs. Most of these latter actors have a tainted image in Moroccan

political imagery, whereas engaged youth want to represent a new political

force. Interview respondents were quick to note that the February 20 Movement

was “the first of its kind in Morocco” (Nizar, interview 2011).

Mobilization did not just occur simultaneously among all aggrieved

people, although the activists’ discourse frequently resorts to this image. Some

individuals dared join protest networks before others. Just like in Tunisia, these

founding members of the Movement gained status as symbols, even though they

were not formal leaders. As the number of adherents to the Movement grew,

mobilization became self-reinforcing. This mobilization by example was much

easier to accomplish than in Tunisia, because activists did not have to fear

regime censorship of their online activities or police arrests, although a few

such episodes did occur (Nadia, Transparency Maroc, interviews 2011).

Mobilization in Morocco was then more a question of awareness-raising and

convincing people that participation could yield benefits.

However, I am not arguing that the question of “fear” and repression

was not an obstacle to mobilization in Morocco. According to several activists,

many Moroccans still remember the years of repression - les années de plomb -

under former King Hassan II. Heavy Makhzen surveillance, the use of secret

prisons, arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of activists, torture, and widespread

use of force against rioters are but a few of the vivid memories Moroccans still

have from the 1970s and 1980s (Nadia, interview 2011). Despite an apparent

modernization and liberalization, the regime’s agents are still omnipresent at all

levels of society. Nizar of the February 20 Movement explained that there were

still “reflexes of restraint” among many, who were therefore reluctant to join the

mass protests (Interview 2011). Selma agreed, stating that people still live under

a collective imagery of servitude to the King (Interview 2011). The February 20

Movement wanted to address this fear, and conversely to empower people to

advance their claims.

All in all, the conditions were much more permitting for protests in

Morocco than in Tunisia, and an answer to the question of why the degree of

contention in Morocco will probably rather be found in the questions of perceived

injustice and agency, civil society strength, and regime flexibility.

IV.4.1 The decisive role of formal organizations in Morocco

Online social media were indeed a catalyst for protests in Morocco, but

civil society also entered the movement at an early stage. Human rights

organizations in Rabat had been holding sit-ins in sympathy with Tunisia, Egypt

and Libya during the winter of 2011, and there had been committees of support

with Tunisia operating for years. Interviews with activists revealed that almost all

of them had previous connections to the cluster of autonomous human rights

organizations in Rabat: Amnesty International, the AMDH, and Transparency

Maroc, to mention some. It was clear that several organizations, and the AMDH

in particular, wanted to assume a leading role in the protest movement from the

start (Abdallah, Amin, et al., interviews 2011).

Amin, a member of the youth club of the AMDH, underlined that the

Moroccan NGO sector had struggled to recruit youth to its organizations. He

argued that the AMDH had been more successful at this precisely because it

challenged the preconceptions many young people had of NGO activism as

“participation in endless meetings and noisy assemblies” (Interview 2011). In

his view, most NGOs only managed to recruit those who were already interested

in volunteering, while the AMDH was better at reaching out to new

constituencies and generations. Even though conditions for civil society

organizations in Morocco were better than in Tunisia, the cultural and

generational differences that I discern between long-running NGO activists and

youth remind us of the situation in the latter country.

Interestingly, older Moroccan NGO activists expressed surprise at the

level of commitment their youth members showed to the emerging protest

movement. Furthermore, generational cleavages manifested themselves in

debates on strategy. The youth were more impatient and wanted to replicate the

dramatic, yet successful examples of Tunis and Cairo, while “the old guard” held

back and opted for a moderate approach (Abdallah, interview 2011).

Undoubtedly, activists were anxious about how the regime would respond to

such unprecedented mobilization.

While certain activists worked independently of formal NGOs and only

expressed their views online, activist youth belonging either to the AMDH or the

plethora of radical Leftist groups, trade unions, etc. in Morocco were also active

users of new social media. This meant that the distinction between online

organization and “non-cyber” organization of protests was even more blurred

than in Tunisia.

Regardless of who shaped the agenda, the February 20 Movement

benefited from being portrayed as a genuine youth initiative rather than a

“product” of the activities of mainstream NGOs. The AMDH itself was careful to

underline the Movement’s autonomy and grass-roots character (Ibid). I interpret

this narrative as an integral part of the Movement’s identity, but the responses of

interviewees betray a consistent civil society involvement and influence.

Amin and Nadia described how civil society activists gathered to form

the first coordination cell of the February 20 Movement (Interviews 2011).

Organizations such as the AMDH had chapters in more than 90 Moroccan cities,

and encouraged these to set up February 20 coalitions around the country.

From the start, experienced activists from established associations formed the

“practical core” of the Movement, and ensured that its momentum was not lost.

The demonstrations on February 20 were therefore planned and announced

weeks in advance, and Amin recalled how young members of the AMDH had

worked day and night to mobilize people leading up to this crucial day (Interview

2011). The long-established friendships and networks among these individuals

greatly facilitated their joint efforts at pooling their resources together and

preparing for the events.

Activists received substantial logistical support from their primary

organizations, 99 of which established a National Council of Support to the

February 20 Movement. Included were several trade unions, but these did not have

an influence or capacity comparable to that of the UGTT in Tunisia.

Abdallah, himself leader of a local chapter of the Union Marocaine du Travail

(UMT), elaborated on how the Makhzen had successfully splintered and

weakened the Moroccan trade union movement over decades, and that

membership was very low compared to that of the UGTT. The Moroccan regime

had implemented legislation that undermined the power of union delegates at

the workplace, and several unions were too closely associated with political

parties to be credible representatives of workers’ interests.

Civil society actors argued that their involvement in the Movement

helped mobilization greatly. Traditional mobilization with flyers, posters, and

outreach activities were relatively more important than in Tunisia, because of

the limited reach of Facebook and Moroccan printed media. Television and

radio, which remain under regime control, were not mentioning the Movement

before the first mass rallies; while some minor newspapers were acknowledging

its existence and potential. Still, the large numbers of illiterate people could only

be reached if civil society and trade unions put their resources at the

Movement’s disposal. Hence, the Movement’s online activity was

complemented by the efforts of multiple organizations, and their role increased

over time in an effort to keep up the politicization of sympathetic groups. This

effort arguably became more important as protests dragged on throughout the

spring and summer months of 2011.

IV.4.2 Challenges to widespread mobilization in Morocco

To further understand the important role of formal organizations for the

February 20 Movement, one can employ Curtis and Zurcher’s concept of

multiorganizational fields (1973, 53). In contrast to Tunisia, where the

multiorganizational field was small, but well consolidated, the Moroccan field of

formal organizations has been broader and more polarized. Oppositional

organizations ranging from the radical Left to the Islamists have constituted rival

alliances vying for influence over the February 20 Movement. Interview

respondents affirmed that the Movement remained open to anyone interested.

The Leftists and Islamists had a notable capability to bring their followers out in

massive numbers, and were therefore important components of the Movement.

Abdallah rendered how the first core of activists had decided to open the

Movement to everyone, to prevent any subsequent strife between factions in the

streets (Interview 2011). However, the Movement’s spokespersons have

adamantly denied that extremists control them in any organizational sense, and

have pointed out that this is only an allegation the Makhzen has been spreading

to delegitimize the February 20 Movement.

Amin, and other human rights activists who had been involved from the

start, emphasized their personal loyalty to the founding charter of the February 20

Movement, and argued that they had been able to hold the political “center” free

from the interference of either Leftists or Islamists. Both of these “ends of the

political spectrum” ran their own popular initiatives, and could operate

independently from the Movement if they so wanted (Interviews 2011). Thus, the

February 20 Movement did not monopolize the socio-political space for protests

in Morocco. One may derive from this discussion that the Moroccan protest

movement was struggling much more than the Tunisian one to forge a strong

sense of unity and shared identity.

In Tunisia, the escalation of protests had been so rapid that there had

been little time to debate strategies, and various political forces were united in a

popular front against the regime. Moreover, formal organizations had not

“unleashed” the unrest in Tunisia, and had been unable to impose any

preexisting identity or agenda on it. Although the Tunisian organizational field

was generally weak, the weight of the UGTT ensured that a massive

mobilization could be undertaken through “traditional” channels and with

participants from various age cohorts. The Moroccan organizations clearly

lacked the leadership of a predominant organization like the UGTT which could

have kept discipline at crucial junctures. Moroccan trade unions could not

uphold this role. The AMDH spearheaded the February 20 Movement, but it was

still not a mass organization, and it drew its core members from a limited

socioeconomic stratum. The infighting of NGOs in Morocco weakened them

collectively and undercut their legitimacy in the eyes of non-members. In sum,

Morocco scores lower than expected on civil society strength, because this

variable is not only about the freedom of civil society, but also about the ability

of organizations to use their freedom and acting cohesively.

In its first phase, the February 20 Movement had been hastily built

around a set of shared demands, with a basic shared identity related to these

demands. The Movement’s identity and goals might actually vanish if people

were forced to choose between the identity of the Movement and the competing

identities of its constituent groups, and this debate arose as the Moroccan

demonstrations became drawn out in time. The February 20 Movement has

managed this tension so far, both because the Movement’s Founding Charter

echoes the grievances participants had before February 20, and which they still

have, and supposedly because the Movement’s identity is malleable. Activists in

Rabat conceded that starting from mid-May 2011, they had shifted their

discourse somewhat from political to social demands, in order to activate the

untapped potential of the poorest classes and forestall a weakening of the

Movement (Amin, Selma, Nadia, interviews 2011).

Some went as far as claiming that the Movement’s initial focus on

politics, and in particular constitutional reform, had been a mistake. This

discourse had mostly appealed to the middle classes, whereas the poor in les

quartiers populaires were indifferent:

“People in the poorer districts are only interested in bread, olive oil,

and so on. They don’t know what parliamentary democracy is, they are

illiterate and they don’t care. If you talk about these things, you will not

trigger their interest” (Amin, interview 2011).

Some interview respondents argued, like in Tunisia, that socio-economic

and political demands could not really be extricated from each other, and that

Moroccans from all walks of life had participated at the first demonstrations,

which had taken place in more than 35 cities (Nizar, interview 2011). However, the

February 20 Movement had clearly not been able to attain a critical mass. It

appears as if the multi-organizational field which helped drive mobilization in

Morocco was quite divided according to class tiers and that the first waves of

protests had not reached beyond the professional and middle classes to a sufficient

extent, at least not in the capital. In Casablanca, on the other hand, mobilization

among the poor had been a Movement goal from the outset

(Selma, interview 2011).

This new drive in the poorer quarters entailed a shift in focus, meaning

that local and communal issues gained more prominence at the expense of direct

demands for political reform at the central level. The regime probably

welcomed this change, but it was also worried about the possible growth of

demonstrations when the poor joined them. The new strategy also meant that

the moderate Islamists gained greater influence over the February 20

Movement. The Islamists had always been popular among the poor, who felt

alienated by the modernizing rhetoric of the government and left out by the

neoliberal state. The Islamists were useful to the February 20 Movement,

because their cadres were well disciplined, and they could provide a sizable

pool of rank-and-file in order to throng the streets and add significance to the

contention (Amin, interview 2011). Abdallah estimated the current number of

protesters each weekend to hover around 300,000, but he believed that the

numbers had to reach the millions for the regime to yield further concessions

(Interview 2011). The largest single rally in the spring had probably never

exceeded 80,000 people (Nizar, interview 2011). Obviously, the scale of this

protest movement never equaled that of the mass demonstrations in Tunisia.

This basic fact, and the understanding that the continued efforts of multiple

NGOs was required to sustain mobilization throughout the spring, compels us to

ask whether the mobilization potential in Morocco had actually been relatively

limited from the beginning. The narratives about grievances and injustice that

fueled participation might have been less suggestive, and less emotionally

charged, than their Tunisian counterparts. While a large number of Tunisians

felt collectively humiliated by the oppressive state and socioeconomic

pressures, Moroccans mobilized along class lines, and a lot of them apparently

lacked a refined understanding of the more political aspects of demands. In

Tunisia, again, people across the country had a very clear perception of the

corruption at the top, which fueled an unprecedented anger. The political

agenda of the Moroccan protesters was limited to demanding constitutional

reforms and improvements in governance and transparency. This is a total

contrast to Tunisia, where the crowds clamored for the outright overturning of

the regime itself. Theirs was a clear-cut, spectacular demand that stirred

people’s emotions and shared feeling of “making history”. Their revolutionary

demands stand in clear contrast to the reformist movement in Morocco. I want

to foreground that the February 20 Movement was very careful when criticizing

the King. As I have presented previously, the King benefits enormously from a

propaganda and traditional imagery that elevates his person above the failings

of the Moroccan regime. The February 20 Movement went further than anyone

before it in holding the King accountable, but they could not have demanded his

removal for fear of losing popular support. This difference on the variable

radicalism of protesters' demands is a fundamental input to the question of why

contention was so much less intense in Morocco.

The fact that the Makhzen’s coercive apparatus appears less intrusive in

people’s lives than Ben Ali’s security forces were to Tunisians, and that overt

repression is rarely seen in Morocco, also prevented Moroccans from acquiring the

same urgent need to change political conditions in the country. In spite of towering

economic and social problems, the sense of injustice has been less heightened and

people have felt less desperate to act.

If one makes a comparison in terms of socio-economic grievances only,

the mobilization potential in Morocco could have been comparable to that of

Tunisia. Transparency Maroc explained that “the social and economic

grievances in Morocco are the same as in other Arab countries, but the political

regime is different, so the outcome must be different” (Interview 2011). The

reason for why protests have been more modest in Morocco might lie as much

with the regime as with society. It is to the political regime that I now turn.

IV.4.3 Interactions between protesters and the Moroccan regime

Until the mass protests started to stir up the popular districts in the late

spring of 2011, the Moroccan state did not respond with much repression. The

Makhzen was careful to strike only when the media was absent, and repression

was harsher in more remote locations. Nevertheless, the Moroccan regime was

surely worried about protests from the start, and turned to its preferred methods

of co-optation and pre-emption to take the steam out of this emerging political

force. From the first weeks of February, the Makhzen even used Facebook and its

own media outlets to spread disinformation against activists. The regime already

had a tormented relationship with several of the core NGOs backing the

February 20 Movement, most notably the AMDH.

One of the founding members of the Movement online appeared on

television on February 19, saying that the anticipated protests had been called

off. Other activists immediately refuted this claim, and accused the Makhzen of

bribing people into acquiescence (Nadia, interview 2011). An expedient use of

Facebook and traditional mobilization led to a very successful turnout the

following day. The organizers themselves were surprised at their success, and

the rallies that day made for a paradigmatic event in Moroccan politics.

Marches were not met with police violence, but sit-ins over the following days

were dispersed. The police also used indiscriminate violence when the

protesters organized a small sit-in in May at Tamara, where the Moroccan secret

police is suspected of running a prison (Selma, interview 2011). Furthermore,

the February 20 Movement had recurrent troubles with thugs who called

themselves “royalists”, who interfered at their rallies, and who had allegedly

been paid by the Makhzen. The police also protected the “royalists”. However,

serious clashes did not erupt between them and anti-regime protesters.

Largely, repression was mild, with few people killed (New York Times

Online 2011). This means that fear was a minor obstacle to participation, and

conversely, that repression did not engender outrage and the ensuing escalation of

protests like it did in Tunisia.

Table III: Estimates of Casualties in Tunisia and Morocco 2011

Country

Numbers

Tunisia

219

Morocco

While escalation of contention in Tunisia was very swift, and the regime

was unable to get ahead of the developments, the Moroccan regime had a greater

opportunity to respond to the Movement’s demands. The Monarchy and the

Makhzen might also have learned from the mistakes that Ben Ali and Mubarak

had committed. On March 9, the King gave a speech where he declared that a

constitutional reform would take place, the minimum wage would be increased,

and other token social reforms carried out (Abdallah, interview 2011).

Thus, King Mohamed VI regained the initiative in the political process

merely a few weeks after the protests had begun. He was to appoint who would

revise the constitution and how this process would be organized, and he was to have

decisive influence over the final draft. Nevertheless, people responded with

enthusiasm, and claimed that the King had granted them their “Arab Spring” without

violence. This meant that the mass protests lost a lot of their less dedicated followers.

The King’s plan effectively undermined the legitimacy of the February 20

Movement. The women’s association, l’Association

Démocratique des Femmes Marocaines (ADFM), went so far as to say that the

Movement had lost its very core (Interview 2011). This was arguably not the

case, but the King had successfully appropriated the Movement’s own discourse

to preserve his own hegemony. Nadia deplored: “When the King says he wants to

address poverty, and we also want to address poverty, this creates ambiguity

among people. Who are they going to believe?” (Interview 2011). One after

another, Moroccan NGOs were confronted with the choice of boycotting the

reforms, or bandwagon with the King’s initiative. Almost all chose the last

option.

Mobilization in itself is exhaustive and requires heavy involvement and

commitment by participants and organizations. A true popular movement can

rarely be sustained over time (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986). In Morocco, the

popular perception of injustice was simply not emotionally intense enough to

nurture prolonged levels of contention, and the numbers receded through the

spring of 2011. Dwindling support arguably affects the perception of agency

among less committed participants, and demobilization becomes a selfreinforcing

phenomenon. In Tunisia, the opposite mechanism occurred as we have seen, and

demobilization only took place after Ben Ali had stepped down. To continue

with the Monarchy’s strategy in early 2011, I underline that the constitutional

drafting process lacked transparency and the final constitution lacked in clarity

and consistency. Still, many NGOs praised the new provisions and hoped they

would entail real improvements. Transparency Maroc argued that the new draft

opened for new anti-corruption legislation. The Union of Journalists perceived

possibilities for improving the Press Code. They also viewed the threshold on

critiquing the King as somewhat lowered.

However, the Constitution that was approved by popular referendum on

July 1, 2011 does not safeguard present gains in terms of fundamental civic and

political rights from future threats. Reforms in Morocco remain precarious, because

the Makhzen typically prefers to rule by means of ambiguity, nepotism, and

traditionalism rather than codified laws (Sater 2007; Younes M’Jahid, interview

2011). The new Constitution has achieved little in terms of improving predictability

in governance or equality before the law, even though popular optimism continues

unabated.

The Moroccan regime has succeeded where Ben Ali failed – by creating

a counter-discourse to the protest movement, and dividing the Moroccan people

accordingly. Interestingly, the more integrative mode of governance in Morocco

might have given the regime an advantage when dealing with protests16. In

addition, the ambiguous governance structures of the Monarchy, the superficially

modern institutions of Parliament and courts, and the Makhzen that permeates

the entire structure, make for a difficult protest target17. Selma reflected on this,

saying “people don’t know to whom, or how, to address their grievances”

(Interview 2011). One understands immediately that the “perception of

injustice”-factor suffered from such a lack of an easily identifiable antagonist:

Corruption and mismanagement were systemic and severe, but they were not

associated with the Head of State like they had been so expressively in Tunisia.

This difference also informed people’s notion of agency in each country

differently.

This discussion has shown that there were fundamental differences

between how the Tunisian and Moroccan regimes interacted with challengers

during the spring of 2011, and that their behavior reflects their more

longstanding approaches to oppositional political forces. With reference to the

regime rigidity/adaptability variable I applied in the case of Tunisia, I conclude

that Morocco is situated much more towards the flexible/integrative end of the

spectrum and has been for a long time, and that this can explain why that

country only saw the emergence of a reformist movement with limited goals

which also only gained fewer supporters and had a smaller impact on the

monolithic, insulated autocracy, if one compares them according to Tarrow's criteria of

centralization and implementation capacity (1998, 82). I am not arguing that the Moroccan state

is decentralized in the meaning of “federal”, for its core remains authoritarian. However, it covers

a larger and more diverse population, and encompasses a wider set of economic, social (17

continued): and political interests, among which the King is the arbiter, as we have seen.

17 One must not exaggerate the usefulness of applying the dichotomies

centralizedfragmented and exclusive-inclusive when one analyzes authoritarian states. The

Tunisian state proved more fragmented than expected, while the study has shown how the

various Moroccan institutions are sown together by the organic and personalistic bonds of the

Makhzen. With these caveats in mind I contend that we may still undertake a comparison based

on these dimensions.

regime than did contention in Tunisia.

Lastly, if one looks for Tarrow’s other political opportunity structures in

the case of Morocco, we see that most of them had not, and did not, materialize

during the spring of 2011. Emboldened by the examples of their neighboring

countries, people have expressed their grievances in unprecedented numbers, and

they have managed to collaborate nationwide like they had never done before.

Yet regardless of how pressured the regime felt, contention could not fracture it.

Elites did not defect to the protesters, and the Moroccan regime remained as

pluralistic and flexible, yet as loyal to its leader, as it had always been.

V - Conclusion

Our examination and comparison of contentious episodes in Tunisia and

Morocco shows that most of the independent variables I suggested from the

outset were relevant, but that others detected under way were also significant

when explaining differences between the cases. The study supports my

argument that one needs to apply a social constructivist approach to identify

how structural, long-term socio-economic and political changes could help spur

collective action. Despite the decline of the authoritarian corporatist order, I

have observed that both the Tunisian and Moroccan regimes were quite adept at

retaining control of their respective societies, albeit in different ways. If I

restrict the analysis to the political opportunity structures in these countries, I

cannot explain the sudden wave of unrest that emerged in both polities.

However, by bringing in an exploration of the collective action frames that were

generated, and how these affected people’s interpretations of injustice, identity,

and agency, one acquires the tools to understand how this “flash flood” could

occur. The impact of purely economic grievances might also have been less than

I hypothesized.

Indeed, Tunisia and Morocco shared many of the same problems,

resulting from flawed processes of neo-liberal restructuring and a retreat of the

public sector. The demographic boom only exacerbated rising unemployment

figures, while cuts in subsidies led to rising expenses. At the same time, these

countries had vastly expanded their educational systems. The consequence was

that a huge number of students graduated every year with high aspirations, which

the economic and political order could not fulfill.

The level of economic development and class configurations were quite

different in the two countries, however, with Tunisia having a more advanced

economy and a much larger literate educated middle class than Morocco. This

affected the scope of mobilization. Morocco’s poorer classes were slower to

respond to the call for mobilization, and the February 20 Movement has had to

alter its demands somewhat to appeal to the country’s lower strata. In Tunisia, the

middle class, and the highly educated unemployed, had experienced the Ben Ali

regime as a collective humiliation, and rallied behind a fundamental, emotionally

charged demand for the restoration of dignity.

The anger against the Ben Ali regime was directed at two levels – 1) the

abusive and dehumanizing practices of security forces and regime agents, which

were everywhere in society, and which interfered in all civil, social, cultural,

educational, and political life in the country – and 2) against the President and his

closest coterie of family and advisors, who seemed corrupt beyond repair. The

latter aspect is such a central factor to explain mobilization that I prefer to single

out popular perceptions of responsibility for corruption as a major variable in my

model. The Tunisian public had good opportunities to observe how the ruling

family ran the state as its own private enterprise,

In Morocco, the regime’s internal diversification between the Monarchy

and the Parliament and Government meant that the public was less prone to

keep the King personally responsible for problems identified at the lower rungs

of the administration. Moreover, the Moroccan King and his closest technocrats

managed to appear much more responsive to the problem of corruption.

In general, the Moroccan state seems less insulated from society than

Delimitation and Objectives of the Thesis

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