The future of minorities in the governance process in North Africa

ABSTRACT

Despite the normative assumption that the states of North Africa have populations that are culturally, ethnically and socially homogenous their actual demographic composition does not fit this paradigm. This has become particularly important in the recent past as Amazighté has begun to play a significant role in regional affairs, alongside the growing popular pressure for participatory governance throughout the region. Both these factors raise a series of questions with respect to the actual political model or models that would be involved, should such issues be integrated into the political scene. Firstly, what would the actual political process be based on; to what extent will indigenous participatory models be relevant alongside the hegemonic European paradigm as one of the consequences of the colonial experience? And, secondly, how well will whichever models that are adopted cope with the issue of minority representation and the distinction between national identity and citizenship. This comment is intended to further discussion of these concerns.

KEYWORDS:

• Maghrib
• democracy
• minorities
• amazighté
• Awakening

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The phrase comes from his seminal study, Democracy in America where he suggests that,

I am thoroughly convinced that political societies are not what their laws make them but what they are prepared in advance to be by the feelings, the beliefs, the ideas, the habits of heart and mind of the men who compose them. (Roper 1989, 22)

2 ‘A state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’ (Weber 1946, 79); for the original, see Weber (1921/1946, 397). The legitimacy of its coercive power and the limits upon it are the concerns of John Locke’s vision of democratic governance in both political and economic terms, particularly the individual’s rights to sanctity of property rights (Locke [1689] 1988) and of David Hume’s more measured views of the superiority of democratic governance over its competitors (Hume [1777] 1987).

3 ‘The state is the actuality of the ethical idea.’ (Hegel 1967, 257, 258)

4 ‘A political system in which power is shared by representatives of different or antagonistic social groups.’ (Brown 1993, 486) The Lebanese case is rather more complex than this would suggest, for in addition to the sharing of power between social groups – an agonistic system (Mouffe 2000) – there is also a superstructure of community leaders (za’im pl: zu’ama’) engaged in communal consensus and, thereby, in managing the consociational system in accordance with their own imperatives.

5 Although this quotation is usually attributed to T.S. Eliot, it appears that it has a much longer history, going back to Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) who embroidered it upon a scarf as ‘En ma Fin gȋt mon Commencement.’

6 Indeed, there are two separate concepts that are used – al mujtama‘ al-madani (which really means ‘civic society’ and would include secular organisations) and al-mujtama‘ al-ahli (‘civil society’, including Islamic associations and organisations)

7 The first slogan was widely used in Tunisia and, later, in Syria and Yemen while the second was widely adopted in the Tahrir Square demonstrations in Cairo. It was often modified as ‘Aish, karama insaniyya, hurriyya’ (bread, human dignity, freedom). There were, of course, many other slogans, some of them variants on the two cited here. The word ‘Aish’ (‘life’) rather than the more usual ‘khubz’ for bread underlines its crucial role in the Egyptian diet (The New Arab 2016; Al-Haq and Hussain nd).

8 Tahar Ben Jelloun, ‘Discours inaugural: Amazighté et démocratie,’ Forum International: Culture Amazighe et avenir de la Démocratie en Afrique du Nord, Fes (May 11, 2018).

9 The president suffered a disabling stroke in June 2013 but remained in post, even being re-elected in 2014! A collective presidency, as a result, became the ruling institution instead, under the effective control of the president’s (unelected and unaccountable) younger brother, with the result that political life was in suspension with fears growing that the president would stand for re-election and win, for a fifth time in 2019, whatever the cost to Algeria’s political evolution.

10 The UAE seems to have funded the Tamarroud Movement which was the vehicle through which the Egyptian army actually ousted the Morsi government. The UAE also used Egypt as a pathway for the delivery of weapons to Khalifa Haftar, the military leader in Cyrenaica (Kirkpatrick 2015).