‘Inclusive’ Neoliberalism, Local Governance Reforms and the Redeployment of State Power: The Case of the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH) in Morocco

Abstract

This contribution uses the National Initiative for Human Development in Morocco as a case study to show the effects of ‘inclusive’ neoliberal local governance reforms on local state–society relations and the redeployment of state power. This initiative, launched by the king in 2005, is designed to improve socio-economic conditions in targeted poor areas through new participatory local governance mechanisms. The article argues, first, that these mechanisms in fact serve to strengthen the power of the appointed representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, especially at the province level, at the expense of local governments. Second, the findings show that by instrumentalizing local associations to access INDH funds, local councillors base their legitimacy increasingly on their renewed alliance with the king through the INDH and the clientelist relations it allows them to maintain, rather than on their status as political representatives. This contributes to the fragmentation and weakening of local (political) accountability.

Introduction

The current wave of revolutions in the Arab world has not spared Morocco. The King of Morocco announced constitutional reforms which were overwhelmingly adopted in a popular referendum on 1 July 2011.1 They followed long-standing demands from several political parties and NGOs, as well as the recently constituted 20 February movement that had successfully called for demonstrations in several towns beginning on 20 February 2011. The timing of the constitutional reforms and the early legislative elections held on 25 November 2011 can certainly be explained by the monarchy's fear of a spill-over of the ‘Arab spring’ uprisings to Morocco.

The number of riots had already been increasing sharply since 2006, protesting against poor living conditions and the lack of employment opportunities particularly among the young and well-educated. Even those with public sector jobs have been striking widely for better pay and job security.2 The 2003 Casablanca bombings had also served as a wake-up call that something had to be done urgently to address the situation of the poor and marginalized people, who are seen as easy prey for Islamist mobilization. Indeed, Morocco struggles to improve its human development indicators, especially on education, which are far below the levels expected for a middle-income country.3

This article focuses on what the king himself has called a ‘chantier de règne’, i.e. a reign-long effort that will define his legacy in the long term, namely the National Initiative for Human Development (known under its French acronym, INDH), which is implemented at the level of rural and urban local governments (communes) and urban neighbourhoods, mostly through local ‘civil society’ organizations. The INDH is an excellent example of the now dominant combination of neoliberal institutionalist governance (building on principles of New Institutional Economics and normative decentralization) with ‘inclusive’ neoliberal policies (promoting ‘participatory democracy’ through participatory poverty assessments and planning) in the global development agenda (Craig & Porter, 2006: 252). It illustrates very well the dual processes of ‘vertical disaggregation’ of state functions promoted by New Institutional Economics, i.e. how, as an alternative to the perceived slow, corrupt and clientelist central government, the local level has become the privileged scene for government action and donor-funded programmes and projects where ‘responsive agencies held accountable by informed citizens would provide a less corrupt institutional environment for local business and better access to decentralized service delivery’ (Craig & Porter, 2006: 12).4 The INDH is also an example of the ‘horizontal disaggregation’ of the state, i.e. how, in line with the principles of ‘inclusive’ (neo)liberalism that emphasize the ‘joined-up’ co-production of services (Craig & Porter, 2006: 93), ‘civil society’ associations and NGOs become the preferred partners, along with the private sector.5

The INDH is also based on and further entrenches the neoliberal assumption according to which the role of the state is to foster ‘responsible citizens’ to take care of themselves, rather than to support the material costs of social policies. Individuals, not the state, have the responsibility to ensure their inclusion in the market: the state is not supposed to invest in assistance, but to facilitate individuals' access to the market economy by taking on an active role for overcoming their personal condition of marginality (Bono, 2011a; Zemni & Bogaert, 2009: 102). This is illustrated by the fact that the INDH encourages the ‘marketization’ of development (for example by launching calls for project proposals by open competition, as well as demanding co-financing6 from civil society and the private sector for the delivery of public services), and shifting the responsibility for public services from the state to the citizen as well as ‘civil society’ and the private sector through ‘contractualization’, i.e. performance-based contracting and management. The ‘participatory’ and ‘capacity building’ aspects of the INDH (see below) demonstrate how, while retaining core conservative neoliberal macro-economic and pro-market policy settings, ‘inclusive’ neoliberalism adds ‘positive liberal’ approaches emphasizing ‘empowerment’ to enable participation (and ensure ‘inclusion’) of people in local markets (Craig & Porter, 2006: 12). Indeed, all these features can be summed up under the label of ‘good governance’ reforms: promoting economic opportunity through global market integration, and enhanced social and economic security and empowerment through innovative governance arrangements for local delivery of public services (Craig & Porter, 2006: 2).

The historical context for the INDH is the Structural Adjustment Programme that Morocco underwent in the early 1980s, which promoted the usual tools of liberalization, deregulation and privatization in the neoliberal toolbox, but which also hit the middle and low-income group the hardest and exacerbated the country's uneven development. Bogaert and Emperador (2011: 246), citing Hibou, argue that these reforms did not necessarily lead to the loss of state power but rather to the ‘redeployment’ of state power into more indirect modalities of state rule, and they give the INDH as a prime example of such redeployment. I argue here that this redeployment takes place under the guise of ‘inclusive’ neoliberal principles, producing hybrid forms of governance in which both market and local territorial powers coexist, with perverse implications for accountabilities around poverty outcomes (Craig & Porter, 2006: 252). To support the argument I critically assess the INDH's institutional framework, i.e. its ‘participatory’ mechanisms, the role of local governments (called communes in Morocco) and local councillors, the involvement of local ‘civil society’, the powers given to the Ministry of the Interior and, finally, their effects on local political accountability.

In terms of methodology, this paper is based on (published and unpublished) reports and articles, especially by the National Observatory on Human Development (ONDH) which has produced several studies since its establishment in 2006.7 Informal interviews were conducted with key informants in Rabat in January 2011. The paper also draws on the hitherto rather limited empirical research on the INDH conducted by Yasmine Berriane (2010) and Irene Bono (Allal & Bono, 2008; Bono, 2010a, 2010b, 2011a, 2011b) and a shorter analysis by Iván Martín (2006).

The paper is organized as follows. The next section gives some background on the programmes and investments of the INDH, before examining the participatory mechanisms it has put in place, and the ensuing increase in the number of local associations. The bulk of the paper deals with the INDH's governance mechanisms and the changes in the balance of power it promotes between the various stakeholders, intentionally or not. The paper ends with some observations on how the INDH relates to Morocco's decentralization reforms and accountability issues. The paper argues that despite the widespread rhetoric linking the INDH to the grounding of ‘participatory democracy’ in Morocco, the findings suggest that it has in fact strengthened the power of the Ministry of the Interior's representatives at the expense of local governments, that it has served as a vehicle to co-opt regime-friendly NGOs and local associations, and that it has led to the fragmentation and weakening of local (political) accountability.

The INDH's Programmes and Projects

The INDH is widely perceived to be a key instrument to re-establish the king's links with the Moroccan people and thus contribute to the monarchy's continued legitimacy (ONDH, undated: 100). Since the launch of the INDH in 2005, the ‘fight against poverty’ has been presented by the king as the domain in which to reproduce the same ‘symbiosis between the throne and the people’ which enabled the independence of the country (Bono, 2011a). As Bono (2011a) points out, the INDH is the only public policy in Morocco that has an anniversary (18 May), a slogan and a logo, which are displayed and repeated at every occasion celebrating the national cause. The framing of the INDH within a patriotic register also makes the strategy unquestionable as a public agenda, which no political party is supposed to (and so far has not dared to) put in question.

In the king's speech on 18 May 2005 in which he announced the INDH, he asked the government to adopt an action plan based on the principles of good governance, which he defined further as being responsibility and transparency, professionalism, the widespread participation of citizens, integration and rationalization of the interventions of the public sector and institutions, and continuous monitoring and evaluation.8 More recently, and as an obvious response to the ‘Arab Spring’, official documentation on the INDH has included respect and human dignity as part of its ‘value system’ (INDH, 2011a: 9, 2011b: 17). The king has personally been involved from the start, inaugurating projects on an almost daily basis and in a well-publicized manner, even leading him to be called ‘the inaugurator’ (Benchemsi, 2008). The first phase lasted from 2006 to 2010 and was financed with 10 billion Dh (about €900 million), funding approximately 20,000 projects targeting 5.2 million people. A few projects were launched urgently in 2005 following the king's speech, for which an additional budget of 250 million Dh was made available. The second phase (2011–15) was officially launched on 4 June 2011, with almost double the budget of the first phase – i.e. 17 billion Dh (about €1.5 billion).9 Given that the second phase will use essentially the same institutional architecture as the first phase (with a few changes in programming), this paper focuses on a discussion of the first phase.

The initiative consists of four programmes: the programme combating social exclusion in urban areas (in 264 urban neighbourhoods in 36 cities); the programme combating poverty in rural areas (in 403 rural communes); the programme combating vulnerability (targeting 50,000 vulnerable people such as homeless and street children, women in extreme poverty, beggars, ex-prisoners without incomes and disabled and old poor people, living mostly in urban areas); and a cross-cutting programme. This last programme consists of a Provincial Competitive Fund intended to finance development projects with a high impact on human development in all non-targeted rural and urban areas, on the basis of a call for proposals at the level of provinces (El Hajam & Medouar, 2009). The rural and urban areas were chosen based on poverty levels as determined by the 2004 poverty maps.10

According to the review of the first phase (INDH, 2011b: 37, 39, 43), a total of 22,000 projects have been launched. Almost half of all projects (more than 9000) were carried out under the cross-cutting programme, with a total investment of 4.3 billion Dh, mostly to local associations.

The projects in the four programmes fall mainly into three categories (INDH, 2011b): public works (such as rehabilitating or building new schools, youth, sports and cultural centres and health clinics, and furnishing them with equipment), economic development projects (mainly income-generating activities and various professional training), and infrastructure projects to improve living conditions (such as sanitation, water and electricity supply, roads, etc.). It seems that the programmes are effective in reducing poverty: a national demographic survey by the Planning Authority (HCP) in March 2011 found that the poverty rate in the INDH target communes decreased from 36 to 21 per cent (INDH, 2011a: 33), though the INDH's Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) system did not include indicators on incomes etc., and the results of a rigorous impact evaluation are not yet available (World Bank, 2012: 10). Rather than assessing the INDH's material outcomes, this paper now turns to its ‘participatory’ mechanisms. Critics of such ‘participatory’ poverty and needs assessments and planning exercises argue that they constitute a classic ‘inclusive’ neoliberal approach to framing poverty in ‘local vulnerability’ rather than political economic terms. Further, they extend the qualitative reach of liberal framing and surveillance of poverty, and by associating NGOs with them, have the effect of turning potential civil society critics into consensual governing partners (Craig & Porter, 2006: 79). The findings presented here with regard to the INDH seem to confirm these claims.

Participatory Approaches and the Growth of ‘Civil Society’

There is no space here to give a detailed history of participatory approaches in Morocco (see Bergh, 2008), but what is clear is that the INDH has further reinforced a trend that started in the early 1990s with the implementation of various ‘participatory’ small-scale rural development programmes.

The most important outcome of this trend is that participation is now widely equated with the setting up of local associations and therefore, by extension, the growth of ‘civil society’. Many government programmes require there to be formalized local associations to apply for funding and projects. Indeed, there has been a mushrooming of such associations over the last 15 years or so, with even very small rural villages of 100 inhabitants having up to three or four such associations, all created for specific purposes as part of government or donor programmes (e.g. irrigation water user associations, drinking water user associations, parent–teacher associations for schools, cooperatives for commercializing olive oil etc.). The INDH's implementation mechanisms, especially the cross-cutting programme, also mean that in many cases new associations were created for the sole purpose of submitting a project proposal (ONDH, undated: 100–101). Bono (2010b: 32) reports that in the province of El Hajeb, the INDH contributed to the dramatic increase in the number of associations from 450 in 2004 to more than 830 in February 2010.11 According to the review of the first phase (INDH, 2011b: 62), the INDH partnered with a total of 6337 associations (of which 9 per cent are cooperatives), 60 per cent of which were created after 2005. This growth has led to a situation where a considerable part of the population (17 per cent) report being a member in associations, compared to 2 per cent who are members in political parties or trade unions (ONDH, undated: 62).

The beneficiaries, organized in associations or cooperatives, are required to contribute a part of the costs of development projects in which they are involved. This can be done, for example, by offering hours of labour in the construction of local infrastructure, or by assuring a part of the funding requested for promoting an activity either directly or by using microcredit. As Bono (2011a) points out, the INDH demands individual contributions to demonstrate ‘ownership’ and ‘responsibility’. In practice, however, for the associations, participation in the context of the INDH actually often means a simple consultation rather than real involvement in community development. Indeed, in the rural areas, the representatives of the Ministry of the Interior at the province level (at the Division de l'Action Sociale – DAS) consider the ‘participatory diagnostic’ to be an annual collection of grievances on the part of the population, rather than a multi-year bottom-up planning exercise (ONDH, 2009: 67–68; and confirmed by ONDH, undated: 63). This is confirmed by the World Bank's (2012: 13) finding that

the work was conducted in a wide variety of ways and is of mixed quality, ranging from best practice to weak. Most of the projects identified are high impact, poverty-reducing projects, but in only some cases are the ILDHs [Local Initiatives for Human Development, five-year local development plans for the period 2006–10] genuinely multi-annual phased investment programmes built on a truly participatory process, validated with and owned by poor people and poor communities within the commune. Many are project lists updated from time to time, pieced together through a range of consultative processes of varying quality.

Weak internal governance practices of local associations (see Bergh, 2009b, 2010b) and the INDH's bureaucratic requirements contribute to a situation where a small circle or even one person only develops a project proposal to be submitted to the DAS/INDH on behalf of an entire village, yet the intended beneficiaries are not even aware of it as they were not involved. Furthermore, since access to resources offered as part of the INDH is regulated by representatives of the central authority, associations wishing to benefit from them are likely to cooperate with the Ministry of Interior. They may even opt for auto-control strategies, in order to present themselves as ‘good development actors’, abandoning activist engagements such as participating in strikes and demonstrations, offering solidarity to other social movements, or even expressing any political sympathy or attitude (Bono, 2010b: 37, 2011a).

In urban areas, protest associations (associations revendicatives) – i.e. those that put forward rights-based claims of residents to government authorities – have been excluded from participating in the local representative bodies of the INDH (the CLDH, see below), even though they are well rooted in the targeted areas and enjoy considerable weight among the population. This seems to be mainly the case for neighbourhood associations established as part of slum clearing programmes and illustrates the government's strategy of excluding (potential or real, and particularly Islamist) opposition movements from government programmes such as the INDH (ONDH, 2009: 68).

In short, ‘participation’ as practised in the INDH results in two questionable outcomes: first, by focusing on lists of projects that strictly fit into the menu ‘on offer’ in the three categories of projects mentioned earlier, the INDH reinforces the framing of the causes of poverty as lying in the lack of infrastructure and services only, rather than wider structural conditions of trade or existing distributions of power and property (Craig & Porter, 2006: 136). Second, officials are using the ‘participatory’ mechanisms to exclude more regime-critical associations from access to funds. However, the INDH must be credited with promoting the rapid growth of (potentially developmental) local associations, opening up new spaces of participation to encourage deliberations between state and societal actors, especially women, who were traditionally excluded from public fora (see Berriane, 2010).

The INDH's Governance Mechanisms and their Implications for the Local Balance of Power

In this section, I will systematically analyse the various governance arrangements set up by the INDH at all levels of governance (see ONDH, 2009: 63–64, undated: 99) to show that they have strengthened the power of the Ministry of the Interior's representatives at the expense of local governments.

At the national level, a strategic committee is headed by the prime minister in charge of budget allocation, training, communication and convergence strategies, and monitoring the evaluation indicators. A steering committee, headed by the Ministry of Social Development is tasked with ensuring overall coherence and leading the vulnerability programme. The National Coordination Unit of the INDH is located in the Ministry of the Interior, and responsible for the day-to-day management of the various programmes.

At the regional and provincial level, the walis and governors (representatives of the Ministry of the Interior) chair the 12 Regional Human Development Committees and the 70 Provincial Human Development Committees (the latter are known under their French acronym, CPDH). They have the power to approve and consolidate (at the provincial level) the Local Initiatives for Human Development, i.e. the development plans and projects drawn up by the 667 Local Human Development Committees chaired by the presidents (mayors) of the commune councils. These local committees are – at least on paper – responsible for the implementation and follow-up of the projects and ensuring the convergence with the sectoral programmes (i.e. the programmes designed and implemented in a mostly top-down fashion by sectoral ministries and provincial departments in the area of education, health, public works, agriculture, etc.). The local committees are supported by almost 700 communal and neighbourhood social mobilization teams (les équipes d'animation communale et de quartier – EAC/Q). The work of all these various committees at the sub-national level is being overseen by the already mentioned Social Action Divisions (Division de l'Action Sociale – DAS) in the Ministry of the Interior offices at the province level (numbering 70), reporting directly to the provincial governors, who are in turn appointed directly by the king.

The level of the CPDH is where real decision-making power lies with regard to the selection of projects in the cross-cutting programme through the Provincial Competitive Fund (see World Bank, 2012: 41ff.). The ONDH's study on participation (cited in ONDH, 2009: 63ff; see also ONDH, 2010: 8) finds that while the CPDH is supposed to represent the sectoral ministries, councillors and civil society, the local councillors are in most cases only represented by the president of the provincial (in rural areas) or préfecture (in urban areas) council. This means that the commune presidents (mayors) and councillors representing the targeted communes and urban neighbourhoods are effectively side-lined. Similarly, the study notes that this is due to the guidelines that only give observer status to the chairs of the Local Human Development Committees (i.e. the mayors), and hence they do not get to decide on budget allocations. In other words, there is no incentive for commune presidents and councillors to spend their time going to CPDH meetings. As for the NGOs represented on the CPDH, they often have a provincial or even national scope, rather than local, and lack detailed local knowledge. It is therefore not surprising that local actors accuse the CPDH of being an institution without any real links to the local level where the INDH projects are being implemented. As the World Bank (2012: 7) notes,

resources were delegated only to provincial (CPDH) level, which is far from local stakeholder control over resource allocation. In addition, much subproject implementation was by government departments or by the provinces. These realities meant that in this first phase the poor and vulnerable end users were sometimes only marginally involved in a process driven mostly by officials.

This is of course not to deny the fact that the INDH has certainly led to the strengthening of many NGOs through its training and capacity-building components, and the emergence of new local elites in the NGO sphere, including younger, educated civil servants as well as well-educated and well-connected women. The argument made here (and in the earlier section on participation) is that by selectively distributing INDH funds, the government remains in control as to which new elites are allowed to emerge and which are not. The latter include members of the Islamist organization Al-Adl-Wal-Ihsan (see Berriane, 2010; Bono, 2011b).

Moving to the level of the Local Human Development Committees (known under their French acronym of CLDH), they are composed of 10–15 members, with one-third local councillors, one-third representatives of local associations and one-third representative of government ministries or civil servants employed by the Province/Ministry of the Interior. The main issue here is that in rural areas where ‘civil society’ is weak, the local councillors have invaded and come to dominate this sector as presidents or members of associations, eager to influence the allocation of INDH resources to their associations which they then use in political competition (Bono, 2010a: 10; and see Bergh, 2009b and 2010b for a more detailed discussion of this phenomenon in the pre-INDH period). Hence the councillors can often be found as representatives in the CLDH quota reserved for NGOs. This is perfectly understandable behaviour when we consider the marginalization of the local councillors (in their capacity as local councillors) in the CPDH.

The weak role of the commune councillors (as councillors) is further reflected in the low levels of the communes' contract ownership of INDH projects. The mid-term review (ONDH, 2009: 46ff.) analysed the contract ownership of the projects (la maîtrise d'ouvrage des projets) and showed that the state (i.e. sectoral ministries) is dominating the scene, being responsible for more than half of all disbursed funds. It points out the very weak involvement of the communes, being responsible on average for 23 per cent of expenditures in rural areas and scarcely 9 per cent in the cities. Indeed, out of the 29 urban communes that together received almost 30 per cent of the total INDH funds for 2005–08, 17 of them did not take contract ownership for any projects at all.12

Similar to the rural councillors, urban councillors also feel side-lined from the centres of power, given that the CLDH's activities are very limited compared to those of the DAS and the neighbourhood social mobilization teams (EAQ). Hence it is not surprising that in some cases there is no difference in membership between the CPDH and the CLDH apart from the fact that the former is chaired by the governor. Of course this duplication of institutions lacking linkages with the targeted population goes against a core idea of the INDH – that the CLDHs are supposed to channel the local demands from civil society member and local councillors up to the province level (ONDH, 2009: 65–68). This state of affairs could help to explain the fact that almost half of the respondents who were classed as ‘INDH beneficiaries’ in the Perception Study conducted in early 2008 had never heard of the INDH before, and among all respondents (beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries), only 36 per cent were aware of the existence of the CLDH (ONDH, undated: 46, 55).

As for the role of the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior, the caïd, the perception study (ONDH, undated: 60) asked the respondents whom they would favour as a dialogue partner (‘partenaire qui doit mener la concertation avec la population’) and almost half of them mentioned the caïd or his village/neighbourhood representatives (cheikh and moqdem – collectively referred to as ‘autorités locales’). They were followed by the councillors (29 per cent), the associations (26 per cent), the CLDHs (17 per cent) and the local social mobilization teams (11 per cent). This shows that in the eyes of the population, the traditional locus of power still resides to a large extent with the caïd. In fact, these local actors are those with the longest (though mostly authoritarian) experience in developing the ‘culture of proximity’ that is central to the INDH, rather than the new actors that are officially central to the INDH's success such as the DAS and EAC/Q (ONDH, undated: 100).

This implies that the ‘new concept of authority’ (le nouveau concept de l'autorité) may now become tangible on the ground. Shortly after his accession to the throne, King Mohamed VI introduced it on 12 October 1999 in his speech to the regional and provincial governors and commune council presidents.26 He explained that this new concept is based on ‘the protection of public services, local affairs, and individual and collective liberties; and on the preservation of security and stability and the maintenance of social peace’. Most importantly, these responsibilities ‘require a direct contact with the citizens and treating their problems on the ground by associating them in the search for appropriate solutions’. It has been argued that this new concept of authority amounts to a new culture of public service based on the respect for decentralized institutions and local liberties (Harsi & El Yaagoubi, 2006: 191–192; see also Benyahya and Bouachik, 2001). Bono (2010a: 36) argues convincingly that the application of this concept of proximity to the citizen, at least in the context of the INDH, means the arbitrary, case-by-case application and even transgression of official laws, rules and norms. For example, more than half of the income-generating activities (known under their French acronym as AGR, Activités Génératrices de Revenus) are being implemented by associations and cooperatives which lack the capacity to manage them professionally and adhere to the administrative guidelines. Most importantly, their non-profit status is hard to reconcile with the profit-making objectives of the AGR (ONDH, 2009: 54; see also World Bank, 2012: 42ff.). Allal and Bono (2008: 21–22) conclude that in the name of ‘proximity’, local officials find multiple ways around this legal hurdle and even manage to allow individuals to benefit from INDH funding, rather than groups of people as originally intended. Given this application of the concept, it is not surprising to find that most of the INDH-related official literature is devoid of any rights-based language or concepts.13

Most importantly, the governor has been designated as ‘ordonnateur du budget’ (official with power to authorize expenditure), allowing him to disburse funds within one month rather than having to wait for the nine months or so that it usually takes via the Ministry of Finance. Given his powers, there is the risk of personalization of the INDH by him or DAS staff, marginalizing other actors (notably the elected councillors) and giving way to clientelism in the allocation of projects or procurement contracts (ONDH, undated: 99, 102, 104; Ksikes & Tritki, 2009; Bono, 2010a). This risk is increased by the king's ‘invitation’ to the wealthy national and local elites to contribute to the INDH in the form of private and organized philanthropy, either by reorienting their own charitable initiatives to the INDH, setting up a charitable association or foundation for direct financial or material contributions, or contributing to one of the many royal foundations created to fight against poverty, in return for certain favours such as tax breaks (Bono, 2011a). As Bono (2010a: 25) points out, what would previously have been viewed as clientelist practices are now couched in the spirit of generosity and the ‘relations of trust’ needed for the success of the INDH. International donor representatives are aware of the problem of clientelism and the risk of elite capture, yet it remains to be seen whether they will take any strong action to mitigate these in the second phase (see ONDH, undated: 109; El Hajam & Medouar, 2009; World Bank, 2012: 14, mentioning ‘problems with targeting’, and interviews).

Finally, at the level of the communal and neighbourhood social mobilization teams, the study on participation (cited in ONDH, 2009: 66) notes that their composition varies from a predominance of civil servants, to association members, or even pupils and students. In many cases, the level of education has been privileged in the choice of members rather than whether they are rooted in the locality, and, in any case, as in the CPDH, the members of local associations are often superseded by associations of provincial or even national scope. The INDH has substantially contributed to the growth of a new breed of consultants and facilitators, skilled in what is called ‘social engineering’.14 Between 2006 and 2009, around 2500 local facilitators, of which 16 per cent were female, were employed as part of the EAC/Q (El Hajam & Medouar, 2009). A huge training operation was mounted at the start of the INDH to train 12,000 caïds and local councillors in conducting participatory needs assessments and strategic planning to develop the ILDH (Ksikes & Tritki, 2009). Such training was often outsourced to consultancy firms.

The importance of ‘social engineering’ is also underlined by the host of guidelines, procedural manuals, toolkits and handbooks produced by the INDH, the Ministry of Social Development and the Social Development Agency for use by the various actors, in order to ‘normalize’ and standardize the participatory approach, including participatory diagnostics and monitoring and evaluation procedures (INDH, 2011b: 33; Bono, 2010a: 12).15 As Zemni and Bogaert (2011: 412) point out, ‘this technocratic approach to development evacuates to a large extent the possibility of politics as conflict is translated into a development target that has a solution based on certain kinds of expertise and knowledge’. As also argued earlier in this article, the technification of social and political problems via ‘participation’ de-politicizes the latter and obscures wider structural issues of political economy, such as the structure of core productive sectors, and labour markets in them. However, this process also re-politicizes participation as serving the makhzen's16 need for enhanced information on and control over the local territories and populations, not least through the constant ‘threat’ of random financial and performance audits on certain associations (Bono, 2010a: 19).

Furthermore, in line with the neoliberal paradigm, another major focus of the capacity-building activities is on the individual and his or her integration into the economic and social fabric by enhancing his or her social competences. The ultimate objective is to foster ‘the emergence and diffusion of a self-enterprising spirit’ and access the market via membership in associations (INDH, 2011b: 49, 52; Bono, 2010a). As Bono (2010b: 35) points out, the importance of achieving such a ‘self-enterprising spirit’ legitimizes the forceful ‘encouragement’ to attend training by local representatives of the Ministry of the Interior directed towards association members.

In short, it could be argued that the INDH has shifted the local balance of power in favour of the Ministry of the Interior at the expense of local governments, and contributed to the emergence of new elites in pro-regime associations and consultants as new intermediaries or brokers between the makhzen and the people.

The INDH, Current Decentralization Policy and Accountability Issues

Having argued that one of the INDH's main effects on local governance is the marginalization of local governments, it is instructive to consider how it relates to the new (amended) Municipal Charter that came into force in 2009. The effective sidelining of the latter in many INDH-targeted communes illustrates well some of the pitfalls of ‘inclusive’ neoliberal local governance reforms highlighted by Craig and Porter (2006: 92, 96), namely the fragmentation of governance resulting in overlapping reforms, messy, ineffectual coordination at local levels and weak (political) accountability around development outcomes. The new Municipal Charter stipulates that every commune needs to have a six-year Communal Development Plan (known under its French acronym, PCD), covering the period from June 2010 to June 2016.17 Before then, the communes were supposed to have their own plans as part of the National 2000–2004 Five-Year Plans, but these in practice did not amount to much more than a few separate project files, many of which were not implemented. The INDH thus gave a useful impetus to prepare local monographs and diagnostics, which were then used to develop the ILDHs (El Hajam & Medouar, 2009).

There is however the question of whether the INDH is taking the requirement for PCDs into account. While some governors have allocated INDH funding for capacity building to develop the PCDs in a participatory way, and a considerable number of communes are supported by the Social Development Agency18 in this task, the general picture emerging from the interviews is one of a ‘souk’ (market) of PCDs where the main winners are – again – consultants, contracted either by the Ministry of the Interior on behalf of the poorer communes, or by the (wealthier) communes themselves. As with the ILDHs, many consultants do not have the necessary experience or incentives to develop the PCDs in a participatory way but simply deliver the final product to the communes (sometimes even only in French!). The latter thus comply with the Charter's requirement, but without having had any meaningful involvement. This situation most probably does not contribute to enhancing the communes' legitimacy in the eyes of the population. The PCDs may also not contribute much yet to developing the capacity for local democracy, one of their official principal objectives.19 Some bureaucratic posturing is clearly going on within the Ministry of the Interior – the department in charge of local governments believes the PCDs should include the ILDHs, while the INDH National Coordination Unit does not want to have anything to do with the PCDs as it would mean that the INDH would lose visibility on the ground.20

The conclusion drawn by the mid-term review is revealing here (ONDH, 2009: 57). It points out that while the INDH's principal long-term objective is to promote a new form of governance and spatial management through the participation and involvement of the populations and local governments, the fact that the latter are not participating to any significant degree means that there is a risk that the INDH may be accused later on of having worked against decentralization. To this is added the tension between wanting to adopt a participatory approach and the need to show results quickly, which means the INDH is often considered as an opportunity to mobilize financial resources rather than as an approach to stimulate local development and governance (ONDH, 2009: 72; see also ONDH, undated: 63). Indeed, only 3–4 per cent of all projects in the rural and urban sub-programmes were devoted to strengthening governance and local capacities (World Bank, 2012: 33, 36).

As for the concept of local accountability, it seems to be of limited applicability within the INDH.21 It is quite revealing that the 2008 mid-term review (ONDH, 2009: 87) only mentions the concept in its last chapter on recommendations, and the authors seemed to have deemed it necessary to give the English translation for the French term ‘la reddition des comptes’, in case the latter is not well known among the readers, or perhaps to satisfy donors that they knew would be looking for this concept. In fact, in the various documents on the INDH consulted for this paper, it is hardly mentioned, or then only by referring to the lack of it (see ONDH, undated: 110). For example, citizens having submitted project proposals to the DAS report feeling like

pupils waiting for the exam results. Whether the application fails or is successful, no explanation is given. Some even fear that their projects are being ‘pirated’ [i.e. that the DAS would steal their ideas and later implement them under its own banner, claiming credit] or that the allocation of project funding is already pre-determined. (ONDH, undated: 65)

Indeed, the selection criteria for the open call in the cross-cutting programme leave quite a large room for manoeuvre to the CPDH, and also the ineligibility criteria can be amended by the latter ‘according to local specificities’. This is provided that the project application even makes it to this second round, as the DAS staff can eliminate it on grounds of non-adherence with the (rather vaguely defined) programme objectives in the first round (INDH, 2006: 8, 11; World Bank, 2012: 49). This state of affairs would seem to confirm the interpretation of the new concept of authority as discussed earlier.

Of course, the fact that the INDH is funded to a considerable degree by donors does not necessarily contribute to strengthening downward accountability.22 The performance audit report for 2006–08 (Alouane et al. 2009: 3, 12) notes that the performance indicators (numbering 49) were determined without consulting those responsible for implementing the programmes at the local level, but were negotiated and agreed between the Moroccan government and the various international partners, mainly the World Bank and the European Union. Indeed, if anything, it seems that the main stakeholders within the government administration (notably in the Ministry of the Interior) are mainly concerned with ensuring their accountability vis-à-vis the initiator of the INDH (the king) by holding numerous seminars and forums among themselves (ONDH, undated: 112). Perhaps this is how they interpret the king's call for accountability in the speech by which he launched the INDH in 2005, saying ‘impregnated by the culture of evaluation and the need for all actors to be accountable for their actions in the exercise of their functions, a culture that we intend to see rooted in the management of public affairs, we are making an appointment in three years to evaluate the results of this new Initiative’.23 The World Bank's Implementation Completion Report (2012: 7–8, 10, 48) also notes the lack of two-way communication channels between the ‘beneficiaries’, governance bodies and project sponsors to report on implementation, usage and satisfaction, and the largely absent grievance mechanisms.

Given that this is a ‘chantier de règne’, the stakes are very high for the makhzen, and there is a widespread sense that the INDH must not fail, or if it is seen to do so, the elected government (prime minister and cabinet) should be blamed, but not the makhzen. According to an international consultant who applied for a consultancy to evaluate the INDH,24 he was told by a government official that there was no point in him applying for this job as the results are already known – i.e. that the INDH had already been declared a success. The review of the first phase (INDH, 2011b: 59) is equally positive about its achievements and ‘overwhelming success’, though it does list some issues for improvement in the second phase. The World Bank (2012: 7) notes that the National Coordination Unit in the Ministry of the Interior ‘tended not to use the results of M&E or ONDH to learn, and after an initial stage it disbanded the innovation teams which could have helped it capitalize on lessons’. The World Bank report (2012: 21) further states drily that the ‘INDH's high profile and the consequent pressure to show success placed constraints on data collection and reporting’.

However, probably also due to the high expectations raised by the media, the perception study (cited in ONDH, 2009: 62; see also ONDH, undated: 70, 81) revealed that almost half the people in the sample were not satisfied by the actual implemented projects. The main reason given for this was corruption, theft or clientelism, which were cited by 39 per cent of the respondents (ONDH, undated: 82). Similarly, half of all respondents thought that the approach and implementation procedure would not have positive results with regard to good governance (ONDH, undated: 84).25 Not least as the result of pressures from international donors, a significant effort is now underway to identify impact indicators and to collect benchmark panel data to be able to measure the INDH's real impact over time. It remains to be seen to what extent these efforts will contribute to downward accountability to the citizens.

Conclusion

To conclude, the analysis of the INDH's implications for local governance seem to indicate a paradoxical situation: while there is a widespread discourse around participation in and support for local ‘civil society’ resulting in increased democratization, in fact what has emerged so far is an increase in the power of the (unelected) representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, notably the civil servants in the DAS and the governors, at the expense of the local governments and elected councillors. These local elites in turn tend to occupy the space of civil society to access resources and thus base their social legitimacy increasingly on their renewed alliance with the king through the INDH and the local clientelist relations it allows them to maintain, rather than on their status as political representatives. In this sense, the INDH could be said to contribute to the erosion of local party politics that is already well underway at the national level (see Willis, 2002; Liddell, 2010).

As a case study of ‘inclusive’ neoliberalism and institutionalist governance modes to poverty reduction, the findings on the INDH presented here show the (both intended and unintended) outcomes of such an ‘impossibly rational and elaborate, a perfect and expensive system laid down on a very fraught local situation’ (Craig & Porter, 2006: 19) that ultimately contributes to an ‘inclusion delusion’ (Craig & Porter, 2006: 252), weakened political accountability and the redeployment of (authoritarian) state power.

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the useful comments by the anonymous reviewer, Janine A. Clark and Asa Maron on an earlier draft. I also thank Irene Bono for generously sharing some of her written work on the INDH. I am grateful to my employer, the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of the Erasmus University Rotterdam for research funding, and to the interviewees in Morocco for sharing their insights with me.

Notes

¹ For details, see Bergh (forthcoming, 2012).

² L'économiste (newspaper), issue no. 3464 of 10 February 2011: ‘Fonction publique, à chacun sa grève’, available at: http://www.leconomiste.com/article/fonction-publique-chacun-sa-greve (accessed 14 February 2011).

³ Morocco ranks 114th in the 2010 Human Development Index out of 169 countries, behind Egypt (101st) and Tunisia (81st). However, this is an improvement from the 127th rank in 2009. See http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/ (accessed 14 February 2011) and INDH (2011a: 33).

⁴ See Bergh and Jari (2010) for a collection of papers on local governance in the MENA region, available at: http://www.fatih.edu.tr/ ∼ jesr/vol12%281%29.htm, and Bergh (2010c) for an assessment of decentralization and local governance reforms in the region.

⁵ See for example the case study on such donor projects in Al Haouz province (Bergh, 2010a).

⁶ In the cross-cutting programme, 70 per cent of the funds needed for a project can be paid by the INDH and 30 per cent from other sources, according to the guidelines (INDH, 2006: 5).

⁷ Most of the ONDH studies are not available on-line (see http://www.ondh.ma/LangFr.aspx?r = 16), or only in summary form (see ONDH, 2010). In a meeting with the secretary general at the ONDH on 25 January 2011, he explained to me that this is due to the fact that the ONDH's board members do not agree with all the findings presented in the reports that were commissioned from consultants, and hence prefer not to put them on-line for fear of them being cited as ONDH-approved reports. This illustrates the ONDH's dilemma which is that it is supposed to be an institution able to objectively evaluate the INDH, but in practice it depends directly on the prime minister's office for funds and appointment of board members, and hence only enjoys limited freedom to be critical of the INDH. (This situation was confirmed by two board members that I also met.) Nevertheless, I was given some of these reports in hard copy, including that on the perception of the INDH (referred to here as ONDH undated), which is in fact titled as a draft report. I found the studies to be methodologically sound and credible, as far as this could be judged, and their findings are largely corroborated by independent empirical analysis (e.g. Bono, 2011a). All translations from French into English are my own.

⁸ For the text of the speech, see http://www.indh.ma/fr/article.asp (accessed 14 February 2011).

⁹ For details, see http://www.lematin.ma/express/2e-phase-2011-2015-de-l-INDH_SM-le-Roi-preside-a-Jerada-la-ceremonie-de-presentation/151976.html (accessed 2 November 2011).

¹⁰ See http://www.tanmia.ma/carte_pauvrete/royaume.swf (accessed 2 November 2011).

¹¹ The ONDH study on the role of civil society (cited in ONDH, 2010: 11) found that out of the 480 associations in the sample, three-quarters were less than 10 years old.

¹² This raises important issues of sustainability and convergence between the projects financed by the INDH and the pre-existing sectoral programmes and plans which are however beyond the scope of this paper (see World Bank, 2012).

¹³ Although a national seminar on the INDH did pose the question of ‘how to transform the participatory approach into a right and not a process’ though it seems no clear answer was given (INDH, 2011a: 10).

¹⁴ In French this is called ‘ingénierie sociale’, which has a rather unfortunate, but most probably unintended, connotation of ‘manipulation’ in English, whereas it is probably meant to refer to ‘social work’ or a social intervention. See the website of the Ministry of Social Development, Family and Solidarity, see http://www.social.gov.ma/fr/index.aspx?mod = 3&rub = 12&srub = 60 (accessed 14 February 2011).

¹⁵ See also the website of the Ministry of Social Development for such handbooks: http://www.social.gov.ma/fr/index.aspx?mod = 1&rub = 80 (accessed 2 November 2011).

¹⁶ The word makhzen literally means treasury – i.e. the place where all the state revenues are deposited. The term came to denote the Moroccan government as a whole and today, makhzen refers to the power structures surrounding the monarchy (Bergh, 2008: 81).

¹⁷ See Touti (2010) for details. The new policy framework also includes the establishment of Communal Information Systems.

¹⁸ The Social Development Agency (known as ADS) is a Social Fund set up in 2001 with a World Bank loan. See http://www.ads.ma/ (accessed 12 February 2011).

¹⁹ Interview with senior official (governor) in the Ministry of the Interior, 21 January 2011.

²⁰ Various authors' interviews in January 2011.

²¹ See Bergh (2009a) for a discussion of issues in public sector accountability through civil society in Morocco at the national level.

²² Out of the first phase's total budget of 10 billion Moroccan Dirham ($1.2 billion; €900 million), 60 per cent was provided by the central government (including a 100 million loan by the World Bank), 20 per cent by 14 donors in the form of grants and 20 per cent was taken from the budget reserved for local governments (interview with donor agency official, 26 January 2011; World Bank, 2012: 3).

²³ Available at http://www.indh.ma/fr/article.asp (accessed 14 February 2011).

²⁴ Informal meeting in Rabat, 22 January 2011.

²⁵ The World Bank report (2012: 50) mentions two qualitative surveys undertaken by the INDH in 2009 and 2011 but notes that their quality is unclear as only a brief summary report is available from 2009 and a draft summary from 2011. I did not have access to these reports but it seems that their findings are much more positive than those in the ONDH's surveys cited here.

²⁶ Available at: http://www.maroc.ma/NR/exeres/1563520F-92DE-408F-AD8F-11CE3ABF3365 (accessed 14 February 2011).