Trajectories of depoliticization and re-politicization: Petitioning to Moroccan municipalities

ABSTRACT

Does the exercise of the right to petition allows citizens to act politically? This paper looks at the practice of presenting institutional petitions to Moroccan municipalities since the inception of this right. It inquires on the ways in which citizens and associations employ petitions to engage with their local government. By discussing the diverse trajectories of citizens’ exercise of the right to petition, this paper will highlight the interdependence of depoliticization and (re-)politicization at the local level. It is based on extensive qualitative and quantitative research on municipal petitions, the process that led to their presentation and their outcome, conducted over 20-months of presence in the field (February 2020 – December 2021). Reviewing the outputs of the petitions presented in the city of Tangier, this paper shows that the performance of the right to petition entails both dynamics of top-down de-politicization and pathways for re-politicization of citizens’ action. Further, the institutionalization of the right to petition and the limits to initiatives’ implementation curtail the political relevance of engagement through petitions. At the same time, it challenges local power balances by creating a frame that allows for further political engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Petitions
• politics
• citizen’s participation
• local governance
• Morocco

Introduction

The dynamics of citizens’ political engagement in the MENA region go well beyond ‘formal’ political participation.¹ In spite of declining electoral turnouts and shrinking civic spaces, survey data from the Arab Barometer shows that citizens continue engage in a multitude of practices to express their opinion and influence political outcomes (Thomas, 2019). This data shows that demographic and socio-economic attributes, in conjunction with the recent histories of these countries, mainly explain the variations in form and frequency of citizens’ engagement. Yet, first-hand empirical examinations of such diverse forms and frequencies of political action remain scarce.²

Morocco is no exception. A diverse set of collective mobilizations and innovative practices of exercising political agency developed against a backdrop of limited formal participation and high levels of distrust towards political institutions (Masbah et al., 2020). These include regional mobilizations with different objectives, such as in Al-Hoceïma and the Rif region, Jerada, Ouarzazate and Zagora. The 2018 consumers’ boycott and increased political activity in digital spaces also represent alternative forms of engagement (see for instance El Marzouki, 2018; Iddins, 2020). Moreover, the 2011 Constitution contributed to reshaping citizens’ political engagement strategies. Despite the general acknowledgement that this constitutional reform absorbed the demands for change without questioning the monarchy’s supremacy (see for instance Benchemsi, 2012; Vairel, 2014; Volpi, 2013), it also included a series of innovations aimed at ‘ensuring citizens’ participation and contribution to policies and decision-making at all levels’.³ The right to petition figures amongst such innovations.

Introduced with the ambition to diversify bottom-up engagement in decision-making processes (Zaanoun, 2021), the right to petition allows citizens and associations to add a question to the agenda of their local governments’ councils. If accepted, the petition will have to be discussed during the following session.⁴ So far, the right to petition national institutions has been rarely seized: 11 petitions have been presented since 2016, three of which have been accepted and, yet, none has seen actual implementation. The onerous conditions to exercise this right and the ample room for manoeuvre left to national authorities to decide upon petitions’ outcome are key obstacles (Colin, 2023). On the contrary, citizens and associations have increasingly exercised the right to petition at the local level – and particularly to municipal councils. Official data shows that out of 212 local petitions presented between 2015 and 2019, the overwhelming majority has been presented to municipalities (155 initiatives) against a limited engagement at the provincial or prefectural (34 initiatives) and regional level (23 initiatives) (General Directorate of Local Governments, 2019). Despite some limitations in terms of who actually manages to present a petition and its policy outputs (Colin & Bergh, forthcoming), the growing exercise of the right to petition to municipalities renews the interest in the diversification of citizens’ engagement strategies.

The goal of this paper is to understand whether the exercise of the right to petition allows citizens to act politically. On one hand, citizens’ action is depoliticized when its influence on decision-making is limited. On the other, citizens act politically when their engagement leads to challenging the consensus, either about the rights they are claiming or about way they are supposed to participate.⁵ Simply put, it delves into the dynamics of depoliticization and re-politicization that result from the array of interactions within the space provided by the petition.

To do so, this article examines the motives that spur citizens’ action, the broader progress of their engagement, and the posture of other actors involved in the process. This implies focusing on the issues that citizens bring forward through petitions and their eventual policy outcomes, as well as on the implicit and explicit understanding of how citizens should participate. After having situated the right to petition in current debates, this paper will focus on the initiatives presented to the municipality of Tangier between 2015 and 2021. Fundamentally, this article demonstrates co-existing dynamics of depoliticization and re-politicization through the exercise of the right to petition. Concretely, citizens’ engagement in participatory arenas depends on their relationship with the municipal council. Yet, such engagement can also influence this relationship substantially, and especially so when citizens exceed the normative boundaries of the right to petition. Ultimately, the evolving relationship between actors underscores the interdependence of depoliticization and re-politicization.

Literature review: citizens’ participation in the prism of depoliticization and re-politicization

The discussion on the way in which the right to petition influences citizens’ capacity to act politically is grounded in the need to focus the analysis of participatory processes on the wider political processes they entail (Neveu, 2011). Therefore, this section critically examines the debates on depoliticization and (re-)politicization with three main goals. First, it will extrapolate key theoretical insights on how to identify either processes. Second, it will spotlight the scholarship that focused on the MENA region to situate theory within relevant empirical cases. Third, this section will clarify the analytical expectations of this paper by reflecting on the key lessons of both theoretical and empirical studies – thereby delineating the gap that this paper seeks to fill, and how.

Theoretical underpinnings

As a starting point, one’s specific understanding of ‘what is political’ deeply affects the way in which depoliticization and re-politicization are appreciated (Beveridge, 2017; Hay, 2014). As Hay (2007, p. 65) puts it, politics ‘relies on the capacity for things to be different’. Thus, citizens’ capacity to influence decision-making processes represents a key indicator of politicization or depoliticization alike. Indeed, Wood and Flinders (2014) describe politicization as the process of making an issue a matter of public decision-making and contingency, while depoliticization is associated with its removal from the sphere of public deliberation. Concretely, politicization happens as issues become the matter of increasingly collective deliberation. Conversely, depoliticization occurs when decisions of public interest are not associated with a collective deliberation (Beveridge & Naumann, 2014).

However, these considerations can be applied to both the content and location of decisions (Krippner, 2011, p. 146). This means that depoliticization and re-politicization are processes that do not only relate to the actual subject of such decisions, but also to the arena in which they are taken and the actors involved. In this sense, issues are depoliticized as less and less people pay attention to the matter and invest resources to gain a voice in decision-making, while politicization implies that both the actors taking decisions and the ones monitoring them are broader and more diverse (Papadopoulos, 2017). Therefore, as Hay argues, depoliticization represents ‘a displaced and submerged politics – a politics occurring elsewhere, typically beyond sites and arenas in which it is visible’ (2014: 302). Yet, such displacement does not imply that depoliticization erases the politics of decision-making; rather, it signals an effort aimed at limiting citizens’ participation in these processes.

Moreover, the depoliticization of an arena may cause the politicization of another one – thereby suggesting that these phenomena often happen concurrently (Flinders & Buller, 2006). The co-existence of depoliticization and (re-)politicization is evident in the work of Legacy (2022), who framed these dynamics around the notion of consensus. Building on the works of Mouffe (2005, 2013) and Rancière (1995), Legacy describes state’s politics as a composition of practices, discourses and institutions that are aimed at establishing a certain consensus, which can then be challenged by political action that proposes a counter-hegemonic consensus (2022: 3–4). In this framework, depoliticization represents the processes which led to establishing and protecting a consensus, while re-politicization marks the challenges posed to the current consensus (Legacy, 2022, p. 4).

To sum up, depoliticization and re-politicization are processes that are fundamentally linked to citizens’ involvement in the decision-making process: changes in the issues that can be the subject of public deliberation, in the spaces where decisions are taken, and in the actors involved are clear signal of either processes. Plus, depoliticization and re-politicization are often intertwined. Practically speaking, some actors push for the depoliticization of some issues while others try to bring them back in the public arena. Actors and issues are included and excluded from the arena of public deliberation as the spaces for citizens’ participation are transformed. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand how these dynamics play out concretely.

Depoliticisation and (re-)politicisation in the MENA

Although depoliticization and (re-)politicization remain largely understudied in the MENA region, the literature available yields valuable insights on how these dynamics play out empirically. First, this scholarship has clarified states’ central role. In the case of Morocco, Maghraoui (2002) explained how the monarchy depoliticized economic policies by framing them as a technical issue rather than a political one. Here, the state’s effort to remove economic policies from the arena of public deliberation is at the core of the depoliticization process. In an earlier example, Hamdi (1998) argued that the relative lack of state control on emerging Islamist movements in the University of Tunis was a key factor of their politicization. In this case, it is the (relative) absence of the state that allows a bottom-up politicization to happen.

Second, this scholarship also noted that depoliticizing’ efforts were often directed to civil society actors. For instance, Ferguson (2017) observed how political liberalization reforms in Jordan contributed to depoliticizing associations. Concretely, the state managed to take off the table its survival by legalizing an increasing number of activities for association, while simultaneously restricting their scope of (political) action. In Ferguson’s words, depoliticization implied that ‘[associations] pursued an apolitical response to a political problem’ (2017: 61). Furthermore, Clark’s (2018) seminal work on local politics in Morocco also shows how the state’s depoliticizing strategies reached the local level by offering technocratic civil society organizations a path to integrate municipal governance. As Bennani-Chraïbi (2011, p. 70) already demonstrated that the boundaries between political action and action in civil society (action associative) are porous and constantly negotiated, states’ interest for the political dimension of civil society may not come as a surprise.

Third, empirical studies on the region also showed the concomitance of depoliticization and re-politicization. In the case of Lebanon, Baumann (2016, p. 643) described the interdependence of these processes by observing that ‘[the] politicisation of sectarianism required the de-politicisation of alternative social cleavages along socio-economic lines’. Here, state’s effort to politicize sectarianism comes at the expenses of depoliticizing other divisions – hence reasserting the independence of these processes. However, (re-)politicization can also happen as an ’unintended consequence’ of states’ action. This is clear in the work of Vairel and Zaki (2011), who showed that the top-down depoliticization aimed at quelling protest movements did not exclude avenues for bottom-up politicization depending on actors’ room for manoeuvre. Moreover, Cavatorta (2016) argued that depoliticization at the macro level does not exclude a potential re-politicization at the micro level – thereby adding a crucial reflection on the scale of these phenomena. Since ‘local extra-institutional struggles […] are intensely political in terms of challenging power structures’ (Cavatorta, 2016, p. 91), examining citizens’ action at the local level is crucial to understand how depoliticization and (re-)politicization dynamics unfold.

The literature that analyses depoliticization and (re-)politicization in the MENA added different nuances to the theoretical considerations made above. Notably, it highlighted the role of the state in shaping this arena, as well as its attention to civil society’s capacities and room for manoeuvre. However, this literature also corroborated the co-existence of processes of depoliticization and (re-)politicization – either as planned goal or ‘unintended’ consequences. These considerations make the right to petition an ideal case study for these dynamics.

Analytical expectations

These theoretical and empirical accounts showed that both depoliticization and (re-)politicization may result from a broad spectrum of phenomena. If the literature showed that these dynamics are often connected, their interdependence at the local level has yet to be examined. This article contributes to this literature by shedding light on the wider political process that the exercise of the right to petition entails, drawing attention to the interdependence of depoliticization and (re-)politicization at the local level. As the result of the state’s effort to shape participation, this case can illustrate the way in which the state influences decision-making processes for citizens and civil society. At the same time, the way in which citizens exercise the right to petition can reveal how they respond to top-down efforts to shape their participation at the local level. Centrally, this paper has the ambition to shed light on the relational dimension of local politics, focusing on ‘how actors have managed to transform how governance is materialized on the ground’ (Clark et al., 2022, p. 271).

Concretely, the assessment of whether participatory dynamics entail a process of depoliticization or re-politicization needs to consider the interplay between which decisions are taken (content), by whom and where (location). On one hand, citizens’ action is depoliticized when its influence on decision-making is limited. Broadly speaking, the impression that most participatory processes lead to increased depoliticization is due to the legitimation of a decision only on the basis of its technical rationality, rather than its political value (Moini, 2011, p. 159). Said differently, depoliticization happens when participatory dynamics are valued on the basis of the design and implementation of the process that led to the decision, rather than on the actual content of the issues at stake. In this sense, the top-down regulation of the right to petition may have such effect by clearly defining the boundaries of the rights that can be claimed through petitions and the process to do so. Moreover, the implementation (or lack thereof) of citizens’ initiative will provide key insights on citizens’ actual influence on local decision-making processes. On the other, citizens act politically when their engagement leads to challenging the consensus, either about the rights they are claiming or about way they are supposed to participate. As such, participatory processes may also contribute to the (re-)politicization of citizens’ participation. This is especially the case when they raise the attention on issues that were not part of the public debate (Bobbio, 2017, p. 627). Moreover, dynamics of re-politicization are evident in the ‘unintended uses’ of these mechanisms (Leifsen et al., 2017). Ferreira and Allegretti (2019, p. 452) also pointed out that, especially in authoritarian contexts, ‘any form of public participation can reveal promising surprises’. They note that participatory processes can create spaces for citizens’ learning and accountability – even if partial – through their public and traceable features. Hence, the exercise of the right to petition may produce a bottom-up (re-)politicization of citizens’ action. Crucially, both the issues raised through the right to petition and the strategies to achieve implementation may play a key role in allowing citizens to act politically.

Data and methods

This section presents the analytical and methodological choices underlying the observation and analyses of the exercise of the right to petition to Moroccan municipalities. Then, it discusses the wider framework of the data-collection process to present the empirical data grounding this paper.

Concretely, the exercise of the right to petition generates an encounter between the citizens presenting the petition and the municipal council, where the former claims a right (i.e.: the right to petition and its specific demand) and the latter decides upon it. From a procedural perspective, citizens or associations present their petition to the municipal council which assesses its compliance to the legal framework and, if conform, adds the topic of the petition to the agenda of the following municipal council meeting. While this regulation provides certain guarantees that formally compliant petitions will be discussed by the council, it does not include any insurance on the implementation of citizens’ initiative. In short, the implementation of the petition depends on the municipality.⁶

Furthermore, such encounter does not happen in a void. On the contrary, the interaction between the actor presenting the petition and the municipal council is mediated both by the conditions to exercise the right to petition and by the specific historical, political, and social context of a given municipality. In this matter, the space created by the exercise of the right to petition is akin to the notion of ‘participatory sphere’ – where ‘heterogeneous participants bring diverse interpretations of participation and democracy and divergent agendas’ (Cornwall & Coelho, 2007, p. 2). This understanding of the right to petition stresses the importance of how actors exercise this right and the interactions that such agency entails, thereby recognizing the ‘essentially processual, projective and relational nature’ of rights claims (Neveu, 2013, p. 207).

The data used in this study has been collected by the author between February 2020 and December 2021 in the framework of a mixed-methods fieldwork for a PhD project. The fieldwork began with a cross-cutting analysis of the right to petition throughout Morocco to collect quantitative data on the exercise of this right. In parallel, the first-hand experiences of citizens and associations with the exercise of the right to petition in different localities have been explored through semi-structured interviews, focus groups, as well as ethnographic observation. Moreover, different discussions with local elected officials and individuals involved in donors’ programmes engaged with the promotion of the right to petition also provided different perspectives on the use of petitions in Morocco.

To do justice to the methodological considerations made above, this paper explores the exercise of the right to petition and its relationship with depoliticization and (re-)politicization in a specific context – namely the city of Tangier. This choice of location follows a purposeful sampling, defined as a selection of ‘information-rich cases whose study will illuminate the question being investigated’ (Patton, 2015, p. 401). Specifically, Tangier represents an information-rich case study because of the number and diversity of citizens’ initiatives: 20 petitions have been submitted to Tangier’s municipal council between April 2019 and March 2021, against an average of one to three initiatives presented in the other cities where citizens exercised this right. Moreover, the discretionary power left to municipalities to implement petitions also motivates the choice of focusing on one city. Concretely, this choice allows an in-depth exploration of citizens’ different experiences while holding the municipal context constant. As different actors overcame the visible and invisible barriers to submit a petition, it becomes possible to focus on the trajectories of their engagement and underscore the diversity of depoliticization and (re-)politicization processes.

The available data has been analysed systematically to identify the reasons for citizens’ exercise of the right to petition and their assessment of the results. Interviews targeted citizens that presented petitions, NGOs staff, elected officials and civil servants in Tangier’s municipal council. A total of 24 interviews have been transcribed and then coded inductively with Nvivo to identify recurrent themes, concepts and patterns concerning the phenomenon being studies (O’Reilly, 2009; Patton, 2015). Ethnographic observations also complemented the analysis of interview data by providing further elements to adjust and refine the analytical process (Gobo, 2008). Following the logic of case-oriented research (Ragin, 2015), the different observations of citizens’ experiences with the right to petition will determine the relevance of the theoretical framework proposed earlier in the paper.

While this approach may limit the generalizability of findings given the peculiar case, focusing on Tangier allows to observe a broad array of interactions and hence generate crucial insights that may be further explored by more comparative research. Far from claiming perfect representativity on the uses of petition, this study of Tangier represents an ‘extreme case’ (Seawright & Gerring, 2008, pp. 301–2). In this sense, the high number of petitions provides an opportunity to probe possible explanations on the broader political processes entailed by the exercise of this right.

Same rights, different results? The politics of implementing (or not) petitionary initiatives

The political relevance of the exercise of the right to petition is evident from the politics surrounding the implementation of citizens’ initiatives. As introduced above, the legal framework does not provide any insurance that the petition will be implemented. It only ensures that – if accepted – it will be discussed during the next municipal council. Yet, few initiatives actually see the light of day even Even the municipal council is in favour of their implementation. Hence, identifying the elements that influence the implementation (or lack thereof) of petitionary initiatives sheds light on citizens’ potential to influence decision-making through the exercise of this right.

The first obstacle that petitioners must overcome is the compliance to the conditions to exercise this right. Although the admissibility of a petition may seem exclusively dependent on its conformity with the legal framework, the attitude of the municipality is also central. On one hand, the rigid application of the conditions can lead to rejection on the basis of technicalities (Colin & Bergh, forthcoming). On the other, municipalities can also show flexibility to maximize the petitions included in the agenda of the councils’ meetings. This attitude has been observed in Tangier, where the municipality actively worked to ensure legal compliance. In the words of a civil servant working for Tangiers’ city council:

Although we receive petitions missing some formalities, we do not reject them automatically, but we inform the petitioners of the weaknesses of their petition and ask them to re-submit it.⁷

Such flexibility, coupled with a dynamic civil society sector and numerous projects aimed at raising awareness on the new mechanisms for participation,⁸ contributed to the development of a favourable environment for the exercise of the right to petition.

Overall, 20 petitions have been presented to the municipality of Tangier between 2018 and 2021. All of them have been presented by associations,⁹ with 14 petitions relating to public service delivery and 6 concerning changes in municipal regulations. Petitions need to relate to municipalities’ prerogatives (such as local waste treatment, public health, and management of public space) and this explains why most of them relates to public service delivery. In parallel, the petitions engaging with municipal regulations propose changes in the internal rules of the council and on the functioning of the municipality. Demands to institutionalize advisory bodies, to change the rules to allocate public funding to associations, or to apply new rules for urban development are examples of these petitions. This topic distribution is in line both with the dataset collected by the author and with the trend observed throughout Morocco by the Ministry of Interior (see General Directorate of Local Governments, 2019). In terms of outputs, the council deliberated in favour of 19 of them, while only one petition was formally rejected. However, the record of implementation is far from being as positive: the available data shows that only four of the petitions have been implemented and there are considerable variations in terms of actual outputs.

Two of the implemented petitions related to public service delivery and oppose a specific project. The first one demands to the closure of a poultry factory that was causing nuisances to a neighbourhood. The association of neighbours that presented the petition conducted a series of actions to solve this issue which, however, did not lead to any concrete change.¹⁰ After participating in a training, they filed a petition raising this issue and the factory closed. A staff member of the organization that trained the association to present the petition explains their trajectory clearly:

They did many, many protests. They contacted the prefecture; they got in touch with the municipality … they knocked on the doors of all the stakeholders that could be linked to this issue. But the association was not knocking doors in the right way. […] When you use the petition, the institution [contacted] is, legally speaking, obliged to consider your petition and process it. […] that is why with this petition we had feedback.¹¹

Their success is attributed to engaging in the proper arena for citizens’ engagement, thus acting in ‘the right way’. This assessment differs substantially from the reasons attributed to the implementation of the second petition, which relates to the construction of a car parking in the Al Mendoubia park. This initiative came about as a group of youth noticed the project and oppose it, including by submitting a petition. After gathering the signatures and a first failed attempt for its presentation, they relied on another association to submit the petition on their behalf. They also organized public events to collect signatures, allowing them to meet fellow citizens and raise awareness on their initiative. They also engaged in a wide social media campaign and, once they saw the response, they started building a local youth movement focused on the protection of the environment. In the end, the municipality accepted the petition and agreed to construct the car park elsewhere. Differently from the petition to close the poultry factory, the initiators of this petition value considerably more the actions taken beyond the formal procedure:

We studied the matter from a legal perspective and hence the idea of filing the petition […] Implementing our demand is not credited to the petition alone, but especially to the pressure we put on the municipality to prevent bulldozers from destroying the park.¹²

Both these initiative allowed to bring certain issues to the attention of the municipal council and, despite the different approaches, they also yielded a concrete output. The same cannot be said for the petitions that proposed substantial innovations in local service delivery. Tangier’s municipal council accepted and recommended the implementation of most of submitted petitions, but concrete actions rarely followed. The case of a petition proposing a safe haven for women victims of violence is exemplary. In the first interview with the president of the association that proposed it, the petition’s cost-effective approach (i.e.: transforming an existing centre into a safe space for women instead of building a new one) caused optimism for its implementation.¹³ However, a follow-up interview a year later revealed that the municipality did not implement the proposal due to the lack of funds.¹⁴ Unsurprisingly, budget issues are the key obstacle for the implementation of petition. Even a relatively big city such as Tangier does not seem to have the financial autonomy to follow-up on citizens’ initiatives.¹⁵ Moreover, when the petition tackles public service delivery involving multiple stakeholders, there are further obstacles to achieving concrete outputs. The Association of Teachers of Life and Earth Science (AESVT Maroc) examined the specifications of waste managements’ contracts and presented a petition to propose the valorization of domestic waste. The person in charge to follow-up the petition reported how the municipality had a very positive reaction in the beginning, but then no implementation followed. At first, the lack of funds and space to implement the project seemed to be the main issues. Later, it became clear that the real obstacle was to meet with the service providers to discuss changes, as they have neither the incentive nor the legal obligation of following-up the petitionary initiative.¹⁶

The petitions tackling changes in the regulatory framework of the municipality have to be addressed from a different perspective. The implementation of these petitions may be relatively easier as they rarely require funding. However, the challenge is assessing whether they actually have been implemented. In most cases, the limited information available on local governance does not allow to confirm the implementation of the petition if it is not explicitly announced by the municipality. Based on the information available, two of these petitions were implemented and yielded visible results in Tangiers. The first one was presented by the Ibn Battuta Centre for Studies and Research in Local Development and related to the institutionalization of a participatory budget.¹⁷ Once the petition was approved, the municipality partnered with the Ibn Battuta Centre to facilitate the co-ordination and with the Ministry of Relations with Parliament and Civil Society to provide the funding for 2020. However, there is no information available on the continuation of the project after 2020. Similarly, a petition by the Mediterranean Democratic Institute for Development and Training (IMDDF) proposed the institutionalization of an advisory body for local youth (i.e.: ‘Youth Council’). They also organized meetings with political parties and members of the council to present their initiative in informal advocacy campaigns. After its acceptance, the municipality launched a public call to select its members and partnered with the IMDDF to facilitate its activities. Once the members had been selected and the council was about to start their activities, they were halted by the wali¹⁸ – who worried about the instrumentalization of this body for the 2021 electoral campaign.¹⁹ At the time of writing, the youth council is inactive. Once again, the main outputs of the petition have been the inclusion of this advisory body in Tangier’s municipal regulation and the partnership with the municipality – although the latter did not survive the changes due to the 2021 elections. Even if the administrative staff of the municipality assured that petitions are administrative decisions and that their implementation does not depend on political orientation,²⁰ the reality shows that results (and their durability in time) are profoundly bound to the political choices of local officials.

Discussion: top-down depoliticization vs bottom-up re-politicisation?

The analysis of petitionary initiatives in Tangier showed that the exercise of the right to petition provides the municipality with multiple inputs on citizens’ ideas and priorities for local governance, while not ensuring much ‘bite’ in terms of concrete implementation. The experiences described above showed two opposite, but coexisting, trends: the features of the right to petition and the related constraints to citizens’ influence on local decision-making foster a process of top-down depoliticization of citizens’ participation while, inversely, the performances of this right show pathways of re-politicization of citizens’ action through the right to petition.

The limitations imposed by the legal framework for the exercise of the right to petition lay the first stone for the top-down depoliticization of citizens’ engagement at the local level. Fundamentally, municipalities’ position in the architecture of the advanced regionalization is less strategic and more related to the implementation of the priorities established at the regional level (Bergh, 2016). The fact that most municipalities depend on central government transfers’ and that these resources are allocated on the basis of the Municipal Action Plans is in clear contradiction with the right to petition: by design, municipalities’ fiscal planning does not allow for citizens’ spontaneous participation. Moreover, the fact that the exercise of the right to petition does not entail any concrete legal obligation to implement the initiatives further proves that citizens’ participation is encouraged only at a cosmetic level. Elected officials bear great autonomy in deciding whether they will take into consideration citizens’ inputs. In the words of an interviewee:

So, the demand is there, it is the citizens. But if we do not have the implication of the municipality, the recipe is not complete. It is at the core of the process’ success. If the municipality does not want to collaborate, in the end we have got nothing. Its collaboration and implication are fundamental.²¹

In this matter, depoliticization happens as the political value of participation is submerged and displaced, rather than reduced (Hay, 2015, p. 214). The inherently political value of citizens’ efforts to gain a voice in local decision-making is deliberately withheld in favour of an understanding of the right to petition as a civic contribution to improve local governance.²² Moreover, citizens’ role in these processes is further marginalized, since the implementation of petitions depends on the continuous collaboration with the municipal council and other relevant stakeholders. Even if citizens may politicize issues by submitting a petition to the municipal council, their limited role in the implementation corroborates the inherent process of top-down depoliticization of citizens’ engagement.

Moreover, the regulation of the right to petition as the ‘right’ arena for citizens’ participation may lead to channelling bottom-up engagement and discourage other forms of action. As the result of a state-led effort to organize public participation, this implicitly aims at limiting citizens’ participation to an arena under the control of the state (Aldrin & Hubé, 2016). Such a channelling effect is evident when local actors cease demonstration in the public space and present their grievances through institutional petitions exclusively. Even though the growing number of protests shows that the right to petition does not absorb popular grievances, their channelling potential has been observed in other localities (such as Sefrou or Tan-Tan), where local actors increasingly mobilize through institutional petitions rather than protest.²³ In Tangier, the case of the petition against the poultry factory may serve as an example, since the petitioners stopped exerting pressure on local decision-makers after presenting their initiative. Arguably, participation is promoted as a matter of procedural compliance and thus depoliticized (Moini, 2011).

Nonetheless, the exercise of the right to petition opens the possibility for citizens to engage in actions beyond the formal submission – such as monitoring and holding officials to account for their actions, or lack thereof. As ‘unintended uses’ of the right to petition, these practices show the potential for a re-politicization of citizens’ action. Even if the institutionalization of the right to petition consolidates authorities’ decision-making power at citizens’ expenses, the emergence of new forms of (political) engagement through its exercise reveals the potential for a re-politicization of citizens’ action (Valbjørn, 2012, p. 30).

Concretely, different cases illustrate institutional petitions’ potential to foster new forms of engagement. The petition of the youth fighting the car parking in the Al Mendoubia park was the basis to develop a broader environmental movement. As Bennani-Chraïbi (2021) reminds us, moving from individual to collective action also represents an important signal of politicization. The meetings with municipal councillors organized by the IMDDF are another example of engagement beyond the requirements of the legal framework. Similarly to what has been observed in the context of ‘quasi-democratic’ institutions in China (Distelhorst, 2017), the right to petition creates a space in which bottom-up engagement is politically acceptable. Further, the engagement in participatory spaces provides the possibility to try out new strategies and alliances – creating the conditions for unexpected results even when policy outputs are lacking (Cornwall & Coelho, 2007, p. 9). In a context where citizens’ traditional mobilizations for rights claims may be severely repressed (Berman, 2021), institutionalized arenas for participation provide a legitimate context for citizens’ action – implicitly creating new opportunities for bottom-up action.

On top of accompanying the presentation of their petitionary initiative with other actions, citizens tend to focus on the achievement of their objectives rather than on the procedural act of presenting a petition. Once the compliance of the petition is verified, they change their stance by focusing on implementation. Practically speaking, petitioners may carry out different actions to hold municipalities accountable for their commitment towards the petition. This can entail a broader shift of focus towards the monitoring of the initiatives. For instance, this interviewee explains the actions to take following the election of the new municipal council:

In 2021 there were new elections so the old council … is not there anymore. Now that there is a new council, there just needs to be a follow-up. [The petition] is an act of advocacy, so there needs to be continuous reminders to the municipality so that they take into considerations the commitment [the previous council] took.²⁴

This has also been observed in the case of the petitions that had been implemented and have been blocked by the election of a new council. For instance, the IMDDF plans to send out letters to the newly elected municipal councillors to ask what are their plans for the Youth Council.²⁵ In all these examples, exceeding the formal boundaries that regulate the exercise of the right to petition demonstrates citizens’ active resistance to the top-down depoliticization of this right. Be it by supporting the petition with other mobilization, or by holding officials accountable for their implementation, citizens challenge the consensus on how rights should be claimed by diversifying their repertoire of action.

The evolving relationship between the actors involved also shows the tension between depoliticization and re-politicization. First, exercising the right to petition implies that citizens recognize the municipality as the proper interlocutor to solve their issue. Such interaction is believed to represent an improvement of the relationship between citizens and municipality per se: petitions become a ‘tool that enables community dialogue’²⁶ and reinforces the trust between the petitioners and the municipal council. The municipal council also appreciates the inclination to frame petitions as a collaborative effort, thereby explaining their relative success.²⁷ The case of the youth against the car-parking is again exemplary:

The president of the municipality met with [the head of the movement], where they discussed the possibility of implementing the parking lots project elsewhere. We rejected two out of seven proposals.²⁸

This excerpt shows that the improvement in their relationship can – potentially – be mutual: not only the legitimacy of the municipality is reinforced, but citizens can also gain legitimacy as actors in local governance. However, when municipalities systematically fail to implement citizens’ initiatives, their legitimacy as the proper actor to solve local issues is rapidly eroded. Alas, citizens will not continue to exercise their right to petition if it leads nowhere.²⁹ This, however, does not mean that citizens will not continue to claim their rights:

In general, we are going to use [the right to petition] if it is useful and gives concrete results […] If it doesn’t work out, we will definitely look for other strategies to express ourselves.³⁰

In line with the scholarship that showed that seizing institutionalized arenas for participation does not necessarily exclude the engagement in other forms of action (Blatrix, 2002; Neveu, 2011), institutional petitions’ lack of concrete policy output can justify and motivate increasingly political forms of engagement.

In sum, the institutionalization of the right to petition eroded the political dimension of citizens’ participation and revealed the (political) choice of crystallizing a specific power balance at the local level. Creating a new space for participation did not entail their inclusion in the actual ‘location’ of decision-making: citizens may participate but the decision on which actions to take lies elsewhere. At the same time, the exercise of the right to petition challenges such power balance in at least two ways. First, it creates a frame that allows citizens to engage in other actions that reinforce their position vis-à-vis the municipality. Second, it provides a basis to hold elected officials accountable by calling for the respect of their commitments – further tipping the scale in favour of citizens. Since the challenges to power balances embedded in the status quo are also profoundly political (Hickey & King, 2016, p. 1234), and especially so at the local level (Cavatorta, 2016), these challenges represent another avenue for the re-politicization of participation through the right to petition. Even if the right to petition does not yield substantial policy outcomes, its potential to re-politicize bottom-up engagement in the long run should not be dismissed. After having exercised their right to petition, citizens realize that having a say in local governance is their right.³¹

Conclusion

The study of the citizens’ diverse experiences with the right to petition in Tangier revealed that both processes of depoliticization and re-politicization coexist, in tension, within the same participatory arena. On one hand, the institutional design of the right to petition limits citizens’ influence and consolidates the wide margin for manoeuvre left to public authorities – ultimately pointing towards a depoliticization of citizens’ engagement through this arena. The partial politicization that may result from the inclusion of an issue into the realm of public deliberation is largely dependent on the procedural compliance of the initiative. Yet, authorities’ full control on petitions’ final outcome further constrains their political relevance. Examining both the content and location (Krippner, 2011, p. 146) of decision-making through petitions showed that the partial politicization of participation that happens by raising attention on novel issues is rapidly eroded as decision-making powers remain unquestionably in local authorities’ hands – effectively depoliticizing the process.

On the other hand, the diverse trajectories of citizens’ engagement are not necessarily limited by formal opportunities. The performative dimension (Isin, 2017) of the exercise of the right to petition creates the space to challenge the power balances that limit citizens’ engagement in local governance. Citizens’ action goes beyond what is foreseen in the law: they mobilize new publics in different arenas, create collaborations, and engage in actions to hold local officials to account. Taking a close look at the exercise of the right to petition sheds light to the politics embedded in participatory arenas, highlighting the tension between stakeholders who move issues within and beyond the realm of visible politics (Rancière, 1995). If the design and overall implementation of institutional petitions tend to depoliticize participation by limiting it to a consultative role, citizens’ practices show that they can re-politicize their engagement by exercising their citizenship beyond the role the state ascribed them. Participatory arenas remain spaces in which political subjectivities are formed, contributing to the transformation and development of the discussion on what makes society and how to transform it (Neveu, 2011).

This study also opened novel perspectives on the study of depoliticization and re-politicization in the MENA region. So far, this scholarship has mostly focused on macro dynamics of depoliticization (especially through the increased technocratic management of economic policies) and on state’s politicization of certain issues as a strategy to reassert its centrality. Responding to the calls to ‘avoid to naturalise, universalise, or set up as standard a singular story of politics’ (Bennani-Chraïbi, 2021, p. 307), this study complements this literature in multiple ways. First, it goes beyond the analyses of citizens’ participation focused on outcomes and looks at the inner dynamics of participatory arenas. If the case of institutional petitions is peculiar to Morocco, the findings of this paper are still relevant for the study of the wide array of participatory innovations that are employed by governments in the MENA. Transcending the analysis of outcomes allows us to look at whether (and, eventually, how) these governance innovations allow citizens to act politically. Second, it focuses on the interplay of macro (i.e.: the legal framework) and micro (i.e.: stakeholders’ intention and behaviour) dynamics in processes of depoliticization and re-politicization. As highlighted by the existing scholarship, the state plays a central role in depoliticizing participation. Regardless, citizens still bear the agency to exercise their rights and act politically. Lastly, this research showed the fundamental influence of the relationship between actors on depoliticization and re-politicization alike. Focusing on the role of the state should not neglect local officials and other stakeholders’ contribution to both the depoliticization and re-politicization of citizens’ action. As an example, this paper showed clearly that municipalities’ stance towards participation fundamentally influences the political relevance of institutional petitions. Even in the context of highly depoliticizing mechanisms, citizens managed to creatively claim their rights and actively engage politics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I would like to acknowledge the support received for the elaboration and publication of this paper. My gratitude goes to Mark Lynch and Francesco Cavatorta, for providing fundamental feedback in the framework of a POMEPS Virtual Research Workshop, as well as to all the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. A special thanks to Kees Biekart and Sylvia Bergh, who supervised my doctoral research.

2. The edited volume ‘Political Participation in the Middle East’ (Lust & Zerhouni, 2008) represents an exemplary exception.

3. Official portal of participatory democracy in Morocco, available here: https://www.eparticipation.ma/fr/se-documente

4. The data and methods section will clarify the main elements of the petitionary process, while the empirical section will provide concrete examples.

5. This paper limits its focus on the dynamics (re-)politicization through challenges to the status quo, albeit recognizing that actions to support and consolidate a consensus are also profoundly political.

6. The right to petition municipalities is regulated by of Organic Law n^o 113–14 (2015; articles 121 to 125) and decree n°2-16-403 (2017). This framework also stipulates that petitioners must be informed in written if their initiative is rejected. Citizens also have to attach to a list of signatures to support their initiative to submit the petition.

7. Interview with M.A., civil servant, 24/08/2021.

8. The role of these projects has already been acknowledged. For instance, see Colin and Bergh (forthcoming. The role of ‘professionals of participation’ in Morocco has also been discussed by Cheynis (2016).

9. The exemption from collecting the signatures to support the petition for associations explains that there are no petitions presented in the name of citizens.

10. A testimony of their grievances can be found in this reportage: ‘The suffering of the residents of the Al Majd neighbourhood in Tangier due to the problem of unpleasant odours’, Tanja24, 21/09/2018. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyCvuV5hGRQ (last accessed 09/11/2022).

11. Interview with F.A., NGO worker, 28/08/2021.

12. Interview with Z.A. and N.H., civil society actors, 24/03/2021.

13. Interview with Y.A., civil society actor, 25/02/2021.

14. Interview with Y.A., civil society actor, 23/02/2022.

15. Interviews indicate that the financial health of the municipality has been further jeopardized by the COVID-19 crisis. See also: Khatla Kenza, ‘La commune de Tanger peine à boucler son budget 2021’, Medias24, 9/10/2021. Available at: https://medias24.com/2020/10/09/la-commune-de-tanger-peine-a-boucler-son-budget-2021/ (last accessed 10/03/2022).

16. Interview with R.A., civil society actor, 25/03/2021.

17. More information on the project can be found on the website of the association: https://centreibnbatouta.org/%d8 per centa7 per centd9 per cent84 per centd8 per centa8 per centd8 per centb1 per centd8 per centa7 per centd9 per cent85 per centd8 per centac-%d9 per cent88 per centd8 per centa7 per centd9 per cent84 per centd9 per cent85 per centd8 per centb4 per centd8 per centa7 per centd8 per centb1 per centd9 per cent8a%d8 per centb9/ (last accessed 09/11/2022)

18. The wali (or governor) is the local representative of the central state.

19. Interview with Y.A., civil society actor, 23/02/2022.

20. Interview with M.A., civil servant, 24/08/2021.

21. Interview with F.A., NGO worker, 25/08/2021.

22. Interview with M.A., civil servant, 24/08/2021.

23. Interview with T.N., NGO worker, 11/08/2021; interview with S.B., NGO worker, 18/11/2021.

24. Interview with A.B., civil society actor, 17/11/2021.

25. Interview with Y.A., civil society actor, 23/02/2022.

26. Interview with T.N., NGO worker, 11/08/2021.

27. Interview with F.Z., municipal councillor (PJD), 24/08/2021.

28. Interview with Z.A. and N.H., civil society actors, 24/03/2021.

29. Interview with F.A., NGO worker, 25/08/2021; interview with Y.A., civil society actor, 23/02/2022.

30. Interview with A.B., civil society actor, 17/11/2021.

31. Interview with A.L., civil society actor, 20/09/2021.