Participation without representation: Moroccans abroad at a time of unstable authoritarian rule

ABSTRACT

How do authoritarian regimes adapt to the challenges that population movement poses? This article identifies a kind of control mechanism that, despite not being authoritarian in essence, may represent an asset for authoritarian regimes in search of new control tools in a global age. The analysis of an authoritarian regime’s use of new sophisticated techniques of ‘participation’ demonstrates how the creation of a participatory institution can work as a mechanism that offers participation while denying representation. By outlining the political dynamics that took place between the Moroccan authoritarian regime and its population abroad during the 2011 constitutional reform process, this article shows how the creation of a participatory institution, the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad, provided the regime with a powerful and effective tool of control over Moroccans abroad. More specifically, it demonstrates how, paradoxically, the creation of an emigration-related consultative institution has hindered the possibility of Moroccans abroad to achieve meaningful political participation. The Moroccan case study demonstrates that an authoritarian regime in a global age can successfully convert a loud horizontal voice from abroad into a not very loud vertical one through a ‘participation’ process.

KEYWORDS:

• Participatory institutions
• authoritarianism
• globalization
• Hirschman
• Morocco
• diaspora
• constitution
• Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad

Introduction

While globalization increases people’s movements, authoritarian regimes, instead of moving in a democratic direction, consolidate. Combined, these two different trends have prompted scholars to enrich the academic debate with new approaches. The limited but promising literature dealing with the authoritarian governance of populations abroad has focused on the extraterritorial expansion of voting rights (Brand, 2010), or on institutions and policies that authoritarian regimes set up to control and repress perceived threats coming from abroad (Lewis, 2015). In particular, when perceived threats occur at a period of major political crisis, authoritarian states produce a transnational space (Collyer & King, 2015), characterized by highly coercive control practices (Michaelsen, 2016; Moss, 2016). This literature, however, does not help us understand how Morocco, an authoritarian country forced into a reform process by a major regional crisis in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, included its population abroad in the 2011 constitutional reform process. Following the 2011 demonstrations, when thousands of Moroccans demanded meaningful political reforms, the first constitutional reform under Mohammed VI took place. Unlike the previous constitutional reforms, when only political parties and unions were entitled to participate, the reform process also included civil society actors, both within the country and among Moroccans living abroad (hereafter, Moroccans abroad). Indeed, the Moroccan protest movement found an extension, both online and in the streets, in the Moroccan population living abroad, especially in Paris and Brussels (Desrues, 2012). While the choice to include national civil society groups can be easily understood as an attempt to portray the reform process as inclusive and effective (Dalmasso, 2014), the inclusion of civil society groups of Moroccans abroad seems a less obvious choice. How did the Moroccan regime, faced with a major regional and domestic crisis, include its population abroad in a constitutional reform process?

To answer this question, this article analyses the creation of a participatory institution, the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad, and its role during the constitutional reform process of 2011. This reform process was managed by an institution created ad hoc: the Consultative Commission for the Reform of the Constitution. The interaction between the Council and the Commission¹ during Morocco’s 2011 political crisis offers a unique point of view to understand the relationship between the regime and its population abroad in the political field. In addition, the role played by the Council during the reform process grants us a window through which we can understand how the participatory institutions created by the Moroccan regime work on the inside. During the crisis, different institutions worked at full capacity to maintain the regime’s hold on power by promoting what can be labelled as participation without representation. In doing so, these institutions, presented as tools for change, fully revealed their potential in maintaining the regime’s stability. After proposing a new theoretical approach that combines different strands of the literature on authoritarianism with Hirschman’s (1978) Exit, Voice and Loyalty framework, the paper demonstrates how the Council provided the regime with a powerful and effective tool of control over the claims of Moroccans abroad for increased political participation. More specifically, it demonstrates how, paradoxically, the creation of an emigration-related consultative institution hindered the possibility of Moroccans abroad to achieve meaningful democratic representation.

Political participation of populations abroad is neither exclusively democratic nor authoritarian. The former king of Morocco, Hassan II, who was much more authoritarian than his son, granted Moroccans abroad the right to elect their representatives between 1984 and 1992. He did so, as Brand demonstrated (2010), because he needed to counter both real and promised changes in French law permitting greater immigrant integration. In order to carry on his battle over the Western Sahara, Hassan II granted his subjects greater political participation to maintain their loyalty and their remittances, to mitigate the effects of a structural adjustment programme. With the exception of the 1984–1992 experiment, however, the loyalty of Moroccans abroad under Hassan II was built by relying on coercion, repression, and clientelism (Brand, 2006) rather than inclusion.

Nowadays, while not dispensing with his father’s strategies, Mohammed VI also relies on the selective inclusion of Moroccans abroad via a new participatory institution. In 2005, the king called for the implementation of the rights of Moroccans abroad to vote for, and be elected to, the House of Representatives, through the creation of electoral districts in their countries of residence (Mohammed VI, 2005). On the very same occasion, however, he also expressed his will to establish the High Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad, precisely the institution that, as this article will demonstrate, has been instrumental in denying the abovementioned voting rights of Moroccans abroad.

This article contributes to the field in three ways. First, it speaks to the growing migration literature that has brought back sending states to the core of the analysis (Collyer, 2013a; Gamlen, 2014; Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003a; Tsourapas, 2015) by focusing on the authoritarian sending state’s non-coercive control practices. Second, it adds to the literature on extraterritorial citizenship (Bauböck, 2007; Brand, 2010; Lafleur, 2013) by investigating how an authoritarian regime can successfully counter the claims of its population abroad related to political participation. Finally, the article fits in the literature dealing with the Moroccan regime’s capability to selectively include and neutralize different social groups (Buehler, 2015; Pruzan-Jørgensen, 2010) by showing the mechanisms through which a participatory institution has worked to neutralize extraterritorial claims of meaningful political participation.

The literature on authoritarian resilience has demonstrated how the survival of authoritarian regimes is only partially due to coercion and repression, and that more sophisticated tools have been developed to coopt possible dissident voices. However, what the literature does not explain is how authoritarian resilience may be built by also coopting and, to some extent including, populations abroad. In order to fill this gap, the Moroccan case study has been selected for three reasons. First, the 2011 crisis, when Morocco included its population abroad in a reform process, represents a unique opportunity to analyse how an authoritarian regime may include, at least to some extent, its population abroad so to maintain its hold on power. Second, Morocco provides a good case study to analyse the resilience of authoritarian regimes. The regime has been able to include different groups that may challenge its power both in the Parliament and in institutions nominated and controlled by the Palace. Thus, both its electoral authoritarianism (Buehler, 2015; Wegner, 2011) and the creation of various committees and commissions nominated by the monarchy (Pruzan-Jørgensen, 2010; Sater, 2009) are important tools for regime stability. Finally, due to the size and the importance of its population abroad, Morocco is a good case of a sending country engaging with its population abroad. Moroccans abroad represent 10% of the total population and their remittances are instrumental in keeping the country’s economy afloat. According to the Bank of Morocco, to quote the latest available data, Moroccans abroad sent the equivalent of 62.6 billion Dirham to Morocco in 2016 (Bank al-Maghrib, 2017, p. 78).

This case study relies on 42 elite and key-informant semi-structured face-to-face interviews with different types of people such as members of the Consultative Commission for the Revision of the Constitution, members of emigration-related institutions, scholars, journalists, and civil society activists. Interview partners belonging to the Consultative Commission for the Revision of the Constitution did not require the anonymization of their responses. Moreover, quoting their names allows the different roles the single members played within the Commission and the different opinions they expressed on the topic of Moroccans abroad to be highlighted. On the contrary, some critical members of the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad required their responses to be anonymized. For the purpose of homogeneity, with the exception of the Commission’s members, all interview partners have been anonymized. The anonymized interviewees are by no means the only sources for the limitations of the reform process, which were also mentioned in the interviews with the Commission’s members. Interviews were conducted between April 2015 and May 2016 in Morocco, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.

Vertical voices under a competitive authoritarian regime

As pointed out by Tsourapas (2015), until the 2000s, migration literature ‘suffered from a tendency to marginalize the role of the sending state altogether’ (p. 2195). This trend fostered the development of a ‘from below’ approach. As Portes argues:

[d]espite several earlier typologies that referred to transnationalism ‘from above’ and ‘from below,’ with the first referring to the activities of governments and multinational corporations, the bulk of this literature has focused on the initiatives of common people to establish durable economic and other ties across national borders. (Portes, 2003, p. 875)

Accordingly, the role of Moroccans abroad has been mainly analysed by focusing on their contribution to the economic development of the sending country, i.e. Morocco (Lacroix, 2005), and how they try to maintain those ties for economic reasons (De Haas, 2005 ). The fact that Moroccans abroad also play an important role in the political field became evident when the Moroccan regime included them in the 2011 constitutional reform process. This inclusion, during a very difficult time for the regime, would have us expect that their bargaining power had increased. Yet this inclusion did not lead to greater political participation for Moroccans abroad. Moroccans abroad were entitled to participate in the reform process, as they were allowed to vote in the 1 July 2011 constitutional referendum, but they could vote only by mandate at the legislative elections held in November 2011. This despite the fact that the right to cast a vote from abroad, and to elect representatives in overseas electoral districts, are among the claims of Moroccans abroad as well as on the top of the list of claims of various civil society groups.

A review of the literature highlights that research on populations abroad suffers from three shortcomings. First, the practices of population abroad in the political field have received far less attention and have neglected the sending states’ role. This is especially the case for EU-based research. Indeed, while US-based studies of transnational political practices pay more attention to the role of the sending country as a mobilizing factor, ‘European-based research is (pre)occupied with the implications of transnational political practices on receiving countries’ (Østergaard-Nielsen, 2003b, p. 764). This important lacuna in the literature remains despite the fact that scholars such as Itzigsohn state that immigrants’ transnational political fields should be understood as the product of ‘recurrent and institutionalized interactions and exchanges between, on the one hand, immigrants and their social and political organizations and, on the other hand, the political institutions and the state apparatus of the country of origin’ (2000, p. 1130). Second, with the notable exception of Brand’s interest in understanding the extraterritorial expansion of voting rights by authoritarian states (2006), the literature pays little attention to the institutions and policies that authoritarian states implement in order to successfully counter the claims of their populations abroad related to political participation.

Finally, the literature dealing with populations abroad neglects the hybridization process occurring in authoritarian states in recent years. As demonstrated by the extremely rich literature dealing with authoritarianism, authoritarian political regimes have proved their capacity to maintain their hold on power by implementing institutional mechanisms that are not authoritarian in essence but actually reinforce regime stability (Brownlee, 2007; Gandhi, 2008; Gandhi & Lust-Okar, 2009; Levitsky & Way, 2002; Schedler, 2013). In addition, the literature dealing with authoritarian resilience has demonstrated how these regimes implement a selective opening up towards different actors, civil society ones in particular, without losing any of their power (Anderson, 2006; Clark, 2004; Jamal, 2007; Wiktorowicz, 2000). This opening occurs through the implementation of new institutional mechanisms, which while not being authoritarian in essence, defuse, and neutralize the claims to reform the regime. This institutional shift, which first and foremost aims at maintaining the regime’s stability, has also been seen through the lens of the convergence between democratic systems and authoritarian ones (Beck, 2003; Caillé, 2005; Hermet, 1998, 2007; Le Goff, 2002). This convergence is particularly evident when focusing on participatory institutions, such as nominated commissions, experts groups, and technocratic bodies, which are increasingly complementing, and sometimes replacing, representative institutions (Camau, 2008; Dabène, Geisser, & Massardier, 2008; Massardier, 2008). As Desrues demonstrates, this institutional shift is particularly evident in the case of Morocco, where:

a reality emerges that is made up of partial regimes with state regulation that allows for specialization through and competition between various rep­resentative and participatory institutions at different territorial levels as well as the incorpo­ration of multiple non- governmental actors into public policies. The supreme power tries to control the access to and the hierarchy and decisions of these institutions at the same time as seeking ‘from above’ a subordinate legitimation ‘from below’ that is based on its own repertoires of representative democracy, indirect government through the spokespeople for interests and certain other groups, and the knowledge of experts. (2013, p. 2)

How this institutional shift works when authoritarian regimes are dealing with a population abroad is a question that should be asked to understand how authoritarian regimes have met the new challenges posed by globalization. A partial response has been given by Iskander (2010) who demonstrated that this kind of participatory mechanism, these new institutions, do indeed under certain circumstances create space for new practices to evolve between authoritarian regimes and their populations abroad. This type of institution can promote interpretative conversations that can bring together different voices and different perspectives to generate new insights and new relationships. According to her analysis, Morocco and Mexico, thanks to their engagement in interpretative conversations with their migrant constituencies, have been able to support more inclusive and effective practices of development.

Still, how do these institutions work when politics, not development, is at stake? In Mexico, the Institute for Mexicans Abroad – whose members were selected through elections held at the Mexican consulates throughout the United States – was instrumental in granting Mexicans in the US the right not only to participate in the Mexican electoral process but, also and especially, to be represented (Iskander, 2010). In Morocco, as this article will demonstrate, the Council worked in order to offer participation without representation. Indeed, using Iskander’s words, the Council is ‘a particularly Moroccan interpretation of that institution … the council members are not elected (however imperfect those elections have tended to be in the Mexican case)’ (Iskander, 2010, p. 242). The 2011 political crisis offers the opportunity to run a ‘crisis test’ of the participation-without-representation model implemented by the Moroccan regime to include its population abroad.

To take into account the adaptable resilience of authoritarian regimes in the debate dealing with populations abroad, Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty framework, in particular the concept of voice, deserves to be discussed. Hirschman’s economic theory of exit and voice as responses to organizational decline has been used by scholars to comprehend both national and transnational opposition’s political dynamics. While in Hirschman’s theory voice and exit are mutually exclusive options, scholars applying this framework to political dynamics have revealed how exit can trigger voice (Pfaff & Kim, 2003) or how exit can be interpreted as a transnationalization of voice (Hoffmann, 2010). Voice, thus, should not be interpreted as a dichotomous variable (Dowding, John, Mergoupis, & Vugt, 2000), as it can be individual or collective, and voice and exit can occur simultaneously or at different locations in time and space.

Yet these lines of inquiry do not take into account the possibility that an authoritarian regime may respond to transnational voices by setting up new kinds of institutions in which voices can be expressed and, perhaps more importantly, controlled. Guillermo O’Donnell’s re-conceptualization of Hirschman’s Exit, Voice and Loyalty and Shifting Involvements (SI) framework (O'Donnell, 1986) represents the perfect example of this democracy-authoritarianism dichotomy. O’Donnell’s analysis distinguishes between democratic contexts where horizontal voices, i.e. the sum of interactions that allow for the formation of a collective identity, become collective vertical voices when citizens address the democratic institutions. In contrast, an authoritarian system harshly represses the formation of horizontal voices, while at the same time allowing the expression of collective vertical voices ‘on some thoroughly depoliticized issues’ (O'Donnell, 1986, pp. 3–5).

As stated above, globalization has radically modified the way voice occurs. Nowadays, authoritarian regimes face horizontal voices that have been structured beyond their repressive political systems. Also, globalization compels authoritarian regimes desiring to be part of the international community to display, at least to some extent, some democratic improvement. Thus, in this new context, an authoritarian regime needs to counterbalance the transnational vertical voices differently. As this paper demonstrates in the following sections, the Moroccan case represents the perfect example of this trend. Indeed, during the 2011 political crisis, the regime used a participatory institution that, despite being unelected and unaccountable, provided a framework for the expression of transnational vertical voices by simultaneously functioning as a powerful control mechanism.

The Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad

The overview of institutions related to Moroccans abroad reveals how great the monarchy’s interest is in maintaining strong ties with its subjects abroad. In addition to the Minister for the Affairs of the Moroccan Community Resident Abroad and Bank Al Amal, the monarchy established two royal foundations meant to take care of the interests of Moroccans abroad: the Hassan II Foundation for Moroccans Living Abroad, created by the former king Hassan II; and the Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity, created by Mohammed VI. According to a 2005 United States’ diplomatic cable, these royal foundations:

are meeting crucial needs that the Moroccan government … does not have the capability of addressing on its own. Yet, key questions linger about the extent to which the King uses the foundations as true social organizations, political tools of the Palace, or something in between. In any case, the royal foundations appear to be the King’s primary vehicle for executing his ‘politics of proximity’ by which he is perceived to be close to the populace. (Wikileaks, 2005)

Thus, at the beginning of the 2000s, the monarchy had two institutions under its control that were dealing with Moroccans abroad. Yet, in 2005, Mohammed VI, after calling for the implementation of the rights for Moroccans abroad to vote for and be elected to the House of Representatives through the creation of electoral districts in their countries of residence, declared his intention to set up another institution. In his words, this institution would ‘go beyond this [the abovementioned voting rights] by opening them to all areas and all forms of participation’ (Mohammed VI, 2005). In order to do so, Mohammed VI announced his decision to create,

under the presidency of Our Majesty, a High Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad, established in a democratic and transparent way, enjoying all the guarantees of credibility, efficiency and genuine representation. It will also include members appointed by Our Majesty from among persons recognized for their outstanding involvement in defending the rights of Moroccan immigrants and the higher interests of the nation, as well as representatives of the authorities and institutions concerned with issues of migration. (Mohammed VI, 2005)

In December 2007, the appointed composition of the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad (hereafter Council) was disclosed and the Council established by royal decree. The king’s wish was put into practice after a complicated, and somehow controversial, two-year process. Some aspects of the Council's creation process are worth outlining. First, after complaints from Moroccans abroad about the lack of dialogue, the task of preparing a project for the creation of the Council was moved from the Delegate Ministry for Moroccans Living Abroad to the Consultative Commission for Human Rights. Second, while the Ministry envisaged a mixed composition of appointed and elected members (Belguendouz, 2009, p. 5) on the Council, the Consultative Commission for Human Rights opted to have appointed members only. Third, a working group created within the Consultative Commission for Human Rights and led by Driss El Yazami, the current president of the Council, carried out an informal pre-selection process for future Council members. Finally, the monarchy had the last word about the Council composition. Despite the fact that the Council was supposed to comprise 50 members and El Yazami’s working group offered to list 100 candidates (Consultative Commission for Human Rights, 2007), only 37 were appointed by the king in the end.

As stated above, the creation process of the Council was long and controversial. Still, while many civil society groups for Moroccans abroad criticized and boycotted the process led by El Yazami (Belguendouz, 2009, pp. 12–13), many others participated. In Morocco, four seminars involving 840 civil society actors from Moroccans abroad were organized along with various meetings with civil society groups and political parties. Abroad, 62 consultations were carried out with 1548 people in 20 different countries, and a survey involving 575 participants was successfully conducted (Consultative Commission for Human Rights, 2007). Thus, the Consultative Commission for Human Rights and, in particular, the working group led by El Yazami, showed its capacity in creating a participatory dynamic involving Moroccans abroad when the creation of the Council was at stake. In the end, the King appointed 37 members for a transitory four-year term from those selected by El Yazami’s working group, with El Yazami himself appointed Council president.

This was only the first of a list of prestigious nominations that followed. On 3 March 2011, a few days before the royal speech announcing the reform of the Constitution, El Yazami was appointed by the King to chair the National Human Rights Council, and then as a member of the Consultative Commission for the Revision of the Constitution a few days later. What El Yazami could offer to the Moroccan regime, at a time of political instability, was his leftist and human rights reputation built in Europe. Indeed, El Yazami had been successful in building a professional profile in different European countries that could link some journalism experiences to his civil society activism. The latter was especially dealing with migration and human rights and mainly linked to the European leftist sphere. As the official biography provided by the webpage of the National Human Rights Council states, El Yazami served as the Vice-President of the French League of Human Rights (LDH), the Secretary General of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network. Thus, thanks to his connections with leftist French civil society and with the international human rights civil society, El Yazami’s inclusion in the institutions controlled by the Palace represented an asset for the Moroccan regime.

Up until the approval of the 2011 constitution, how can the Council be assessed? It was an institution that was asked to present consultative advice to the king about any issues related to Moroccans abroad in order to ensure their interests. The Council divided itself into six working groups: Culture, Education and Identities; Citizenship and Political Participation; Administration, Public Rights of Users and Policies; Scientific, Technical and Economic Skills for Inclusive Development; Worship and Religious Education; and Gender Approach and New Generations. According to its official website, the Council was active in different domains such as: promoting a systematic gender approach; boosting cultural action; enhancing a peaceful reflection of Islam in Europe; contributing to the development of scientific research; and promoting a reasoned and pluralistic reflection on citizenship. Despite presenting these topics as equally important, an overview of the Council’s publications and activities clarifies that the Council displays a lack of interest in a specific domain. While dozens of the books published on behalf of the Council deal with migration, development and cultural, religious and gender-related topics, only one title, published in 2013, refers to the political participation of Moroccans abroad. Given the fact that ‘it is probably still voting that raises the greatest intensity of discussion’ (Collyer, 2013b, p. 188), this negligence is particularly striking. In addition, the introduction of the book, instead of focusing on possible solutions, describes the political participation of populations abroad as limited and facing political, juridical and logistical problems (Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad, 2013).

As for its primary task, between its creation and the 2011 constitutional reform, the Council did not produce any consultative advice to submit to the king. Also, and contrary to articles 4 and 14 of the royal decree (Royal Decree, 2008), it presented neither annual reports nor financial statements. Finally, with the exception of 2008, the Council did not hold annual plenary sessions (Belguendouz, 2009).

The Consultative Commission for the Revision of the Constitution and Moroccans Abroad

At the beginning of 2011, following the events in Tunisia and Egypt, Moroccans gathered all over the country to call for reform of the political system. The royal response came on 9 March, when the king promised radical constitutional reform through the establishment of an ad hoc commission: the Consultative Commission for the Revision of the Constitution (hereafter Commission). In his speech, Mohammed VI dealt with the reasons why the Constitution would be changed, what should be modified, which actors were entitled to participate in the process and what its duration would be. The appointed Commission was handpicked by the king – the president of the Commission, Abdellatif Menouni, and its 18 members – in order to prepare a draft to be submitted for monarchical approval. Only the procedures, namely how the Commission would function in the three months assigned to it for work, were not mentioned in the speech. Indeed, much of the concrete steps taken by the Commission to implement its work and its internal debates are still shrouded in secrecy. With the exception of Mohamed Tozy, who disclosed some information related to the internal dynamics of the Commission (López, 2011), the Commission’s members display a reticent approach when asked to relate their experience due to a confidentiality commitment they still have to respect (CCRC 4). However, the two participatory mechanisms officially set up by the Commission in order to collect proposals were necessarily more transparent. First, starting from 28 March, the Commission began a series of official meetings with political parties, trade unions and civil society groups. Second, in addition to or instead of meeting with the Commission, the actors entitled to participate could also send their proposals to the Commission.

Despite time constraints, the Commission’s working methodology was characterized by a high degree of professionalism and specialization. According to members’ skills, the Commission divided itself into groups dealing with different topics. Thereafter, the different groups’ outcomes were discussed and, in the case of major disagreement, submitted to vote during plenary sessions (CCRC 5). The topic of Moroccans abroad was mainly examined by the group dealing with fundamental rights, composed of Driss El Yazami, Amina Bouayach, Lahcen Oulhaj, and Mohammed Berdouzi (CCRC 7); still, plenary sessions allowed all members of the Commission to express their opinion about Moroccans abroad (CCRC 2). However, the voices of Moroccans abroad in the Commission’s participatory mechanisms seem to have been very limited. Both Driss El Yazami and Lahcen Oulhaj, when asked about the number of propositions on Moroccans abroad received by the Commission, stated that they received only four, perhaps five (CCRC 6; CCRC 9).

The other participatory mechanism set up by the Commission also did not witness a significant participation of Moroccans abroad. Whereas Amina Messoudi and Amina Bouayach declared that many representatives of Moroccans abroad met with the Commission to present their demands (CCRC 3; CCRC 5), other members of the Commission described their participation as limited to sending propositions (CCRC 1). Nadia Bernoussi, for instance, pointed out that: ‘we read the proposals; however, we did not meet with any representatives of Moroccans abroad because we could not select who had the right to represent them’ (CCRC 2). Lahcen Oulhaj went even further by declaring that: ‘we did not meet with any associations of Moroccans abroad. We focused on Morocco. Moroccans abroad have specific needs and their demands should concern their countries of residence. My daughter lives in France and I would not accept her advice about what I should do here in Morocco’ (CCRC 6). Abdellah Saaf, while confirming that the Commission did not meet with representatives of Moroccans abroad, pointed out a different mechanism for Moroccans abroad to participate in the reform process. According to Saaf, ‘Moroccans abroad have put a constant pressure on the Commission. They directly contacted Commission’s members to make sure that their cahiers de doléances [complaints] were well received. Especially the Commission’s President received many requests’ (CCRC 7).

Whether the Commission met with representatives of Moroccans abroad or not, their requests were well received by the Commission. Indeed, a strong consensus emerged among the Commission’s members in pinpointing political participation as the core of requests by Moroccans abroad (CCRC 2; CCRC 3; CCRC 5; CCRC 6; CCRC 9). Moreover, among the propositions on Moroccans abroad received by the Commission that dealt with political participation, the right to cast a vote from abroad was explicitly demanded (Collectif des Marocains du Monde – Bruxelles, 2011; Les Marocains du Monde – Canada, 2011; Mouvement Nouvel Elan MONE – Düsseldorf, 2011; Réseau Marocain Transnational Migration et Développement EMCEMO – Amsterdam, 2011). As a result, most of the debate related to Moroccans abroad focused on the political participation issue. Within this debate it is possible to identify two trends. The first trend perceived the right to cast a vote from abroad as the mechanism through which the political participation of Moroccans abroad could be meaningfully implemented (CCRC 4). In turn, this political participation would guarantee the preservation of Morocco’s ties with its diaspora and possibly reinforce them. The second trend within the Commission’s debate, on the contrary, placed a great emphasis on the integration of Moroccans abroad in the countries of residence where many Moroccans enjoy dual nationality. For instance, political participation in Morocco by Moroccans abroad has been described by this second line of thinking as opposed to their full integration in their countries of residence. In the words of Abdellah Saaf, ‘at some point, we discussed the possibility of granting Moroccans abroad the right to vote for their representatives in the Moroccan Parliament, or instead to let them integrate with their countries of residence’ (CCRC 7).

Some of the Commission members’ desire for Moroccans abroad to integrate in their countries of residence, however, should not be understood as a withdrawal by Morocco from its long-lasting attempt to maintain a strong connection with its population abroad. Quite the contrary is true, insofar as this approach aimed at setting up a different kind of ties:

Moroccans abroad well integrated into their country of residence can be even more useful for their country. For example, nowadays we have Moroccans abroad who are elected in their countries of residence, in European countries, Moroccans abroad have even been appointed as ministers … El Yazami, who has lived abroad, and knows the topic very well, considers that, despite all, Moroccans abroad are integrating themselves elsewhere and that we should foster this trend … El Yazami reckons that, as our policies are outdated, we should change our strategy to encourage the integration of Moroccans abroad in their countries of residence. (CCRC 7)

Lahcen Oulhaj, in explaining why the Commission did not constitutionalize the right to cast a vote from abroad, declared:

Moroccans abroad who are elected to the Moroccan Parliament should live here for long periods, thus they are not residing abroad anymore. El Yazami and Berdouzi, for instance, consider that Moroccans abroad should remain in their countries and participate [in the political sphere] there. (CCRC 6)

In the end, the Commission privileged the second approach by introducing the right for Moroccans abroad to participate in the Constitution without clarifying the modalities of this participation. Thus, the Commission passed the responsibility for making a decision on this issue to the legislator: ‘Moroccans abroad want full citizenship because they consider that they represent 10% of the population, they pay taxes in Morocco and sent remittances here … well, the Constitution gave them an answer. Afterwards, the legislator will also provide them an answer’ (CCRC 2).

The answer, however, was unclear, insofar as the 2011 Constitution displays a lack of commitment to ensure the direct representation of Moroccans abroad. According to article 17 of the new Constitution, Moroccans abroad are granted ‘the full rights of citizenship, including the right to be electors and eligible’. However, the same article also states that the ‘law establishes the specific criteria of eligibility and incompatibility. It also determines the conditions and the modalities of the effective exercise of active and passive electoral rights from the countries of residence.’ The Constitution incorporates the claims of key social groups such as Moroccans abroad, but it does so by adopting ‘a consistent pattern whereby the principles of rights that are set up in the constitution can potentially be useless due to restrictive laws … Moroccans living abroad enjoy full citizenship rights, but the law sets specific criteria for eligibility and incompatibility’ (Madani, Maghraoui, & Zerhouni, 2012, p. 22).

Can Moroccans abroad speak?

As stated above, the Commission did not meet with Moroccans abroad and, despite recognizing that political participation was at the core of their requests, a consensus arose linking greater political participation in Morocco with a lower degree of integration overseas. This process led to a constitutional lack of clarity about the political participation of Moroccans abroad that can be better understood by taking into account the role played by the Council and its president El Yazami during the constitutional reform process. The formal mission of the Council is to ensure the defence of the interests of Moroccans abroad, but the purpose it served during the reform process was twofold. First, the Council managed the critical voices of Moroccans abroad who could join the protest movement, and second acted within the Commission as the official representative of Moroccans abroad by also silencing those in favour of a particular type of voting rights.

As demonstrated above, when the creation of the Council was at stake, El Yazami and his working group painstakingly worked to create a participatory dynamic that allowed a number of claims from Moroccans abroad to be expressed. Yet during the 2011 constitutional reform, the Council and its president El Yazami did not encourage Moroccans abroad to participate in the debate. The urgency that characterized the reform process can be blamed on the fact that the Council did not organize extensive activities abroad as in the past. However, the Council also displayed a lack of engagement in other activities less demanding in terms of logistics. For example, an online platform aiming at gathering propositions from Moroccans abroad was only online between 27th April and 20th May 2011. In the press release announcing this activity, the Council signalled its will to launch a survey via e-mails involving a large sample of Moroccans abroad (Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad, 2011). This would have been a remarkable step towards a greater participation, but in the end it occurred three days after the Commission’s decision to end its consultative phase and start evaluating the received proposition (Yabiladi, 2011).

Besides, a seminar, entitled ‘Constitutional reforms, immigration and citizenship’, was organized on 18–19 June 2011, 12 days before the referendum for the approval of the new Constitution. The seminar saw the active participation of various Council members from different European countries and, in particular, those known for supporting the political participation of Moroccans abroad. Yet, this was not the first time that the Council’s members were invited to Morocco since the beginning of 2011. At the beginning of January and again on the 19–20 February 2011, the Council invited all its members for a two-day meeting in Casablanca. The second meeting, previously scheduled for the 18–19 February, was postponed when it became clear that the first demonstration would be organized on 20 February, to prevent Council members from attending this demonstration (CMLA 2).

The fear that some of the Council members may join the protest was not implausible. Since September 2009, five out of eight of the Council members belonging to the Citizenship and Political Participation working group had publicly criticized the Council for not supporting the political participation of Moroccans abroad (Yabiladi, 2009). Their criticisms went as far as launching a series of events labelled Daba 2012, both in Europe and Morocco, in order to reactivate the debate about the political participation of Moroccans abroad. This discussion was vehemently opposed by the Council’s directive board, in particular El Yazami (CMLA 1). According to a Council member:

in 2009 we sent a memorandum to the royal cabinet to complain about the lack of commitment displayed by the Council, but nobody answered. Thus, we thought that our only possibility was to reactivate our connections with civil society groups of Moroccans abroad and to work outside of the Council’s framework. (CMLA 2)

This initiative, that targeted representative institutions and political parties, gathered the support of 450 civil society groups and organized meetings in Paris, Casablanca, Madrid, and Brussels (Bladi.net, 2009). However, and contrary to previous stances adopted by El Yazami towards the civil society of Moroccans abroad, this initiative did not catch his eye until 2011: ‘El Yazami ignored us until 2011. Only then did he ask us to work again within the Council’ (CMLA 2).

Only following the 2011 crisis was El Yazami willing to re-engage in the debate about the political participation of Moroccans abroad with the most critical members of the Council, and he did so successfully. In fact, as mentioned above, at the end of June the Council organized a seminar in which the political participation of Moroccans abroad was debated. Many of the previous critical members participated, and in doing so they publically signalled their endorsement of the Constitution that was going to be approved on 1 July 2011.

However, the critical members’ support of the new Constitution did not last long:

We were happy about the new Constitution as we thought that it clearly stated our right to cast a vote from abroad. Then, during a meeting in July, El Yazami told us that we were mistaken and that he wrote himself the article to exclude this possibility. It was such a cold shower; we did not know that this was going to be a total rip-off. (CMLA 2)

This disappointment was summarized by another Council member as follows: ‘After years of painstaking work of meetings that have been held and reports that have been written, I have realized that there’s nothing. I’ve lost years of work … so I have decided to work outside the institutions again’ (CMLA 1).

The Council, thus, was used as a participatory mechanism that proved its capacity to include Moroccans abroad who seek greater political participation while, at the same time, confining their discussions and reports to inside the institution. When five Council members decided to escape from their marginalization, by reactivating their civil society connections and by addressing representative institutions, the Council’s president simply ignored them. Yet, when the political crisis arrived, the Council included the critical voices of Moroccans abroad again.

Why did the five critical Council members re-engage in the debate? In hindsight, their bargaining power was not enhanced but defused by their participation in the Council. Still, during the political crisis, the possibility that their involvement could lead to the achievement of their goals should not be underestimated. However, the fact that Council members are first and foremost accountable to those who nominated them deprived them of any meaningful effectiveness. They lack the legitimation that even imperfect elections provide, as the Mexican case study demonstrates (Iskander, 2010). As a Council member summarized: ‘El Yazami countered in any possible way our participation in the constitutional reform process. He told us that, since he was a member of the Commission, we should rely on him to transmit our demands’ (CMLA 1). As the next paragraph will demonstrate, El Yazami’s claim was fully supported by the Commission’s members who recognized him as the guarantor of Moroccans abroad.

In parallel with re-engaging the debate with the critical voices within the Council, El Yazami was an active member of the Commission. As demonstrated above, the claim for a meaningful political participation existed among the few Moroccans abroad who bothered to send their propositions to the Commission. Yet, the Commission ignored such claims and discussed other issues such as the option to cast a vote by proxy, which was not mentioned in the propositions of Moroccans abroad (CCRC 5). Why did this happen? When asked about who supported the political participation of Moroccans abroad in the Commission, Mohamed Tozy answered that:

if my memory serves me right, the President of the Commission did. However, there was little room for discussion as El Yazami really did a good job … the Commission received a ready-made diaspora project; there was no reason to doubt El Yazami’s expertise. (CCRC 8)

El Yazami’s decisive role in making the Commission’s decision about the political participation of Moroccans abroad an obvious choice was confirmed by Abdellah Saaf: ‘El Yazami is such an expert on this topic, that the other line of thinking was not really influential’ (CCRC 7). The Commission members considered El Yazami as the guarantor of Moroccans abroad within the Commission (CCRC 1) and the person who obviously had the best knowledge on this topic (CCRC 5). Despite the fact that it was precisely his role as president of the Council that allowed him to be perceived as the spokesperson of Moroccans abroad, El Yazami lobbied for the opposite outcome sought by the other Council’s members, specifically those in favour of the right to cast a vote from abroad. In the end, El Yazami pre-empted the requests of Moroccans abroad to the Commission for direct representation and the right to cast votes from abroad. Still, El Yazami’s agency should be not overestimated. Indeed, while it is impossible to prove that El Yazami followed the Palace’s orders, his career, built entirely on royal nominations, seems to suggest that during the constitutional reform process he did not disappoint Mohammed VI’s desiderata.

At the time of writing, Driss El Yazami is the President of the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad and the President of the National Human Rights Council. In addition, thanks to this last appointment, he is an ex officio member of the Economic and Social Council and a member of the newly established High Authority of National Dialogue on Justice Reform.

It is not clear whether the kingdom is going to enlarge the voting rights of its population abroad in the future, and which (if any) institutions for Moroccans abroad are going to gain influence. As the king’s speeches indicate the lines along which Moroccan politics will evolve, his last speech related to Moroccans abroad deserves to be briefly outlined. On 30 July 2015, after stressing the importance of a non-mediated relation with his subjects living abroad and after portraying himself as the guarantor for Moroccans abroad, Mohammed VI dealt with the issue of their political participation. In this regard, he stressed the importance of ‘the implementation of the constitutional provisions relating to their representation in consultative institutions and participative democracy and governance bodies’ (Mohammed VI, 2015). In doing so, he threw the ball into the Parliament’s court; a court conceived to play off political actors against each other so they end up eventually outdoing each other (Bennani-Chraïbi, 2017; Szmolka, 2010). As for his preference in terms of institutions, while advocating better coordination among those in charge of Moroccans abroad, he pointed out the importance of a particular one: ‘the expertise of the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad should be built on in order to establish a council that responds to the aspirations of this community’ (Mohammed VI, 2015). While in theory Moroccans abroad are entitled to full citizenship, in practice the King praises the institution that has granted them their full subjectship.

Conclusions

This article has demonstrated that the Moroccan regime proved its capability, during a very difficult time, of including its population abroad in a controlled and limited reform process, and at the same time successfully countering the claims of Moroccans abroad related to political participation. The Moroccan regime did so by carefully and selectively implementing coercive control practices, while sparing no effort in setting up a reform process, albeit a limited and controlled one, in which Moroccans abroad were included.

This articles does not argue that extraterritorial voting rights should be given, nor does it investigate the reasons why this is not the case for Moroccans abroad. Rather, it investigates how the Moroccan regime, after Mohammed VI’s declaration that Moroccans abroad could fully exercise their citizenship only by enjoying extraterritorial voting rights (Mohammed VI, 2005), managed to deny those rights by channelling the claims of Moroccans abroad via a participatory instrument. Participatory institutions are a feature of democratic and authoritarian institutions alike that can be used in different ways. This article demonstrates how the creation of a participatory institution by an authoritarian regime can work as a mechanism that offers participation while denying representation. The Moroccan case study demonstrates that an authoritarian regime in a global age can successfully convert a loud horizontal voice from abroad into a not very loud vertical one through a ‘participation’ process.

The 2011 political crisis forced the Moroccan regime to capitalize on every available control mechanism, and thus to fully reveal the authoritarian potential of its participatory institutions, such as the Council. During the constitutional reform process, the vertical voices of Moroccans abroad were conveyed through a participatory mechanism that defused their most challenging claims and contributed to the sustainability of the authoritarian regime. Still, much more research is needed to fully understand how authoritarian regimes, while still relying on coercive power, use increasingly sophisticated participation instruments to answer the challenges posed by globalization.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of this Special Issue, Marlies Glasius, and Adele Del Sordi, and the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable and constructive comments. A previous version has been presented at a workshop on ‘Authoritarian Governance of Overseas Citizens’ in September 2015 at the University of Amsterdam. I also would like to thank Mohammed Madani and Aboubakr Jamaï for their sobering comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the project ‘Authoritarianism in a Global Age' at the University of Amsterdam (http://www.authoritarianism-global.uva.nl/) and received funding from the European Research Council (FP7/2007–2013) [grant number 323899].

Notes on contributors

Emanuela Dalmasso

Notes on contributor

Emanuela Dalmasso is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Politics, University of Amsterdam, for the research project Authoritarianism in a Global Age. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of Turin (Italy). Her main areas of expertise and interest are Middle Eastern politics and gender studies, with a specific focus on Morocco. She has previously published on these topics in the Journal of Modern African Studies, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Contemporary Arab Affairs, and Mediterranean Politics.

Notes

1. Both the Council for the Moroccan Community Abroad and the Consultative Commission for the Reform of the Constitution are participatory institutions created by the Monarchy. The first, established in 2007, is meant to take care of issues related to the Moroccans abroad population. The second was created in 2011, during the reform process of the Constitution, to prepare a draft to be submitted for monarchical approval.