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Globalized authoritarianism: space and class in Morocco
Abstract
Morocco’s cities have changed spectacularly over the past three decades. They are now the showcases of a modern kingdom that presents itself as an exception of stability and free market reform in the region. In this paper, I want to look behind this inviting narrative of cosmopolitanism and liberalization to reveal the political project(s) behind Morocco’s urban transformation and the making of a new political world that is shaped by and, at the same time, produces contemporary forms of globalization. More specifically, this paper looks at the interrelation between megaprojects reshaping urban skylines and promising economic growth, slum upgrading projects reconfiguring the social question and the question of urban government and globalized class agency. Morocco’s cities have become urban laboratories for the development of new strategies of capital accumulation and dispossession, new modalities of government, control and domination. The paper shows the interconnectedness of global capitalism and local places like Casablanca and Rabat and argues that the political result is not so much less authoritarianism, let alone some kind of gradual democratization, but authoritarian government with a different face. Consequently, the making of a new political world in Morocco, and the Arab region more generally, has been determined not only by “the regime” or by domestic state– society relations but also, and increasingly, by interests and interventions related to global capitalism. In other words, through an urban lens we can understand how authoritarian government in Morocco has become, in many ways, a more globalized affair.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Sub Area
Globalization