What factors determine state response to socioeconomic protest movements? In countries where party systems and welfare institutions are weak or co-opted, protests, strikes, and sit-ins are often the primary means by which distributive demands are made on the state. This study leverages comparative case studies of mobilization and state response in the phosphate mining sectors of Tunisia and Morocco to investigate how democratizing revolts – “successful” or otherwise – shift the willingness of states to offer redistributive concessions to social mobilization. From parallel grassroots protest movements gaining scant concessions in 2008 and 2009, the stories of the Tunisian and Moroccan mining town rebellions diverged swiftly following the 2011 Arab revolutions. In Morocco, roughly one billion dollars were diverted from the accounts of phosphate mining firm Groupe OCP to build public “skills centers” in each of the mining towns; to offer paid training courses and entrepreneurship grants to local youth; and to better equip provisional and recreational facilities in the mining towns. In Tunisia, despite myriad rounds of negotiation between the state and social protesters, the envisioned parallel reinvestment plan never came to fruition. This paper uses extensive interview and documentary evidence collected over fifteen months of fieldwork to unpack these divergent trajectories. I argue in short that in the wake of the February 20th movement, elite threat perceptions vis-à-vis protest were elevated, in turn lowering the threshold of mobilization at which elites were willing to grant social concessions. Surviving elites used broad-based concessions to demobilize mass opposition while avoiding political reforms. In Tunisia, after democratization, elites no longer uniformly aimed to demobilize protest movements in service of regime longevity. Instead, imperatives of coalition-building in a new democracy prompted elites to undermine opponents' attempts at social negotiation and to channel exclusive concessions to smaller, well-organized protest groups capable of lending political support.

Within the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco has in recent years been at the vanguard of positive changes for women in public policy. The country has seen significant advances in women’s legal rights and in formal government commitments to ensuring gender equality, including in political representation, driven both by strong, autonomous feminist civil society organizations and by top-down prioritization of a gender-sensitive agenda. At the same time, women’s economic empowerment remains elusive. Women’s economic activity rate remains among the lowest in the world and is falling, female unemployment (particularly among young, well-educated women) is high, and women who are in the labor force are more likely to be in precarious work. Drawing on qualitative interviews, analysis of public policies, and administrative and survey data, this paper argues that political avoidance of confronting male privileges in the private sphere contributes to political stability while undermining stated goals of promoting gender equality in the public sphere, both by restricting women’s opportunities and by reducing their incentives to take on new responsibilities. In response, grassroots activists supporting women are increasingly turning their focus from women to men, seeking to shift norms around masculinity and gender relations within the home.

The Arab Uprisings fundamentally altered the way people protest in North Africa. Since 2011, protests levels in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt have remained high. (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project 2018) In Morocco, protesters have become emboldened in their demands and more direct in whom they whom they hold accountable. This paper examines the question: When do concessions – or protesters achieving their demands – appease social movements and when do they instigate more social movements? Using Morocco as a case study, I build a theory in response. Based on dozens of interviews with Moroccan activists from the February 20th Movement, Hirak, the Unemployed Graduates, and other social movements, I argue that the proliferation of protest movements in Morocco is due to how the regime has managed relations with social movement organizations. Specifically, in response to a mixture of concessions, cooptation and repression from the regime, protest groups in Morocco function more like lobby groups than traditional social movements, calling on the regime to grant concessions to special interest groups.

Questions about the economy and the structure of economic power in the Arab region after the 2011 uprisings remain relatively unexplored by scholars. This paper is part of a project that focuses on the economic dimensions of the Arab uprisings—both its antecedents and those that now shape ongoing transitions in the region. Noting the centrality of economic grievances underlying the 2011 protests, many observers anticipated that old and emerging political actors would focus on redressing such grievances through new policies and initiatives. Such actions though have been stymied by domestic and international obstacles. Activists pushing for more inclusive economic policies have been marginalized and in some cases, excluded altogether from discussions with international and regional donors. Scholars evaluating current economic reform efforts note their resemblance to those associated with previous regimes. After revolution, how should we understand this surprising continuity? In this paper, I examine post 2011 economic changes through the lens of past colonial history in the Middle East to understand the obstacles facing those challenging the present economic order in the region. Economic historians have examined ways in which debt served as a form of colonization, restructuring elite politics and institutions. Leveraging field and archival work and current financial intelligence on debt, taxes, and trade in Morocco since the early 20th century, I build on that work to show how new forms of such colonialism have evolved through loan agreements sponsored by donor governments and international organizations. Drawing on Drezner and McNamara’s (2013) notion of global financial orders, my work explains the persistence of structures favoring particular elites, the mechanics and consequences of international financial markets in the region and why avenues for expansive economic reform therein remain constrained. My research builds on previous scholarship within international relations on the concept of hierarchy and coercion and links that with the literatures examining transitions in Latin America and Eastern Europe to think about the historical role of assistance in reinforcing power relations, how authority is maintained, and how aid can coerce outcomes in what Lake has called “manipulating incentives” through assistance to constrain state behavior in building a new architecture of aid and security in the region.

In the mid-1990s, donors investments pushed the Moroccan government to adopt participatory approaches in rural development projects. However, participatory practices have been often considered an instrumental mean to gain the adherence of the population rather than a modus operandi. Thus, rural development projects have been implemented with little or no meaningful participation by local communities. Consequently, farmers associations have been often under the control of local and customary elites which ‘captured’ the outputs of development projects and governed local natural resources according to their own logic. In 2008, the national agricultural strategy, called the “Green Morocco Plan”, was launched to promote the development of a modern and export-oriented agriculture on the one hand, and on the other hand to assist vulnerable small-holders famers in increasing their incomes. Such a transformation in the agricultural sector and in local natural resource management however does not seem to support subsistence farmers who are often subjected to local power relations and trapped in global value chains which favor a few business intermediaries. At the same time however, the country has been experiencing an ‘associative wave’ which has favored both the proliferation of village associations and the emergence of a new generation of educated young leaders. These new elements have been gradually challenging the customary power structures and to some extent and in certain contexts gained the capacity to negotiate and influence the outputs of local development. This paper is based on four months of qualitative fieldwork and examines how local forms of collective action can reverse local power relations and change rural politics. Focusing on the case study of Ain Leuh, a rural community of the Middle Atlas, this paper analyzes the local power struggles and competition for leadership which led to the appropriation of a Water User Association by the farmers’ community. ‘Appropriation’ not only relates to changes in water management, but concerns also agricultural development, the establishment of new rules and practices, collective learning and local governance. Institutional appropriation in Ain Leuh has been an ‘empowering process’ which allowed local farmers to gain voice and decision making power, thus becoming protagonists of local agricultural development. In fact, the institutional appropriation led to new and participatory practices in other local associations which allow farmers to confidently negotiate their positions vis-à-vis with state institutions and other business interlocutors in order to promote local agricultural development and consequently to improve their incomes.