This panel examines the politics of legitimacy in the states of the Maghreb. Legitimacy is a term frequently used in political debates in the Maghreb both by rulers to justify and bolster their position and, even more frequently, by critics of and opponents of these rulers. However, quite what this legitimacy means in concrete terms is rarely explained or questioned. The panel aims to develop an understanding of the notion of legitimacy in the specific context of the politics of the contemporary Maghreb through bringing together four more detailed studies of debates and contests over the issue in recent years in the three core states of the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. One paper looks directly at the power wielded by the monarchy in Morocco, seeking to examine and question, through discourse analysis and within-case methods, the established official and academic consensus that its power is rooted in notions of its religious legitimacy.A second paper looks at how Islamist parties in Algeria have dealt with the issue of legitimacy, symbolic and political, in the wake of the violence and upheaval of the 1990s by pursuing selectively ‘apolitical’ activity at a distance from the state, ‘politics,’ and partisanship. A third paper looks at the relationship between elections and legitimacy in both Algeria and Morocco, seeking to understand the degree to which regimes use elections to bolster their own claims to domestic and international legitimacy. It also explores, through recent legislative elections in the two countries, how political parties perceive elections affect their legitimacy with regards to their leaders, supporters and the regime. The final paper looks at the concept of political legitimacy in the aftermath of the departure of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia in 2011 exploring how increasing awareness of the pre-revolutionary internal dynamics of the regime undermines dominant narratives of a popular - and thus legitimate - 'revolution' rather than one more made and facilitated through divisions within the regime itself. All four papers draw on extensive fieldwork conducted in the countries concerned.
The Moroccan monarchy’s religious legitimacy is taken as indisputable by the political science literature on the Alaouite kingdom (Benabdellah Alaoui 2016; Bouasria 2013; Joffé 2009, 155; Albrecht & Schlumberger 2004: 377; Bank 2004). Claims that this legitimacy stabilizes and strengthens the regime are widespread, and researchers usually point to the king’s religious role- as it is mentioned in the constitution (§23, 1996; §41, 2011) and as it is displayed to the populace during ceremonies- as evidence of faith-based support for the king (Pruzan-Jørgensen 2010: 274).
However, the religious legitimacy thesis is significantly flawed, as there has been no proof (empirical or otherwise) to show that: (1) the king’s self-proclaimed role and constitutional duties are congruent with the religious practices and belief systems of Moroccans; (2) that they increase political support for the regime. Furthermore, while constitutional texts represent the image that the monarchy wishes to portray of itself, and are thus important indicators of its instrumentalization of Islam, they do not equate to religious legitimacy in the eyes of the masses. Finally, just as military parades were no direct indicator of public support for socialist regimes during the Cold War era, ceremonial display of religious authority is not an indicator of the Moroccan monarchy’s success in drawing support from such traditions.
To address these issues, this paper pursues comparative-historical analysis as a central mode of investigation and combines Millian and statistical comparisons, discourse analysis, and within-case methods to investigate the question of how the Moroccan monarchy’s so-called religious legitimacy concretely affects the interrelationship between the regime, the population, and the country’s political institutions.
This paper contributes to the field of Middle Eastern politics and Comparative Authoritarianism in two distinct ways. First, it empirically explores the scarcely-investigated claims of religious legitimacy of the Moroccan monarchy. Through systematically examining the Makhzen’s strategy of instrumentalizing religion to exert and consolidate political authority in the palace, this paper effectively distances the Moroccan case from common arguments of exceptionalism and brings it back into the broader theoretical debates of authoritarian resilience and legitimacy. Second, this paper contributes to the current debate on legitimacy in non-democracies. Its case study, research design, as well as its empirical and systematic approach to investigating legitimacy in non-democratic contexts through a specific dimension of traditional legitimacy (Weber 1980), can be used to study other cases in the region where rulers claim religious legitimacy, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
This paper explores political legitimacy in Tunisia through a re-evaluation of the 2010-11 uprising and its aftermath. Specifically it discusses internal regime frictions at the time of the protests which facilitated the overthrow of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011. The rise of internal dissent and the key role some former regime figures played in pushing Ben Ali out of power stands in contrast to the widespread narrative of a ‘popular revolution’ against the president and his infamous Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party. The economic and political power accumulated by the president and his family indeed marginalized key constituencies, leaving Ben Ali completely isolated when the protests broke out. Over the past years, a range of former regime figures have tried to reclaim revolutionary legitimacy by stressing the role of internal regime factors that also contributed to its demise. This paper explores in detail the empirical foundations of such claims. It also discusses through which channels some former RCD officials have made a political comeback and which rhetorical devices they use to prop up their political legitimacy — from renaming themselves ‘destourians’ to claiming that their political expertise is needed in times of uncertainty, belittling the inexperience of their new political contenders. Yet even amongst former RCD activists the events of 2010-11 remain contested and whilst some have positioned themselves on the side of the protesters, others maintain that Ben Ali was ousted by an illegal coup d’état and continue to affirm their loyalty to the former president. This paper argues that the distinct ways of interpreting the uprisings reflect the ongoing power battles in Tunisia and the reconfigurations of its political elite. It draws upon interviews and archival work conducted over the past five years in the country alongside in-depth research into the available secondary sources.
