Bulletin n. 2-3/2012
October 2012-February 2013
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Stenner David
    Networking for independence: the Moroccan nationalist movement and its global campaign against French colonialism
    in Journal of North African Studies , Volume 17, Issue 4, 2012 ,  2012 ,  573-594
    Abstract The former nationalists of the Istiqlal Party as well as the royal family continue to suppress any discussion of Morocco's post-independence era, when both sides used any means necessary to take over national politics. The outcome of this decade-long struggle, an authoritarian monarchy dominating an array of weak and fragmented political parties, was not only the result of the clash between Morocco's two dominant institutions during the years of state formation, but was also shaped by early Cold War international politics. The Istiqlalis had commenced a global campaign to influence the nascent ‘world opinion’ to support their cause many years prior to independence in 1956. In order to influence the political discourse from the pages of the American media to the corridors of Capitol Hill and the UN building, the nationalists created a network of supporters that enabled them to spread their message to the United States and later on inspired the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale. This project argues that the very structure of the nationalists’ non-hierarchical and flexible propaganda network and their activities abroad helped them prevail in their struggle against the French, but also enabled the Sultan to co-opt it after independence and turn the Istiqlal into an opposition party. Its informal nature, the lack of a clearly defined membership and loyalty, and the absence of a coherent ideology constituted an advantage at first, but eventually turned into a serious liability. Furthermore, the skills, resources, and personal connections, which the nationalists had acquired during their campaign abroad, fell into the hands of the Sultan and strengthened his position once he had co-opted many of the network's participants. It is by looking at the intersections of the formal and the informal, the foreign and the domestic, the individual and the structural that we can begin to understand the complicated dynamics that underlay this crucial period of Moroccan history.
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