The limits of limited reforms

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 19-33

  McFaul, Michael ^a,b   Wittes, Tamara Cofman ^c  

^a Department of Political Science ^*

^b STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c BROOKINGS INSTITUTION   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 39349084267     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2008.0016     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. While vote spoilage can sometimes be due to ignorance or error, Moroccan ballots reviewed by international observers in Morocco (including one of the authors of this article) showed clear evidence of willful spoilage, including antigovernment messages scrawled on ballot papers. This type of protest vote requires mobilized and motivated voters.
2. This article focuses on Arab rather than Muslim countries since democracy is prevalent in Muslim-majority countries outside the Arab world. See Vali Nasr, "The Rise of 'Muslim Democracy'?" Journal of Democracy 16 (April 2005): 13-27.
3. Mark Tessler, "Gauging Arab Support for Democracy," Journal of Democracy 16 (July 2005): 83-97.
4. Martin Kramer, "Inside the Middle East: Now I'm a ... Neorealist!" Jerusalem Post, 27 August 2007.
5. On PJD restraint in the 2002 vote, see Michael Willis, "Morocco's Islamists and the Legislative Election of 2002: The Strange Case of the Party That Did Not Want to Win," Mediterranean Studies 9 (Spring 2004): 53-81.
6. Some more radical groups, such as the Justice and Charity Association, claim that the PJD actually cooperates closely with the king.
7. Roula Khalaf, "Morocco Sees the Rise of 'Acceptable' Islamist Party," Financial Times, 23 May 2006.
8. Wittes interview with local political analyst, Rabat, October 2007.
9. Thomas Omestad, "The Casbah Connection: Why Morocco Is Producing Some of the World's Most Feared Terrorists," U.S. News and World Report, 1 May 2005. In the Spanish trial, however, prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to prove the connections between the Moroccan terrorists involved in the Madrid bombings and the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.
10. See Victoria Burnett, "Convictions and Key Acquittals End Madrid Bomb Trial," New York Times, 1 November 2007, A3.
11. For some typologies and criteria for distinguishing among Islamist movements, see Tamara Cofman Wittes, Freedom's Unsteady March: America's Role in Building Arab Democracy (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, forthcoming 2008);
12. and Nathan Brown, Amr Hamzawy, and Marina Ottaway, "Islamist Movements and the Democratic Process in the Arab World: Exploring the Gray Zones," Carnegie Papers, No. 61 (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 2006).
13. Amel Boubekeur and Samir Amghar, Islamist Parties in the Maghreb and Their Links with the EU: Mutual Influences and the Dynamics of Democratisation, EuroMesco working paper, No, 55 (Brussels: CEPS, October 2006), 7.
14. Several senior PJD leaders, however, do have ongoing relations with Brotherhood figures and with Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, a major spiritual figure in salafist Sunni Islam who lives in Qatar.
15. Wendy Kristianasen, "Can Morocco's Islamists Check Al-Qaida?" Le Monde Diplomatique, August 2007.
16. Other Arab states, such as Bahrain, have parliamentary bodies with a majority of Islamist participants, but these parliaments have even less authority than Morocco's and thus cannot meaningfully be said to represent Islamist participation in governance. The imbalance of executive-legislative power in Morocco today would certainly constrain the capacity of a potential PJD-Ied governing coalition, but such a coalition would have distinct duties and powers that would qualify it, both symbolically and substantively, as an Islamist-led government under the authority of the king.
17. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
18. Daniel Brumberg, "Liberalization versus Democracy," in Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway, eds., Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), 15-36;
19. and Eva Bellin, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East," Comparative Politics 36 (January 2004): 139-57.
20. Marina Ottaway and Meredith Riley, "Morocco: From the Top-down Reform to Democratic Transition?" Carnegie Papers, No. 71 (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 2006), 6.
21. He explicitly avoided saying that he would select the prime minister from the winner of the election, as most predicted a PJD victory and the king did not want a PJD prime minister.
22. Wittes interview with a Moroccan political analyst and intellectual, Rabat, August 2007.
23. On PJD complaints, see Othmani's 10 September 2007 interview on Al Jazeera International at http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=CsoqfNL51Qw.
24. Elections in Chile in 1988, Poland in 1989, Serbia in 2000, and Ukraine in 2004 are just a few examples of electoral outcomes producing dramatic, regime-changing results not anticipated by the incumbents who organized the elections.
25. It may have been more than coincidence that a US$697.5 million loan from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was signed with Morocco only a week before the vote. The MCC uses governance and democracy indicators in its criteria for making loans.