| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The political situation in the Maghreb in the first decade of the twenty-first century presented a vivid image of enforced stability under authoritarian regimes that gave hardly any hint of changing in the short to medium term. The Moroccan monarchy had successfully engineered a fragmented and ineffective political system that was not posing any concrete challenge to its rule. The military-backed Algerian regime had restored the effectiveness of its institutional apparatus through a combination of repression, diversion of oil rents, and divide-and-rule political tactics. The regime of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia had effectively turned into a police state that did not let any kind of organized opposition challenge the established authoritarian "pact." (In Tunisia, this implicit understanding amounted to stability, provision of state services, and opportunities for personal advancement in exchange for political quiescence.)
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