Change Trends and Change Limits in the Maghreb Political Systems: A Retrospective Survey of the 1990s

Abstract

The end of the 1980s and part of the 1990s was for the Maghreb a period of systemic crisis followed by political openings and transformations. Most of them had an economic background and took place in an atmosphere of economic liberalization. However, the economic factors alone cannot account for the precise moment of launching nor for the nature of the openings. To do so we must take into consideration internal and international political factors. Particularly, it was the commonly repeated crisis of coercion and execution which set off the processes of liberalization and democratization. In several cases, international actors exerted decisive pressure. These processes were ridden by unilateralism since they were neither negotiated nor derived from social demands and by partiality as they only affected some political functions. The inconsistency generated by both features halted the transformations and became a limit to fundamental change of the regimes.