Introduction

Over the past two decades, Morocco has witnessed an escalation in dynamics aimed at reforming the legal framework for associations. Civil society organizations invested heavily in creating an open political climate between 2011 and 2014 following the protest context of the February 20 Movement, which was influenced by the broader regional “Arab Spring”.¹Many in Morocco prefer to use the term “democratic spring” on the grounds that the protest movement included, among others, Amazigh participation. Since then, civil society organizations have worked in different directions and expressed their demands through new forms of “legal victimization” and some political grievances against state institutions; these institutions initially attempted to deal seriously with collective concerns by launching a series of reform promises, but these have not yet been adopted or officially included in the legal reform agenda.

This paper attempts to deconstruct the causes of and factors in the failure to enact legal reforms, drawing on the literature analyzing the public policy field produced on the subject, with the aim of offering a new critical interpretation of the complexities of adding association reform laws to the official agenda.²In approaching this analysis, the author has also drawn on the theories and models proposed by Paul A. Sabatier, John W. Kingdon, Peter Bachrach, Roger W. Cobb, and Charles D. Elder. It will begin by highlighting some general observations on the problem and attempting to understand the legal frameworks at the heart of the demands for reform, before moving on to examine the positions of both official state institutions and civil society organizations, as shown through their advocacy or lobbying initiatives and in the public debate.