The Justice and Development Party in Moroccan Local Politics
This article analyzes the performance of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) in Moroccan local politics from 2003 to 2009, using a variety of data sources including interviews, municipal budgets, and audit reports. We find that the PJD’s campaign and candidates were significantly different from Moroccan political norms. The outcomes of audits and budget patterns show governance in towns where the PJD was elected differed only in those where the party had high electoral support in 2003, allowing it to govern with a small coalition.
Left–Islamist Opposition Cooperation in Morocco
This contribution studies the different preferences of Moroccan Islamists and leftists for cooperating with each other. The Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD) has been actively seeking an alliance with the leftist Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) since 2007. The USFP's national leadership has avoided any form of cooperation with the Islamists at the national level, but had to tolerate government coalitions at the local level. We find that the most important driver behind the USFP's reluctance to ally with the Islamists is its co-optation. The asymmetry in electoral strength and differences in the type of electoral support the two parties enjoy also appear to be important reasons behind the different party preferences. For the PJD, its superior electoral support and the higher degree of programmatic support it enjoys suggest that it expects to be successful in democratic elections, while the opposite seems to be the case for the USFP. Ideology, by contrast, was found to be of little importance in determining the positions of the national PJD or USFP leadership towards cross-party cooperation. The analysis is based on original field research conducted in Morocco and on data from the World Values Survey.
The Algerian Crisis: Algeria's Ruinous Impasse and the Honourable Way Out
This article examines the nature of the continuing conflict within Algeria. The author considers in detail and rejects the main elements of the official French position on the conflict. He suggests that an accurate analysis of its component factors and of recent attempts at moves towards a resolution indicates that a valid, internally achieved solution is by no means impossible. For this to happen, the army needs to reconsider its position as the depository of popular sovereignty, which it can no longer sustain, and France needs to cease its covert obstruction of such initiatives as the 1995 Rome platform.