1
Introduction

Attention to the possibility of democratic transformation that has gripped scholars in recent years initially swept unnoticing past the Middle East. In consequence, interesting developments in Middle Eastern societies were neglected. Although the region as a whole remains characterized by authoritarian rule, by the late 1980s there was evidence of a growing concern about the linkage between governed and governors.^[1] In November 1989, Jordan held its first full legislative election in more than twenty years. The popularly chosen parliament began to exercise atrophied muscle by investigating allegations of corruption in government agencies, referring several of them for judicial investigation. Following dissolution of the Kuwaiti parliament in 1986, Kuwait saw a popular expansion of its diwaniyya , a system of informal networks that generally promoted the sharing of interests within occupation groups. Diwaniyyas in the late 1980s evolved into political fora where the "guest audience" frequently numbered in the hundreds. Parliament was restored in 1992, and the new legislature promptly formed a human rights committee. In Egypt, associational life began to expand, and the concerns of intellectual critics increasingly found voice.^[2] Within the greater Middle East, democratization seemed in the late 1980s to stand its best chance in the Maghrib, where the forced departure of Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba focused attention on political problems, and where just a year later, turmoil provoked by economic crisis called the viability of Algeria's social contract into question. Expectations of democratization were raised high across the region.

In the interim, the euphoria has waned; skepticism has in large measure replaced the optimism of the late 1980s. All the same, societal pressures for democratization remain stronger than at any time in the recent past. Among elites in and out of power, questions of structural change still pro-

voke animated debate. Into the 1990s, across the Maghrib, small groups of individuals, most of them professionals, found themselves meeting in homes or restaurants specifically to discuss matters of public policy and political action. Their relatively quiet, but persistent, efforts to effect liberalizing political change merit close examination. It is to such efforts that this book directs attention.

Efforts, of course, are not to be confused with results. Regardless of expressed concerns and accompanying efforts, democratic transition is far from a certain outcome in the contemporary Maghrib. Many forces are at work, and the ventures of democratically oriented elites are only one among them. An eventual transition is far from assured, but likewise, it cannot be precluded. From the vantage of this book, the outcome of the present ambiguous situation is less critical than understanding pressures for structural change and how they are articulated. Even the truncated stories of failed or incomplete transitions can reveal much about the impetus for structural reform. Studies of accomplished democratic transitions have pointed up weak areas in our understanding of the process by which change is initiated. Little is known, for example, of the tactical decisions made by opposition elites, who in many situations have provided the impulse and the framework for democratization. As useful as it is to identify the conditions under which their actions are likely to be successful, of equal relevance are the factors that make them decide to act. An investigation of the exertions of opposition elites as actions are planned and executed affords a different perspective than that presented in post hoc studies of achieved transitions. Retrospective studies that project backward from successful transitions may screen out false starts and negative outcomes. Such an approach is appropriate when the focus is on the success of structural transformation; it necessarily yields fewer insights into the impetus for action that initiates a transition and carries it forward. A close-up, in situ view offers an opportunity to observe crafting in progress and apply analytic tools to help understand the process of democratization.

What is to be understood as "democracy" in a region where there are few indigenous referents? Even in the abstract, consideration of democratization is problematic, for the meaning of the word democracy itself is subject to dispute. The historical evolution of democracy and democratic theory from classical Athens to the contemporary period has given rise to a variety of governmental forms and theoretical models. With choices as extreme as those represented by Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, democratic thought is like a tree with many grafted branches: the varieties of fruit may be only distantly related. Dominant perspectives alternatively

emphasize representation and participation, and historical combinations have been myriad. What at root serve as the common denominator to different perspectives are twin notions of popular choice and accountability, although exactly who constitute the responsible citizenry remains at issue.^[3] In a work commonly recognized as a central referent for democratic theory, Robert Dahl posits as defining characteristics of democracy, or polyarchy, the right to participate and the right to oppose. For Dahl, the noteworthy advantage of democracy does not lie in the particular policies it may produce, for in their content democratically produced policies may differ little from those arrived at by other political means. Democracy's major virtue is found, rather, in the protection from massive coercion it extends to those who enjoy the franchise.^[4]

Form rather than content affords this protection from tyranny. Building on Joseph Schumpeter's argument that democracy is best seen as a political method, or institutionalized competition, democracy at its core is a set of agreed-upon rules for resolving conflict. Conflict is inherent in politics, and democracy distinguishes itself in recognizing that fact, enshrining rules that establish the parameters of acceptable—and unacceptable—political activity. Within the established bounds, uncertainty of outcome in political struggle is the hallmark of democratic process. Inherent uncertainty introduces an added measure of anxiety into democratic politics, but it is the source of the system's strength. The fact that the game is not fixed in advance keeps at the table many players who otherwise might retire in dismay, disgust, or indifference. Losing one round in democratic politics does not preclude winning the next, and vice versa.

The North African societies at the heart of this book, or at least important segments within them, have been clamoring for increased access to decision-making structures and increased influence on outcomes. In Tunisia, the Movement of Socialist Democrats (MDS) for many years carried this banner, and for the past decade, Islamists have most vocally contested the monopolistic control of power. Likewise, the proliferation of parties in Algeria after political liberalization in spring 1989 attested to widespread, albeit fragmented, interest in access to power. In Morocco, where multipartyism has long been constitutionally enshrined, but the role of parties has been circumscribed, organized labor pressed for political change. In 1990 it shifted its attention away from economic demands to concern for the political rights to organize, strike, and criticize government policy without fear of reprisal.

As Maghribi regimes flirt with the idea of democracy, the strongest proponents of liberalizing change have sounded their voices most often from

the wings, at some distance from the seats of power. Their commitment to institutionalized democracy—and the possibility of political defeat—goes untested, but their demands and their commentary have helped shape a debate among elites about the nature of democratic governance. Criticism of personalism and monopolistic, single-party rule sets the measure of such discussions, and it has become as much a part of popular political culture in Tunisia and Algeria as has acknowledgment of the monarch's hold over the political system in Morocco. While some have focused narrowly on openly contested national elections, others have argued that democratization is a process that to be effective must extend beyond multipartyism and open elections to respect for the independence of law.

As either product or ongoing process, democracy requires active cultivation. Even in well-established democracies, the continuous reproduction of democratic rule both in the polity at large and in smaller organizational groupings is far from automatic.^[5] In societies struggling to establish avenues of participation and structures of accountability, the opportunities for failure abound, and outcomes are highly uncertain. Returns on democratization may be both unevenly distributed and slow to show themselves; as a structure of governance, democracy will likely prove more cumbersome than the alternatives. Guiseppe DiPalma notes that arriving at a working democracy requires not simply the proper raw materials, but considerable craftsmanship, and the mastery of the craftsman becomes that much more critical absent congruent elements of political culture to provide even indirect support. "When . . . countries arrive on the threshold of democracy without those structural or cultural qualities deemed important [for sustaining democracy], when [they] arrive under conditions of harried and divisive mobilization, then the task of crafting should be the more crucial and challenging. Whatever the historical trends, whatever the hard facts, the importance of human action in a difficult transition should not be underestimated."^[6] The shape and durability of the outcome is a function, not only of advantageous contextual conditions, but of particular judgments made at particular junctures with more or less political skill.

The shapers of governance structures everywhere include the universal suspects of politics: old elite families, bourgeois industrialists, the military, sectarian groups and religious leaders, labor unions, and political parties. Although the salience of given players varies according to national history, the Maghribi countries of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco offer examples of the full panoply of actors and actions. The region has known reform, revolution, and stagnation; its era of twentieth-century independence opened on a newly formed republic, a revolutionary socialist state, and one

of the world's oldest ruling monarchies. The prominence of such national leaders as Habib Bourguiba, Hassan II, and Houari Boumediene has tended to obscure the more ordinary and less visible effects of mobilization parties and the relatively quiet bargains struck by elites, but in the ongoing lives of their polities, these political forces have molded the patterns of contemporary political culture. Clientelism, factionalism, and governmental centrism have all helped shape the political process, building institutions and developing patterns that, if far from being to the satisfaction of all, have nevertheless resulted in a high degree of order and continuity. The dynamics of the political process as they have evolved over the past thirty years are explored in Chapters 3–6 of this book. At this point, it need simply be noted that, in the long view and by comparison either to sub-Saharan Africa or the eastward reaches of the Middle East, the three states of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia have been noteworthy for the upper hand they have kept over popular disruptions.

All the same, basic tensions have not dissipated, and neither have the problems of polity formation been fully resolved. On the contrary, the prospect of chronic economic difficulties has raised serious questions about Maghribi states' continued ability to satisfy their citizens, and the rise of Islamist ideology over the past two decades is indicative at very least that views differ as to how the polity might be organized. To a significant degree, Maghribi states consolidated their powers by embracing a welfare function. With the greater demands of a larger, more educated, and urbanized population and a concomitant scarcity of resources, however, the expectation of state strength has become a political liability. Yesterday's state functioned effectively with limited popular access, doling out services and subsidies where desirable or expedient and exercising political repression elsewhere. Today's state, with relatively limited resources, faces a fundamental challenge of participation. The old game leaves too many would-be players on the margin, threatening social cohesion. Total abandonment of established patterns threatens chaos, and statesmen do well to move with caution. Yet where the established political game enters another iteration of demand and unsatisfying response, perhaps with superficial modifications intended to placate marginalized players, the results are ever more disappointing. Maghribi statesmen today face the serious challenge of injecting flexibility and resilience into the institutions crafted a generation ago. The contemporary political challenge is to alter, without entirely scrapping, the rules of the game.

A conceptual distinction between metapolitics and relational politics points up the critical nature of the choices at hand.^[7]Relational politics de-

notes the efforts of players within an established framework to affect a political outcome. These are the moves—advances, retreats, alliances, and compromises—that determine the distribution of political goods. The analysis of relational politics customarily assumes the basic stability of the social, economic, and institutional parameters within which players operate. That is, variation is expected within the formal and informal structures of a reasonably well-anchored political system; the terms of the struggle are uncontested and figure largely as background, contextual variables. Where events occur to undermine the efficacy of existing arrangements, those erstwhile contextual variables are brought center stage. Metapolitics refers to the political dynamics of efforts to set and alter the rules and parameters of political contests. Regime transformation necessarily involves alteration of the system itself and entails efforts to reset the operating political parameters. It is the nature of a transition to call into question old arrangements. In such periods, actors old and new seek to satisfy interests, carrying out the business of relational politics, but they are also engaged in efforts to establish "rules and procedures whose configuration will determine likely winners and losers in the future."^[8] Transitions are more than just an old contest with new actors. To a significant degree, they engage energies in an effort to create a new political game.

Uprooting established patterns of political interactions and redirecting social energies is a daunting task. Inevitably, the attention of actors and observers alike is directed to formal structures—constitutions, parliaments, courts, and electoral systems. Formally articulated structures represent only the tip of the iceberg of politics, however, and they are difficult enough to change even with an expressed popular mandate. Informal patterns anchored in a society's political culture present an even greater challenge, insofar as their foundation and perpetuation are rarely examined by those enmeshed in them. Culture provides a social frame of reference, and as such it is commonly perceived as an extension of the natural order. Culture's power to orient energies is enhanced by the fact that it is reproduced without being articulated and thus remains unquestioned. The invisibility of patterns to those who operate within a culture—and even more so, the invisibility of their roots—leaves those patterns resistant to change. Structural forces work on culture as wind and water work on stone, but continuity is the lawful expectation of culture. Even revolutionary political change, or structural transformation, must eventually reconcile itself with patterns of socialization reproduced in small parochial units.^[9] Appreciation in recent decades of the monumental proportions of the task of transformation has led many observers to doubt the probability, if not the

possibility, of far-reaching political change in the direction of democratization in societies with a long history of authoritarian rule.

The power of political patterning notwithstanding, an impulse toward important political change is readily apparent in North Africa. As already noted, the rise and spread of Islamism across the Maghrib and the proliferation of political associations signal shifting, and sometimes contradictory, frameworks of political interaction. Change must be considered as more than hypothetical—without being inevitable. It has been argued that modernity ineluctably drives cultures toward tolerance and cultural flexibility, an adaptive response to the rapidity of change and recognition of the diversity imposed by technologies that have reduced cultural isolation.^[10] To the extent that modernity is a ubiquitous social force, democracy—with the emphasis on form rather than content—appears more consonant with cultural flexibility than authoritarian structures. From that vantage, some have argued that democracy is the political form of choice, and of history.^[11] In fact, nothing is less certain. Human responses at both personal and social levels often fly in the face of wisdom, and history. The crafting of democracy is fraught with uncertainties; opportunities to slip abound. However desirable, democratic forms do not simply appear. They must be worked with skill, and given the formidable difficulties of political engineering, democracy is far from assured as the product of current political demand. Indeed, there are few indications that those who now clamor for access to the structures of governance would, if in power themselves, be inclined to share that power. The rhetoric employed to contest monolithic structures of power opens up the possibility of democratizing change, but transformation is hardly guaranteed.

If democracy in its essence is a set of rules that leave open the question of political victory, how are such rules established? Who or what social groups have the capacity to direct structural transformation? In the Maghrib, social and political structures that might assist in the birthing of democratic rule are themselves weak or compromised. Ruling parties cling fiercely to their power; opposition parties are fragmented and weak. With few exceptions, the industrial bourgeoisie has no base independent of government. There is little history of pluralism; such associations as do exist steer carefully clear of politics. Labor unions, the notable exception, are dwarfed by political parties in Morocco and co-opted by central power structures in Algeria and Tunisia.

Among the conventional players, only the courts offer some promise. Through powers of adjudication, courts may ideally function as referees in the game of politics. That function turns on trust and good faith, how-

ever, and requires impartiality of the referee. The willingness of courts to accept evidence extracted under torture, or falsified testimony, compromises that requisite impartiality. Courts across the Maghrib are not universally compromised, but neither is the full independence of the judiciary established. In recent years, courts have begun to exercise their powers more fully, and over time they may be expected to play an important role in limiting arbitrary power. In August 1991, for example, a Moroccan court refused to convict Islamist students charged with petty theft and "insults to bureaucrats" (outrage à fonctionnaire ) on grounds of insufficient evidence. With the government's blessing a few months later, the Algerian Constitutional Council struck down a provision of the 1991 electoral code allowing men to procure the vote(s) of their spouse(s). It remains that at the present juncture a court system that in the past has been compromised in the most critical cases cannot bear responsibility, ex nihilo, for the safeguarding of a democratic polity.

If the "who" of democratic transition is problematic, the "how" is no more obvious. Bargaining strategies have been suggested as one important avenue to structural reform. Recent experiences in Tunisia and Algeria, however, have failed to establish viable working rules of democratic procedure. Tunisia's 1988 National Pact, intended to oversee a transition to a democratic contest, was discredited within months. Islamists, included in the negotiation of the pact, were denied formal access to the electoral system, and stringent rules of candidacy exacerbated the problems of new parties trying to compete. The ruling party's complete sweep of the legislative contest in 1989 confirmed cynics in their belief that it did not intend to share power, and the once-celebrated pact faded from Tunisia's political landscape.

In Algeria, Prime Minister Sid Ahmad Ghozali's difficulty in late 1991 in selling parliament a package of electoral reforms that would credibly guarantee an open electoral contest further illustrates the problems inherent in bargaining among the elite as a path to democratizing reform. In an open political market, competition for spoils may well entail establishing rules for their distribution. However, where the outcome of an eventual contest is or appears to be embedded in those rules themselves, mistrust in the immediate term of the democratic intent of at least one important player may overshadow longer-term interest in opening up the political system. Bargaining strategies are unreliable as a route to open contest and may be as likely to sabotage democratization as to promote it.

Government-led liberalization seems no more trustworthy as a sure path to democracy. Liberalization may signal the need of an authoritarian

regime to reach beyond the bounds of its coalition for additional support, but it may also simply be the means by which an authoritarian regime buys time for itself. Political succession, economic crisis, or manifest loss of legitimacy signaled by popular protest may provide the impetus for liberalizing measures intended to establish or bolster legitimacy. The political need for legitimacy cannot, however, be depended upon to sustain liberalization. Legitimacy is certainly useful to a regime, in that it reduces the need for coercive measures, but as Adam Przeworski notes, many regimes manage to establish and maintain a hold on power through fear, or the simple lack of alternatives.^[12] Liberalization seemed critical to establish the legitimacy of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's claim to power in the aftermath of the bloodless coup that removed Habib Bourguiba from office in 1987. In time, however, with the military and security apparatuses under firm control and any threat from the legal opposition minimized, political liberalization has become less compelling for the regime.

It is against this backdrop of increased demand for access to the political system and a mixed response from the regimes that hold the reins that the emergence of a North African human rights movement takes on political significance. Since the mid 1970s, an organized commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights has taken shape across the Maghrib. In the three countries of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, six human rights groups now pressure their governments to exercise their authority within the bounds of law. The Tunisian League of Human Rights, founded in 1977, is in many regards the doyen of the Maghribi movement. It was not the first such group to appear, that title having been claimed by the Istiqlal Party's Moroccan League of Human Rights as early as 1972, but it was the first politically independent group. Political unrest shook Tunisia within a year of the league's founding, seriously testing the league's commitment to its cause in the face of risk to its own members. The league passed that test, and for several years was the only consistently audible Maghribi voice raised in defense of human rights and protesting at their violation. A Moroccan Association of Human Rights, initially affiliated with the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP) was formed in 1979, but like the LMDH, it maintained a low profile. Three Algerian groups, since narrowed to a pair, joined the field in the mid 1980s. Their commitment, too, was tested by events of October 1988. Finally, the emergence of the politically independent Moroccan Organization of Human Rights in December 1988 dissociated human rights from partisan contest and in the process gave new purpose to Morocco's two party-affiliated organizations.

As watchdogs over the practices of their governments rather than as

contestants for political gain, the Maghribi human rights groups have established themselves as important political players. By the mandate they have fashioned, they are seeking to change the rules of the game rather than to assure a given political outcome. To the extent that they resist engaging in direct political contest, relational politics, they free themselves to monitor, and shape, metapolitical forces. They play politics at a different level, but one that may be more germane, ultimately, to the development of democratic governance. In this region, which has neither folk tradition nor national historical tradition on which to draw for guidance through a transition from authoritarian rule, human rights groups have become political players of critical importance precisely because their single goal is to see the rules of the political game rewritten.

History will have to judge the measure of their success. This book can only document their efforts. The story of the Maghribi human rights movement is complex, and can be divorced neither from the context of local political struggles nor from the larger international framework through which it took shape. Nor, for that matter, can it be entirely extricated from the personal affiliations and rivalries of some of its central characters. Desire for political change of the sort advocated by rights groups is a matter of conscience, which is often born of accidentally acquired and morally troubling knowledge. There is a considerable leap from knowledge to action, however. This study is an attempt to understand the process by which individual knowledge is crystallized into political action and the elements that contribute, more or less explicitly, to calculated expectations of success.

In these introductory pages, I have argued that human rights groups challenge the rules of the political games across North Africa, and that in so doing they perform a "metapolitical" function. Their experience is a prism through which to view democratizing efforts across the Middle East, and, indeed, in other regions where private concerns have overshadowed public rules in political contests. The very existence of these groups represents a challenge to entrenched authority; their mere survival is worthy of note, and any appreciable impact they have had requires explanation.

Several factors have enhanced the efforts of human rights groups and have protected their members; in Chapter 2, readers are directed to the most important of these. Evaluating both the process of crafting structural change and the extent of change itself, however, demands closer attention to the contexts in which the human rights groups operate. Only with a

baseline in mind can we appreciate either the objectives that are being pursued or the dialogue that has been opened with governments. Chapters 3–6 accordingly examine the underpinnings of political culture in the Maghrib and outline the frameworks of political games as they were historically developed and have been played across the Maghrib on a country-by-country basis. Chapter 7 traces the emergence of politically independent human rights groups in all three countries, while Chapters 8 and 9 consider the contemporary period more closely to explore the dynamics of their internal operations and interactions with the governments of the Maghrib. The story of Maghribi human rights groups would be incomplete, and an analysis of their political function would be seriously flawed, without attention to the role actors from beyond the Maghrib have played. Outside, international parties have helped protect human rights groups, and they have also brought their own pressures to bear on all of the governments of the Maghrib. In Chapter 10, the dynamics between individual groups and the governments whose practices they challenge are fitted within the context of what has been called "post-international politics." Public policy and political processes are no longer simply a matter of domestic concern in North Africa, assuming they ever were. Chapter 11, finally, assesses the net effect of all these pressures on political systems in the Maghrib.

The bulk of this book is about making and playing political games, which for some is effectively a matter of life and death. Political games are not easily created or undone, and the task of constructing a game fair to all players taxes even the most skillful and the most committed. It is thus important to reiterate that this is a book about efforts. The question of success is left to the end of the book, and beyond.