 |
| Volume XIV, Winter 2007, Number 4 |
| |
ABSTRACT
Corruption in Morocco: Old Forces, New Dynamics and a Way Forward
|
| |
| Guilain P. Denoeux |
| |
Dr. Denoeux is professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. This article draws on interviews he conducted in Morocco in August 2006 and July 2007.
Morocco “has been spared weapons of mass destruction, but it is being destroyed by weapons of mass corruption." This often-heard statement in the kingdom suggests that, for all the rhetorical emphasis that successive governments since 1998 have placed on "fighting corruption," and despite the flurry of legal and institutional changes they have initiated in this area in the past several years, the problem remains pervasive. Corruption is ubiquitous in all its dimensions and manifestations: petty as well as grand, in business transactions as well as in the country's political life, in the private sector as much as throughout the government bureaucracy, in daily human interactions as well as at critical junctures in the country's public life (e.g., during elections), and at the national and local levels alike. Both Moroccan entrepreneurs and foreign investors continue to describe corruption as the primary deterrent to investing in the kingdom. Corruption's toll on economic growth and job creation thus can hardly be overstated, and neither can the extent to which it has eroded public confidence in state institutions, the political elite and the political system in general. In short, corruption is not merely one of the many daunting challenges that Morocco faces; it lies at the very heart of its economic and political troubles. Significantly, during interviews conducted in Rabat and Casablanca in early July 2007, independent experts and civil-society activists, as well as journalists, consistently used the following words to summarize the scope of corruption in Morocco: "commonplace" (banalisé), "systematized," "entrenched," "institutionalized" and "endemic."
|
| |
|
