Morocco: An Islamic Globalizing Monarchy within the Elusive Phenomenon of Arab Spring

Far from taking place in a vacuum, in Morocco the 2011 constitutional revision was assessed both from an internal political perspective and within the broader context of what has come to be called the ‘Arab Spring’. In this manner, the 2011 Moroccan Constitution has indeed marked an unprecedented change, declaring the State’s adherence to the protection of human rights, which are strictly related to the Western history of ‘secular constitutionalism’. Yet, in order to better understand the constitutional transition, one has to consider the religious characteristic of Moroccan monarchy which, on the other hand, makes it a prototype of a ‘globalizing monarchy’, especially within the context of MENA (Middle East and Nord African) region. The Moroccan constitutional transition can in fact be seen as a peculiar tool for taking into account endogenous and exogenous factors respectively. On the one hand, it allows us to investigate how an Islamic specific legal tradition interacts with some principles that represent the pillars of constitutional democracies and that, as such, have been universally recognised; at least in the West. On the other, the exceptionalism of ‘Moroccan spring’ lets us to evaluate how these very principles are contextualized in a peculiar context of MENA region; by which, for the same reasons, one can draw more general considerations concerning the relationship between the pressing process of globalization and post-colonial Muslim-majority States.