Ajustement Economique et Liberalisation Politique

In recent years bilateral and multilateral financial agencies have continuously maintained that the existence of a democratic form of government is a necessary condition for the success of structural adjustment programms (SAPs). In reality, insofar as SAPs entail the free market allocation of resources, the stability and guarantee of private property, profits and comparative advantage, they strike the neopatrimonial regime characteristic of most developing countries at its foundations. Neopatrimonal regimes are based on a model of resource allocations entirely controlled by the political establishment, which uses it as a means to garner support and secure a clientele. Our goal in this study is to focus on the case of Morocco in order to show the degree of correlation between economic reform and political change. The initial hypothesis is the following: if SAPs increase the likelihood of changes in the current political system, such changes are neither automatic nor widespread. The Moroccan example illustrates this point of view. The first part of the study describes the model employed which serves as the theoretical framework of our analysis.