This paper aims to investigate the effect of institutional reforms on the legitimacy of authoritarian regimes under pressure. It builds on the importance of legitimacy in authoritarian contexts (Gerschewski 2013; Kailitz 2013a; Backes and Kailitz 2013; Burnell 2006; Holbig 2013) and in particular the often-overlooked relevance of political processes and associated claims of legitimation by competing actors.
Drawing on an in-depth account of the Moroccan constitutional reform process in 2011 based on a descriptive assessment of the political process and semi-structured actor-interviews conducted between 2013 and 2015 vis-à-vis survey data from the Arab barometer rounds in 2007 and 2013, this paper emphasizes the importance of looking into political processes in order to detect effects of institutional reforms on the ability of challengers to mobilize and challenge the incumbents legitimacy in authoritarian contexts.
The use of institutional reforms by incumbent authorities to restore control over pathways of political contestation and dissolute more fundamental threats to political authority is a phenomenon observable common in all kinds of political systems. Particularly authoritarian regimes often instrumentalize institutional reforms to subvert dissent. In moments of contestation, regimes may use reforms to hijack the discourse on progress and political change and by the same token signal responsiveness to its citizenry. However channelling reforms into institutional and thus more controllable pathways allow a higher degree of control over the outcome of the process. Of course institutional reforms can also be a cornerstone in transitional dynamics however they oftentimes are embedded in an attempt to appease protesters with limited concessions while seldomly altering the underling power structures in a state.
The paper is proceeds in three steps. First, the central concepts and their linkages for assessing the impact of constitutional reforms on regime legitimation are spelled out. In a second step the paper analyses these processes through a case study of Morocco’s constitutional reform process of 2011. Empirically this assessment is based upon qualitative expert and elite interviews with members of the Moroccan constitutional committee as well as political actors from political parties and non-parliamentarian opposition groups. In the third part the paper compares the legitimacy claims associated with the constitutional reform process and the perceptions through looking into the Arab barometer data.
