A New Hope? Marketing Local Governace Reforms as Legitimation Strategies in Morocco and Tunisia

The Arab uprisings in 2011 brought back to life a vivid public and international discourse on decentralization and pushed local governance reform projects in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries. As strong protest movements originated from the local periphery, they also challenged the dominant scientific focus on the national level or regime type in the MENA region. Meanwhile, expectations of international donors and local activists are high: Decentralization reforms are presented as less invasive forms of democratization, as way to bolster the efficiency of local service provision, to increase regime accountability and create new opportunities for the participation of citizens and the civil society. Evidence towards those merits of decentralization, however, is scarce or mixed in most MENA countries. The reform processes are still dominated by the central governments. Even in the cases of Morocco, often cited as the MENA forerunner in local governance reforms, and Tunisia, that managed to start its democratic transition after 2011, central authorities have shown hesitation to release their grip on financial or policy making power on a subnational level. Driving factors for the reforms are disparities between central and peripheral regions, between urban and rural spaces as well as intra-regional differences. The “light hand” of local governance reforms is thus employed to increase political regimes' legitimation in the eyes of elites, the populace, and the international environment. This contribution analyzes how discourses about local governance in Morocco and Tunisia are employed as strategies to stabilize the political regimes before and after the Arab Uprisings. Drawing on theories of soft power, legitimation and cooptation this study employs a Grounded Theory-inspired mixed methods approach based on a regime-related media discourse analysis and semi-structured interview data. I discern legitimation strategies towards different audiences, compare patterns and topoi in the legitimation discourse and their argumentative justification between and within cases.