Democratic decentralization and local development: insights from Moroccos advanced regionalization process

Abstract

Decentralization reforms have been undertaken around the world for about 45 years now, generating a significant body of literature. In this chapter, I will review a part of this literature and present some findings on the case of recent decentralization reforms at the regional level in Morocco. The chapter will emphasize the political economy drivers of decentralization reforms as the main explanations for the inconclusive evidence when it comes to local development.The chapter is structured as follows. This first section reviews the main definitions, typologies, drivers, promises and risk. The second section conceptualizes the links between decentralization and local development. The third section introduces the Moroccan case and reviews the main characteristics in terms of governance, finance and regional planning. It also highlights the relationship between decentralization and deconcentration reforms there and argues that the latter significantly constrains the former's potential to make a positive impact in terms of local development. The fourth section concludes. Definition and TypologyA short definition of decentralization is provided by Faguet and Pöschl (2015, p. 2; citing Faguet andSánchez, 2013 andManor, 1999): 'the devolution by central (i.e. national) government of specific functions -with all of the administrative, political, and economic attributes that these entail -to regional and local (i.e. state/provincial and municipal) governments that are independent of the centre within given geographic and functional domains'. Devolution is also known as 'political' or 'democratic' decentralization. This is because devolution usually transfers responsibilities for services to municipalities that elect their own mayors and councils, raise their own revenues, and have independent authority to make investment decisions (Litvack, Junaid and Bird, 1998, p. 6). Traditionally, the literature distinguishes between two additional forms of decentralization: deconcentration and delegation (Parker, 1995, pp. 19ff; Rondinelli, 1999, p. 2). Deconcentration is the process by which the central government disperses responsibilities for certain services to its regional branch offices without involving any transfer of authority to lower levels of government (Litvack et al., 1998, p. 4). This is often considered the weakest form of decentralization (Rondinelli, 1999, p. 2). Delegation refers to a situation in which the central government transfers respon-

5. Fiscal Decentralization in the Middle East and North Africa: Deciphering Motives and Outcomes

“…Proper funding is necessary for subnational governance reforms. A basic assumption of effective decentralization is that a transfer of powers and responsibilities to subnational institutions must be accompanied by a transfer of proper funding (Vollmann 2020;Bergh 2021). Transformation literature, as well as the proponents of decentralization policies, claim that the reforms aim at boosting economic development when the fiscal relationship between the center and its territories is improved .…”

“…Fiscal control is an important factor in a central regimes' monitoring and controlling of their territories. Therefore, an in-depth analysis of fiscal decentralization helps to identify cases of partial decentralization and the manipulation of reforms hijacked to stabilize the regime in authoritarian contexts as a form of authoritarian upgrading (Vollmann et al 2020;Bergh 2021;Harb and Atallah 2015a;Aalen and Murias 2018). Even if subnational institutions are formally declared to be financially independent bodies, they may de facto have no real fiscal autonomy.…”

“…Another example are development initiatives under the auspices of the wali who act as agents of the MoI in the regions (Agences de Développement Régional). There furthermore exists a myriad of de jure market ori-Figure 6: ented public national and regional agencies and state-owned companies that obscure the division of responsibilities between political actors, or encourage subnational governments to cooperate with the center (Vollmann et al 2020;Bergh 2021;2012;Houdret and Harnisch 2018).…”