Signaling reforms through election results: how a Moroccan opposition party demobilized protests

Abstract

ABSTRACT Elections within authoritarian contexts and social movements have been thoroughly, yet separately, studied. This article jointly analyzes these different phenomena in order to demonstrate how electoral results can affect protest demobilization. My interviews with the February 20 Movement (F20), the main organizer of mass protests in Morocco during the Arab Spring, reveals how the parliamentary victory of an opposition Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party (PJD), helped lead to the F20’s eventual halt of protests. During my fieldwork, I conducted 46 semi-structured elite interviews with civil society activists, political party leaders, MPs, and independent activists throughout Morocco. This article argues that the 2011 victory of an opposition Islamist party, which had not previously been allowed to win a plurality of parliamentary seats, played a major role in quelling protests. The ushering of Islamists into power following the Arab Spring is often viewed as a threat to the state. In Morocco, however, the winning of the PJD in parliamentary elections signaled to the public that change had occurred and convinced many Moroccans that a social movement for change was no longer needed. Said differently, the state needed Islamists to win.