Bureaucratic Transition in Morocco

A recent excellent study of the political aspects of Middle Eastern social change¹ analyzes four principal "instruments of political modernization": the army, the political party, the trade union, and finally, the civil bureaucracy. It is significant that the last-named instrument receives far less attention than the others, not because it is less important, but simply because the bureaucratic-administrative aspect of political development has been relatively neglected by Western analysts. Although another recent publication² clearly recognizes this lack, not just in the Middle East but in the whole field of developing nations, and does a good deal to alleviate it, the fact remains that bureaucracy as an instrument of modernization has not been a favored focus for analysis. In the Middle East, where bureaucracy's role in modernization and social change has been of vital importance, only Morroe Berger among sociologists has chosen this traditional sociological field as a vehicle for his research.³ It is not the purpose of this paper to develop reasons for the relative lack of concern with bureaucracy's role in development. Rather, our attention will be given to a case study involving three aspects of the topic: first, the importance of bureaucracy in developing Morocco; second, the problem of Moroccanization and its solutions; and third, the implications of these solutions for Morocco's future and for the place of bureaucracy in the Middle East's modernizing societies.