Ship from Colombia laden with food and other goods docks in Cuba to help ease crises

Copyright AP Photo

By Gavin Blackburn

Published on 12/06/2026 -  EURONEWS

Regular power outages have intensified since US President Donald Trump threatened tariffs in late January on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.

A ship carrying nearly 100 tonnes of food and essential goods arrived in Cuba from Colombia on Friday as part of the humanitarian aid that several countries have sent to the island as a US energy embargo persists.

The ship, which departed Cartagena in early June, crossed the Havana Bay channel early in the morning flying the Colombian flag and escorted by a small Cuban auxiliary vessel.

The Colombian Presidential Agency for International Cooperation said that, on orders of President Gustavo Petro, the shipment included non-perishable food, medicine, hospital supplies, electrical materials, solar panels and other items.

The ship also carried seven tonnes of goods collected by solidarity groups.

Last weekend, another ship carrying 1,700 tonnes of essential goods from Mexico and Belize arrived in Havana.

People spend the night in the dark on the Malecon during a blackout in Havana, 21 March, 2026 AP Photo

Sanctions on Cuba

Washington announced sanctions against Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company on Thursday in a move expected to increase tensions between the two countries.

That announcement came almost a week after the US government sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and other officials, as well as several institutions.

Cuba is already struggling under a decades-old embargo and a lack of petroleum as the US keeps pushing for a change in its economic and political model.

Power outages, already common given the economic and energetic crisis gripping the island for the past five years, have only intensified since Trump threatened tariffs in late January on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.

Cuba's government said on Wednesday that the US oil blockade that has crippled the island is preventing the United Nations from distributing 170 containers of humanitarian aid.

Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that 170 containers of UN aid worth $6.3 million (€5.4 million) "is not reaching beneficiaries due to the fuel shortage."

Writing on X, he stressed that the blockade was "not only hampering the performance of the Cuban economy" but also affecting the work of international organisations.

Related

• How Cubans feel about the US indictment of Raúl Castro

Both countries have acknowledged that they have held talks, but the scope of them is unknown.

Meanwhile, Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since the US military invaded Venezuela and arrested former President Nicolás Maduro.

Last Thursday, Trump said Cuba has "sort of collapsed" and said "we're going to handle that as soon as we've finished" military operations in Iran.

The ‘Start of Summer’ Festival at the crossroads of Cuba’s political project

By Rubén Padrón Garriga

Published 12 June, 2026

First published in Spanish at La Joven Cuba. Translation by LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

For many Cuban families, the start of summer this year is anything but a celebration. Most households lack an Ecoflow system to make the power outages less unbearable. For them, the arrival of these months can only mean heat, mosquitoes and sleepless nights, because they cannot keep a fan running to provide some relief from the increasingly hot tropical nights.

If you are responsible for maintaining or managing a low-income household, the days are no less gruelling. Instead of tanning, the June sun burns the skin of those who wait for hours for a municipal electric tricycle to take them to work, or those who walk for miles looking for the small business that sells the cheapest chicken.

As this school year draws to a close, children from working-class families, even those with good grades, will not be able to go on trips any further than wherever their feet can take them. There will be no beaches, no swimming pools, no trips to the countryside. Many of those who have worked themselves to the bone all year long to support their families will also be unable to enjoy accessible leisure activities. Cinemas, theatres, and state-run entertainment venues remain closed almost everywhere because of the energy crisis. The country is surviving US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s attacks, but, according to President Miguel Díaz-Canel, “with the heroic resistance of the Cuban people, we are defending our sovereignty and are committed to perfecting the enormous work of social justice that socialist construction has built in Cuba.”

However, this “heroic resistance” is taking many different forms this summer. Some people cannot sleep because of the heat from an energy blackout, while others are dancing to the beat of reggaeton in a hotel pool. For them, the Start of Summer has a completely different meaning.

The “Start of Summer” festival took place between May 29–31 at the Resonance Musique Hotel in Varadero, although some of the festivities also extended to the Meliá Internacional hotel. According to reports in non-state media, it was organized by the Fiesta Havana and Rey Puma projects, with the media platform La Familia Cubana as its main promoter. There is no reliable information on what it cost to attend these events. Some advertisements on social media indicated a price of about US$170 a night for two people. These same sources also indicate that a table in the VIP area cost between $600 and $1000.

The event brought together such figures from the Cuban urban music scene as Yomil, Charly & Johayron, Ja Rulay, Wildey, Zurdo MC, El Micha, Hallel Génesis, Helabusador, and Rey Tony, among others. The La Familia Cubana influencer team documented every moment from the inside: backstage, interviews, concert clips… where everyone was having a fantastic time, everything was vibrant, abundant, and flowing…

Among the more “illustrious” attendees was the controversial influencer and business owner Sandro Castro, Fidel Castro's grandson, who shared images on his social media of lunches at the Xanadu Restaurant in Varadero, jet ski rides, beach parties, and a video showing the now-mythical, but increasingly less credible, beach sign that reads, “What is collected here is for the people.” Sandro Castro also took the opportunity to comment that the dolphins that protected Elián González on the high seas were now bringing people from Miami to Cuba to attend the Start of Summer festival. He also launched his new energy drink, Vampirash.

Anyone viewing the images without context might think that the event was taking place in Cancun or Punta Cana, and not in a “socialist” country where blackouts typically exceed 20 hours a day, water is scarce, medicines are nowhere to be found in pharmacies, and whose government has been asking for international aid for months to meet the basic needs of its population amid the US-imposed oil embargo.

Of course, the controversy was immediate. Anyone who does not know what Cuba is like might think that those who were outraged and attacked the opulence displayed amid the “resistance” were Communist militants, brandishing that maxim from the manuals on socialist transition, “to each according to their work.” But no. Granma, the Communist Party of Cuba’s official organ, remained silent on the matter. Those who expressed outrage were, generally, opposition journalists and influencers, the vast majority of whom are avowed defenders of the most neoliberal variant of capitalism, a model that accepts inequality not as a distortion, but as a fundamental mechanism of its operation.

A curious paradox, it seems that communist morality has switched sides. Today, it is the apologists for capital who are scandalised by its harshest consequences.

It is worth noting that it was not always like this. In the “socialist” Cuba of my childhood (the late 1990s and early 2000s), despite the lingering effects of the so-called Special Period1, many working families still had access to state-provided vacation options. Popular campsites — modest but affordable facilities located in beaches and natural areas throughout the country — allowed families to spend a few days away from home at reasonable prices. In addition, trade unions managed vacation villas that were allocated to “outstanding workers”. Transportation to beach areas was also increased during the summer, and inexpensive food stalls were set up so that workers and their children could enjoy the season without money being the sole deciding factor.

Of course, it was not perfect equality, it never was. The best popular campsites were almost always “reserved” for people with connections, there was favouritism in the allocation of villas, and you travelled like sardines in a can on the buses to the beach. Nevertheless, it was a system that compensated, through social transfers, for salaries that were not enough to afford a hotel stay. A system that recognised that summer, rest, the right for your children to see the sea, could not be privileges that only those who could afford them could enjoy.

Today that floor is gone. In 2010, Raúl Castro announced the elimination of so-called “unnecessary free services” as part of the process of updating the economic model. At the time many of us thought it was a reasonable step, since some of the subsidies distorted the economy and rewarded waste. But the decision was not followed by a cross-the-board rise in state workers’ income, and a social safety net was not created for those who could not afford to pay to replace these free services. On the contrary, driven by the state, the economy became increasingly dollarised while wages were frozen. Inflation did the rest.

In Cuba today, the public sector continues to have a dominant presence in such sensitive areas as health, education, science and other productive sectors. It employs the majority of workers. But those workers have been left in limbo, without fair wages or complementary benefits. A doctor, a teacher, a scientist, let alone a worker in a state-owned enterprise, cannot afford to take a vacation without help from family members abroad or supplemental income in foreign currency.

Judging by the videos, the Start of Summer festival in Varadero was not filled with foreign tourists. The vast majority of those present were Cubans, part of the same society in which thousands of families now struggle to survive the crisis. This inevitably raises the question: who can afford to attend such an event?

Here it is important to avoid falling into typical black-and-white thinking such as “all of them are the sons and daughters of the politicians and party leaders.”

At those VIP tables, there were Cubans from very diverse backgrounds. There were those who had been absent from the island for years, returning with the foreign currency they had saved in the “capitalist” system. There were the owners of private businesses who had genuinely prospered — and it is worth making the distinction, not just any business, but one profitable enough to allow them to spend hundreds of dollars on leisure. There were the “influencers” who are paid to promote those businesses. There were also those who knew how to capitalise on assets they acquired through social redistribution mechanisms, assets that for decades had no market value, such as a mansion in Vedado that can suddenly be sold or rented. And, we must not ignore it, there were also those who had accumulated wealth through the misappropriation of resources and corruption.

The truth is that, regardless of the reasons why each person has money — some legitimate and others not — today many Cubans are able to show that they can spend hundreds of dollars in hotels while others struggle to survive. I remember that when I was a child — this was before the expansion of the private sector in 2016 and the authorisation of private businesses in 2021 — there was still a certain fear of showing that one was living “beyond one’s means.” The system was designed to prevent accumulation, and if you did accumulate wealth, the suspicion that you were doing something outside of the ordinary soon surfaced. Even those who lived off remittances from abroad showed a certain discretion regarding what most people lacked.

Today the scenario is radically different. Inequality and class privilege are no longer something hidden, but rather something that is displayed with pride. When you see the sons and daughters of the country’s leaders on social media living the high life, who can feel ashamed of living above the means of “working people”? Paradoxically, inequality only becomes a topic of conversation when an event such as the Start of Summer festival confronts us with these contradictions, but generally speaking, the debate tends to take on a moralising tone and remain at that level. It rarely manages to go a step further and analyse the causes and consequences of this problem.

Sociologist Mayra Espina Prieto, who has been researching poverty and inequality in Cuba for decades, explained it clearly in an interview with La Joven Cuba. What is happening is not simply a reconcentration of wealth, but the result of a process that she calls social restratification. Until the 1980s, the revolutionary project achieved a real process of de-stratification — the social pyramid flattened, the distance between the base and the top decreased — but that advance was never complete, and from the 1990s onwards it began to be reversed. “With the aggravating factor,” she notes, “that those who advance to the new positions offering better opportunities are almost always groups that historically were already better off.”

Warning that these figures should be taken with caution — as they are estimated from mirror data, since Cuba does not publish figures on income poverty — Espina estimates that between 40-45% of the Cuban population are unable to cover their basic needs with their income, while a small group (no more than 11-13% of the population) can be ranked with incomes far above the average, with a real ability to live comfortably from day to day and, in some cases, display the advantages this income provides. Between these two extremes, there is an increasingly unstable intermediate fringe that can fall steeply with any blow: an illness, the loss of remittances, the death of a family member abroad, or whatever.

This re-stratification has effects that corrode the social fabric, since the confidence that effort leads to a dignified life disappears. It normalises that a few have access to what the majority lack and the sense of a common project is weakened.

In a society that for decades built its legitimacy on the promise of equality, that erosion has a political weight that transcends indignation when a show of opulence such as the Start of Summer appears. It means that more and more people stop believing the system they live in has something to offer them. This has a clear effect on the way Cuban families organise their daily lives amid the current situation in which inflation, the paralysis of public transport, blackouts and the gradual disappearance of social transfers have pushed each household to subsist on its own: an Ecoflow, so as not to depend on the electricity grid; a tricycle, so as not to depend on the bus; a parallel income, so as not to depend on the state salary; purchases in the private sector, because the supply in Cuban pesos is practically non-existent. These are individual solutions to collective problems.

In this trap lies perhaps the most silent effect of the current crisis — which in this sense is far from the one that occurred in the ’90s. Solutions are no longer sought in the collective project, but become a personal responsibility.

Meanwhile, in official discourse, there continues to be talk of resistance, social justice, popular sovereignty, socialism, when at the same time daily life is organised around the logic of everyone for themselves, fending for oneself and making the most of things. When a system forces people to exist in this way, it becomes increasingly difficult to convince them that they are still part of a collective project. And, one might ask, why should we?

To the worker who today “resists” the summer with 20 hours of blackout and one meal a day, how do you explain the fact that in that same country there are those who can celebrate surrounded by luxury? How do you convince him that he has to keep fighting to save socialism?

That is why it would be naïve to be scandalised that many Cubans no longer feel any attachment to the word socialism. From what concrete experience could they feel this attachment? From a state salary that just covers a carton of eggs and a bag of milk? From an endless blackout while the neighbour lights up with the solar panel sent to him by the family from “imperialism”? From seeing how rest, leisure, mobility, access to well-being, gradually become signifiers of class? What they want, then, is for the capitalism that de facto exists to be administered and managed better, so that they too can access the capital needed for a dignified life.

However, our political menu does not abound with alternatives either. The official left continues to cling to a rhetoric that no longer manages to name the real experience of the majority, invoking an egalitarian horizon while administering a society that is increasingly unequal, more fragmented and more dependent on private solutions to problems that were previously assumed to be collective. On the other hand, a large part of the opposition — mostly located on the right — justifiably denounces the official discourse’s hypocrisy, but usually does so from an idealised vision of capitalism, one where “everyone can make it” if they try hard enough. The problem is that they rarely stop to think about what happens to those who, despite their efforts, are unable to secure a minimum of dignity for themselves via the market, as is the case in underdeveloped capitalist countries.

What they propose, in most cases, is not a capitalism with redistribution mechanisms, strong public services, subsidies for vulnerable people, the elderly or poor families, or a model where private enterprise coexists with public institutions to guarantee a minimum floor for all. What they propose is, rather, that the state withdraw and that “Saint Market” regulates social life. In a society conceived by “classical liberalism,” it no longer matters too much that some can celebrate in Varadero while others do not have enough to eat, because in the end the one who celebrates would be seen as someone who earned it, and the one who does not succeed as someone who did not know how or want to succeed.

***

To those who are genuinely indignant over the Start of Summer, I say that it is nothing more than a symptom of the problem. Those hotels illuminated amid widespread darkness are a postcard that reflects the Cuban model’s main contradiction. One that has made socialism and social justice its banner, but that today can do nothing but mismanage a defective capitalism.

That is why there is no use in expressing one’s shock on networks or calling for a ban on the next edition. Covering up this spectacle would hardly serve to hide the marks of a society that has long been reorganising itself around privilege, inequality and individual capacity over the collective project. The most serious thing is that this reorganisation occurs without naming itself and without offering the mediations that, in other capitalist contexts, progressive governments have implemented to cushion the fall of those below or help them reach the middle.

The Cuban crisis, as it stands today, is unlikely to last much longer. Whatever its outcome, rebuilding the country, with this system or with the one that comes, will have to be a collective task of which people feel a part of. However, no reconstruction will be possible without facing up to the causes that brought us to this point, amid external asphyxiation and internal errors that have ended up emptying most of the promises, which for decades sustained the national project’s legitimacy, of their content.

Facing these contradictions implies putting an end to administering their symptoms, hiding them behind slogans or selling miraculous solutions. It means starting to honestly discuss what country really exists, what majorities are being left out, but, above all, what material, social and political conditions should be rebuilt to guarantee them a dignified life, and how to do it. Everything else — the passing scandal, the selective outrage and the easy promises — remains just another way of going around in circles.

Rubén Padrón Garriga has a degree in Social Communication from the Faculty of Communication of the University of Havana and has collaborated with various media outlets. He is a social communicator by training and journalist by hobby.

• 1

  Translator's note: The Special Period refers to the economic crisis that hit Cuba in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It fall led Cuba to lose more than 80% of its imports and exports.

The end of the 6x1 work week: A working-class victory in Brazil

By Israel Dutra

Published 3 June, 2026

First published in Portuguese at Revista Movimento. Translation by Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is becoming inevitable. Reflecting broad social opinion, the lower house of Brazil’s parliament has voted to end the odious “6x1” work week (six day/44-hours of work). Starting 60 days after the Senate passed it, the work week will be reduced by one day to five, and to 40 hours. This is undoubtedly an historic victory for the Brazilian working class, one that will have a political impact on the upcoming national election.

The parliamentary vote was overwhelming, with 472 in favour in the first round and only 22 against — mostly MPs from far-right parties such as Novo (New Party), Partido Liberal (Liberal Party), and Missão (Mission Party). The second round vote was 461–19.

The far-right tried all kinds of manoeuvres to obstruct the reform, even proposing a 10-year transition period. The coup plotters’ attempts to generate confusion was defeated, and the bill is now in the Senate. Vigilance and mobilisation are needed, as the bosses remain unhappy with the bill. We must also take advantage of the politicising effect this has had in the streets and on social media.

Popular support

A broad popular majority, expressed in the streets and on social media, celebrated this victory. The much-talked-about WhatsApp family groups this time were not filled with messages of support for conservatism. The proposed work week reduction resonated deeply with tens of millions of Brazilians — an impressive 70% plus of the population supporting it, an unusually high figure in such a politically fractured society.

The persistence of the VAT movement (Movimento Vida Além do Trabalho or Life Beyond Work Movement) succeeded in pushing its progressive agenda amid capitalism’s crisis, which currently offers few or no reforms. The movement helped sway Congress, which is usually aligned with the bosses’ interests and dominated by the Centrão (Big Centre, a centre-right parliamentary bloc). Up against the wall, and with about 120 days until the election, very few parliamentarians wanted to risk being listed as an enemy of the working class.

The government successfully tapped into popular sentiment, knowing this would be a crucial battle as part of its electoral strategy, where every vote matters. It ran advertising campaigns highlighting the importance of free time for all workers. President Lula da Silva spoke publicly about this too. Society became immersed in a discussion around a central issue for workers: the struggle for free time and the work week.

Despite this energy, there were no significant demonstrations in support of the proposal. Why? Leaving aside the paralysis of the main trade union leadership and the Workers Party government’s policy of avoiding actions that generate “street heat”, the new working class, mostly young and concentrated in certain sectors, instead expressed themselves via an unstoppable torrent on social networks. They did not express themselves that much in the streets, due to the lack of a tradition of struggle and a coherent strategy — there was not even a call for a united May Day event. Nevertheless, we have seen an important shift in the political pendulum, if not to the left at least towards a greater sense of class consciousness and class demands. An opening has been created.

This was a struggle with a “national political character,” which also set the agenda for the upcoming election, even if there are also important local struggles. There have been strikes by municipal teachers in state capitals such as São Paulo, and there is an ongoing strike in Belo Horizonte. There was also the strike at São Paulo state universities, which mobilised about 12–15,000 people in opposition to Governor Tarcísio Freitas.

Far-right on backfoot

As the dispute was more political than anything else, it has influenced — and, at the same time, been influenced by — the election campaign. The election campaign is coming to the end of a first period, which will likely last until the “mini-recess” for the World Cup, according to analysts such as Vinicius Torres Freire writing in Folha de São Paulo. The defeat of the 6x1 work week is part of this first period.

The Bolsomaster scandal, which links the Bolsonaro family to the Banco Master financial scandal, has also changed the dynamics of the election campaign. Directly damaging Flávio Bolsonaro, the scandal halted his upward trajectory and has left the far right at an impasse. Confidence among Flávio allies in him has plummeted, as has his voting intentions.

What seemed like the start of a favourable trend has stalled and is now going backwards. Some are even questioning the viability of his candidacy. Amid the unpredictability of our times, nothing is certain, but Flávio is clearly struggling to regain momentum.

Flávio managed to take a photo with Trump, which means a lot for him amid the crisis. He wanted Trump’s blessing to run with the same priorities as his father, Jair, did before. But the right-wing opposition is suspicious of him. Brazilian entrepreneur and Missão party presidential pre-candidate Renan Santos wants to channel the youth vote, while Partido Social Democrático (PSD, Social Democratic Party) pre-candidate Ronaldo Caiado and Novo pre-candidate Romeu Zema are trying to forge a possible alternative in case Flávio’s campaign falters.

Trump’s designation of Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC, Capital's First Command) and Comando Vermelho (CV, Red Command) as terrorist organisations represents a very serious threat, and raises the spectre of more direct US interference in Brazil’s election.

There is logic behind taking a photo with Trump, as foreign policy will be a key issue in this campaign, and will only gain in importance as time goes on. US imperialism’s quagmire in Iran, its attacks on Cuba, and the popular rebellion in Bolivia are vying for people’s imagination just months out from the election. The far right is gambling its future on the Brazilian and Colombian elections, along with Trump's strategic bid to win the November US midterm elections.

Support for radical left

In all this, we cannot ignore the strong support shown for Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (PSOL, Socialism and Liberty Party) and its leaders on social media as a result of the 6x1 issue. This support will no doubt also express itself politically and electorally. But it is up to PSOL’s left wing to organise this support into a militant social force.

The support on social media has been incredible, especially for PSOL MPs Sâmia Bomfim and Fernanda Melchionna, but also for PSOL MP Erika Hilton and PSOL Rio city councillor Rick Azevedo, who founded the VAT Movement. Sâmia’s ironic takedown of far-right MP Nikolas Ferreira went viral. It takes a lot of nerve to deal with the sheer audacity of such far-right leaders.

We need to mobilise if the Senate threatens to weaken the bill. Trade unions, the UNE (National Union of Students) and the UBES (Brazilian Union of Secondary Students) would need to call for a plan of action and strikes.

Although the working class is not yet mobilised enough to organise a general strike in the immediate term, this option should not be ruled out if the Senate seeks to undo the victory. In that scenario, the social majority that supports ending the 6x1 work week could generate the conditions for a more decisive national action, with large marches and demonstrations. The idea of ​​paralysing the country could serve as a demonstration of the need to go all the way in order to achieve victory, as proposed by STILASP, the trade union who led the successful Pepsico strike.

But we cannot stop there. The millions who have been discussing options for the country and workers in schools, neighbourhoods, shopping centres, universities, factories and workplaces, could become a fundamental asset for building a real instrument of the new working class, one that would vote for Lula as a containment tactic against the far right, but go much further in terms of agenda and methods of struggle.

Trump’s action the day after the significant victory indicates that the polarisation will continue, including in the election campaign. We must throw ourselves into it, taking advantage of the enormous support PSOL has received, to build a movement that guarantees Lula’s victory and the election of a parliamentary bloc committed to present and future struggles.

The Bolivian rebellion teaches us that the far right and capitalists must be defeated through the strength of the working class and the people as a whole, and its program.

Israel Dutra is a sociologist, PSOL Secretary of Social Movements, a member of the party's National Committee, and a Socialist Left Movement (MES/PSOL) leader.

Workers, Students, and Indigenous Movements Shut Down Bolivia in Popular Rebellion

The popular revolt has mounted a broader challenge to neoliberalism, austerity, and US imperialism in Latin America.

By Sam Carliner ,

Truthout

May 28, 2026

An Indigenous woman gestures in front of riot police during a protest against the government of President Rodrigo Paz on Mother's Day in La Paz, Bolivia, on May 27, 2026.Marvin RECINOS / AFP via Getty Images


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For more than a week, the nation of Bolivia has been in a state of full-on revolt.

In response to neoliberal reforms by the recently elected right-wing government led by President Rodrigo Paz, unions have launched a general strike, peasants and Indigenous peoples have set up dozens of roadblocks throughout the country, and massive marches have been held in the capital, La Paz. These are just a few expressions of a much broader social discontent, which has brought the country to a halt and stoked mass resistance to the larger project of U.S-aligned, right-wing attacks on workers and social movements in Latin America.

Joseph Bouchard, a social scientist and journalist currently in La Paz as a visiting fellow at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, explained the diverse character of the movement. “It’s sort of a grouping of different social movements and groups that I think represents the wide spectrum within the Bolivian left,” Bouchard told Truthout. “You have teachers unions and workers unions. You have mining unions. You have just regular people joining who are not necessarily part of any movement. You have an Indigenous federation who used to be part of an anti-dictatorship movement in the 1980s. You have [former president Evo Morales’s] people … And so you have really all these groups that together add up to sort of the largest representation of the Bolivian left, disaffected voters, organized groups, disorganized groups.”

While the diversity of the movement also brings a wide range of demands, one of the most popular is for President Paz to resign, with some sectors of the movement arguing that the country should maintain a general strike indefinitely until Paz has been ousted. The level of outrage is especially profound considering that Paz has only been in office for six months.
How to Lose a Populace in 6 Months

In October 2025, Bolivia elected right-wing populist Rodrigo Paz, ending 20 years of government by the left-wing MAS (Movement to Socialism) party founded by former president Evo Morales. Paz, running on a campaign of “capitalism for all,” promised to address economic hardships plaguing the country. His campaign also benefited from the implosion of MAS, which was experiencing intense infighting from which it has not recovered.

Despite appealing to the economic concerns of the Bolivian people and positioning himself as more of a centrist than the country’s established (and much more extreme) right, once elected Paz wasted no time in carrying out attacks on the country’s workers and poor. One of his first moves was to eliminate a tax on large fortunes. He has also proposed education policies that teachers have criticized as privatization-oriented measures.

Two policies in particular have incited the outrage now rocking the country: a land privatization law and Supreme Decree 5503, which eliminated state fuel subsidies.

Two policies in particular have incited the outrage now rocking the country: Law 1720, a land privatization law which many see as a move to hand over Indigenous lands to agribusiness and other large-scale landowners, and Supreme Decree 5503, which eliminated state fuel subsidies, practically doubling the consumer cost of fuel overnight. Along with the rising fuel costs, Paz’s government has further angered Bolivians by importing low quality fuel, or “junk fuel,” as the people call it, which has reportedly damaged people’s vehicles, imposing repair costs many cannot afford.

It did not take long for the outrage to spread. Bolivia had already seen significant protests in December 2025, just a month into Paz’s presidency, but these were halted due to negotiations between the government and the country’s largest union federation, Central Obrera Boliviana (COB). Despite these negotiations the Paz administration continued advancing neoliberal reforms, further fueling outrage and forcing COB and other unions, including teachers unions, to call strikes at the start of May. Around the same time, rural Indigenous communities embarked on a long march to the capital, while other peasant and Indigenous communities erected blockades across major roads.

Despite its best efforts, the Bolivian government has not yet quashed the nationwide shutdown, though on May 26 the country’s Chamber of Deputies voted to repeal restrictions on the use of military force against protesters. Even before the vote, the state had deployed militarized forces against protesters. This repression has only further radicalized the movement, with some protesters using dynamite, rocks, and slingshots to defend themselves against the military, according to multiple sources on the ground who spoke with Truthout. Reports emerging on social media confirm this as well.

A history student at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés who spoke with Truthout described the repressive climate that the protesters are braving.

“Especially police, they have been repressing the movement with chemical agents, rubber bullets, and so on,” she told Truthout. “[The military] tried to stop the blockades which have been in the roads, but 30 minutes after they left, the blockades were rebuilt with even more people.”

The student, who is a member of the socialist youth group Combate Rojo, asked to remain anonymous due to the doxxing to which members of her organization have been subjected from the far right. She mentioned that arrests and violence have been common in the crackdown on protests.

A Challenge to the Regional Right and U.S. Imperialism

The protests in Bolivia are not merely a national issue. They have implications for a regional strategy in which the United States is relying on far-right allies in Latin America to advance U.S. interests. These interests are expressed clearly in Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy, which names the Western Hemisphere as the administration’s top region of strategic interest. It states, “The goal is for our partner nations to build up their domestic economies, while an economically stronger and more sophisticated Western Hemisphere becomes an increasingly attractive market for American commerce and investment.”

The protests in Bolivia have implications for a regional strategy in which the United States is relying on far-right allies in Latin America to advance U.S. interests.

Paz has closely aligned Bolivia with the United States, joining the recently formed Shield of the Americas, a military alliance composed mostly of right-wing governments with the stated mission of fighting cartels. On May 21, the alliance issued a joint statement condemning the protests in Bolivia, alleging that the protesters are being led by “criminals and drug traffickers.”

Under the Trump administration, allegations of drug trafficking have been used to justify a wide range of interventionist and militaristic policies including the attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, the establishment of a seemingly permanent military occupation along the U.S.-Mexico border, dozens of illegal and deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean, and a growing military campaign in Ecuador that has resulted in the bombing of a civilian farm in a rural village.

Bouchard argued that the U.S. response to the protests is a rejection of Latin American sovereignty.

“You can vote for a government and then decide you’re unhappy with what they’re doing if you feel like they’re betraying their promises or not fulfilling what they voted for,” Bouchard said. “This is how democracy works. U.S. government and right-wing allies in Latin America are basically saying that no protests are ever legitimate; if you vote for a government you’re basically supposed to accept whatever they do after.”

Several of the Latin American governments who signed the Shield of the Americas statement are likely observing the protests in Bolivia with concern that their own populations could draw inspiration from them.

The same week that Bolivian trade unions launched their general strike, Argentina and Chile saw massive student-led demonstrations against attacks on public education. Both Argentine President Javier Milei and Chilean President José Antonio Kast have been pushing their own neoliberal reforms similar to those carried out by Paz.

“They know that they can bring down governments … They’ve done it before many times. These tactics work and they can get concessions.”

Even in Brazil, which is currently governed by the left-wing government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, university students and municipal teachers in São Paulo have been on strike and held combative marches against austerity pushed by the state’s far right governor. While the protests in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile have not reached anywhere near the level of widespread anger expressed in Bolivia, they demonstrate a regional trend in which workers, students, and broader communities are beginning to rise up against economic strain and far right movements.

The history student who spoke with Truthout said that there are many in the movement in Bolivia who understand that their uprising poses a challenge to far more than just Paz’s agenda.

“[Protesters] mention Milei, they mention the genocide [in Gaza],” she said. “That internationalist connection to U.S. imperialism and Israel, it’s there. You just can’t hide it.”

Bouchard said that the Bolivian people understand their country’s history, and this informs how radical the movement has become and how much more radical it can get.

“They know that they can bring down governments,” Bouchard said. “They’ve done it before many times. These tactics work and they can get concessions. They know that the Paz government is quite weak, and if they use these tactics like they’ve done before they can win.”



This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Sam Carliner

Sam Carliner is a freelance journalist with a focus on U.S. foreign policy, geopolitics and international struggle. His writing has appeared in Teen Vogue, Responsible Statecraft, Salon, Shadowproof, Waging Nonviolence, and other publications. He previously managed social media at the feminist antiwar organization CODEPINK. Currently he writes and edits for the socialist publication Left Voice, with a focus on international coverage. Follow him on Twitter: @saminthecan.

The Political Process In Morocco: Monarchy, Reform, And Incremental Democracy – Analysis

May 27, 2026 
By Dr. Mohamed Chtatou


This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of the political process in Morocco, examining the structural role of the monarchy, the development of constitutional governance, party politics, civil society, and the contested trajectory of democratisation. Drawing on comparative political theory, historical institutionalism, and empirical scholarship, it argues that Moroccan politics is best understood not as a failed or stalled democracy, but as a distinctive hybrid regime in which the Makhzen — the royal palace and its networks — continuously recalibrates relations with elected institutions, political parties, and social movements to preserve monarchical centrality while accommodating pressures for reform. The 2011 constitutional reforms, the rise and fall of Islamist party government, sub-national governance, gender politics, and the structural constraints imposed by rentier dynamics and regional geopolitics are examined in detail. The essay concludes that Morocco’s political trajectory reflects a calculated strategy of adaptive governance that, while preserving significant space for pluralism, stops well short of genuine power-sharing.

1. Introduction

Morocco occupies a singular position in the comparative politics of the Arab world. It is simultaneously one of the most politically liberalised states in the MENA region and a country in which real executive authority remains firmly concentrated in the hands of a monarch whose legitimacy is simultaneously constitutional, religious, and dynastic. This combination of formal pluralism and substantive monarchical dominance has attracted extensive scholarly attention, generating debates about whether Morocco represents a genuine experiment in gradual democratisation, a durable monarchy employing liberalisation as a regime-maintenance strategy, or something genuinely novel that resists familiar analytical categories (Brumberg, 2002; Maghraoui, 2002; Catusse, 2008).

The question is not merely academic. Morocco is a strategic partner of the European Union and the United States, a recipient of significant development assistance, a country that has managed thus far to avoid the violent ruptures experienced by its neighbours, and a society undergoing rapid socioeconomic transformation driven by urbanisation, demographic change, and integration into global markets. Understanding how its political system actually works — how power is organised, how demands are processed, and how change does or does not occur — is therefore a matter of both scholarly and policy importance (Denoeux & Gateau, 1995; Storm, 2007).

This essay proceeds as follows. Section 2 establishes the historical foundations of the modern Moroccan state, tracing the consolidation of the post-independence political order. Section 3 analyses the constitutional architecture and the structural role of the monarchy. Section 4 examines party politics and electoral institutions. Section 5 considers the dynamics of civil society and social movements, with particular attention to the 2011 protests. Section 6 addresses sub-national governance and decentralisation. Section 7 analyses gender and representation. Section 8 reflects on external dimensions of Moroccan politics, including the Western Sahara conflict. Section 9 offers concluding reflections on the prospects for political change.

2. Historical Foundations of the Modern Moroccan State

Modern Moroccan politics cannot be understood without reference to its pre-colonial, colonial, and immediately post-independence history. The Sharifian state — legitimised by the Sultan’s descent from the Prophet Muhammad — possessed a distinctive character that distinguished Morocco from the Ottoman provinces of the Mashriq. The Sultan’s dual role as political sovereign and Commander of the Faithful (Amîr al-Mu’minîn) fused temporal and religious authority in ways that proved extraordinarily resilient across the upheavals of colonialism and independence (Hammoudi, 1997; Pennell, 2000).

French and Spanish colonialism (1912–1956) paradoxically reinforced certain dimensions of this authority. The French protectorate, operating through the fiction of indirect rule, preserved the formal institution of the sultanate even as it hollowed out its effective power. This created a complex dynamic: the Sultan retained symbolic authority and became a focus of nationalist sentiment, while real administrative and economic power was exercised by the French Résidence. Sultan Mohammed V’s exile by the French in 1953 and his triumphant return in 1955 transformed him from a religious figurehead into a nationalist hero, dramatically amplifying the legitimacy of the monarchy in the post-independence period (Leveau, 1985; Pennell, 2000).

Morocco’s Mohammed V. Photo Credit: Fotograaf Onbekend / Anefo, Wikipedia Commons

Independence in 1956 inaugurated a struggle over the organisation of political authority. The Istiqlal Party, which had led the nationalist movement, anticipated a leading role in the post-independence order. Mohammed V, however, moved quickly to assert monarchical prerogatives, appointing governments, managing relations with political parties, and using the armed forces and security services as direct instruments of royal power. His son and successor Hassan II, who reigned from 1961 to 1999, institutionalised a form of royal autocracy that relied on divide-and-rule tactics among political parties, a sprawling patronage network known as the Makhzen, periodic but severe repression — particularly during the Years of Lead (les années de plomb) of the 1970s and 1980s — and the mobilising force of the Western Sahara issue, which became central to Moroccan national identity (Entelis, 1989; Slyomovics, 2005).

The transition from Hassan II to Mohammed VI in 1999 was widely anticipated as an opportunity for political opening. The new king initially signalled reformist intent, dismissing the powerful Interior Minister Driss Basri, establishing the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) to address past human rights abuses, and promising a new concept of authority (nouveau concept de l’autorité). These early gestures generated considerable optimism domestically and internationally, though scholars rapidly noted that structural reform of monarchical power remained off the table (Monjib, 2011; Vermeren, 2009).

3. Constitutional Architecture and the Role of the Monarchy

Morocco has had a succession of constitutions — in 1962, 1970, 1972, 1992, 1996, and most recently 2011 — each reflecting the political conditions of its moment and each preserving the structural centrality of the monarchy. The 2011 constitution, adopted by referendum in July of that year, represents the most significant formal expansion of parliamentary and governmental powers in Moroccan constitutional history, though its practical implementation has been characterised by what Fernández-Molina (2011) terms selective constitutionalisation — the selective uptake of constitutional provisions in ways that do not fundamentally alter the distribution of real political power (Chtatou, 2023, May 27 ; Chtatou, 2025, October 7).

The 2011 constitution formally establishes Morocco as a constitutional, democratic, parliamentary and social monarchy (Article 1). It recognises Amazigh as an official language alongside Arabic (Article 5), incorporates a significantly expanded bill of rights including gender equality and protection from torture, and strengthens the independence of the judiciary (Articles 107–128). Crucially, it requires the king to appoint the prime minister — renamed Head of Government — from the party that wins the most seats in parliamentary elections (Article 47), a provision applied for the first time after the November 2011 elections (Madani, Maghraoui, & Zerhouni, 2012).

Nevertheless, the constitution preserves and in some respects reinforces extensive monarchical prerogatives. The king remains Commander of the Faithful (Article 41), chairs the Council of Ministers (Article 48), presides over the Supreme Security Council (Article 54), appoints ambassadors, senior military officers, and governors (Article 49), and retains the power to dissolve parliament (Article 51). The concept of royal arbitration (Article 42) gives the king an ill-defined but potentially expansive role as guardian of the constitutional order. Vairel (2014) argues that the 2011 reforms represented a defensive constitutionalisation designed to absorb protest energy without transferring genuine decision-making authority.

Scholars working within a comparative politics framework have debated how to classify the Moroccan regime. For Brumberg (2002), Morocco exemplifies liberalised autocracy — a regime that institutionalises enough pluralism to generate legitimacy and foreign support while preventing genuine contestation over fundamental power arrangements. Maghraoui (2002) speaks of political authority in crisis, pointing to the growing gap between formal institutional design and the personalised, patrimonial reality of how decisions are actually made. More recently, Dalmasso (2012) has applied the concept of authoritarian upgrading (Heydemann, 2007) to the Moroccan case, arguing that the 2011 reforms represent not liberalisation but adaptation — the reequilibration of the regime in response to changed constraints.

4. Party Politics and Electoral Institutions

Morocco has a large, fractured, and historically unstable multi-party system that reflects both the structural incentives created by royal divide-and-rule strategies and genuine ideological and social cleavages within Moroccan society. As of the mid-2020s, the party system includes parties rooted in nationalism (Istiqlal), the left (the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, USFP; the Party of Progress and Socialism, PPS), liberal conservatism (the National Rally of Independents, RNI; the Popular Movement, MP), Islamism (the Justice and Development Party, PJD), and royal-aligned technocratic formations (the Authenticity and Modernity Party, PAM) (Willis, 2012; Zerhouni, 2004).

The PJD’s trajectory over the decade following 2011 represents perhaps the most significant and instructive episode in recent Moroccan party politics. Having won the most seats in the 2011 parliamentary elections in the wake of the Arab Spring protests, the PJD formed a governing coalition under Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, who became widely popular for his combative, populist communication style. Benkirane’s government pursued a cautious reform agenda — fiscal consolidation, subsidy reform, and modest anti-corruption measures — while maintaining a broadly cooperative relationship with the palace (Daadaoui, 2013).

The limits of this cohabitation were made apparent in 2016–2017, when, following elections in which the PJD again performed strongly, King Mohammed VI declined to ratify Benkirane’s proposed coalition and eventually asked his less confrontational colleague Saad Eddine El Othmani to form a government instead. This episode — labelled the blocage (blockage) — crystallised for many observers the structural constraints on genuine parliamentary government in Morocco: even a party with a strong popular mandate governed within a framework set by the palace, and could be removed from that framework at royal discretion (Wegner, 2011; Catusse & Dazi-Héni, 2017).


The 2021 elections produced a further and more decisive reconfiguration of the party landscape. The PJD suffered a historic collapse, losing over ninety percent of its seats in a result many analysts attributed to a combination of policy failures — particularly in the management of COVID-19 and the normalisation of relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords, both conducted without meaningful parliamentary consultation — internal divisions, and a campaign context in which PAM and RNI, both regarded as close to the palace, were electorally dominant. RNI leader Aziz Akhannouch was appointed Head of Government. The election underscored that while competitive elections impose real costs on parties that fail, the structural parameters of competition are set by the monarchy (Boussaid, 2022).

Electoral institutions in Morocco have been repeatedly modified in ways that fragment party representation and prevent any single party from accumulating a commanding parliamentary majority. Proportional representation with regional lists and low electoral thresholds encourages the multiplication of parties and coalition government, which in turn increases the palace’s role as coalition broker and reduces the leverage of any individual party or prime minister. Sater (2007) argues that this institutional design reflects a deliberate monarchical strategy of institutional proliferation — the creation of multiple, overlapping, competing political actors whose rivalry structures and stabilises monarchical governance (Chtatou, 2025, October 7).

5. Civil Society, Social Movements, and the 2011 Protests

Civil society in Morocco is extensive, heterogeneous, and politically consequential, though its relationship to formal political institutions remains complex and in many respects constrained. The associational landscape includes human rights organisations (notably the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, AMDH, and the Official Advisory Council on Human Rights, CNDH), women’s rights organisations, Amazigh cultural associations, development NGOs, trade unions, professional associations, and youth movements. This dense associational life reflects both genuine civic energy and, in part, the strategic cultivation of civil society by the state as an alternative arena for managing social demands that might otherwise take more disruptive forms (Cavatorta & Dalmasso, 2009).

The February 20 Movement (Mouvement du 20 Février, M20F) that emerged in the context of the 2011 Arab Spring represented the most significant mobilisation of popular political energy in contemporary Moroccan history. Beginning with a demonstration on 20 February 2011 that drew tens of thousands of participants in cities across Morocco, the movement called for a new constitution, an end to corruption, genuine parliamentary government, and the release of political prisoners. It drew together a heterogeneous coalition including secular leftists, Islamists from the banned Al Adl wal Ihsane (Justice and Benevolence), youth activists, Amazigh organisations, and human rights defenders (Vairel, 2014; Zaki, 2011).

The monarchy’s response was rapid, strategic, and ultimately effective in demobilising the movement. In a landmark speech on 9 March 2011, King Mohammed VI announced a process of constitutional reform, ultimately producing the July 2011 constitution described above. By accepting the form of the movement’s constitutional demands while retaining control of the drafting process through a royal commission rather than an elected constituent assembly, the palace channelled protest energy into a controlled institutional channel. The M20F’s demand for a real constitution articulated by the people was deflected into a royal constitution endorsed in a referendum marked by high official turnout figures that many civil society organisations disputed (Sater, 2016; Maghraoui, 2011).

Since 2011, social mobilisation has continued in various forms. The Hirak Rif movement emerged in the northern Rif region in 2016 following the death of fishmonger Mouhcine Fikri, initially focusing on socioeconomic grievances — unemployment, lack of development, and historical marginalisation of the Rif — before escalating into broader demands for political accountability. The movement’s leaders, including Nasser Zefzafi, were arrested in 2017, tried for threatening state security, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms in proceedings that attracted significant criticism from international human rights organisations (Amnesty International, 2018; Human Rights Watch, 2017). The Hirak episode illustrated both the vitality of grassroots mobilisation in Morocco and the firm limits the state places on movements it judges to constitute a structural challenge to the existing order (Chtatou, 2023, May 27).

6. Sub-National Governance and Decentralisation

Morocco’s 2011 constitution and subsequent organic laws introduced a significant reform of sub-national governance, formally establishing the principle of advanced regionalisation (régionalisation avancée) and creating twelve new regions with elected regional councils and presidents. This reform was framed by the royal discourse as a means of devolving power, enhancing local democracy, and accelerating development, particularly in peripheral regions — the Oriental, the south, and the Rif — characterised by high rates of poverty and emigration (Bergh, 2012).

In practice, decentralisation in Morocco reflects the general pattern of Moroccan political reform: a genuine extension of formal institutional capacity at the sub-national level combined with the continuation of significant central oversight through appointed Walis and governors who represent the Ministry of the Interior and retain substantial de facto authority. Regional councils have real budgetary resources and administrative competencies, but major development projects continue to be driven by royal initiatives through specialised agencies — such as the Agence du Sud, which coordinates development in the southern provinces — that operate outside the regular democratic framework (Catusse, Destremau, & Verdier, 2010).

The relationship between decentralisation and democracy in Morocco thus exhibits what Bergh (2012) calls a dual track: a formal track of elected regional governance with increasing technical capacity, and an informal track of royal-appointed technocratic management that handles the most strategically significant investment and development decisions. Whether this duality will evolve towards a more integrated and genuinely participatory model of sub-national governance remains an open and contested question in both scholarship and political debate (Chtatou, 2025, October 7).

7. Gender, Representation, and the Politics of Women’s Rights

The politics of gender in Morocco illustrates, with particular clarity, the complex interplay between top-down royal reform, bottom-up civil society pressure, Islamist political mobilisation, and patriarchal social structures that characterises Moroccan political life more broadly. The 2004 reform of the Mudawwana (family code), which raised the minimum age of marriage for women to 18, introduced judicial divorce on the wife’s initiative (khul), restricted polygamy, and equalised parental authority, is widely regarded as among the most significant legislative achievements in Morocco’s post-independence history. The reform was made possible by a distinctive political conjuncture: sustained mobilisation by women’s organisations, the political marginalisation of Islamist opposition following the 2003 Casablanca bombings, and the personal endorsement of King Mohammed VI (Sadiqi & Ennaji, 2006; Charrad, 2001).


Political representation of women has been addressed through a combination of reserved seats, national lists, and party quotas, producing a gradual but uneven increase in parliamentary representation. Women held approximately 21% of seats in the House of Representatives following the 2016 elections, a figure that, while well above the regional average, remains far below gender parity and reflects the limited organic integration of women into party structures and local political networks (Sater, 2007; Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2021). At the local government level, the 2015 elections produced significant increases in women’s representation on communal councils, partly as a result of a legislative requirement that one-third of seats on municipal councils be allocated to women through dedicated lists (Benali & Moudden, 2016).


Formal legal progress coexists with persistent structural challenges. Violence against women, discrimination in inheritance law, and the practical inaccessibility of certain family law provisions continue to draw criticism from feminist organisations and international monitoring bodies. The intersection of gender with class, rural-urban divides, and regional disparities means that the experience of Moroccan women is highly heterogeneous: urban, educated, middle-class women have generally benefited most from formal rights reforms, while rural, less-educated, and poorer women face more significant barriers to accessing legal protections (Sadiqi & Ennaji, 2006; Ennaji, 2016).

8. External Dimensions: Western Sahara, Regional Politics, and International Pressures

The Western Sahara conflict represents the most consequential external dimension of Moroccan domestic politics, functioning simultaneously as a source of national mobilisation, and a permanent fixture of Moroccan foreign policy. Morocco occupied the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara in 1975 following the Green March organised by Hassan II, and has since administered most of its territory, claiming sovereignty not recognised by international law or the United Nations but supported by key partners including France and the United States (Jensen, 2005; Zunes & Mundy, 2010).

The Sahara issue exercises a significant disciplining effect on Moroccan domestic politics. The boundaries of legitimate political debate are defined in part by an implicit consensus that Morocco’s claim to the territory is non-negotiable, and critics — including journalists, bloggers, and political activists — who have questioned this consensus have faced criminal prosecution under provisions of the penal code relating to threats to territorial integrity. The 2020 US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, secured as part of the Abraham Accords normalisation of relations between Morocco and Israel, represented a significant diplomatic achievement for Rabat and further entrenched the monarchy’s role as manager of Morocco’s strategic interests (Maghraoui, 2021).

Morocco’s relations with the European Union, its primary trade partner and a major source of development assistance and remittances, are structured through an association agreement and bilateral arrangements covering trade, migration management, fisheries, and agricultural exports. The EU’s democracy promotion agenda has had limited effect on Moroccan political reform, partly because EU member states, particularly France and Spain, prioritise the strategic management of migration and security cooperation over normative pressure for democratisation. Scholars working on EU-MENA relations have identified Morocco as a paradigm case of the disjunction between the formal democracy-promotion rhetoric of EU external policy and the actual incentive structures shaping bilateral relations (Bicchi, 2007; Cavatorta & Durac, 2010).

9. Conclusion: Adaptive Governance and the Prospects for Political Change

Morocco’s political process, as this essay has demonstrated across multiple dimensions, is characterised by a distinctive and durable form of hybrid governance. The monarchy has shown remarkable capacity to adapt to changed circumstances — the 1999 royal transition, the 2003 terrorist attacks, the 2011 Arab Spring, the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting regional geopolitics — without relinquishing its structural centrality. Constitutional reform, electoral competition, civil society activity, and significant legislative changes across multiple domains have all occurred within a framework that consistently preserves the monarchy’s ultimate authority over major national decisions (Chtatou, 2023, May 27).

This essay has argued, following Heydemann (2007), Dalmasso (2012), and others, that this pattern is best understood as adaptive governance — a regime strategy that employs liberalisation instrumentally, tolerates and even encourages pluralism within defined limits, and responds to mobilisation not with simple repression but with a sophisticated combination of co-optation, institutional reform, and, when necessary, targeted repression of those who transgress structural limits. The comparison with the Arab Spring trajectories of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria underscores the relative effectiveness of this strategy in terms of regime survival, though whether it constitutes a path to genuine democratisation or merely its indefinite simulation remains deeply contested (Chtatou, 2025, October 7).

Several dynamics may put pressure on this equilibrium in the coming decades. The youth bulge — a large, educated, urbanised, and digitally connected young population with high unemployment and frustrated aspirations — generates ongoing demand for more genuine political participation and economic inclusion. The weakening of traditional party organisations, the rise of new forms of social mobilisation, and the increasing salience of corruption as a political issue all create new sources of pressure. Climate change and water scarcity, to which Morocco is acutely vulnerable, will test governance capacity in ways that formal institutions may be poorly designed to address.

Ultimately, the prospects for political change in Morocco will depend on whether the monarchy can continue to manage these pressures through its established repertoire of adaptive strategies, or whether the accumulation of unmet demands generates mobilisation sufficient to force a genuine redistribution of political authority. The scholarly consensus, as of the mid-2020s, inclines toward continuity over transformation.

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