Dynamic Durability: The Reproduction of Colonial Land Policy in Morocco

• In Event: Historical Political Economy of the Middle East

Abstract

Why do postcolonial states repeat the policies and strategies of their colonial predecessors? Social science literatures on institutional and colonial legacies typically rely on the theoretical approaches of persistence or path dependency. Yet, persistence and path dependency are often incapable of explaining 1) the policy decisions of postcolonial actors and 2) commonalities in the sequence of decisions by colonial and postcolonial actors. By examining the content, sequence, and timing of land reforms in colonial and independent Morocco, this paper argues that homologies in the conditions facing nascent regimes—both colonial and postcolonial—promote similar strategic outcomes. Using secondary and archival sources, I argue that the strategies that the French Protectorate and postcolonial Moroccan monarchy developed were isomorphic reactions to a shared set of goals, conditions, and constraints: in aiming to cement their rule through rural economic control in contexts of low state capacity, limited resources, and powerful rural elites, both states developed graduated land-reform policies that cultivated patronage networks. The content and sequence of the reforms developed as a result of growing state capacity, and as such, their increasing ability to achieve their own goals and meet elites’ demands. This paper therefore argues that the continuity of colonial policies, both in content and sequence, can emerge due to the active reproduction of colonial policy rather than sheer persistence or path dependency.

Author

• Benjamin Kaplow, Yale University