The Limits of the Eu's Soft Power: Authoritarian Resilience in Morocco

This paper seeks to cast new light on the endurance of the Moroccan regime by examining the failure of the European Union to press Rabat harder to democratise. In particular, the paper focuses on the EU’s inability to make better use of the strong educational links it has to the country to put more pressure on the regime. The paper argues that these bonds should give the EU significant soft power over Morocco, but are struggling to do so because of Brussels’s failure to live up to the values it claims to represent. The disconnect between how the European Union presents itself and how it acts is undermining its appeal as a role model.

The originality of this paper rests on the approach it adopts. It is the first study to present the endurance of Morocco’s competitive authoritarian regime as a failure of the EU’s soft power, of the attractiveness of the bloc’s democratic culture, and to explain this shortcoming as a consequence of the counter-productive interaction of the resources that generate this power. It is also the first to highlight and measure this failure by looking at educational ties, at the number of Moroccans studying in universities in the EU. And it adds depth to existing critiques of the European Union’s double standards by identifying specific ways in which this insincerity is impairing Brussels’s ability to promote political liberalisation in Morocco rather than regard such dissimulation as evidence of the EU’s Machiavellianism and inconstancy but little else.