ABSTRACT
The main objective of this chapter is to examine the response of the state, at both discursive and strategic levels, to the increasing activity of part of civil society as identified in Chapter 5. It would be too simple merely to assert that the state started to ‘give in’ to independent associations’ demands, an idea that would follow a line of analysis that views civil society and the state in opposition terms. In fact, in the first section, I will show that the state’s discursive reaction depended very much on the representation of civil society’s articulation of interest, which was, at times, conflicting and which was expressed in particular relationships with the state. These corresponded neither to a dichotomous nor to an intermediary representation of state-civil society relationships. In order to analyse the representation of civil society’s interest, I am using a newspaper analysis of the Moroccan national press of three important national themes: human rights, women’s rights, and Berber rights. I aim to show that through the participation of organizations of civil society in the public sphere, and through conflicts that were expressed here, the state responded discursively and practically in ways to mark and further develop its ‘embodiment’ of Morocco’s national consensus. These took different features that I will discuss in the first section, an important one being its increasing involvement in the definition of discourses.
