ABSTRACT
Within the domestic sphere, what Morocco witnessed in July 1999 can be viewed, according to the classification proposed by Joe D. Hagan, as a ‘regime change involving a change in the effective head of state, but no change in the basic political make-up of the ruling group’ (1987: 347). This concept of regime change does not necessarily involve a systemic change or transition, but also includes ‘change within a given type of political regime’ (Albrecht and Schlumberger, 2004: 387). Overall, discontinuity in Moroccan foreign policy under Mohammed VI was to be less marked on an internal level than it was to be in terms of regional and international constraints, since the latter two environments were significantly disrupted from late 2001 onwards as a consequence of the 9/11 attacks. In other words, the origin of the perceptible changes would be more often exogenous than endogenous.
