Regime Type And Its Impact On The Identity Crisis Of Arab Maghreb Union

It is very obvious and even classified as part of nowadays common knowledge that the international world politics have gone through a drastic and sometimes even radical changes. Some of these changes were dramatically experienced during the Second World War and unexpectedly after the fall of Soviet Union. This paper is basically an attempt to approach one of these aspects of change experienced in our modern world politics. It is mainly an attempt to rethink regionalism and regional organizations as a new political phenomenon. And since regionalism per se is a big field of research, therefor, my attempt of approaching it will be mainly focusing on the way regime types influence the identity building in the region of North Africa.Empirically speaking, the paper will be tackling the region of North Africa and mainly its Maghreb Arab Union regional organization. And the focus of this paper will be on the importance of domestic politics as a non-conventional way of studying regionalism. And unlike many studies of regionalism, generally emphasized by realists and liberalists that focus either on security of economy as an outcome of the old regionalism paradigm, this paper will emphasize domestic politics as a guiding line for understanding the regional one.Therefore, in the case of MAU, the analysis of this regional organization will not take this conventional analysis as its guiding line. Regionalism analysis in this paper will be mainly guided by new regionalism paradigm, which basically focuses on a bottom-up regionalism or what is called “micro-regionalism”. Many scholars who adopt this paradigm maintain a new approach to regionalism, New Regionalism Approach(NRA). This type of regionalism, which is adopted mostly by constructivists, tends to go beyond the structure and state analysis dimension by adopting a more multi-dimensional approach that pays more attention to culture, identity and the influence of civil society on the regionalization process. This new trend of regionalism gravitates toward not taking for granted regions as natural already given political entity as most rationalist believe. Therefore, they tend to trace elements that are believed to consist these regional organizations, like regional identity, from their source of influence at the agent level. Following this approach political descriptions, like regional identity, shouldn’t be understood in separation from the influence of national identity building process which is finally part of regionalization process. And as we all know; national identity is a crucial part of any state image at the international level. It plays a big role in foreign policy of any state, and generally states are affected by which identity they chose to embrace. Normally, any state identity is formed by its geographic location, history, culture and local identities. In democratic states, the identity the state chooses to embrace often reflects the grass roots’ real identity and often matches how the constitution describes it. However, North Africa includes a number of examples, where foreign policy decision and choices don’t match what the state claims to be or stand for.Thus, and under new regional approach guideline, I seek to prove, first and for most, how different regime types have different influence on the way North African states have generated their national and regional identities; and how then they dissimilarly adjusted their foreign policy when they were faced with unrest moments like “Arab spring” and strong civil society like Amazigh movement. Secondly, I want to problematize the conventional concept of “Arab Maghreb Union” by showing how the umbrella term “Arab” doesn’t present the real and the only identity in North Africa but it even contradicts with the reality of the region. Thirdly, by this research I want to rethink the region in an open rational and pluralistic political context rather than one-sole-identity policy claimed by states of the region. Last but not least, I want to show how the claimed “national identity” for so many years is eventually proven to be a big mistake and even a myth seen as a truth. Finally, I want to show how domestic politics at the “micro-regionalism” level has an influence on the way macro-regionalism functions. I will show that by focusing on the role of civil society presented by the Amazigh movement.The primary and secondary questions I will raise in my research will be as the following: Why does Moroccan Constitution reflect pluralistic identity which led to the identity crisis of the AMU while other members maintain mono-oriented identity, Pan-Arabism.The secondary research question: In what ways have Morocco and other members constructed distinctive national identities and how have they operationalized and caused identity crisis in the AMU?My argument is that AMU has witnessed identity crisis as different political regimes have constructed distinctive national identity. In particular, Morocco could have pluralistic identity since it has monarchy while others have created mono-oriented national identity because they are authoritarian regime. To prove this argument, my paper will be divided to four chapters.The first chapter will highlight first the literature review of regionalism in North Africa. I will argue that, primarily, most of what have been written, so far, about regionalism in Africa generally and North African region particularly often focus on economic and regional security issues, with a taken for granted belief that the region is ideationally integrated. There is actually little written about the region from the perspective of identity issue in relation with the region’s regime types and their influence on the way national identity is built on one hand, and the extent to which individuals of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds are really represented at the level of national as well as regional identities. And how they have successfully influenced the process of building these two identity levels.The second part of this chapter will focus on the chosen theories and approaches. And as far as the theoretical side is concerned, I will give first a precise definition for national as well as regional identity. I will, as well, conceptualize regionalism from a more constructivists view. And finally, I need to give a definition of regime type in the way that fits the region’s regime characteristics. Secondly, the argument of this paper will be addressed under the New Regionalism Approach. This approach was suggested by a couple of scholars, like Hettne and S?derbaum, who wanted to take the question of regionalism far beyond the boundaries already designed by rationalists. This turning point in the field of international theory in general and regionalism in particular was marked by the emergence of constructivists approach to the question of regionalism, which challenged the rationalist mainstream paradigm’s state centric ontology. This new approach tends not to take the regions for granted as realists and liberalists do. In contrast, they try to shed more light on the way these regions were constructed and built from a bottom up approach, a process known by new regional scholars as regionalization. They also tend to give more importance to norms, identities and non-state actors, like civil society, in the way they approach and build international political theories.The second chapter will mainly display a historical overview of the birth of MAU and motives behind its embracement of Arabism as a regional identity. I will show the the birth and the failure of Arabism as a claimed-bounding regional identity. And finally, I will point out to the birth of Amazigh movement as a bottom-up reaction against pan-Arabism. I will explain how this reaction started at the national level, led by civil society in the form of social, cultural and sometimes even political associations, to end up challenging the whole formal regional identity, adopted by MAU, by the birth of Amazigh World Congress and many other Amazigh associations in the whole North Arica.The third chapter will, Empirically, focus on the case of Morocco to show the impact of regime type, monarchy in this case, on the way national identity has been developed through out history and how this regime type has always provided a more flexible political environment that allowed more negotiation of nation building course, including national identity, among the elites on one hand and the king on the other hand. This environment allowed another form of regionalization process or what Fridirik Soderbaum(2000) calls “informal regionalism” that started with the birth national associations in both Morocco and Algeria to end up in some cross-national ones, like the Amazigh World Congress. I will then show how this informal form of regionalism has successfully challenged the formal one by bringing on an another aspect of national as well as regional identity different than the one the regimes wanted for me years.The fourth chapter will finally summarize the whole idea of the paper and will also direct attention to the importance of domestic as well as ideational element in the way we should understand regionalism nowadays. It will also emphasize the importance of pluralism to building more interdependent and integrated regions. This final conclusion might be also used to stipulate other regions experience.