Morocco's politics: the royal decrees nobody countersigns

What Morocco's constitution says the monarchy is

Article One of the 2011 text defines the state as "a constitutional, democratic, parliamentary and social Monarchy", built on the separation, balance and collaboration of powers. The same article lists what it calls the federative constants of national life: a moderate Muslim religion, the unity of the nation's components, the constitutional monarchy and democratic choice. Article 4 sets the motto, God, the Country, the King. Article 175 puts the Muslim religion, the monarchic form of the state and the democratic choice of the nation beyond amendment, together with the freedoms and fundamental rights the text records.

Article 43 makes the crown hereditary in the male line, by primogeniture among the descendants of Mohammed VI, unless the king names another of his sons in his lifetime. Article 46 declares the person of the King inviolable and says respect is due to him. Article 64 writes the same limit into parliamentary immunity. A member cannot be prosecuted for an opinion or a vote unless the opinion challenges the monarchic form of the state or the Muslim religion, or the respect due to the King.

Hassan II's first constitution was approved in a referendum in December 1962. A constitution of 1970 provided for one chamber and did not survive the coup attempt of July 1971, and another, announced in 1972, was largely suspended after a second attempt in August. Revisions in 1992, 1996 and 2011 extended parliament's powers to budgets, bills, questions to ministers and commissions of inquiry, and the 1996 reform created the two-chamber legislature.

In February 2011 thousands rallied in Rabat and other cities for a new constitution curbing the powers of the king. Mohammed VI announced a set of constitutional reforms on 17 June 2011, and the text was approved by referendum in July, a "landslide victory" in Wikipedia's phrase.

Why the Moroccan king holds two offices

Two articles open the constitution's title on the monarchy, and they describe two offices held by one man. Article 41 is the King as Commander of the Faithful, Amir al-Mu'minin, who "sees to the respect for Islam" and guarantees the free exercise of beliefs. He presides over the Superior Council of the Ulema, which the article makes the sole body entitled to pronounce on fatwas before they are officially adopted. He exercises those prerogatives by dahir, "in exclusive manner".

Article 42 is the King as head of state. He is the symbol of the nation's unity, the guarantor of the state's continuity, the "Supreme Arbiter between the institutions" and the guarantor of the kingdom's territorial integrity "within its authentic frontiers". Wikipedia's account of the office ties the religious title to the king's descent from the Prophet Muhammad, and the Alawi claim to that descent is the subject of Morocco's history.

The BTI 2026 country report, published by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, says the title gives the king "both religious and political authority", exercised over Islamic practice through the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs, and that religious interpretation is restricted to the Maliki school of Sunni Islam. Article 3 makes Islam the religion of the state; BTI notes that only Islam, Christianity and Judaism are recognised.

Article 7 closes the same field to party politics. No party may be founded on a religious, linguistic, ethnic or regional basis, and none may aim at an infringement of the Muslim religion, the monarchical regime or the kingdom's territorial integrity.

Britannica writes that Hassan II "guarded his status as religious head of state" and found his main opponents among militant Islamists; in December 1995 Abdessalam Yassine, leader of the outlawed Justice and Charity Group, was released after six years of house arrest. BTI records that the association has said it would form a party on condition of a monarchy with only symbolic powers.

Which royal decrees the king signs alone

Article 42 ends with the countersignature rule. The King exercises his missions by dahir, under powers the text "expressly" gives him, and the head of government countersigns every dahir except those issued under eight listed articles. The head of government who countersigns answers to the Chamber of Representatives, which can censure his government. The listed dahirs carry the king's signature alone.

Most of the king's other powers run through bodies he chairs. He presides over the Council of Ministers under Article 48, and Article 49 lists what it deliberates: the strategic orientations of state policy, bills revising the constitution, organic laws, the general orientations of the finance bill, amnesty, military texts, a state of siege and a declaration of war. The same council approves appointments to a fixed list of posts, on the head of government's proposal: the wali of Bank Al-Maghrib, ambassadors, walis and governors, the heads of the internal security administrations and the heads of strategic public enterprises.

He is Supreme Head of the Royal Armed Forces under Article 53 and chairs the Superior Council of Security set up by Article 54. He signs and ratifies treaties, though Article 55 requires prior approval by law for treaties on peace, borders, trade, state finances or citizens' rights. His messages to the nation and to parliament are read in either chamber "and may not be made the object of any debate". The right of pardon is his under Article 58.

Article 59 sets the conditions for a state of exception: a threat to the integrity of the national territory, or events that obstruct the regular functioning of the constitutional institutions. The king must first consult the head of government, the presidents of both chambers and the president of the Constitutional Court, and address the nation. Parliament cannot be dissolved while the exceptional powers last, and the article states that fundamental rights remain guaranteed. BTI reads the result from outside the text, calling Morocco "an executive monarchy" whose dahirs are "immune from judicial review".

How the head of government is chosen and removed

The first paragraph of Article 47 ties the choice of head of government to the election result. The King appoints the head of government "from within the political party arriving ahead in the elections" to the Chamber of Representatives, and appoints the ministers on his proposal. The king keeps a power to end a minister's functions on his own initiative, after consulting the head of government, and the head of government may ask him to end them.

A king had chosen an opposition leader before any article required it. In the 1997 elections, in Britannica's words, opposition parties "won the largest bloc of seats in the lower house", and in March 1998 Abderrahmane Youssoufi of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces was appointed prime minister.

A new government needs the chamber's vote. Under Article 88 the head of government presents a programme to both chambers sitting together, and the government is invested once an absolute majority of the members of the Chamber of Representatives votes for it. Article 105 lets the chamber remove it by a motion of censure, signed by at least a fifth of the members and passed by an absolute majority. A censured government resigns collectively, and no further censure motion is admissible for a year.

Under Articles 89 to 92 the head of government holds the regulatory power, appoints to civil posts outside the Council of Ministers' list and chairs a Council of Government. Its decree no. 2.24.1009, reported by the High Commission for Planning in November 2024, set Morocco's legal population at 36,828,330 on 1 September 2024.

The first election held under the new text, on 25 November 2011, gave a plurality to the Justice and Development Party (PJD), which Wikipedia describes as Islamist, and Abdelilah Benkirane was designated head of government under Article 47. The PJD came first again in 2016 with 125 of the 395 seats, against 102 for the Authenticity and Modernity Party, and Benkirane was reappointed on 10 October 2016. In the election of 8 September 2021 the PJD lost more than 90% of its seats. The National Rally of Independents took a plurality and formed a coalition with the Authenticity and Modernity Party and the Istiqlal Party; turnout in 2021 was estimated at 50.35% of registered voters. The latest general election was held on 23 September 2026.

Who sits in the Moroccan parliament

Article 60 gives parliament two chambers whose members "hold their mandate from the Nation", and names the opposition "an essential component of both Chambers". The two are elected on different principles, for different terms.

Article 63 fixes the councillors' proportions: three-fifths represent the local collectivities, shared out between the regions by population, and two-fifths come from the professional chambers, the employers' organisations and the representatives of salaried workers.

Article 61 strips the mandate from any member who leaves the party under which he stood, or its parliamentary group. More than 30 parties compete for seats, by the BTI report's count, and Wikipedia's politics article says the proportional system "generally prevents any single party from obtaining an absolute majority of seats".

Parliament sits from the second Friday of October and from the second Friday of April, and the king presides over the opening of the October session.

Under Articles 96 to 98 the king may dissolve one chamber or both, after consulting the president of the Constitutional Court and informing the head of government and the presidents of the two chambers. A new election must follow within two months. A chamber elected after a dissolution cannot itself be dissolved for a year, unless no governing majority can be formed in the newly elected Chamber of Representatives.

Who appoints Morocco's judges and constitutional court

Article 56 makes the king president of the Superior Council of the Judicial Power. Article 115 sets its membership around him, with the First President of the Court of Cassation as president-delegate and ten members elected by the magistrates of the courts of appeal and of first instance. Judges are appointed by the council and approved by royal dahir, one of the decrees the head of government does not countersign.

The Constitutional Court has twelve members, appointed for nine years without renewal. Six are designated by the King, one of them proposed by the Secretary General of the Superior Council of the Ulema. The other six are elected, half by each chamber, by a two-thirds majority in a secret ballot, from candidates put forward by each chamber's bureau. Each half is renewed by thirds every three years, the king appoints the president from among the members, and every member must have exercised a judicial, doctrinal or administrative profession in law for more than fifteen years.

BTI's assessment of the judiciary concerns these appointments. It finds that the council "remains under monarchical control", that the selection of judges lacks transparency, and that royal pardons override judicial decisions. Freedom House records one such pardon in July 2024, of some 2,400 people, among them the journalists Omar Radi, Taoufik Bouachrine and Soulaimane Raissouni, whose cases press freedom groups had called fabricated. BTI dates it to 29 July 2024.

How Freedom House and the BTI assess Morocco

What the scores record

Freedom House scored Morocco 37 out of 100 in its 2025 report and classed it Partly Free, from 13 of 40 points for political rights and 24 of 60 for civil liberties. The score leaves out Western Sahara, assessed in a separate report. Two indicators sit closest to the Article 42 list. On whether the head of government or other chief national authority was elected in free and fair elections, Morocco scored 1 of 4. It scored the same on whether the elected head of government and legislators determine government policy. Freedom House's overview says the 2011 reforms "shifted some authority over government from the monarchy to the national legislature", and that the palace keeps "full dominance through a combination of substantial formal powers, informal lines of influence in state and society, and ownership of crucial economic resources". The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Morocco a "hybrid regime" in 2022.

BTI names that informal layer the Makhzen, "the monarchy and its inner circle". It says loyal technocrats are appointed to the "ministries of sovereignty", Interior, Foreign Affairs, Islamic Affairs and Defense, and that in March 2023 the palace reprimanded the PJD for criticising the normalisation agreement with Israel, reaffirming foreign policy as the king's "domaine réservé". It cites the Arab Barometer of 2024, in which 74% of Moroccans believed corruption is widespread.

How the Years of Lead were examined

The reign of Hassan II from 1961 to 1999 is called the Years of Lead, after its forced disappearances, killings of opponents and secret camps such as Tazmamart. The Equity and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2004 in BTI's account, confirmed nearly 10,000 cases ranging from death in detention to forced exile, and recorded some 592 people killed. BTI adds that the commission granted amnesty to perpetrators and that most of its recommendations went unimplemented.

Protest has continued outside the chambers. The Hirak Rif movement began in al-Hoceima in October 2016. In December 2024 the House of Representatives approved a strike law letting the authorities seek urgent court orders to suspend strikes. The 2025 protests rose against youth unemployment, which official statistics put at 35.8% at the time.

How regions and Tamazight entered Morocco's constitution

Article One describes the kingdom's territorial organisation as decentralised and "founded on an advanced regionalization". Since 2015 Morocco has been divided into 12 regions, subdivided into 13 prefectures and 62 provinces. Article 135 has regional and communal councils elected by direct universal suffrage. Walis and governors are appointed in the Council of Ministers, and BTI finds that the Ministry of the Interior keeps "significant control" despite decentralisation. Three of the 12 regions, Guelmim-Oued Noun, Laâyoune-Sakia El Hamra and Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab, lie partly or wholly in Western Sahara, whose status is disputed.

The preamble describes a national identity forged by "Arab-Islamist, Berber [amazighe] and Saharan-Hassanic" components. Article 5 keeps Arabic as the official language and makes Tamazight an official language as well, "common patrimony of all Moroccans without exception". Law no. 26-16, one of the two organic laws the article called for, sets out how Tamazight enters teaching and public life. The government allocated 200 million dirhams to the work in 2022 and 300 million in each of 2023 and 2024, rising to 1 billion dirhams from 2025, according to the Ministry of Digital Transition and Administrative Reform. The same article commits the state to preserving Hassani.

The institutions came before the article. The Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture was created by dahir on 17 October 2001, after a royal speech at Ajdir, and Berber-language teaching began in primary schools in 2003. On 3 May 2023 Mohammed VI made the Amazigh New Year an official national holiday. BTI records that Amazigh organisations still meet registration denials, and that a Rif Nationalist Party calling for independence was founded in September 2023, although Article 7 forbids any party founded on a regional basis.

Which alignments Moroccan foreign policy has kept

How Morocco's memberships were made and broken

The preamble commits the kingdom to building the Union of the Maghreb "as [a] strategic option", and to ties with the Arab and Islamic Ummah, with Africa and with its Euro-Mediterranean neighbours. Morocco left the Organisation of African Unity in 1984 after it admitted the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, and rejoined the African Union on 30 January 2017, 33 years later.

Britannica describes a foreign policy that "has often differed from that of its Arab neighbours". Through the Cold War Morocco sided with western Europe and the United States, and Hassan II opened a dialogue with Israel in the 1970s ahead of the Camp David Accords of 1978. The American tie dates from 20 December 1777, when Sultan Mohammed III declared American merchant ships under the protection of the sultanate. The United States named Morocco a major non-NATO ally in June 2004, and a free trade agreement took effect on 1 January 2006. On 10 December 2020 Morocco announced it would resume relations with Israel, and a joint declaration of the three countries was signed on 22 December 2020. BTI records that Islamists and the left condemned the agreement.

How the Western Sahara claim runs through it

The status of Western Sahara is disputed. Morocco claims the territory as its Southern Provinces. The Polisario Front claims it for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, proclaimed in 1976 and recognised by more than 40 countries, according to Britannica. The United Nations, as Freedom House records, considers it a non-self-governing territory.

A UN-monitored ceasefire took effect in 1991 on the promise of a referendum, and by 2001 Morocco no longer accepted holding one. Its autonomy proposal was presented to the Security Council in mid-April 2007. The Polisario Front declared the ceasefire over in November 2020, and the next month the United States recognised Moroccan sovereignty over the territory as part of the agreement with Israel; Israel followed in 2023. Spain, France and the United Kingdom have endorsed the 2007 autonomy plan, Britannica records. On 4 October 2024 the European Court of Justice annulled EU-Morocco trade agreements on fisheries and agricultural products from Western Sahara. This catalogue records the dispute and takes no position on it.

Which neighbours Morocco has broken with

Algeria and Morocco fought the Sand War of 1963 around Tindouf. Relations were restored in 1988, the land border closed in 1994 in BTI's account, and on 24 August 2021 Algeria cut diplomatic relations, accusing Morocco of supporting a separatist group. Morocco called the decision "unjustified".

Morocco claims Ceuta, Melilla and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, held by Spain. In July 2002 Spanish troops took the islet of Perejil after Moroccan soldiers landed on it, and both sides agreed under American mediation to leave it deserted. The two had a border incident on 17 May 2021, and are to host the 2030 FIFA World Cup together with Portugal.