The political economy of Morocco is often depicted as unshaken in the face of challenges from abroad and at home. The literature focuses overwhelmingly on the primary place of the monarchy and palace politics in determining economic and social outcomes. A tenet of the literature on postindependence Moroccan politics is that the private sector most effectively lobbies decision makers and influences policy through opaque personal channels, and that patronage is essential for any transaction. (Hammoudi 1997; Hibou 1996; Layachi 1999; Leveau 1985; Leveau 1987; Waterbury 1970).

But the preponderant focus on the palace in the scholarly literature on Morocco has masked pockets of change initiated by emergent social actors. A tendency to treat social groups as aggregate wholes in studies of Morocco skews analyses of the postreform Moroccan political economy and overlooks the role of “self-made men,” a new class of industrialists who modified existing patterns of business–government relations that had been entrenched for decades.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN INTEREST GROUP

Events in the 1990s, notably an economic bust and the signing of a bilateral trade agreement with the European Union, highlighted mutual interests among exporters and compelled them to organize within the existing producers association for the textile and apparel sectors.