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"New actors and new forms of social mobilization in the Maghreb"

Isabelle WERENFELS

Research on the composition of the political elites in the francophone Maghreb post-2011 has shown that the emergence of truly new elites has been limited. Existing elites largely managed to bring newcomers into the fold and to monopolize power. However, outside the political classes new social and political actors – ranging from diasporas, sexual, ethnic and religious minorities, and contesting movements in social and geographic peripheries to violent extremists – have developed bargaining and nuisance power that allows them to affect elite policies, obviously to different degrees in democratizing Tunisia than in the two authoritarian countries Morocco and Algeria. Yet, in all three states, despite their different political frameworks, these often transnational actors of change have an impact on public discourses, not least due to new forms of mobilization.