Koenraad Bogaert's detailed and insightful study, Globalized Authoritarianism, seeks to bridge the gap between Middle East and North Africa (MENA) urban studies and the political science literature on the MENA that deals with power, state, government, and globalization. The book addresses two lacunae in the debates concerning the nature of Arab politics and their link with globalization: the question of space and the role of the city. Bogaert thus uses the city as a window to pursue broader political questions. His starting points are Morocco's megaprojects and slum upgrading programs in order to better understand political change in the country. In particular, he focuses on: the Bouregreg Valley project, a massive waterfront project re-developing the river valley that lies between the cities of Rabat and Salé; and the Villes Sans Bidonvilles (Cities without Slums, VSB) program, a country-wide slum upgrading and poverty alleviation project.
Bogaert's theoretical approach builds on a history of critical debates concerning the nature of MENA politics and globalization. Underlying his approach is the assumption that the political reforms and projects that Morocco has implemented over the last twenty years are less indicative of a (linear) process of gradual democratization or liberalization than they are “examples of how authoritarian government converges with increasing globalization and transforms through its interaction with a rationale of economic liberalization” (p. 9). Indeed, one of the central arguments of the book is that authoritarian government in Morocco has become a “more globalized affair” (p. 16). The book traces how Morocco has moved from state developmentalism toward market-oriented modalities of government and, consequently, how authoritarianism has been transformed by the increasingly intertwined interests of the ruling domestic elites and the global economic elites. In the end, he argues, market requirements define and justify the authoritarian mode of government (p. 15–16).
Bogaert distinguishes himself from other critical perspectives examining globalization in the region in two primary ways. The first is his understanding of power which draws on the work of Marxist or radical urban scholars, such as Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey, and on the works of Michel Foucault and the Foucauldian studies on governmentality. Rather than regarding the two as conflictual, Bogaert argues that precisely because of their very different ontological and epistemological positions, the traditions should be seen as complimentary. Thus, Bogaert argues that the two traditions help us to link two inherently connected urban dilemmas from the viewpoint of power: how to reshape the city in order to serve power's interest (the city as a class project); and how to deal with the population residing in those cities who might suffer from and therefore resist this class project (the city as a governmental problem). Indeed, the former is the primary question that underlies his analysis of the Bouregreg project while the latter is pursued through his analysis of VSB.
The second manner in which his approach distinguishes itself from most other studies of globalization in the MENA is his argument—and consequently his methodological approach—that neoliberalism can best be understood as a set of projects. This allows Bogaert—and his empirical analysis supports this—the ability to focus on the practical encounters of neoliberalism and to understand that globalization is not something external but integral to political change.
For Bogaert, neoliberal urban projects, such as the Bouregreg project and VSB, are class projects. It is in his discussion of class that Bogaert develops his Marxist approach that is complimentary to Foucault. Bogaert understands class as relational, referring to specific relations of power, domination, and exploitation. Similarly to how Foucault looks at power as something that structures relationships in space and time, in Bogaert's reading of Marx, class does not refer to the ownership of the means of production of specific individuals but to the practices of extracting and appropriating from those who actually produce the wealth. This means that, for Bogaert, the important question “is not whether those who remodel the city can be described as a class but rather whether their practices and strategies can be understood as class practices or class strategies” (p. 19).
Confirming other critical studies examining globalization and the state in the MENA, Bogaert demonstrates how the Moroccan state plays a crucial role in these class projects. As a consequence, state power has been “reinstitutionalized, reassembled, and redeployed” but it has not been undermined (p. 19).
The book is divided into three parts and six chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of neoliberal projects. In Part 1, Bogaert elaborates on the relation between global capitalism and local places through the concept of neoliberal projects. Part 2 examines the changing state institutions of power and the class nature of the agency behind them. In Part 3, Bogaert explains the new techniques of neoliberal government, the creation of new subjectivities, and urban slums as a key arena for the reproduction of neoliberal power.
The book is impressively researched and persuasively argued offering insights into how globalization and neoliberalism work in practice. While much of the literature on neoliberalism tends to be highly theoretical, Bogaert breaks the empirical analysis down to concrete examples of how globalization and neoliberalism affect not only where people live but how they live. Chapter 4, which looks explicitly at the Bouregreg project is a fascinating read, detailing the project, including funding, planning decisions and the role of “starchitecture,” and revealing how the Valley was opened up to global market penetration and foreign investment and the new patterns of power that were created in the process.
The same can be said of Chapter 6 which takes an in-depth look at VSB and demonstrates how VSB is one example of a new kind of social welfare mechanism that seeks to adapt the lives of the urban poor to the new conditions created by neoliberal globalization. In contrast to many other critical perspectives, he argues that the continued, if not increased, poverty of the urban poor is a result of their inclusion in, and not their exclusion from, contemporary capitalist economies.
Bogaert's theoretical approach and his understanding of key concepts are woven throughout the book, as is the necessary history of political reforms and urban projects in Morocco for readers with little knowledge of the country. While at times slightly repetitive, the theoretical concepts are clearly explained making the book accessible to upper-level undergraduates (and beyond) who have little knowledge of the literatures on globalization or the critical debates surrounding the topic.
