Morocco finds a new source of policy expertise — its own citizens
What will “national development” mean in a post-Covid world? How will developing nations find the model best suited to their unique situation? And how will they align all the public and private actors needed to make it work?
Morocco’s answer: by tapping into the collective intelligence of its own citizens.
This spring saw the release of a long-awaited report by the Commission Spéciale sur le modèle de developpement (CSMD), created in 2019 by His Majesty King Mohammed VI.
“Blue ribbon” commissions to tackle thorny issues are nothing new. But the methods employed by Morocco’s CSMD, and the proposals which resulted from them, point the way toward an entirely new approach to governance in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Morocco’s new model of development was created through methods of collective intelligence, an emerging science that explores how groups can outperform individuals in learning, decision making, and problem-solving.
It is an ability that has long defined our species, from coordinated bands of hunters on the savannah to the networks of scientists that develop coronavirus vaccines. A complex environment has conditioned humans to pool their knowledge to survive. But collective intelligence doesn’t just happen; for the “wisdom of crowds” to emerge, a group must be organized in the right way, with the right methods and tools.
What governments are discovering is that collective intelligence can generate solutions and co-ordinate action better than traditional top-down methods.
Morocco faces a complex set of challenges. Having boomed in the early 2000s, it witnessed economic growth stall in the 2010s, and its demographic and environmental pressures have intensified.
In 2017, King Mohammed VI issued an unusual call to action to the nation’s elected leaders. The solution for national development would not come from a technocratic team of global experts, credentialed advisors, or paid consultants. Rather, the nation’s new model would have to be the product of “an inclusive, participatory approach…to make sure all key stakeholders are actively involved.”
But how to hold a productive conversation with 36 million people?
Beginning in January 2020, the CSMD launched a broad national consultation open to all Moroccan citizens, aimed at harnessing a wide variety of expertise from local communities, government, NGOs, and the private sector.
Its multi-channel approach was designed to reflect four indicators that studies suggest are critical to producing collective intelligence: a diversity of participants and information sources; a critical mass of contributions; a sufficiently rich exchange of information at each “touch point”; and an effective process to synthesize contributions into a coherent whole.
The CSMD created an online platform with opportunities to give quick feedback (“What is one thing you want to change about Morocco?”), as well as more detailed proposals on themes like health care and territorial inequality. A social media campaign reached an estimated 3.2 million citizens, with dozens of “participatory workshops” live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube.
To seek out the knowledge of those least connected to these channels, the CSMD conducted 30 field visits to struggling urban districts, universities, and remote villages in the High Atlas mountains. These field visits featured learning sessions with social innovators and rencontres citoyennes (“citizen encounters”) where groups of 20 to 30 local residents, balanced by age and gender, shared stories and aspirations.
As they integrated this citizen input, the CSMD itself embodied the cognitive diversity that science suggests is a driver of group intelligence. The 35 members included a professor of medicine and founder of an AIDS non-profit; a young expert in crowdfunding and organizer of “civic hackathons”; a political scientist and playwright; a former prime minister; a post-doctoral researcher in AI; a specialist in rural education; and a documentary filmmaker, among others. In a country whose high political offices are typically filled by older men, ten of the 35 were women and nine were under the age of 45. “Working with these colleagues was like getting a PhD in everything,” noted one member.
From January to December 2020, the CSMD received over 10,000 written pages of contributions from 6,600 individuals and 165 organizations. Though the pandemic curtailed much of the in-person consultations, the CSMD held 20 public online events and more than 100 socially distanced workshops in the summer and fall. Overall their deliberations stretched across 61 plenary sessions and 5 weekend retreats for an estimated 430 hours of internal work.
What were the key learnings?
First, the most urgent priorities also commanded broad consensus: reversing the decline in economic mobility, reinforcing the social safety net, and extending the reach and responsiveness of public services, especially outside the main cities. Alongside these criticisms, citizens shared hundreds of local projects and initiatives that show promise in reinventing educational models, creating jobs, advancing gender equality, and protecting natural resources.
Above all, Moroccan citizens expressed pride in their country and a keen appetite to participate in public life. As one young woman put it, “If citizens are not engaged, if they are not involved in public debates and decisions, all change will be in vain.”
Released in May and promoted across the country this summer, the new citizen-created model redefines development as “a global and multidimensional process that goes beyond the sole objective of accumulating material wealth.” The most urgent priorities also commanded broad public consensus: reversing the decline in economic mobility; reinforcing the social safety net; and extending the reach and responsiveness of public services, especially outside the main cities. Specific forms of citizen inclusion are recommended, from participatory budgeting to community health workers and new espaces socio-théologiques (“socio-theological spaces”) to create dialogue on issues of gender and culture.
Did the CSMD’s collective intelligence methods work?
In response to King Mohammed VI’s challenge, the Commission created the most sophisticated public consultation in Morocco’s history and put the concerns of a diverse body of citizens front and center. A critical element of this success was the coherence of the CSMD’s actions with its values. The creativity, diligence, and openness of its 35 members give a shining example of the principles proclaimed in the new model, in a region where these values are often under threat. “What was so surprising,” marveled an elderly participant of a citizen workshop, “was that they asked us to tell them everything, anything we wanted — about corruption, injustice, as well as what we were proud of in our region. The Commission was ready to hear everything.”
The collaboration with citizens ended up changing the way policy was imagined. “In our plenary debates,” recalls one CSMD member, “we often quoted directly from what we had heard, ‘Don’t you remember what that guy in the village said?’ Those field visits played a major role — I would go as far as to say that this report wasn’t really written by the 35 of us, technocrats in an office, but with the people in a very deep sense.”
Success is not yet guaranteed; the coming months will provide a crucial test. Following national elections this week, a new government will be charged with overseeing a massive change of mindset to develop and scale up these methods of policy co-construction and citizen feedback. Civil servants and elected officials must be ready to adopt an entrepreneurial, “test and learn” mindset, to shift their institutions toward a “culture of leadership, initiative and performance” that the new model proposes. Everyday citizens, too, must seize the opportunity to educate themselves on public issues and offer critiques respectfully.
How, and how fast, the government and citizens of Morocco learn to think together will determine whether this daring new model of development can achieve its promise.
Dr. Lex Paulson is Executive Director of the School of Collective Intelligence at Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique in Morocco.
