In the Semi-Shadow of the Global West: Moroccan zawaya as Good Public Administration

The 2020 international protests addressing structural racism and colonial legacies have also questioned Western ascendancy on defining (good) governance. Non-Western traditional forms of governance surviving today, despite not receiving much academic attention, pose an obvious alternative. This study analyses key indigenous institutions in Morocco known as zawaya, and in doing so, fills some of the lacunae on Islamic-African public administration. Drawing from novel data collected via ethnographic fieldwork across three domains of public service provision, the authors, apparently for the first time in such a context, present a public administration that is functional in its operation, delivering on its goals, and on both counts markedly different from the global-Western mainstream. Our results uncover a public administration that (1) coexists with a larger state, (2) delivers coproduced services, and (3) merits recognition.