The regional fact and the trend towards regionalization: What lessons for the Moroccan model?

Abstract

In recent years, the notion of regionalization has embodied all the interest of the debates on the tendencies of territorial restructuring of countries. Indeed, there is no standard regionalization model. This is a trend largely influenced by the realities and contextual characteristics of each country and the approaches differ from one country to another. The operationalization of a territorial policy highlights its multidimensional aspect having a relationship with the contextual conditions specific to each country. Europe, from the early 1970s, experienced a great wave of regionalization. Several countries have triggered processes of transformation of their territories simultaneously. On the African continent, this movement, created more than two decades ago, is also at the center of the institutional changes initiated in some countries.

This article consists of a comparative analysis aimed at bringing together socio-economic indicators of four countries: France, Spain, Germany and Morocco to determine the similarities and differences of their regionalization models having gathered significant experience in order to highlight their impact on the territories of the countries in question. The objective is to verify to what extent the implementation of regionalization policies can contribute to the reduction of territorial development gaps within a country.

The results obtained in this work have highlighted the non-existence of a standard model of regionalization, and underline the particularity of each model of regionalization which must necessarily be influenced by the characteristics and the contextual realities of each country, which leads to a wide variety of regional approaches. It is also a question of demonstrating that each country must find the form of regionalization that best suits its context and its economic and social development objectives. It is therefore important to adapt regional approaches according to the realities and contextual characteristics of each country, rather than simply applying a standard model which may not be suitable for all situations.

Keywords: Region, Advanced regionalization, Territorial inequalities, Regional Economic.

JEL Classification: R11

Paper type: Theoretical research.