Will Morocco Be the Arab Spring's Great Success—Or Great Failure? - Max Fisher

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/will-morocco-be-the-arab-springs-great-success-or-great-failure/241286/

The country begins down that new course today, with a national referendum on a new constitution. Morocco, as always, is taking a uniquely Moroccan approach. Mohamed VI, who remains quite popular with large stretches of society, but who is nonetheless exactly as autocratic as his title implies, appears legitimately eager to deliver some kind of reform. Like his fellow Arab leaders, he initially ignored the pro-democracy protesters who rose up in his country on February 20. But when the demonstrations became impossible to ignore, Mohamed VI's response has been to try and meet some of their demands, rather than to crush them by force. He hand-picked an assembly of scholars (some of them legitimately independent and sincerely pro-democratic) and asked them to draft a new constitution that would meet with his, and the country's, approval.