This study attempted to clarify the structure of authoritarian resilience of Morocco, which was verified by the reactions to the wave of the “Arab Spring.” After the revolutionary movements known as the Arab Spring swept the Middle East and North Africa, King Mohammad VI of Morocco carried out limited, top-down political reforms. Only three weeks after Moroccans expressed their public dissatisfaction in a series of protests, the king announced that he would amend the constitution. Based on this revised constitution, parliamentary elections were held on November 23. The Party of Justice and Development (PJD) won and took leadership of the government for the first time since entering the political arena in 1997, which was also the first Islamist-led government in Morocco. This study insisted that the PJD’s win in Morocco cannot be considered a triumph for the Islamists in the same way that Islamist party victories in Tunisia or Egypt, but it should be understood in the same context as the leftists’ victory in 1997 following the constitutional reform in 1996. It also was only a transformation/reshuffle of the government and a change in the relationship between political actors in the parliament. As a conclusion, I suggested that this might be better understood as a new strategy of the king, “the rotation of the ruling parties and the opposition,” under the name of nominal democracy.

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