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Tara Lihi

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On September 8, 2023, Morocco’s Atlas Mountains region experienced a Mw 6.8 earthquake. The disaster caused devastating loss of life and damage to property and infrastructure and exposed institutional strains in Morocco’s disaster response systems. Despite more than a decade of constitutional and decentralization reforms, the country’s emergency response remained highly centralized. Local authorities, formally designated as first responders, faced severe constraints due to limited resources, access to information and the absence of emergency funding mechanisms, as well as administrative procedures requiring approval from centrally appointed governors.

This paper examines the historical development of both decentralisation policies and the institutional role of the Ministry of the Interior to explain why Morocco’s earthquake response remained centralised despite formal decentralisation reforms. It argues that disasters do not merely expose pre-existing state fragility; they actively reproduce it by redistributing experience, information, and authority under conditions of deep uncertainty.  This study shows that the systematic exclusion of elected local representatives during disaster response and reconstruction channels learning, legitimacy, and operational experience toward centralized institutions. In turn, decentralized governance is weakened, leaving local communities with limited agency over recovery processes and reinforcing longer-term patterns of state fragility.