Decentralized cooperation and regional development planning in Morocco: institutional misalignments and their implications for regional policy and territorial cohesion

This article analyzes how the growing prominence of decentralized cooperation in Morocco interacts—or fails to interact—with the regional development planning instruments put in place under advanced regionalization. Drawing on contributions from the literatures on multi-level governance, development planning in the Global South, and territorial cohesion, it examines institutional gaps between the legal framework, planning tools, and the actual practices of territorial actors. Based on a structured documentary review combining a systematic search protocol, qualitative content analysis of legislative texts and twelve post-2015 regional development plans, and critical engagement with institutional reports, the study identifies three types of misalignments: a largely implicit and fragmented integration of decentralized cooperation projects into planning documents; uneven coordination between levels of government around external resources; and a persistent tension between stated territorial cohesion objectives and competitive logics of partnership capture by certain regions. The article argues that these gaps currently limit the capacity of decentralized cooperation to become a structuring lever for territorial convergence, while at the same time opening up prospects for institutional reforms. It contributes to debates in regional science and regional policy by showing how the design and coordination of planning instruments condition the ability of decentralized cooperation to support more inclusive regional development and territorial cohesion within the framework of advanced regionalization.