This paper by Mohamed El Hachimi examines the nature of Moroccan civil society movements and evaluates their contribution to the democratisation of the political system of the country. According to the author, the associative movement in Morocco is not able to play a key role for democratisation given its high degree of atomisation and depolitisation. The emergence of new extra-institutional social movements such as the 20th February movement can be seen as an attempt to overcome the deficit of powerful civil society structures. However, the author highlights that the literature on civil society movements has tended to overestimate the role of these organisations when confronted to the institutional mechanisms of state apparatuses.