Narrative Sovereignty and State Power

Successes only have lasting impact when they are embedded within a narrative framework that shapes how they are interpreted. This is precisely what narrative sovereignty means: a state’s capacity to control the story through which its choices, policies, and transformations are read by the world. This is neither communication nor propaganda, but a strategic capability: defining concepts, fixing vocabulary, and setting the terms of debate—including for one’s adversaries. Those who frame the question often predefine the answer.

The United States built its hegemony not only on material power, but on a remarkable narrative coherence linking culture, technology, universities, and diplomacy. Even failures are integrated into the broader story, rather than denied or erased. The lesson is simple: shaping the mental frame matters more than convincing everyone.

China, for its part, has adopted an offensive, repetitive, and disciplined narrative strategy, structured around a clear sequence: humiliation, renewal, responsible power. It does not respond to criticism; it changes the agenda. Here again, narrative discipline lies at the heart of effectiveness.

Japan and Rwanda, despite very different trajectories, also offer compelling examples of narrative mastery. The former embodies a form of quiet power built on credibility, quality, aesthetics, and disciplined modernity. The latter has managed to move from a narrative of genocide to that of a high-performing state, tightly linking governance, stability, and future-oriented projection, while exercising precise control over how the past is invoked.

These cases share several common features: a clear central narrative that can be expressed in a single sentence; multiple channels of diffusion; an ability to anticipate narrative conflicts rather than merely react to them; and long-term action, not driven by the emotions of the moment.

Morocco and the Gulf countries have made notable advances thanks to institutional stability and strategic visions carried by their monarchies. Their symbols are powerful: Africa, the Atlantic, and sport for Morocco; the global city, technology, and regional leadership for the Gulf. The issue is not the absence of a narrative, but its inability to become a dominant frame of reference. The challenge is to move from being high-performing countries to becoming countries that impose their own definition of success—including on sensitive issues such as human rights, the environment, or the place of women—by integrating these debates into a sovereign narrative framework.

For Morocco, the narrative question is now particularly acute: what story do we want to project toward 2030? Several logics coexist. A defensive narrative, driven by elite and public mobilization. A form of silent power, embodied by credible institutions that speak through facts. Both are necessary—but insufficient if they are not embedded in a conscious strategy of narrative sovereignty.

The challenge is not to invent a new story, but to transform the existing one into a mental frame of reference: a shared language through which Morocco is read, domestically and internationally. A narrative that does not merely defend, but structures debate, sets the questions, and controls the tempo.

In this sense, 2030 is not only an organizational or logistical test. It is a major narrative test. In a world where meaning is contested before facts, those who do not impose their own language are read through the language of others; those who do not define themselves are defined from the outside.

Narrative sovereignty is neither rhetorical luxury nor nationalist posturing. It is one of the conditions of contemporary power: the power to influence, the power to persuade, and the power to remain present in a world governed as much by narratives as by facts.

Article published in the Aawsat newspaper.