Tunisia is a peculiar case in the MENA – a single-party dictatorship that, after a half-century, turned into a democracy defined by compromise and cooperation between Islamists and secularists. The post-Arab Spring decade of democratic politics embodied the success of electoral competition and new institutional rules, but problems of economic underdevelopment and transitional justice confront the country as governments and parties continue adapting to the demands of pluralism
In 5 paragraphs answer the following question: Arab Spring in Tunisia was the beginning of a peaceful transition. Why works for them but does not work in other regions of the MEDA?
Introduction (argument) (why)
-reason 1
-reason 2
– reason 3
conclusion
�
Drivers of Democracy: Lessons from
Tunisia
Prof. Eva Bellin
Thirty-one months since the fall of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, how far has Tunisia progressed in the transition to
democracy? For crisis-chasing journalists as well as activists
close to the political process, aberrant acts of violence and the
noise of daily battle may obscure the country’s true political
trajectory and generate discouragement about Tunisia’s
future. But the perspective granted by distance reveals a
different trend line—one that is surprisingly positive and
encouraging. Tunisia’s trajectory has so far been clearly
democratic, and has been driven by a variety of factors. Some
are consequences of deliberate choice and engineering, while
others are the product of chance. This Brief will identify the
various drivers of democratization in Tunisia over the last
two years and will consider some of the key challenges the
country faces as it pursues this process.
Democratic Drivers and Assets
Within the Arab world, Tunisia has long been considered one of the most
auspicious candidates for democratization. The structural conditions that
favor democracy in Tunisia are so familiar that enumerating them is practically
a cliché: Tunisia has a large middle class, its population is relatively well
educated, its society is ethnically homogeneous, and the country is closely
linked economically to Europe. But thirty years of research on democracy have
sensitized us to the structural indeterminacy of democratization. Countries
August 2013
No. 75
Judith and Sidney Swartz Director
Prof. Shai Feldman
Associate Director
Kristina Cherniahivsky
Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of
Middle East History and
Associate Director for Research
Naghmeh Sohrabi
Senior Fellows
Abdel Monem Said Aly, PhD
Khalil Shikaki, PhD
Myra and Robert Kraft Professor
of Arab Politics
Eva Bellin
Henry J. Leir Professor of the
Economics of the Middle East
Nader Habibi
Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor
of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
Kanan Makiya
Brandeis University
Mailstop 010
Waltham, Massachusells
02454-9110
781-736-5320
781-736-5324 Fax
www.hrandeis .edu/crown
Crown Center
for Middle East Studies
Brief
2
Eva Bellin is the Myra and
Robert Kraft Professor
of Arab Politics at the
Crown Center and the
Department of Politics at
Brandeis University.
The opinions and findings expressed in this
Brief belong to the author exclusively and
do not reflect those of the Crown Center or
Brandeis University.
that have seemed structurally inhospitable to democratization (such as Mongolia)
have successfully pulled off transitions to democracy (even if they have not always
proven able to sustain their democratic initiatives); by contrast, other countries
deemed structurally well disposed to democratization (such as Chile and
Argentina) have sustained authoritarian regimes well past historical expectation.1
In fact, the truth of democracy’s structural indeterminacy is nowhere better
demonstrated than in the case of Tunisia itself. When in 1987, Ben Ali finally
unseated Habib Bourguiba, the country’s autocratic founding father, many
observers were optimistic that the country would quickly democratize thanks to
its auspicious structural conditions. But this proved not to be. Political choices
made and implemented by Ben Ali served as the proverbial Weberian switchman,
orienting Tunisia down a different track—one of persistent authoritarianism—for
an additional twenty-three years.
Yet today, Tunisia appears to be going in a more promising direction, making real
progress toward building the foundations of democracy. Six of the most salient
factors driving this trajectory—some the product of inspired political engineering,
others the product of lucky accident—will be discussed in this Brief.
The Military
First among the factors that have favored democratic progress in Tunisia involves
the character of the Tunisian military. Authoritarian regimes around the world
live or die based on their military’s investment in regime survival, and, more
specifically, the willingness of the military to use its coercive power to sustain
the regime. In Tunisia, for a variety of historical reasons, the military developed
into an apolitical and professional entity not invested in the survival of Ben Ali’s
regime.2 As a result, it did not oppose the fall of the autocrat and indeed refused
to use lethal force to sustain Ben Ali’s rule when mass protest erupted in 2010–
11. Instead, the military leadership forthrightly expressed its support for the
country’s transition to democracy and vocally embraced the notion of civilian
supremacy. It also eschewed the practice embraced by other militaries attending
regime change of carving out unaccountable authoritarian enclaves that survive
the transition. (Think Chile in the 80s and Turkey in the 60s through the 90s.)
The military’s stance in Tunisia eliminated, in one fell swoop, one of the most
serious potential threats to successful democratization.
The Elite
The second factor that has proven key to Tunisia’s progress towards
democratization concerns the matter of elite commitment. At critical junctures
when long-standing political institutions have broken down (such as right
after the overthrow of an authoritarian regime), there is a moment when human
agency plays a pivotal role in determining a country’s political trajectory. This
is why established scholars of democratization such as Larry Diamond insist on
the importance of individual choice, strategy, ingenuity, courage, and conviction
in shaping the course of democratization in any country.3 First among these
steering agents is a country’s political elite. Although democratization is possible
without the elite’s ideological conversion to democratic values (as Waterbury and
Salamé argued so persuasively in their separate contributions to the landmark
work Democracy without Democrats4), elite commitment to democracy is clearly an
asset that increases the odds for successful transition. It has been responsible for
steering even countries inhospitable to democratization (such as Mongolia5) in a
democratic direction.
3
In the case of Tunisia’s critical juncture, when Ben Ali’s
regime was suddenly brought down by a surge of popular
protest, the country was blessed with elites committed
to democratization. This was true of the overwhelming
majority of secular-minded elites serving on the High
Commission for the Protection of the Revolution,6 the
popular committee that helped guide Tunisia’s political
course for the first months after the fall of Ben Ali; but it
was also so for Islamist elites, most notably extending
to the Nahda movement, which had long expressed its
commitment to free and fair elections and to the creation of
a civic as opposed to a theocratically driven state.7
This is not to say that all of the political elites in Tunisia
were thoroughly liberal in their ideological convictions.
Significant differences in commitment to gender equality
and freedom of expression, for example, would manifest
themselves in battles fought out between Islamists
and secularists during the first two years of Tunisia’s
transition. (See below.) But there was complete consensus
across the elite spectrum with regard to breaking with
authoritarian rule, eliminating its institutions (most
notably, the ruling RCD party), and embracing free and fair
elections as the way forward politically.
Inclusiveness
The third factor that has favored democratization’s
progress in Tunisia has been the political elite’s
commitment to the principle and practice of inclusiveness.
That commitment has been evident from the start. The
High Commission for the Protection of the Revolution
strived for broad representation from Tunisian society,
beginning with a roster of forty-two national figures of
different political persuasions, along with representatives
of twelve different parties and seventeen civil society and
national organizations. When protest was nonetheless
voiced that the Commission was insufficiently inclusive,
the Commission quickly doubled its membership, paying
special attention to the broadening of participation
by women and youth.8 The newly formed electoral
commission (the ISIE) thereafter committed itself to an
extraordinarily inclusive process preceding the election of
Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly.9 It granted legal status to
well over one hundred new parties—including secularists,
Islamists, and Communists alike—and sought to facilitate
the broadest possible level of participation by means of the
voter registration process it adopted and by establishing
public funding of political campaigns.10
In its subsequent deliberations, the newly elected
Constituent Assembly also embraced the principle of
inclusiveness. Its six constitutional subcommittees, tasked
with crafting the new constitution, were each composed
of twenty-two members—an unwieldy number, but
one designed to ensure representation of all the major
groups that had had members elected to the Assembly.
The subcommittees were instructed to aim for consensus
among their members and were encouraged to take the
process of deliberation to the people by holding meetings,
both with their constituents and with groups in civil
society, to discuss the contents of the articles they were
drafting.11
Overall, the principle of inclusiveness was prioritized,
even if it came at the expense of other objectives, such
as efficiency and clarity. Commitment to inclusiveness
meant that Tunisia’s first free and fair elections were
a bit confusing (so many parties, so many changes in
registration rules),12 and that the process of constitution
writing was painfully slow.13 (The Constitutional
Assembly has produced what appears to be a workable
draft of a constitution only after two years of deliberation.)
It meant that some parties expressly opposed to
democratic principles and institutions were granted
legal status to participate in the electoral process.14 In
this, Tunisia followed in the footsteps of Greece and
Spain, successful democratizers who risked opening the
playing field to formerly banned parties (in their case,
Communist parties) in the hope of “keeping potential
spoilers on board.”15 Presumably, inclusion of even these
risky partners would encourage “buy-in” on the part of all
parties concerned and facilitate confrontation taking the
form of peaceful competition at the ballot box and in the
assembly hall, rather than violence in the streets.
Dialogue
The fourth factor that has bolstered the process of
democratization in Tunisia is the elite’s commitment
to dialogue. Endless discussion, while enervating and
sometimes exasperating, often proves the key to bridge-
building, to keeping people on board, and to cobbling
together working coalitions and compromises.
Commitment to dialogue has been a norm among the
Tunisian elite since well before the fall of Ben Ali,
and it continues today. For over a decade, secular and
Islamist elites met in France to engage in dialogue about
fundamental principles that would guide the country’s
governance; the platform they produced after extensive
negotiations was first published as the “Call from Tunis” in
2003, was reproduced in 2005, and formed the foundation
for elite collaboration after Ben Ali’s fall.16
Commitment to dialogue is also the modus vivendi in the
Constitutional Assembly, where subcommittee members
are encouraged to deliberate until consensus is achieved.
And that commitment is likewise evident in the “national
dialogue conferences” – repeatedly hosted by groups
in civil society in order to work through “contentious
issues that have bogged down Tunisian politics.”17 These
4
conferences typically bring together representatives from
dozens of parties and groups in civil society, and their
deliberations have proven key to settling such issues as
whether Tunisians should be allowed the right to strike
(ultimately, yes), whether the country should embrace
a presidential or a parliamentary system of government
(ultimately, a mix of both), what the final draft of the
constitution ought to look like, and when elections should
be held.
Acknowledging this principle is not to overstate the
degree of comity found in contemporary Tunisian politics.
Politicians in Tunisia call each other names, stomp off in
anger, resign, fail to show up, and neglect to consult their
constituents. There is lots of drama and insult. The press,
in its role as the “second hand” of history, provides daily
accounts of such misbehavior. But by focusing on the noise
of such contentiousness, the daily press misses out on the
larger process taking place: that dialogue is occurring,
that consensus is building, that crucial compromises
are being reached. Tunisian politics is no love fest, and
the compromises negotiated leave no one fully happy or
satisfied. But isn’t that a mark of democratic success?
Forging uneasy compromises nonviolently, across deep
and seemingly incompatible divides, is the essence of the
democratic venture.
Planning and Luck: Tunisia’s First Election
Democratization in Tunisia was also helped along by
the providential results of its first election—itself the
product of clever institutional engineering along with a
dash of good luck. Tunisia’s first elections, by all accounts
largely free and fair, denied a majority to any single party.
But they also delivered a large enough share of the vote
to the top four or five parties to prevent debilitating
fragmentation of the political system. Ultimately a
coalition of three parties, a “troika” composed of two
secular parties and the leading Islamist party, was able
to put together a working government. The fact that
no party enjoyed a majority provided an incentive for
coalition building and accommodation. The fact that the
country sidestepped fragmentation meant that Tunisia
avoided political paralysis.
This auspicious result was in part the product of elite
agency: the decision by the electoral commission to
embrace a system of proportional representation rather
than a majoritarian/first-past-the-post/single-member-
district electoral rule.18 But it was also a matter of luck.
Many Tunisians were unfamiliar with the varied political
options before them and confused by the proliferation
of upstart parties. They voted for the most familiar
among the choices before them, often without deep
conviction. The political indifference of the majority
persists to this day, as evidenced by public opinion polls
that reveal the majority of the public undecided about
upcoming elections.19 Luckily for Tunisia, this profound
apathy has delivered electoral outcomes that deny
any party a majority and encourage collaboration and
accommodation across ideological lines.
Civil Society
The sixth factor that has fostered the progress of
democratization in Tunisian resides in the country’s
robust civil society. Civil society has abetted
democratization in two crucial ways: first, by playing
watchdog—keeping track of the regime’s performance
and holding its feet to the fire when it strays too far from
democratic and liberal ideals—and second, by facilitating
dialogue and compromise across political divides when
“normal politics” within Tunisia’s formal political
institutions hits an impasse.
In fulfilling its watchdog function, forces in civil society
have played a crucial role in keeping the post–Ben Ali
governments on the straight and narrow. When the first
government, led by Mohamed Ghannouchi, seemed to
be dilatory in breaking with the remnants of the Ben
Ali regime, protesters (often organized by the national
trade union federation, the Union Generale Tunisiene
du Travail or UGTT) set up camp in downtown
Tunis to force the regime in the right direction. When
religiously conservative groups proposed an article
in the constitution endorsing the principle of gender
“complementarity” rather than equality, liberal and
feminist organizations mobilized thousands to march in
protest and force the assembly to reconsider.20
When the Nahda-led government enacted measures
that veered toward undermining freedom of the press,
appointing political cronies to leadership posts at
the national newspapers and dragging its feet on the
creation of an independent media watchdog authority,21
the journalists union organized strikes that forced the
government to correct its course.22 And when the regime
compromised judicial autonomy, firing judges in violation
of due process and failing to follow through on promised
administrative reforms, the Association of Tunisian
Judges organized protests to nudge the regime in the right
direction.23
In addition to long-established associations, thousands of
new organizations have sprung up in civil society since
the fall of Ben Ali, many focusing on issues of human
rights, especially those of special concern to women
and youth. Together they have created a remarkably
muscular network that not only monitors and blogs about
but increasingly influences the political course of the
country.24
5
Civil society organizations have also played a crucial role
in sustaining a culture of dialogue among Tunisia’s varied
political camps when the normal channels of politics hit
roadblocks. First in this role is the national trade union
federation, the UGTT—the strongest organization in
civil society and certainly the one with the longest and
most august political history. Repeatedly over the past
two years, the UGTT has convened national dialogue
conferences that bring together dozens of political parties
and associations to work through difficult issues. These
conferences, while not always proceeding smoothly, have
worked to bridge divides and have delivered workable
compromises as described above. As such, the UGTT, in
collaboration with other associations in civil society, has
proved to be a critical asset in helping Tunisia find its way
through the difficult shoals of transition to democracy.25
Indicators of Progress
Thanks to these democratic drivers, Tunisia has seen real
progress on the path toward democracy. This is evident in
the achievement of some key institutional milestones. First
among these was the free and fair elections for the National
Constitutional Assembly conducted in October 2011.
Although the elections were not without flaws, according
to the accounts of both local and international observers
they were overall “an outstanding success”: competitive,
inclusive, transparent, and credible.26 With the holding
of these elections, Tunisia officially cleared what is
conventionally considered the minimal bar of democratic
transition.
Among other milestones achieved: Tunisia passed new
press laws in November 2011 that considerably expand
and protect the freedom of the fourth estate;27 leading
parties finally achieved consensus on the country’s political
structure—a mixed presidential/parliamentary system—
in April 2013;28 and the Constitutional Assembly finally
succeeded in cobbling together a new constitution in June
2013—one which, though not perfect with respect to its
protection of liberal ideals, creates a solid foundation,
sufficient for moving forward toward new elections and
further political negotiation.29
But beyond these institutional milestones, and perhaps
even more important for Tunisia’s future trajectory,
the past two years reveal a pattern of compromise,
accommodation, and pragmatism among Tunisia’s
ideologically divided political elite that is auspicious
for the future of democracy. This positive trend may
elude local activists who are enmeshed in the often ugly
contentiousness of day-to-day politics. But in fact some
crucial compromises have been negotiated that are quite
encouraging, not least because they have been so bitterly
contested. For example, from the start the drafters of the
constitution were divided on the role that Sharia (Islamic
law) would be assigned in the document. Would Sharia
be designated as the primary source of legislation, or at
least as one source of legislation (as is the case in almost
every constitution in the Arab world today)? Secularists
and Islamists were deeply divided on this issue. But by
spring 2012, the leader of the Nahda party renounced any
mention of Islamic law in the constitution. In an effort to
reassure the secular camp, Rachid Ghannouchi announced
that the first article of Tunisia’s prior constitution, which
stated that the country’s religion is Islam and its language
is Arabic, was “enough” in terms of asserting Tunisia’s
Islamic character. No mention of Sharia as either “a” or
“the” source of legislation, he advised, was necessary.30
A similar act of conciliation was evident several months
later. An early draft of the constitution disseminated
in August 2012 proposed several articles that severely
challenged the liberal sensibilities of many Tunisians,
especially the more secularly minded. These included
Article 3, which originally made blasphemy a punishable
offense, and Article 28, which embraced the notion
of gender complementarity rather than equality. The
two articles sparked significant protest in the liberal
community, and they triggered equally indignant
resistance by Islamists. But by October 2012 this divide had
been bridged. The Nahda leadership agreed to withdraw
the anti-blasphemy article from the constitution, and the
article on women was rewritten to embrace equality.31
Similar compromises were evident in other areas. For
example, the Nahda party differed from many of the secular
parties in its preferred form of government for Tunisia.
Nahda sought a parliamentary system of government,
believing that such a system would enable it to capitalize
on its broader grassroots base and thereby exercise
greater political influence. Many of the secular parties,
however, preferred a presidential system of government,
convinced that the direct election of a president would
deliver a non-Islamist leader, which would in turn curb
Nahda domination. After months of contention the two
sides came to an agreement in October 2012, settling on a
mixed system of government—a compromise solution that
partially accommodated the preferences of both.32
Overall, these compromises bridging political divides seem
driven less by ideological conversion to the reasonableness
of the opponent’s point of view than by pure and simple
pragmatism. Although the Nahda party dominates the
Constitutional Assembly and hence the government, its
control of 41 percent of the seats forces it to recognize
that it cannot rule alone. To corral the votes necessary to
6
achieve its major goals, Nahda must make compromises.
Here again is evidence of the importance of electoral good
fortune (specifically, the fact that the elections denied
a majority to any one party), and the central role that
such electoral luck plays in enabling and encouraging
enduringly important institution-building compromises.
The compromises discussed so far have essentially gone
in one direction, with Nahda conceding on some of its
religious and ideological preferences in order to keep its
coalition partners on board. But there have been notable
compromises on the part of Tunisia’s secular forces as
well. Tunisian secularists are often militantly secular
in a way that seems odd to many Americans but is in
line with France’s venerable tradition of “laïcité” in the
public sphere.33 Tunisian secularists have, for example,
been adamant about reining in certain public displays of
religiosity, notably forbidding women to don the full face
veil (the niqab) on some university campuses. This stance
is in line with French practice—which, as of 2010, has
outlawed the niqab almost everywhere in the public sphere.
But interestingly, in May, President Moncef Marzouki, the
leader of the Congress for the Republic party and someone
long identified with the secular liberal camp in Tunisia’s
political spectrum, spoke in support of Tunisian women’s
right to choose to wear the niqab in school settings. He
condemned “discrimination” on religious grounds and
argued that a person’s choice of garb was a matter of
freedom of conscience, which the Tunisian state was
philosophically committed to uphold.34
To Americans deeply ensconced in the liberal tradition,
Marzouki’s stance sounds like a self-evident upholding
of freedom of expression and belief. But to many
Tunisian secularists this was utter sacrilege, and many
in Marzouki’s camp expressed extreme dismay at his
position. Yet, Marzouki’s conversion to this stance was
no doubt ultimately pragmatic, stemming from the
recognition that some accommodation of his opponents
had to be made in order for the political process to go
forward.
Enduring Concerns
All this suggests that there is much reason to be hopeful
about Tunisia’s political future. But there is also reason for
significant concern. Two issues in particular are routinely
cited as challenging democracy’s progress in the country.
The first is economic. Tunisia is not “out of the woods”
economically. Since the overthrow of Ben Ali, the country
has seen “respectable but not buoyant growth.”35 The
structural problems that helped fuel popular protest
against Ben Ali’s regime continue to bedevil the economy—
most notably, a high level of unemployment. In addition,
the country’s political uncertainty, generated by the still
incomplete constitution-writing process, the sporadic
incidents of ideologically driven violence, and the sense
of compromised security owing to the failure of security
sector reform (see below), has not helped reinvigorate
investment levels, both foreign and domestic, in the
Tunisian economy.
Clearly this is a sub-optimal situation. But the question is
whether anemic growth will necessarily derail democracy.
Presumably the linkage proposed between the two stems
from the belief that economic dissatisfaction will spur
protest and violence, which in turn might legitimize the
government’s embrace of a state of emergency and the
clamping down on essential freedoms. Alternatively, there
might be a belief that economic dissatisfaction will lead
Tunisians to find refuge in Islamist parties and award those
parties majority rule, thereby diminishing their incentive to
accommodate the liberal democratic preferences of others.
Neither of these hypothetical paths is impossible . But the
fact that there is nearly complete consensus on economic
policy among all major parties in Tunisia, Islamist and
secularist alike, suggests that economic grievances may
play less of a role than expected in Tunisians’ choice of
party.36 Furthermore, economic malaise in the wake of
regime change has historically not necessarily proven fatal
to democratization. Many countries—Spain, Argentina,
and Mongolia among them—have experienced significant
economic hardship after the fall of authoritarianism and
yet this did not derail their transitions to democracy.37
So although Tunisia’s economic difficulties are certainly
of concern, they do not necessarily destroy the country’s
democratic prospects.
More troubling for the future of democracy in Tunisia
is the increasing incidence of violence, and the general
sense of insecurity this creates. Some of this violence
has been sensational if sporadic, such as the murder in
broad daylight of secular leftist activists Chokri Belaid
in February 2013 and Mohamed Brahmi in July 2013.38
Some of it has been dramatic if geographically contained,
such as the confrontations of al-Qaeda-affiliated trainees
with Tunisian soldiers in the Chaambi mountains in the
northwestern portion of the country in June and August
of this year. But some of this violence has been more
endemic and low-grade, such as the repeated physical
harassment directed at activists from the secular left by
Salafi sympathizers. Although the Nahda-led government
has taken a strong stance against the sensational and
dramatic incidents of violence described above, it has been
less vigorous in condemning the low-level harassment
7
carried out by Salafis and Salafi sympathizers. Some of
this threatening behavior has even been institutionalized,
with the creation of neighborhood vigilante committees
loosely coordinated under an umbrella “League for the
Defense of the Revolution”39 and committed to preventing
any attempt by old regime figures to make a comeback and
“divert the revolution from its goals.”40
The fact that these committees have targeted secular
figures and embraced thuggish means only deepens the
divide between the secular and Islamist camps, and the
failure of the regime to supplant these neighborhood
militias with effective local police forces diminishes the
confidence of the citizenry in the …
AFTER INDEPENDENCE
king or the institution of the state. There were virtually no
stable mechanisms for the expression of interests or the for-
mulation and implementation of policy. Moreover/ the dev-
astating experience of state destruction combined with the
country’s continued and growing dependence on external
sources of revenues to create a pattern of persistent hostility
to the notion of the state, to bureaucratic organization, and
the social differentiation associated with local control of a
state apparatus in earlier eras.
The twenty-five years after independence were times of
enormous change in both Tunisia and Libya. However de-
pendent upon the international economy the two countries
were to remain, the rights and responsibilities of political
independence markedly altered the context in which do-
mestic politics and economic activity took place. New op-
portunities were presented to and new demands imposed
upon the Tunisians and Libyans, and the ways in which
they were met illustrated the significance of their earlier ex-
perience of state formation and social structural change.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The State Consolidated in Tunisia:
Economic Development and Political
Authoritarianism
The consequences of consistent and continuous state for-
mation were evident in the character of Tunisia’s dilemmas
after independence. Faced with the prospect of capturing a
stable, bureaucratic state apparatus, the Tunisian national-
ist movement divided, and the divergent interests of its var-
ious constituencies became apparent. The capture of the
state and consolidation of control by the provincial elite
who formed the core of the Neo-Destour, and the extension
of the administration into the furthest reaches of the realm
through the “socialist” programs of the 1960s, marked the
final extinction of tribal politics.
By the end of the 1970s, the state efforts at “moderniza-
tion from above” produced a significant industrial sector
and promoted class-based politics in the cities. In the rural
areas, the government’s efforts to guarantee the availability
of resources to fuel their industrialization programs and its
simultaneous concern to maintain the landed elite from
which the governing authorities originated prolonged pa-
tronage-based policy and political organization. It was no
longer state formation as such but government policy in an
established bureaucratic state that was the principal politi-
cal influence on the social structure and political organiza-
tion of the hinterlands.
INDEPENDENCE AND THE CAPTURE OF THE STATE
The prospect of independence precipitated a near-civil
war in Tunisia; the high stakes involved in the imminent
230 231
AFTER INDEPENDENCE
capture of the state led to the dissolution of the consensus
among the nationalist elite and the development of rivalries
among the contenders for power. During World War II and
particularly during the late 1940s, when Bourguiba v,ras in
exile and the party was under the leadership of Salah Ben
Youssef, party membership expanded dramatically. Al-
though Bourguiba considered the Sahil petite bourgeoisie
the “dorsal spine” of the party, the party leaders endeav-
ored to incorporate all sectors of the society into the move-
ment, to strengthen their case against continued French
rule. Clientelist recruitment, in permitting the vertical in-
tegration of numerous segments of society, enabl_ed t~e
party to gather into its fold a wide variety of otherwise dis-
parate groups, from the peasantry and the working class to
the religious authorities and the old bourgeoisie of Tunis.
Such a structure also meant, however, that a breakdown in
elite consensus would pit the interests of the various con-
stituencies against each other. 1
Bourguiba’s strength rested in the petit bourgeois land-
owners and merchants of the Sahil, and later the labor
union (Union Generale des Travailleurs Tunisiens), estab-
lished when the French-Tunisian union split after World
War II under nationalist pressure. Ben Youssef, by contrast,
found support among the religious authorities, the tradi-
tional artisans and merchants of Tunis, and the old com-
mercial class of his native Djerba. The underlying differ-
ences in the interests of these constituencies were obscured
by their common desire for independence, a desire well ar-
ticulated in the otherwise vague ideology of the party.
On the eve of independence, Ben Youssef mounted a
challenge to Bourguiba’ s control of the party and to his
1 On Ben Youssef and the early years of independence, see Le Tourneau,
Evolution politique de l’Afrique du Nord musu/man; Clement Henry Moore,
Tunisia Since Independence: The Dynnmics of One-Party Government (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1965); and Elbaki Hermassi, Leaders~ip a~d
National Development in North Africa (Berkeley: University of Califorma
Press, 1972).
STATE CONSOLIDATED IN TUNISIA
accession to control of the state. Ben Youssef objected to the
autonomy agreements that preceded independence, saying
they were too much a compromise. For his efforts he was
expelled from the party’s Political Bureau. As the French
moved to grant the full independence that would remove
the presumed raison d’etre of the Youssefist opposition, the
battle turned violent. The French, at first refusing to inter-
vene, finally sent their police forces against the Youssefists,
and Ben Youssef himself fled into exile. It was French mili-
tary units that undertook mopping up operations in the
south against Ben Youssef’s supporters in mid-June, three
months after Tunisia became formally independent on
March 20, 1956.
Neither a simple personal rivalry nor a pure class conflict,
this struggle had been a clash of constituencies. The in-
creased impersonality and complexity of the state bureau-
cracy of the Protectorate had weakened political organiza-
tion based solely on personal relationships and had led to
the appearance of broad-based groups conscious of their
collective interests. The Protectorate’s pervasive discrimi-
nation and its failure to permit open representation of the
various interests of Tunisians, however, had inhibited the
deveiopment of organized interest groups and prolonged
reliance on individual followings as the principal mecha-
nism for aggregating and articulating political demands.
Bourguiba and Ben Youssef had different visions of the fu-
ture of Tunisia-Ben Youssef was the greater admirer of the
Arab nationalists of the Middle East, for example, while
Bourguiba preferred the secular liberalism he had known in
France-and these reflected the differing interests of their
supporters.
With Bourguiba’s victory his vision and his supporters
were also victorious. Although class-based policies and pol-
itics were to become increasingly important after independ-
ence, particularistic discrimination was not to disappear en-
tirely, for the Bourguiba government continued to favor the
provincial elite in general and the elite of his home region in
232 233
AFTER INDEPENDENCE
the Sahil in particular. Moreover, the government’s desire
to maintain its provincial power base and to ensure contin-
ued access to the surplus production of the agricultural sec-
tor even while it encouraged development of other sectors
of the economy would discourage formal recognition of
competing interest groups at the national level and prolong
the role of patronage, particularly in the rural areas. It was
its control of an established bureaucratic state that permit-
ted the government to pursue such policies in the face of
growing organized dissent.
The first five years after independence were devoted to
consolidating the control of Bourguiba and his followers
over the state. Not only were Youssefist sympathizers
purged from party positions, but the political and economic
. power of the strata that had been Ben Youssef’s constitu-
encies was undermined. Bourguiba’ s supporters moved,
for example, to weaken the power of the religious establish-
ment and the large absentee landholders of Tunis who had
supported Ben Youssef. Within six months of independ-
ence, public habus lands had been nationalized, the
shari’ah, or religious law, courts integrated into the national
French-based judicial system, and the prestigious religious
school of Zitouna mosque, where Ben Youssef had an-
nounced his break with Bourguiba, placed under control of
the Ministry of Instruction.
The weakening of the legal status of habus properties not
only deprived the religious establishment of its independ-
ent financial base but undermined the old upper class, for
private habus lands had often been endowed to the benefit
of the bourgeoisie of Tunis. Although, unlike the public ha-
bus, the private habus were not absorbed into the public do-
main, many of their beneficiaries, fearful that they would
eventually be confiscated, began selling their properties, a
trend that would continue through the 1960s. The dissolu-
tion of habus tenure marked the decline of the old Tunis
bourgeoisie and the advancement of the provincial elite
from which many of Bourguiba’s supporters had issued. In
STATE CONSOLIDATED IN TUNISIA
one northern region, for example, 80 percent of the habus
property was bought, usually on concessionary terms, by
local landowners. The magnitude of this shift in economic
power from Tunis to the regional elite is suggested by the
fact that well over a fifth of the total agricultural land in
Tunisia was held as habus at independence. 2
Bourguiba simultaneously moved to enhance his control
of the political apparatus of the state. Five days after inde-
pendence, a National Constituent Assembly was elected,
charged with writing the Tunisian Constitution, and Bour-
guiba became prime minister. The Assembly electoral law
had been designed to favor election of Bourguiba support-
ers and it proved effective in doing so: by the summer of
1957, the Assembly had deposed the Bey-suspected of
Youssefist sympathies-and named Bourguiba president.
He announced on August 1, 1957, “I have become the fa-
ther not only of Destourians but of all Tunisians.”3
By the time the constitution was promulgated, Bourguiba
had the state well in hand, and Hedi Nouira, head of the
newly established national Central Bank-and like Bour-
guiba, a native of the Sahil town of Monastir-was dele-
gated the task of preventing the complete collapse of the
economy in the wake of the French withdrawal. About half
the non-Muslim population left the country between 1956
and 1960; many colons abandoned their lands, which were
taken over by the state, while capital flight reached crisis
proportions before a national currency and related controls
were established in 1958. Private investment dropped pre-
cipitously and agricultural production stagnated. The pub-
lic sector, however, expanded dramatically: between 1955
2 Ahmed Kassab, L’ evolution de la vie rurale dans les regions de la Moyenne
Medjerda et de Beja-Mateur {Tunis: Universite de Tunis, 1979), pp. 538-40;
Mohsen Chebili, “Evolution of Land Tenure in Tunisia in Relation to Ag-
ricultural Development Programs,” in Land Policy in the Near East, ed. Mo-
hamed Raid El-Ghonemy (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization,
United Nations, 1967), p. 190.
3 Cited in Moore, Tunisia since Independence, p. 89.
234 235
AFTER INDEPENDENCE
and 1960, the number of Muslim public employees rose
from twelve thousand to eighty thousand. This expansion
reflected both replacement of French civil servants and ef-
forts to alleviate unemployment among an urban popula-
tion that increased by 700,000 during the second half of the
decade; most importantly, it also provided the promised
material benefits of independence in the form of employ-
ment for party activists. 4
Assertion of state control over military force in Tunisia
was complicated by the prolonged Algerian war of inde-
pendence. The French had arranged to maintain a military
presence in Tunisia as part of the independence agreement,
and their intransigence when pressed for new discussions
reflected the utility of their installations during the Algerian
war. By 1961 French refusal to discuss evacuation of the mil-
itary base at Bizerte prompted an attack on the facility,
which cost perhaps a thousand Tunisian lives and greatly
embarrassed the Tunisian military establishment. Al-
though the French eventually agreed to withdraw, it was
not before a plot against the Tunisian government was dis-
covered in the army. Youssefists and Communists were im-
plicated, the Communist Party was banned, making the
Neo-Destour the sole party in law as well as fact. 5 The Tu-
nisian regime thereafter kept military spending unusually
low; conscription laws provided a more than adequate pool
of potential draftees for the army-eight thousand troops in
1960, twenty-two thousand in 197&-while high civilian un-
employment rates guaranteed adequate volunteers for the
eighteen-thousand-member domestic national guard and
national security police forces. In part because the civil
administration was well-established, the military was not
used for political purposes like employment or large-scale
domestic intelligence, and civilian control of the state’s mo-
• For population figures, see Amin, The Maghreb in the Modern World, p.
75.
s On the Bizerte incident, see Moore, Tunisia since Independence, pp. 89 et
seq.
ST ATE CONSOLIDATED IN TUNISIA
nopoly of force was ensured by the low allocations to the
military.
SOCIALISM: THE CONSOLIDATION
OF STATE PENETRATION
The increasing levels of government intervention in the
economy that marked the early years of independence were
made a formal element of the Tunisian political scene with
the adoption of a development plan in 1961. At the Party
Congress in 1964 the new policy was ratified and the party’s
name changed to the Parti Socialiste Destourien (PSD). Ah-
mad Ben Salah, a young party and union activist and op-
ponent of Ben Youssef, was given wide responsibility in an
economics “superministry” to outline and implement Tu-
nisia’s development plans. 6
The ten-year perspective for 1962 to 1971, which the
plans were to implement, projected an annual growth rate
of 6 percent, which would have allowed the attainment of
minimum income goals without major redistribution of
wealth. Although structural reforms were envisioned in all
sectors, they fell largely within the framework of “tunisifi-
cation” and increasing state control. Redistribution of agri-
cultural property, for example, was limited to nationaliza-
tion of the remaining foreign holdings and establishment of
farming cooperatives with state participation. Bourguiba
explained Tunisian “socialism” in 1964:
[After independence] the exploitation of the people by
colonization was replaced by another form of exploita-
6 On this period, see Amin, The Maghreb in the Modern World; Hermassi,
Leadership and National Development; Moore, Tunisia since Independence; Lars
Rudebeck, “Development Pressure and Political Limits: A Tunisian Ex-
ample,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 8, 2 (1970); and Lilia Ben
Salem, “Centralization and Decentralization of Decision Making in an Ex-
periment in Agricultural Cooperation in Tunisia,” and Ezzeddine Mak-
louf, “Political and Technical Factors in Agricultural Collectivization in
Tunisia,” in Popular Participation in Social Change, ed. June Nash, Jorge Dan-
dler, and Nicholas S. Hopkins (Chicago: Ardine, 1976).
236 237
AFTER INDEPENDENCE
tion it would be idle to deny…. Old customs, old eco-
nomic structures, especially agricultural structures, and
archaic modes of production encouraged the circulation
of wealth under conditions that were inadmissible to
one’s reason and revolting to one’s conscience…. Injus-
tice crept in without anyone realizing that he was still
being exploited as he had formerly been by foreign set-
tlers…. This brought us to adopt socialism, and we de-
cided to solve our problems progressively.7
Under the guise of socialism, the Tunisian state had taken
upon itself this dismantling of “archaic modes of produc-
tion” that “exploited” people without their knowing it. In
fact, Bourguiba envisioned the creation of a modern capi-
talist economy. State intervention to that end could conven-
iently be portrayed as socialism, and the campaign against
the noncapitalist sectors was made all the more attractive to
the Tunisian leader by their earlier support for Ben Youssef,
a support Bourguiba interpreted as indicating their suscep-
tibility to”exploitation.”
By 1968, it was clear that the projections of the develop-
ment plans had been overly optimistic. The annual growth .
rate between 1960 and 1967 was 3.3 percent, which, al-
though among the highest in Africa, was little more than
half the hoped-for figure. Agricultural production, bur-
dened by several particularly bad harvests in the late 1960s,
had not increased, and the rate of industrial growth, while
high, did not compensate for the problems in agriculture.
Despite the development of tourism, the balance of pay-
ments deficit grew, and the country remained dependent
on foreign aid for well over half its needs.
The agricultural sector had been viewed as the most
promising for development; the planners had hoped to in-
crease both production and employment through modern-
7 Habib Bourguiba, “Destourian Socialism and National Unity: Speech
of March 1, 1966,” in Man, State, and Society in the Contemporary Maghrib, ed.
Zartman, p. 145.
ST ATE CONSOLIDATED IN TU NI SIA
ization of production techniques. Without, however, ex-
tending public control to private commercial agriculture,
these goals proved contradictory: agricultural moderniza-
tion undermined full employment policies and the private
sector made no effort to meet the nationally planned pro-
duction and employment targets, in spite of the govern-
ment-run service cooperatives at their disposal. A decision
to extend the state-run production cooperatives throughout
the agricultural sector, including the Sahil, led the olive-
growing landholders there to object violently: demonstra-
tions in January 1969 in a Sahil town led to police interven-
tion, and at least one person died in the ensuing riot.
The government was faced with a choice. Had rates of
production increased as dramatically as forecast in the very
optimistic perspective of 1961, the income distribution
goals could have been met without challenging the inter-
ests of the provincial landowners. Without significant ex-
pansion outside agriculture, however, genuine improve-
ments in the income level of the poor could not be made at
no cost to the well-off. The government had to decide
whether to impose by force programs clearly unpopular
with Bourguiba’s major constituency or to abandon equita-
ble income distribution as its highest social and economic
priority.
By the fall of 1969 the decision was made. Ahmad Ben Sa-
lah, architect of Tunisian socialism, was dismissed and the
socialist experiment abandoned, as the government re-
turned to policies favoring a mixed economy, recognizing
the existence of three sectors, public, cooperative, and pri-
vate, with emphasis on the last. The “socialist” programs
were ended before they weakened the commercial agricul-
ture of the provincial supporters of the government, but
after a number of other implicit purposes of the interven-
tionist policies had been accomplished. The state’s admin-
istrative penetration of the society and economy had been
strengthened through the wide network of service cooper-
atives and agricultural extension activities-most of which
239
i’ · I
11.··· 1i
238
AFTER INDEPENDENCE
were retained when the expansion of the unpopular pro-
duction cooperatives was halted-while the continued ru-
ral exodus further eroded the noncapitalist, noncommercial
agricultural sector and made available a supply of cheap la-
bor. As important, however, was the creation of a newly
wealthy bourgeoisie prepared to undertake domestic in-
vestment.
Ben Salah’ s policies had favored the growth of a new
commercial bourgeoisie in construction, public works, and
tourism, and they had accumulated capital during the 1960s
while consumer imports were restricted. Not a few of these
new entrepreneurs had been provincial landowners, and
they had accumulated capital in the agricultural sector, buy-
ing habus properties, for example, and increased their pro-
ductivity through mechanization. They also diversified
their investments beyond commercial agriculture to trans-
port, construction, hotel management. Partly _because of
the continued significance of patronage, they enioyed easy,
often preferential, access to government and private credit.
It was they who would profit from economic liberalization,
and Bourguiba was to give them their opportunity during
the 1970s. 8
ECONOMIC LIBERALISM AND POLITICAL
AUTHORITARIANISM
By the standards of classical liberalism, the Tunisian state
remained heavily involved in the economy throughout the
1970s-the government’s share in total capital investment
never dropped below 50 percent-but its adoption of the
rhetoric, and to some extent the reality, of private enter-
prise represented a major shift in state policy. As the state
withdrew from its overwhelming involvement in the econ-
s Daniel Karnelgarn, “Tunisie–Developpernent d’un capitalisrne de-
pendant,” Peuples mediterraneens 4 (July-September 1978): 114; see Kassab,
L’evolution, and Hafedh Sethom, Les fellahs de la presqu’fle du Cap Bon
(Tunis: Universite de Tunis, 1977) for illustrations of such landowners.
STATE CONSOLIDATED IN TUNISIA
omy, announcing, as the director of the Investment Pro-
motion Agency put it, that “the role of the state is to permit
the private sector to function,” 9 it also began to evince a
more explicit capitalist class bias as the urban industrial sec-
tor expanded. Bourguiba nonetheless continued to manip-
ulate the personal and political followings by which many
of the political elite guaranteed their power throughout the
1970s.
The initial reaction of that elite to the fall of Ben Salah and
to the new policies of economic liberalization was positive,
and it was accompanied by hopes of political democratiza-
tion: single-party rule was widely thought to be inappro-
priate to a liberal economic regime. Bourguiba did not,
however, move to give up his considerable powers. By the
end of 1971, he appointed the Monastir-born president of
the Central Bank, Hedi Nouira, prime minister, and at the
Party Congress of 1974 the government opposition to polit-
ical liberalization was unmistakable. Bourguiba, who had
reached the end of his constitutionally allotted three five-
year terms, was elected president for life, a position he had
previously declined, and seven signatories of a declaration
deploring arbitrary decision-making were expelled from
the party, to join a number of former Political Bureau mem-
bers who had left the party since the late 1960s. 10
The promotion of the private sector associated with Hedi
Nouira’s tenure as prime minister produced, at least for the
first half of the 1970s, a positive aggregate economic pic-
ture. Between 1970 and 1976 Gross Domestic Product grew
9 percent a year, well over double the rate of the 1960s,
while the government’s share in total new investment in
manufacturing dropped to half of the 85 percent it had held
in the 1960s. Foreign private investment was encouraged by
the very liberal investment codes of 1972 and 1974, and be-
9 Quoted in Kamelgarn, “Tunisie,” p. 115.
10 On these developments, see Elisabeth Sterner, “Le lX’ Congres du
Parti Socialiste Destourien,” Maghreb-Machrek 66 (1974).
240 241
https://1960s.10
AFTER INDEPENDENCE
tween 1969 and 1974 the country ran its first balance-of-pay-
ments surplus, as the trade deficit was offset by services
and capital inflow.11
The picture worsened late in the decade-in 1977 growth
in GDP dropped by half and unemployment doubled-but
even earlier, discontent with the policies of the government
was evident, as student and labor groups backed frequent
demonstrations and strikes. The government refused to
change its position, signaling its attitude in April 1976 when
the constitution’s call for freedom, order, and justice was
revised to place order before freedom.
Wildcat strikes by both private and public sector workers
protesting the low wages designed to attract foreign invest-
ment continued throughout 1977. Outbreaks of violence
during a strike in Ksar-Hellal, birthplace of the Neo-Des-
tour, precipitated the first intervention of the Tunisian
Army to quell civil disturbances. Although the strike had
not been sanctioned by the UGTT, the union leader and
PSD Political Bureau member Habib Achour supported the
workers, and the UGTT became the rallying point for op-
position to the regime. In January 1978, as Achour resigned
from the party’s Political Bureau, the union’s National
Council issued a statement condemning N ouira’ s economic
policies as favoring capitalists-Tunisian and foreign-to
the detriment of the national interest.
The country’s first general strike was called for January
26, 1978, to protest the government’s arrest of several union
militants. The strike turned to rioting as the police, army,
and the little-known PSD militia clashed with students and
workers: The death toll of what became known as Black
Thursday was officially given as forty-seven, although
many unofficial sources put it as high as two hundred.
Over three hundred people were given sentences of up to
six years’ imprisonment, and Habib Achour was sentenced
to ten years at hard labor.
11 International Monetary Fund, Surveys of African Economies, 1977.
ST A TE CONSOLIDATED IN TUNIS IA
Prime Minister Nouira remained steadfast in opposing
~aves :award democratic politics. Addressing a group of
Journalists only a month after the January strike, he said:
“Pluralism for us is just the icing on the cake …. England,
the mother of Parliaments, arrived at its own version only
~fter several centuries. Tunisia has had just twenty years of
mdef:~ndence, it i~ still a political baby. I am not advocating
a political apprenticeship of several centuries, but at least
we should have some apprenticeship.”12 N ouira’ s refusal to
permit the political competition that would legitimize the
regime’s economic liberalism satisfied no one.
The widespread support for the union’s demand for
worker representation in the policy-making councils of the
go_vemment illustrated the extent to which capitalist enter-
pnse had grown in Tunisia since independence. Although
most of the private industrial investment had come from
overseas as a consequence of the investment laws of the
early 1970s, employment in manufacturing had doubled
between 1966 and 1976, and by the end of the decade, in-
dustry was to account for over a third of GDP. N ouira’ s fail-
ure to acknowledge the participation of the working class in
the cap_italist ~evelopment of the country suggested a lack
?f confidence m the local bourgeoisie’s ability to maintain
its own domination. His policy soon began, however, to
threaten the interests of that very bourgeoisie as those who
did not benefit from the policies of the government-in-
~eed, we:e not represented in its councils-began to ques-
tion not srmply the policies but the regime as a whole. 13
. During Nouira’s tenure as prime minister, the commer-
cial and industrial bourgeoisie born in the 1960s had pros-
pered. Indeed many Tunisians remarked on the appear-
ance of an indigenous grande bourgeoisie, housed in
12 Quoted in Kathleen Bishtawi, “Glowing Embers: Tunisia at the Cross-
roads,” The Middle East 42 (April 1978):27.
_
13 Abou Tarek, “Tunisie: La sate11isation,” Les temps modernes 375 (1977);
Nicholas S. Hopkins, “Tunisia: An Open and Shut Case ” Social Problems
28,4 (1981). ,
242 243
https://whole.13
https://inflow.11
AFTER INDEPENDENCE
ostentatiously expensive villas of the beachfront suburbs of
Tunis and profiting from the ,,government’s policies of en-
couraging foreign investment and private lending from
abroad, as well as from its efforts to maintain “labor peace.”
The benefits of the development of the 1970s fell dispropor-
tionately to the already wealthy: the rural-urban income
disparities accentuated, and at the end of the decade over
30 percent of the population fell below the poverty line es-
tablished by the World Bank. The unemployment rate dur-
ing the late 1970s was put at 12 percent, but that did not in-
clude the very serious disguised unemployment in the rural
areas and among recent migrants to the cities, many of
whom eked out livings on the margins of the service sector.
It also did not include the 230,000 Tunisians registered as
working abroad-a figure which was equal to the total in-
dustrial work force at home-nor the thousands of unregis-
tered workers abroad, particularly in Libya. Moreover,
many of the highly educated students faced dismal job
prospects at home, since the expansion of managerial and
professional jobs was …
