The Force of Obedience. The Political Economy of Repression in Tunisia
Abstract
The events that took place in Tunisia in January 2011 were the spark igniting the uprisings that swept across North Africa and the Middle East, toppling dictators and leading to violent conflict and tense stand-offs. What was it about this small country in North Africa that enabled it to play this exceptional role?This book is a deeply informed account of the exercise of power in Tunisia in the run-up to the revolt that forced its authoritarian ruler, Ben Ali, into exile. It analyses the practices of domination and repression that were pervasive features of everyday life in Tunisia, showing how the debt economy and the systems of social solidarity and welfare created forms of subjection and mutual dependence between rulers and ruled, enabling the reader to understand how a powerful protest movement could develop despite tight control by police and party. For those wishing to understand the extraordinary events unfolding across the Arab world, this rich, subtle and insightful book is the indispensable starting point.
... Based on the arguments of Hmed and Yousfi, scholars have come to assign a pivotal overall role to UGTT in the revolutionary process. This chimes with findings on the weakness of other civil society and opposition groups under Ben Ali (Camau and Geisser, 2003;Hibou, 2011a;Hudáková, 2019), meaning that there was simply "no other force available ". 7 However, this explanation for the creation of RMM -especially in light of the weakness of others -entails very strong claims on what local trade unionists and the resources they commanded were able to achieve. Finally, the studies empirically corroborating these claims do so only through interviews with trade unionists, disallowing for conclusive assessment of whether subalterns without prior activist experience would confirm their leadership role. ...
... As Ben Ali came to power, postcolonial authoritarian legitimacy built around the charismatic leadership of Bourguiba as the deliverer of independence was waning and the regime sought to replace it with a narrative built around a reformist government that brought social and economic development (Camau and Geisser, 2003;Hibou, 2011a). This was combined with preserving certain promises of the Bourguiba era -such as social mobility through education guaranteed by public sector employment, and state social provisions -which, in the face of neoliberal reforms, proved increasingly difficult to maintain (Achy, 2015). ...
... In addition, my interlocutors said that they were actively discriminated against by the administration when applying for public sector jobs, permits, or the allocation of social benefits. This is significant because these mechanisms of inclusion operating through the political economy were argued to have effectively ensured support for the regime (Hibou, 2011a). That this was not the case for young men in the interior was expressed by Naoufel Abbassi, a 38-year-old from Menzel Bouzaiane, who is now an elementary school teacher but had been previously excluded because of his regional origin. ...
How and where did mass mobilization for radical demands emerge in the process of the 2010/11 Tunisian revolution? And how can this inform theories of revolution, especially considering conditions of hegemony? These questions were addressed using secondary and archival sources as well as an event catalogue to identify time periods, localities and social groups for ethnographic study, leading to a focus on subaltern social groups, primarily in the provincial interior, where eight months of fieldwork and over one hundred open, narrative interviews were conducted. The thesis argues that provincial subalterns responded to their hegemonic disincorporation and increased policing during the Ben Ali regime by developing new forms of politics and resistance. Entailing interactions with political activists and unionists as well as significant levels of self-activity, this process furnished local solidarities, defensive logics, and principally economic-corporate claims which drove mobilization in the Tunisian interior during the first three weeks of the revolution. For the people there, indiscriminate violence and killings caused a collapse of existing hegemony, leading them to re-interpret their struggle in revolutionary terms by drawing on local histories of revolt. This revolutionary praxis of subaltern social groups and the radical demands they articulated pushed UGTT leaders and coastal middle-classes to turn against Ben Ali, thus creating national-level revolutionary mobilization. From this it is concluded that scholarship on the Tunisian revolution has assigned undue weight to organized and activist agencies while largely ignoring subaltern self-activity. It also suggests that Tunisian studies had overplayed the social and regional reach of the Ben Ali era hegemonic formation. The conclusion that revolutionary praxis developed among disincorporated subaltern groups in Tunisia further intervenes in studies of subaltern politics which have tended to posit everyday politics, hidden resistance, and defensive mobilization as a certain ceiling to subaltern self-activity. Addressing critical theories of revolution, the thesis concludes that self-change through revolutionary praxis appears possible in the context of a contemporary hegemonic formation, pointing to potentials for subaltern self-emancipation. Absent significant (organic) intellectual labor and organizational resources, however, revolutionary transformation will likely be limited by persistent forms of domination, counter-revolutionary forces and hegemonic ideas.
... Many close observers of Ben Ali's Tunisia have shown that a small group, particularly the Trabelsi family, controlled large and key parts of both the formal and informal economy and engaged in mafia-like extortion practices (Hibou 2011;Meddeb 2011). In fact, the anger at the Trabelsi clan was one of the driving forces behind the uprising in 2010. ...
... Unlike Hibou's (2011) description of Ben Ali's Tunisia, where the middle classes were complicit in the corruption but simultaneously shielded from it, corruption was no longer seen to function in a closed system, but one in which everyone was visibly complicit. It is not just that "now everyone is corrupt", but that the corruption can no longer be made invisible, and that the degree to which everyone participates in its perpetuation is made clear. ...
... Additionally, social opposition from various segments of society can challenge humanitarian leaders, especially when policies disrupt established power dynamics and resource allocations (Hibou, 2011). These challenges necessitate strategic approaches to policy-making and robust support systems to empower humanitarian political leaders in their efforts to alleviate poverty. ...
... Authoritarian Leadership: Authoritarian leaders centralize power and make decisions unilaterally, often prioritizing political stability and control over social welfare. This approach can lead to policies that favor elite interests and perpetuate inequalities (Hibou, 2011). Humanitarian political leadership, on the other hand, values participatory decision-making and seeks to address inequalities through inclusive policies. ...
The persistent issue of poverty remains a critical challenge globally, necessitating innovative and effective strategies for alleviation. This research paper explores the significant role of humanitarian political leadership in shaping social and eco nomic policies aimed at poverty alleviation. Humanitarian political leadership is characterize by leaders who prioritize human welf are, equity, and social justice in their policy decisions. The study delves into the defining attributes and behaviors of such leaders and examines their impact on policy-making processes and outcomes. Through a comprehensive literature review, case studies, and qualitative analysis, the research identifies the key mechanisms through which humanitarian political leadership i nfluences social and economic development. The findings reveal that humanitarian political leaders are instrumental in creating and implementing policies that address the root causes of poverty, enhance social welfare, and promote sustainable economic grow th. These leaders leverage their positions to advocate for marginalized populations, ensuring that their needs are meet through inclusive and e quitable policies. The study highlights successful examples of social and economic policies shaped by humanitaria n political leaders, demonstrating their positive impact on poverty reduction. However, the research also acknowledges the challenges and barriers faced by these leaders, including political resistance, economic constraints, and social opposition. The pape r offers policy recommendations to support and enhance humanitarian political leadership, suggesting strategies for overcoming these challenges and promoting effective poverty alleviation. Ultimately, this research underscores the critical importance of hu manitarian political leadership in achieving sustainable social and economic development. It calls for increased attention and support for leaders who prioritize human welfare, advocating for a global shift towards more compassionate and equitable politica l leadership to address the enduring issue of poverty. The findings expected to inform policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in developing strate gies to leverage leadership for sustainable development and social justice.
... In some extreme cases, U.K. and U.S. government agents and their informants built personal relations-including sex-with targeted activists under false pretenses to infiltrate and disrupt activist groups. Not only do states have an arsenal of repressive tools at their disposal (McPhail and McCarthy 2005;Soule and Davenport 2009), there has also been a rise in tactical innovations of repression (King and Waddington 2006;de Lint and Hall 2009;Rafail 2010;Hibou 2011;O'Brien and Deng 2013), including "a range of subtle but painful sanctions" (Slater and Fenner 2011, p. 22) conducted by both government agents and nongovernment third parties, such as ridicule, stigma, and silencing (Ferree 2005). ...
... A new stream of research challenges the hypothesis that authoritarian states derive repressive power from structural conditions (Nathan 2003;Mann 2008;Blaydes 2011;Dimitrov 2013;Lee and Zhang 2013;Lorentzen 2013). Future studies could benefit from expanding the spectrum of repressive operations to include not only punishments but also awards, inducements, and attractions (Hibou 2011;O'Brien and Deng 2013). ...
Existing research has focused on the extent to which transnational interventions compel recalcitrant governments to reduce levels of domestic repression, but few have considered how such interventions might also provoke new forms of repression. Using a longitudinal study of repression against AIDS activism in China between 1989 and 2013, the author proposes that transnational institutions' provision of material resources and reshaping of organizational rules can transform a domestic repressive apparatus in specific policy areas. The intervention of transnational AIDS institutions not only constrained traditional violent coercion but also generated new forms of "diplomatic repression" through (1) changing repressive motives by moving AIDS from the margin to the center of mainstream politics and (2) supplying resources, networks, and models of action that enabled government organizations to reformulate health social organizations as new repressive actors with innovative repertoires of strategies inside and outside China's territory.
... This process heightened further with the economic liberalisation pursued by the Ben Ali government . Ben Ali's presidency oversaw a further entrenchment of Tunisia's food dependency, since the political lexicon concerning the objectives of agricultural policy changed dramatically from the end of the 1980s (Hibou 2011;Zemni 2017). The integration of Tunisia's agriculture into the global market created a structural food dependency and a general impoverishment of the peasantry, unable to supply its own food security. ...
This article posits that US-led imperialism remains the most fundamental contradiction to be assessed when analysing the material, social and political development of countries in Northern Africa. After grounding its conceptual discussion around the Marxian analytical character of imperialism, the article focuses on the military–financial nexus and then assesses the ideological implications of this. It argues that imperialism operates according to rational and interlinked strategies that deploy the systematic use of violence and intimidation that are central to undermining the political and developmental potential of Northern Africa. The discussion shows how imperialist policies curb the space of national autonomy required to advance a developmental path in the interests of popular classes and regional solidarity, at both the material and ideological levels.
... In other words, the people, that forest often hidden by the tree of elites and dominant groups, did not 'want' to pursue an overall 'change' of the postindependence political system and the socio-economic order initiated and established in the early republican era. Against this backdrop, the issues of 'consent' and 'coercion' are explored in connection with the notions of 'voluntary servitude', 'constrained obedience' and 'manufacturing consent' (Herman and Chomsky 2002;Hibou 2011;Khiari 2003;La Boetie 1576). Hibou (2011, 9), for instance, focused on 'the mechanisms of submission and enslavement' under Ben Ali's rule. ...
Beyond the euphoria of the early revolutionary moments, in 2010-2011, muted counter-revolutionary setbacks followed elite-led 'democratisation'. For those who construed the political developments in the aftermath of the popular uprisings in Tunisia, in the wake of Ben Ali's autocratic regime dismantlement, as a first step in the direction of a 'democratic transition', disappointments were on the horizon. By the summer of 2021, the sudden re-emergence of a powerful presidency in the name of 'returning sovereignty to the people', while the ghost of the oligarchic state and the spectre of the authoritarian elites still hung about, opened the door for the return of a bureaucratic police state. Meanwhile, the effects of lingering economic and health crises were compounded by politico-constitutional wrangling. These further clouded an already polarised social environment and created the political conditions for the 'restoration' of the 'presidentialist regime'.
... It follows that with the humanitarian crisis of the different wars in the DRC, the economy has once again relied on people ' s capacity for survival, reflecting the tension between necessity and resistance. Survival has been seen as an effect of governmentality, signalling accommodation, not resistance, to a successfully imposed neoliberal agenda ( Chabal 2009 ). 10 Some have also argued that the relative absence of the state facilitates the creation of mechanisms of domination where the state and the effects of a particular political economy transcend private life ( Chabal 2009 ;Hibou 2011b ; see also: Meddeb 2011 ). Subjection, or at least, negotiation, is henceforth the key for surviving domination, but may not be seen as a form of resistance. ...
Everyday resistance, peacebuilding and state-making addresses debates on liberal peace and the policies of peacebuilding through a theoretical and empirical study of resistance in peacebuilding contexts. Examining the case of ‘Africa’s World War’ in the DRC, it locates resistance in the experiences of war, peacebuilding and state-making by exploring discourses, violence and everyday forms of survival as acts that attempt to challenge or mitigate such experiences. The analysis of resistance offers a possibility to bring the historical and sociological aspects of both peacebuilding and the case of the DRC, providing new nuanced understanding of these processes and the particular case.
... However, the politics of elite bargaining also hindered the process of 'legislative learning' of the post-Uprisings Parliament (Bahri and Völkel 2021, 18). Informality, personal kinships, and intrigues-features echoing Ben Ali's way of doing politics and tools to preserve his position in power (Hibou 2011)-affected the democratisation of internal rules and mechanisms, and impeded the institutionalisation of the Assembly of People's Representatives that did not manage to 'establish trust between political institutions and the citizenry' (Bahri and Völkel 2021, 8). Moreover, it postponed the establishment of a constitutional court purposely by exploiting it as an additional arena for power contestation (Ibid.). ...
Amid widespread anti-government protests, on July 25, 2021, the Tunisian President, Kais Saied, dismissed the Prime Minister and suspended parliamentary activities. Thereafter, political parties’ leaders and key civil actors assumed shifting and, lately, conflating positions in reaction to Saied’s move. Although they often called for the formation of a united front against Saied’s unilateral takeover of state institutions, their actions remained largely uncoordinated in avoiding the risks of authoritarian backsliding. Drawing on a political party perspective, this article seeks to understand why the Tunisian political forces failed to coordinate their actions against Saied’s presidential coup. The article contends that in post-July 2021, the Tunisian opposition failed to unite effectively because political forces were primarily driven by opportunism and their past ideological stance towards Ennahda. As a result, political parties opposing Saied’s move preferred to unite selectively. The article invites us to rethink the historical legacy of Tunisian pact-making and alliance politics by concluding that Saied’s actions set distinct rules from the dynamics of opposition coordination that distinguished the Collectif du 18 Octobre (2005) and the post-Uprisings period. Yet, these rules re-echo some old pact-making patterns that characterised the Tunisian opposition under Ben Ali’s One Party state.
... Ben Ali's Democratic Constitutionalist Rally (RCD), despite claiming to be the vanguard of a pluralistic form of modernization, had functioned mainly to surveil citizens, disseminate political propaganda, and dispense patronage. 2 Prior to the uprising, most Tunisians had studiously avoided opposition parties, and in 2011 the average person knew little either about the country's parties or about the theoretical virtues of these institutions. Allowing Tunisians to participate in mass politics outside the framework of the RCD was a widely held goal, and the number of legal parties multiplied from nine to 110 in 2011. ...
... For Hibou this 'central technology of power' persuaded citizens they too had adopted measures introduced by the state and weakened perceptions of authoritarian political constraint. 50 Consensus was fashioned as an element of national identity that meant accepting the regime's way of governing as well as its definition of and policies towards those outside the consensus, like al-Nahda, who were heavily repressed. ...
Tunisia's transition away from authoritarianism has been shaped by a politics of consensus, which has brought together representatives of the former regime with their historic adversary, the Islamist movement al-Nahda. This article argues that consensus politics was a legacy of the authoritarian regime that was re-produced during a democratizing transition. The politics of consensus was encouraged and enabled by al-Nahda, which prioritized its inclusion within this elite settlement to provide political security for itself and the broader transition. However, this came at a cost, engineering a conservative transition, which did not pursue significant social or economic reform. The Tunisian case shows that historical legacies, such as consensus politics, can shape a transition as much as contingent, pragmatic decisions by political leaders.
Whether with central bankers or strolling passers-by, inflation is a recurring term, one that encapsulates contemporary life in Tunisia. How does a concept of economics become everyday talk? Through three stories, I show how what I call ‘inflation-talk’—a mode of small talk that operates as critique and affect—circulates across discursive spaces, ultimately becoming a medium to question economic transformations and reveal political disillusions in post-revolutionary Tunisia. I consider how inflation has become a ‘feel’ of the economy, meaning a measurement not solely for economists but for people to make sense of their everyday. Ultimately, I ask how in times of global inflation, anthropologists, especially ones working in North Africa and West Asia, can theorise a critical anthropology of inflation.
This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the multifaceted and contested nature of religious authority in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and South Asia. Within the context of the Middle East, the chapter focuses on the complexities arising from the interweaving of religious authority and political power. It sheds light on the contestations between traditional religious institutions and charismatic leaders, while also highlighting the evolving role of the ‘ulamā in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Moving further, the chapter addresses the paradoxical position of religious authority in Southeast Asia, a region known for its religious and cultural diversity. It examines tensions between orthodox interpretations and local religious practices, with a focus on the contested role of Sufism. Shifting attention to South Asia, the chapter explores the evolution of religious authority, emphasising the historical dominance of the ‘ulamā and the emergence of charismatic political-religious leaders. Throughout these regions, the chapter highlights the shifting nature of authority, where traditional sources such as Sufis and religious scholars are contested by charismatic leaders who rely on messianic aspirations and personal charisma. These dynamics reflect the complex and ever-changing landscape of religious authority, influencing religious discourses and power structures in these regions.
The paper gives an insight into (1) social and ecological injustices in Tunisia and regional disparities. It then continues with discussing (2) the question of whether any change is noted, in particular since the fall of the dictatorship in 2011, and of political will for change, including the challenge of corruption, before turning to (3) the question of whether social and ecological transformation pose competing challenges in Tunisia. This last point includes a brief discussion of the role of international actors.
This article analyzes the shortcomings and pitfalls of the first stage of this process, which came to an end in 2021. After contextualizing the associated controversies within theoretical debates on decentralization as well as within the historical and legal context of current decentralization reforms, I investigate the process behind the drafting of a new legal framework for the local collectivities code (LCC). The analysis uncovers deep-seated contention regarding the content of the reform between ruling parties, national bureaucrats, legal experts and NGOs – most importantly surrounding the question of the financial autonomy of local units, which is a typical point of contention in decentralization processes. The analysis concurrently reveals numerous procedural weaknesses with negative consequences on the overall reform process. Moreover, the lack of a roadmap for the reform process proved to be disastrous, leading local elections to take place before the LCC was promulgated. Finally, the government’s lack of a clear vision for the reform process gave national bureaucrats an excessive amount of autonomy. The outcome of this was blockages and dysfunction among the elected councils, creating numerous challenges for the subsequent stages of decentralization reforms in Tunisia – if continued at all given the current political crisis.
The article contributes to literature that critically scrutinizes knowledge production and transfer in conflict and intervention contexts. Drawing on original research on the Tunisian transitional justice process, it contributes an empirically grounded picture to the study of co-production of governance orders and security knowledges through transnational assemblages. These transnational assemblages are formed by complex coalitions of actors from the Global North and South, and the socio-material context they operate in. The article shows how security knowledge is produced, channelled, and steered into confined knowledge flows as transitional justice processes unfold. It then shows the ambivalent nature and different qualities of confined knowledge flows as they may be enabling and limiting, exclusionary and protective, and implicated with power relations. By doing so, it contributes to the understanding of how the (neo-)liberal politics of transitional justice are reproduced.
Providing a longue durée perspective on the Arab uprisings of 2011, Benoît Challand narrates the transformation of citizenship in the Arab Middle East, from a condition of latent citizenship in the colonial and post-independence era to the revolutionary dynamics that stimulated democratic participation. Considering the parallel histories of citizenship in Yemen and Tunisia, Challand develops innovative theories of violence and representation that view cultural representations as calls for a decentralized political order and democratic accountability over the security forces. He argues that a new collective imaginary emerged in 2011 when the people represented itself as the only legitimate power able to decide when violence ought to be used to protect all citizens from corrupt power. Shedding light upon uprisings in Yemen and Tunisia, but also elsewhere in the Middle East, this book offers deeper insights into conceptions of violence, representation, and democracy.
Non-party ministers and technocrats have emerged as leading political actors in post-revolutionary Tunisia. Five heads of government out of eight appointed between 2011 and 2020 were not affiliated to any political party. Technocrat-led governments were appointed amidst acute political crises due to their ostensible technical expertise and non-partisan profile. Despite their prominent role in government, existing studies on post-revolutionary Tunisia have largely neglected the role of non-party ministers and technocrats, treating them as relatively marginal actors. The article situates their emergence along a decades-long technocratic turn started under Ben Ali, which opted to replace the professional politicians of the Bourguiba era with technocrats hailing from the public administration. After 2011, a combination of demand- and supply-side factors have contributed to their increased participation in government. In particular, the article argues that the institutional autonomy of the technocratic apparatus, weakness of political parties, a preference for technical expertise and consensual politics, and pressures from international financial institutions were key to the rise of non-party ministers and technocrats in post-revolutionary Tunisia.
In this paper, I examine how public art projects in the Medina of Tunis “stay in the game,” a reference to the (social) media management strategies that projects pursue to attract and keep funding. Following the 2011 “Arab Spring,” revolution, known locally as the thawra, a vibrant public art scene has formed centered in the Medina of Tunis, the highly visible but economically marginalized historic center of the city of Tunis. The formation of this public art scene is due largely to a post‐revolution influx of foreign development funding. The public art scene in the Medina of Tunis, bolstered by social media, has been widely articulated as providing visibility to marginalized communities through participatory methods. I argue that this claim paradoxically obscures the diverse lifestyles and imaginaries of the communities that public art projects aim to benefit. This paradox is rooted in both a history of mediating the historic city as an image of a modern nation, and public art's dependency on foreign funding, which draws it into maintaining foreign neoliberal interests while expressing these interests as essentially local. Meanwhile, improvements in the material conditions for residents of the Medina, expressed in terms of mirtah(comfort), remain elusive.
The 'Arab Spring' has come to symbolise defeated hopes for democracy and social justice in the Middle East. In this book, Jamie Allinson demonstrates how these defeats were far from inevitable. Rather than conceptualising the 'Arab Spring' as a series of failed revolutions, Allinson argues it is better understood as a series of successful counter-revolutions. By comparing the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen, this book shows how these profoundly revolutionary situations were overturned by counter-revolutions. Placing the fate of the Arab uprisings in a global context, Allinson reveals how counter-revolutions rely on popular support and cross borders to forge international alliances. By connecting the Arab uprisings to the decade of global protest that followed them, this innovative work demonstrates how new forms of counter-revolution have rendered it near impossible to implement political change without first enacting fundamental social transformation.
Does electing Islamist parties help or hurt women? Due to Ennahda winning a plurality in the 2011 elections and women from all parties winning 31% of seats, Tunisia offers an opportunity to test the impact of legislator gender and Islamist orientation on women's representation. Using original 2012 surveys of 40 Tunisian parliamentarians (MPs) and 1200 citizens, we find that electing female and Islamists MPs improves women's symbolic and service responsiveness by increasing the likelihood that female citizens are aware of and contact MPs. Electing Islamist female MPs has a positive impact on women's symbolic and service responsiveness, but decreases the likelihood that men will interact with legislators. We argue that Islamist deputies are more responsive to women due to an Islamic mandate effect—that is, Islamist parties' efforts to institutionalize their constituency relations, provide services to the marginalized through direct contact with citizens, and respect norms of piety by using female parliamentarians to reach women in sex‐segregated spaces. While Islamist parties positively impact some dimensions of women's representation, they also reinforce traditional gender relations. Our results extend the literature on Islam, gender, and governance by demonstrating that quotas and party institutionalization improve women's representation in clientelistic contexts.
This is an issue of the journal Middle East Topic and Arguments (META) dedicated to the figure of the Rebel in the context of the Arab world.
Full text of the issue available here: https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2016.6.157
Realising the shortcomings of the various integrative processes, four MENA countries—Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan—signed the Agadir Agreement in 2004. This agreement came into force in 2007. Not only does it aim to promote faster economic integration and coordination between its members, but also to consolidate economic liberalisation at a broader regional level and with the EU as part of the Barcelona Process.
European decolonisation posed new uncertainties and risks for European companies with an established presence in Africa. However, some firms found not just risk but opportunities in decolonisation. By examining the activities of foreign enterprises in various African states, and their strategies to stay in Africa, various contributors explore how some European companies benefitted from features of the new international landscape, particularly those provided by development aid. The book brings together research on different European companies (most notably those of former colonial powers) and considers their work or involvement in the development field after European decolonisation. In this introduction to the book, Dimier and Stockwell show how by bringing the study of foreign companies and development aid to Africa into the same frame of analysis, the book breaks new ground. They provide an extensive review of the historiographies of business and development in the colonial and post-colonial eras, and identify key features of European, and especially British and French, post-colonial development aid. They also introduce each chapter and the key themes and questions which these chapters address.
The Arab uprisings of 2011 led to a reassessment of comparative politics research on authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab region made its way from area studies into mainstream comparative politics, and research foci have shifted towards civil-military relations and repression. Ten years later, we observe higher levels of repression across the region, reflecting a diversity of repressive trends. Advocating comprehensive research on this variation, we review recent literature that tackles various dimensions of repression in Arab autocracies. In addition to disaggregating forms and targets of repression, we call for its justifications, agents and transnational dimensions to be considered next to the implications of digital technologies of coercion. We also reflect on how repression affects the possibility of doing research and how we can investigate the proposed dimensions of repression.
This edited volume is an open access title and assembles both the historical consciousness and transformation of the MENA region in various disciplinary and topical facets. At the same time, it aims to go beyond the MENA region, contributing to critical debates on area studies while pointing out transregional and cultural references in a broad and comparative manner.
The Editors
Prof. Dr Rachid Ouaissa is professor of Politics of the Middle East at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg.
Prof. Dr. Friederike Pannewick is professor of Arabic Studies at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg.
Dr. Alena Strohmaier is postdoctoral researcher in Media and Middle Eastern Studies at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg.
Globalization has eroded borders, fostered mobility, and deepened inequality virtually everywhere. The waning of the state as the world’s default political unit has had myriad consequences; among the most challenging may be the simultaneous expansion of supranational norms of human rights and contraction of legal, enforceable citizenship. The upheavals of the Arab Spring provided eloquent testimony to both the appeal of rights-based political discourse, as protesters across the region called for “bread, freedom, and social justice,” and the catastrophic consequences of reliance on weakened and ineffectual states to enforce such rights. The baleful landscape of the Middle East today suggests a warning for the rest of the world: enfeebled states may herald the demise of universal human rights.
This paper advances two arguments about environmental problems. First, it interrogates the strength and limitations of empiricist accounts of problems and issues offered by actor-network theory. Drawing on the work of C.S. Peirce, it considers how emerging environmental problems often lead to abductive inferences about the existence of hidden causes that may or may not have caused the problem to emerge. The analysis of environmental problems should be empiricist in so far as it is sceptical of the claims of those who know in advance what the problem is, but it should also be alert to processes and things that are not readily traceable or perceived. Secondly, the paper’s contention is that environmental problems almost invariably involve an encounter between unlike or disparate materials or processes. In such circumstances, the challenge is to develop a form of inquiry that is alert to both the specificity of such encounters and to the specificity of the political situations in which they come to matter.
This chapter seeks to explain the developments of the Tunisian transitional justice process. Drawing on Norbert Elias’s ideas about social processes, it argues that dynamics of transitional justice processes can neither be understood solely in light of international norms and the “justice industry” that both shape institutionalized transitional justice projects, nor simply by examining context and the political preferences of domestic actors. Rather, these shifts are shaped by the interplay of planned processes with unplanned political and social dynamics; with a political context in flux, power shifts, and sometimes competing planned efforts in other realms. Empirically grounded in “process-concurrent” field research in post- “Arab Spring” Tunisia, the contribution shows that a technocratic/institutionalized transitional justice project can develop dynamics that are somewhat, but not entirely, independent of power shifts. However, the above interplays may lead to frictional encounters that trigger feedback loops, new processes, and new structures.
French authors in the 19th and early 20th century often compared the colonised Muslims in the Maghreb with European children with the conclusion that they were roughly on the same developmental level. It was obvious to the French audience of the various publications that described the Muslim colonised as children or at least as child-like in many respects, that this alone already warranted the colonisation of the region, as people on the level of children could not be expected to effectually govern themselves. This infantilisation of the colonised can be observed in descriptions of what the colonised habitually consumed, as various drinking preferences and habits were explained through their allegedly childlike behaviour. It was claimed that the Muslim colonised only enjoyed sugary drinks, such as tea or absinthe, that, “like children”, they only copied the bad drinking habits of the French, and that they lacked the characteristics of maturity that supposedly regulated the danger of overconsumption among French adults. These discourses were also adapted by the elites among the colonised. The French-educated Tunisian doctor, Béchir Dinguizli, for example, stated in a 1927 article discussing the problems of the overconsumption of tea in Tunisia: “I do not need to point out, gentlemen, that the native of our country, great child by his nature, does not know moderation.” This chapter will analyse and contextualise French reports of drinking habits of the colonised in the Maghreb as inherently childlike, and place them into the wider field of descriptive mechanisms that served to dehumanise and devaluate the colonised and, as a direct consequence of this dehumanisation, to justify the continuation of the French colonisation of the region.
In 2007, a protest movement emerged in South Yemen called the Southern Movement. At the beginning, it was a loose amalgamation of people, most of them former army personnel and state employees of the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) who had been forced out of their jobs after the southern faction lost the war in 1994. Because of the state security forces’ brutality against protesters, more and more people joined the demonstrations, and the claims began to evolve into concrete political demands, such as the restored independence of the territory that once formed the PDRY, which in 1990 unified with the Arab Republic of Yemen to form the Republic of Yemen, as a separate state. By appropriating hidden forms of resistance, such as the intentionally and unintentionally intergenerational transmission of a counternarrative, South Yemenis have strengthened the calls for independence in recent years.
Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia show some common features, yet the details of their political and economic systems are different. The five countries have been categorized as authoritarian regimes, and they enjoy strategic locations for trade and economic activities along with considerable natural resources in some cases. The five countries have experienced different levels of development and social circumstances. This chapter provides in-depth systematic case-study analysis of the causes of corruption for each of the five countries, aiming to give an overview and better understanding of the causes of corruption in North Africa.
This paper shows how the constitutional provisions related to the state of emergency and exception, although they are contained within democratic traditions, were set to operate in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia as a mechanism of basic control and maintenance of liberal autocracies. The state of emergency model was used for the survival of regimes in times of instability and social unrest, leading in some cases to the suspension of human rights for many years. Nevertheless, these provisions were modified or lifted when the regime had to show a more convincing stake to the democratic process in 2011.
A dominant narrative describes the postcolonial Algerian trajectory as a “revolution” which has alternately experienced a “Party-state”, the “Islamist peril”, a “civil war” then an “autocracy”—the “crisis” of the latter precipitating a “popular uprising” that caused the fall of the “raïs” and imposed a “transition”. Breaking with the doxa, this study establishes that the domination, resulting from the counter-revolution of the 1950s, is based on a praetorian state-regime complex. The critical sequence that starts with the military coup of 1992 is less a “civil war” than a fierce neoliberal restructuring giving rise to the “reinvention of tradition” of the garrison state as “organized crime”. Drawing a “strategic learning” from the success of the praetorian counterrevolution orchestrated by the Egyptian secret police in 2013, the
powerful Algerian deep state has been arranging the anti-Bouteflika V street performances. Beyond an apparent radicalism, the 'hirak' contributes to freezing the authoritarian status quo: anti-political, it operates a structural avoidance of the conflicts at work in the shade of praetorian neoliberalism. Celebrating brotherhood with the army, the late counter-revolution has increased the “caging” of the Algerian people.
The role of civil society as a democratising force, both under authoritarian regimes and during political transitions, has received renewed attention in the wake of the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. Considerable praise has been reserved for Tunisia, whose civil society played a prominent role in the country’s successful transition. However, as a thorough analysis of the Tunisian example illustrates, this contrasts sharply with its relatively marginal role in the pre-2011 period. Indeed, Tunisian civil society has not always been a pro-democracy force, its functions shifted with the political context, and different types of civil society organisations (CSOs) played widely different roles. Tracing the evolution of civil society in Tunisia from the establishment of the Ben Ali regime in November 1987 until after its fall in January 2011, the article develops a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of its roles before, during, and after the revolution. More specifically, it shows that before the revolution, only a handful of CSOs served as islands of political resistance, while the majority functioned as vehicles of regime resilience, helping to strengthen authoritarian rule in the country. During the revolution, members of more critical CSOs played an important supporting role in the spread, organisation, and continuation of protests. Finally, in the post-revolutionary period, former oppositional CSOs, together with a plethora of newly created CSOs, were crucial not only in successfully steering the country towards a democratic transition but also in strengthening the nascent democracy. Civil society should thus be understood in its variety and particular political context.
During democratic transitions, newly elected governments face public demands to reform the institutions of the old regime, especially the security forces; yet, these reforms often fail. I argue that politicians define policy issues in ways that maximize popular support for their own positions through well-established processes of elite issue framing. Politicians can reduce popular demand for difficult and costly reforms of the security forces by framing them as trade-offs with other types of reform. The argument is tested with original survey data from Tunisia, an important contemporary case of democratic transition. An embedded vignette experiment primes existing issue frames by asking respondents to adjudicate between investments in security reform versus economic or political reform. I find that framing a trade-off with a more popular policy, economic development, reduces public demand for security reform. These findings have important implications for security sector reform and democratic consolidation in Tunisia and beyond.
Historic built environments of the modern colonial era survive in cityscapes of former colonies the world over, often featuring largely in the projected urban identities of cities in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Tunisia is no exception. The complex relationships between extant architectures of colonialism and current users, designers, and preservationists there are shifting within the context of contemporary globalization. Though ties between Europe, France, and Tunisia are less overt than they once were—now taking the form of international development loans, professional and educational exchanges, tourism programmes, popular culture and the media—they are nonetheless significant in their sustained influence. This article explores the nature and products of neocolonialism in postcolonial heritage management and tourism practices, using several case studies from Tunis including curated medina walking tours, the renovation of the Avenue Bourguiba, and expansion of the renowned Bardo Museum. Rather than dismissing contemporary preservation and tourism management practices, the article invites further debate regarding the influence of foreign actors, conservation approaches, and potential alternatives for the future of heritage management in a rapidly changing Tunisia.
We investigate the path-dependent effects of subnational variation in authoritarian state-building policies on voter–party linkages after regime change. We argue that long-term patterns of regional favoritism and marginalization produce patterned regional heterogeneity in the attitudes and preferences linking voters with parties. Postcolonial state-building policies create “winners” and “losers” from particular interventions, in turn shaping local citizens’ preferences over these policy areas and forming axes of contestation ready to be activated by democratic politics. We argue that attitudes associated with regionally consistent state-building policies should function uniformly as determinants of vote choice across regions, while attitudes associated with regionally divergent state-building policies should experience patterned regional variation in their effect on vote choice. We develop these arguments empirically with historical analysis of Tunisian state-building and an original exit survey of voters in five diverse regions conducted on the day of Tunisia’s first democratic legislative elections in 2014. Our findings contribute to a growing literature on the importance of analyzing political transformation at the subnational level.
This chapter analyzes macro-political developments in Egypt and Tunisia since the 2011 revolutions in order to reconstruct the broader political context in which socio-economic protests have been unfolding. The chapter offers an account of the puzzling observation that incumbent governments in both countries, despite the different regime trajectories, have had a limited capacity to adopt economic reforms with distributional implications through authoritative state action. It argues that this incapacity transcends regime type because it is caused by more fundamental socio-political dynamics which relate to the socio-political coalitions on which social and political stabilization has depended. What explains the limited political capacity in both cases is the incumbent governments’ vulnerability vis-à-vis representatives of old distributional coalitions (including elements of both state-dependent labor and private business constituencies) whose support (or at least acquiescence) has been essential for post-revolution stabilization, either on a pluralist or on an authoritarian basis.
State Crime and Civil Activism explores the work of non-government organisations (NGOs) challenging state violence and corruption in six countries - Colombia, Tunisia, Kenya, Turkey, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea. It discusses the motives and methods of activists, and how they document and criticise wrongdoing by governments. It documents the dialectical process by which repression stimulates and shapes the forces of resistance against it. Drawing on over 350 interviews with activists, this book discusses their motives; the tactics they use to withstand and challenge repression; and the legal and other norms they draw upon to challenge the state, including various forms of law and religious teaching. It analyses the relation between political activism and charitable work, and the often ambivalent views of civil society organisations towards violence. It highlights struggles over land as one of the key areas of state and corporate crime and civil resistance. The interviews illustrate and enrich the theoretical premise that civil society plays a vital part in defining, documenting and denouncing state crime. They show the diverse and vibrant forms that civil society takes in a widely varied group of countries. This book will be of much interest to undergraduate and postgraduate social science students studying criminology, international relations, political science, anthropology and development studies. It will also be of interest to human rights defenders, NGOs and civil society.
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