Ben `Ali's
November 7, 1987 coup inaugurated the heady period of political
reform that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in the
late 1980s. The new president promised to establish the rule of
law, to respect human rights and to implement democratic political
reforms. Ten years later, it would be difficult to find another
country that has moved so far in the opposite direction.
A disturbing
rumor made the rounds this summer at the Cafe de Paris, the Hotel
Africa and the other haunts of Tunisia's classe politique.
Word had it that a constitutional commission was considering legislation
allowing the government to revoke the citizenship rights of some
political opponents. True or not, the rumor's existence--and the
widespread belief that the government started it--says much about
political life on the tenth anniversary of Zine al-'Abidine Ben
'Ali's "tranquil revolution."
Ben 'Ali's November
7, 1987 coup inaugurated the heady period of political reform
that swept across the Middle East and North Africa in the late
1980s. The new president promised to establish the rule of law,
to respect human rights, and to implement the kind of democratic
political reforms that Habib Bourguiba had steadfastly refused.
Along with Algeria, Jordan and Yemen, Tunisia rode the leading
edge of what many hoped would be a wave of democratic transitions
in the region. Ten years later, it would be difficult to find
another country that has moved so far in the opposite direction.
Back from the Democratic
Brink
That Tunisia stood at
the forefront of political reform in the late 1980s came as no surprise
to many observers. Since the 1960s, scholars had held up the small
country as one of the region's best hopes for democratic politics.
Tunisia's tradition of reform and openness, its Western-oriented
elite, and its progressive social policies suggested the kind of
trajectory that would culminate sooner or later in multiple political
parties, competitive elections, and respect for human rights. Moreover,
state and society in Tunisia had developed what the historian Mohamed
Hedi Cherif describes as a unique form of "self-regulation." During
periods of economic or political crisis, Tunisians accepted a strong
state that intervened to restore order and prosperity. But that
state also generated countervailing social forces that kept it in
check when it became too powerful.1 Against this
backdrop, the prospects for political reform under Ben 'Ali seemed
good. If the president balked at his democratic promises, Tunisia
possessed the kind of muscular civil society that would force him
to follow through.
During his first year in power, Ben 'Ali seemed bent on establishing
himself as the country's most dedicated reformer. He amnestied
thousands of political prisoners, revamped Bourguiba's Parti Socialist
Destourien (PSD) into the Rassemblement Constitutionel Democratique
(RCD), abolished the state security court and the presidency for
life, reformed laws governing pretrial detention and ratified
the United Nations' convention on torture. Ben 'Ali also supported
new legislation that made it easier to form associations and parties,
and he negotiated a National Pact with the country's principal
social and political organizations.
By late 1988, however, the bloom had begun to fade. Ben 'Ali
refused to legalize Hizb an-Nahdha (The Renaissance Party), the
country's largest Islamist organization, even though the party
pledged to accept the rules of competitive democracy. And despite
opposition demands for proportional legislative elections, the
1989 electoral code maintained the old majority list system. Those
rules, combined with restrictions on media access and other interferences,
allowed Ben 'Ali's RCD to win every seat in the April 1989 elections.
Those elections marked the end of Ben 'Ali's honeymoon and the
beginning of Tunisia's slide into deeper authoritarianism. Angered
by their exclusion from parliament despite strong support for
their candidates who ran as independents, an-Nahdha activists
intensified protests at the university and in working class neighborhoods.
The government, in turn, stepped up its repression against an-Nahdha
and the Tunisian Communist Workers' Party (POCT). Late-night raids
and house-to-house searches became commonplace in some neighborhoods.
Stories of torture under interrogation and military court convictions
multiplied.2 The campaign to crush an-Nahdha
intensified in 1991 following an attack on an RCD office in the
Bab Souika area of Tunis and after the government claimed that
security forces had uncovered a plot to topple the regime. Susan
Waltz reports that the government's extensive dragnet hauled in
more than 8,000 individuals between 1990 and 1992.3
Most Tunisians tolerated the government's repression. As the
press never ceased to remind them, a vigorous economy that could
generate new jobs depended on Tunisia's ability to attract foreign
investment in a competitive regional environment. Ben 'Ali and
other officials pointed to Algeria and Egypt and argued that tolerating
any kind of Islamist party would lead only to economic chaos.
Better to be done with them quickly and create the kind of stable
investment climate that Tunisia's neighbors could not provide.
In terms of Cherif's model, the 1989-92 period seemed to offer
another example of Tunisians' willingness to tolerate a strong
state that claimed to act on behalf of national well-being.
By late 1992, Tunisia had reached an important crossroads. Economic
growth had climbed above eight percent, and most observers agreed
that an-Nahdha no longer posed a serious threat. Some portion
of the rank and file certainly remained. But for all practical
purposes, an-Nahdha had become an offshore operation sustained
by supporters in Europe and North America. By his fifth anniversary
in power, Ben 'Ali could legitimately claim to have saved Tunisia
from economic bankruptcy and civil war.
Most opposition figures had held their fire during the economic
and political crisis. Once those crises passed, they called on
the government to make good on its earlier promises. This pressure
did move Ben 'Ali and the National Assembly to pass a new electoral
law in December 1992, but it only allowed the legal opposition
parties to share a pitifully small handful of seats.
At the same time, however, Ben 'Ali stepped up his campaign
to quash any form of opposition. Some of the methods for co-opting
and manipulating the press, unions, and other organizations harkened
back to the Bourguiba days. But Ben 'Ali's authoritarianism has
betrayed the kind of heavy-handedness that students of Maghribi
politics generally associate with Algeria and Morocco rather than
Tunisia. Over the past ten years, Ben 'Ali has dramatically expanded
Tunisia's internal security apparatus. Critics claim that much
of this growth has taken place outside of the Interior Ministry
and other official police forces. They argue that Ben 'Ali has
used a slush fund, labeled the "sovereignty fund" in the budget,
to build up a parallel security apparatus run directly from the
presidential palace.
Along with the Interior Ministry, this organization has implemented
a ruthless campaign whose tactics run from surveillance and phone
tapping to fabricated videocassettes, threats against family members,
passport confiscations, beatings and even assassinations.4
In addition to rank and file workers, human rights activists,
and university professors, this strategy has targeted some of
Tunisia's most prominent opposition figures.
Tunisia's slide into deeper authoritarianism raises interesting
questions. Why did a government that worked hard to establish
a reputation as a bastion of human rights and civil liberties,
and one that had eliminated serious political opposition, feel
compelled to intensify its repressive methods? Why hasn't this
authoritarian turn generated a countervailing "civil society"
response? Has Ben 'Ali broken Tunisia's self-regulating system?
Finally, what are the prospects for more extensive political change
in Tunisia?
To answer these questions about repression and state-society
relations in Tunisia, we must dispense with two pieces of conventional
wisdom. The first is the widely-held impression that Ben 'Ali
is essentially Bourguiba redux. Although similarities exist, important
differences distinguish the two leaders' strategies for consolidating
and holding power.
The second piece of conventional wisdom is the equally popular
notion that Ben 'Ali's political strategy--including the repression--is
simply a product of the fight against an-Nahdha. Although Islamists
clearly have been the regime's single greatest preoccupation,
it is misleading to reduce Tunisian politics under Ben 'Ali to
a simple state vs. Islamists dynamic. Ben 'Ali has always viewed
an-Nahdha as part of a broader and more complex political game
and there is good reason to believe that this game involves players
that Ben 'Ali fears as much or more than an-Nahdha.
A Tale of Two Regimes
In the struggle for Tunisian independence, Habib Bourguiba emerged
as the nationalist movement's principal spokesman and negotiator.
But he was not its only source of power and influence. Indeed, he
survived a serious threat to his position as the neo-Destour's leader
in 1955-56 only with the support of organized labor and other key
party officials.
As Tunisia's first president, Bourguiba consolidated control
over the party and state bureaucracies by co-opting and manipulating
clientele networks in ways that would concentrate power in his
own hands without alienating his bases of support. Rather than
becoming Tunisia's sole political patron, he set out to become
its chief patron.
Bourguiba accomplished much of this through an ongoing game
of political musical chairs. He intentionally gave and withdrew
important posts to powerful individuals who could use their positions
to service their own clienteles. In this way, Bourguiba established
himself as the maker and breaker of political careers. He created
tangible incentives for loyalty that consolidated his personal
power much more effectively than a system based solely on repression
and fear.
Bourguiba also recognized early on that protest and contestation
could play an important role in the effort to co-opt individuals
and organizations. In the 1950s and again in the mid-1980s, Bourguiba
discretely supported worker unrest designed to undermine the union
leadership. On both occasions he supported break-away unions,
and then reunited the labor movement under leaders who owed their
positions to Bourguiba rather than to the rank and file. He tried
unsuccessfully to use this same tactic to bring the Tunisian Human
Rights League (LTDH) to heel in the mid-1980s.
Bourguiba was not the only politician who exploited popular
unrest. Indeed, the intermingling of elite politics and popular
protest became a staple of Tunisian political life after the government
established a prime ministership in 1969. Party elites discretely
encouraged unrest as a way of discrediting competitors, then tried
to negotiate alliances with the student and worker movements in
order to secure a popular base for their own ambitions. Getting
the militants to back off allowed politicians to demonstrate their
ability to deliver social peace.
The onset of Bourguiba's health problems in 1967 sparked a great
of deal of speculation and jockeying for position in a system
that lacked a clear successor and a method for choosing one. In
addition to relieving himself of the more technical tasks of government,
Bourguiba used the prime ministership as a tool for turning this
elite competition to his advantage.
At his direction, the National Assembly passed legislation that
gave the president the power to select the prime minister and
designated that person as the automatic successor if the president
died or became incapacitated. By establishing his personal control
over the succession, Bourguiba reinforced his power by creating
what William Zartman aptly describes as "position politics."5
Rather than building alliances against Bourguiba, party barons
conspired against one another to earn his favor and a chance to
become prime minister. As Bourguiba aged, Tunisian politics devolved
into a collective wager on his mortality. Everyone wanted either
to be prime minister or to be on good terms with the person who
was when Bourguiba passed on.
Through the early 1980s, this intricate political theater channeled
elite competition away from Bourguiba. And while the radicalization
of the labor movement in 1977 demonstrated that he could not completely
control this messy game, two factors did help Bourguiba to keep
social conflict from spinning totally out of control. First, strong
economic growth in the 1970s supported a succession of wage increases
and an extensive system of consumer subsidies. Second, the worker
and student unions' reliance on public funds allowed Bourguiba
to intervene in and manipulate their internal politics.
By the mid-1980s, these conditions no longer obtained. Economic
deterioration eroded the government's ability to buy social peace.
Bourguiba became less tolerant of labor's wage demands and cracked
down hard on the union in 1984-85. The Islamic Tendency Movement
(MTI)--al-Nahdha's precursor--stepped into the void created by
the union repression and became the social force that politicians
publicly reviled and privately courted. But the MTI was an independent
entity whose clandestine organization provided few openings for
external manipulation. For Bourguiba, allowing it to become the
force that elites courted was too risky. His campaign to destroy
the MTI set Tunisia on the course that brought Ben 'Ali to power
in 1987.
Thus, the vibrancy of Tunisia's civil society and its ability
to generate pressure on the state in the 1970s and early 1980s,
did not reflect a deep-seated political culture. Rather, it was
a product of pragmatic political choices. Bourguiba's strategy
for consolidating and holding power created new opportunities
for protest, and workers, students, Islamists and others tried
to use them to their own advantage.
Ben 'Ali's strategy for consolidating and holding power has
produced a very different state-society relationship. Unlike Bourguiba,
Ben 'Ali did not rise to power at the forefront of a well-organized
movement. Prior to becoming interior minister in 1986, Ben 'Ali
had spent his entire career in the military and security forces.
When he seized power, he stepped into the void at the center of
a paralyzed political system. The deepening economic and political
crisis had discredited the ruling party's traditional elite. Internal
divisions and government repression had crippled the opposition
parties and other organizations.
These conditions gave Ben 'Ali a degree of freedom that Bourguiba
did not enjoy. He faced no organized challenge and he did not
have to court or compensate powerful constituencies that had contributed
to his rise. Most Tunisians were simply relieved to see Bourguiba
ushered offstage with minimal trauma.
At the same time, however, Ben 'Ali realized that this freedom
from the entanglements of traditional party politics could be
an important handicap. This brings us to a point that is central
for understanding Ben 'Ali's authoritarianism. Battling an-Nahdha
clearly has been the government's single greatest preoccupation
over the past ten years. But this is precisely the kind of contest
for which Ben 'Ali is eminently qualified. From the 1970s on,
he had supervised Bourguiba's successive crackdowns on labor,
students and Islamists. This experience, and those of other countries
in the region, suggested a simple, sober lesson. The Islamists
would become a serious threat to his position if he followed Benjadid's
example in Algeria and offered them access to the ballot box.
But if he played to his strengths and remained committed to destroying
an-Nahdha, he could probably win.
A revival of position politics, on the other hand, would have
posed a much more serious threat. Many longtime party barons resented
Ben 'Ali for preempting their own plans for stepping into the
presidency. From the beginning of his rule, Ben 'Ali feared that
one of these established politicians, or one of his own ministers,
would use their networks in the party, the state bureaucracy,
and other organizations to undermine him. As a relative newcomer
to ruling party politics, Ben 'Ali lacked the social bases and
patronage networks so vital to Bourguiba's style of political
management. He did not have the political resources to referee
and manipulate effectively an ongoing competition between powerful
politicians and the social actors they rallied to their camps.
To protect his own position, Ben 'Ali has tried to do two things.
First, he has worked to prevent state and party officials from
developing into the centers of power that they became under Bourguiba.
He abolished the office of party director--a position of considerable
power in the 1970s--and reduced the autonomy of his ministers.
His dismissal of Hedi Baccouche in 1989 demonstrated that Ben
'Ali has no tolerance for a prime minister who shows any sign
of becoming a power in his own right.6 Throughout
his cabinet, Ben 'Ali has carefully selected individuals who are
technically competent but come from nonpolitical backgrounds or
lack extensive connections in the ruling party or the state bureaucracy.
He is involved in the operations of individual ministries much
more deeply than Bourguiba ever was, and he has used frequent
cabinet shuffles to prevent ministers from establishing lasting
clientele bases.7
Second, Ben 'Ali has worked diligently to break the tie between
elite and popular politics that was so vital in the 1970s and
1980s. Ill-equipped to play position politics, he has tried to
ensure that "civil society" remains unavailable as a political
weapon.
Initially, Ben 'Ali relied on old-fashioned co-option, exercised
with considerably less finesse than his predecessor, to put the
opposition parties and other organizations on short leashes. Outright
repression became more important after evidence emerged in 1989-90
of a broad opposition front built around former Prime Minister
Mohammed Mzali and other longtime Destour politicians. In April,
1990, the political bureau of a group calling itself the Tunisian
National Salvation Front issued a communique claiming to represent
all opposition groups inside and outside of Tunisia. The communique
condemned with equal vigor the government's repression of everyone
from Bourguiba to the POCT and an-Nahdha. It called on all democrats,
regardless of ideology and affiliation, to unite in a common effort.
From his new headquarters in London, an-Nahdha's leader, Rachid
al-Ghannouchi, made a similar commitment to building a broad opposition
front that would push Ben 'Ali to establish a meaningful, multi-party
democracy.
This challenge became Ben 'Ali's chief concern. He became--and
remains--terribly afraid that this front, headed by former politicians
with extensive ties throughout the country, is conspiring to unseat
him. Ben 'Ali fears that this front will establish alliances with
an-Nahdha, the LTDH, militant portions of the labor and student
movements, the legal opposition parties and anyone else who might
provide a useful striking arm against him. From his perspective,
then, a strike, a student demonstration, or an opposition communique
could be much more than it appears to be. Because any kind of
contestation could be organized and manipulated by the opposition
front it must be repressed.
This repressive strategy has stunted Tunisia's formidable civil
society in two ways. Most obviously, it has elevated the risks
of engaging in protest and made collective action much harder
to organize. Beyond this climate of fear and intimidation, Ben
'Ali's effort to break the connection between elite and popular
politics has also created a profound strategic malaise for the
organizations that long constituted the bedrock of associational
life. As elsewhere in the region, the struggle for meaningful
autonomy from state control has dominated the lives of workers'
and students' unions, human rights groups, women's groups and
Islamist organizations in post-independence Tunisia. At the same
time, though, these organizations have always understood that
the line between state and civil society is blurry at best. For
more than 30 years, establishing alliances with individuals and
factions of the governing elite and playing on tensions within
party and state bureaucracies was a fundamental part of these
organizations' strategies for influencing government policy. The
dissolution of these ties, the end of position politics as it
operated for so long, has left Tunisia's traditionally vigorous
civil society adrift.
Future Scenarios
To be sure, adrift does
not mean broken. Pressure from the legal opposition parties has
helped to prompt electoral reform. The trade union has reduced some
of the social costs of privatization and economic reform. The LTDH
has fought valiantly to protect its independence and to make respect
for human rights a value that the government must at least profess
to support. These accomplishments are not trivial.
By the same token, Ben 'Ali's effort to break the link between
elite and popular politics has weakened the ability of these organizations
to act as the engines of dramatic change anytime soon. What, then,
might the future hold? Three scenarios seem likely.
One scenario can be called "Ben 'Ali's nightmare." A broad opposition
front succeeds in establishing a clandestine organization inside
the country. It lays low until a downturn in the economy or some
other development heightens public dissatisfaction. Unrest erupts
and Ben 'Ali gets moved aside by someone from inside the ruling
party or perhaps by one of the old party barons. Some of the likely
participants in such a plan do, indeed, think in these terms.
But none of them believes that such a plan can succeed in the
near future.
A second, particularly ironic, scenario involves Ben 'Ali's
own security apparatus. Some observers believe that Ben 'Ali has
created a force that he may not be able to control. If he ever
becomes unwilling or unable to continue their economic favors,
or if he ever agrees to political reforms that undermine their
power, these forces might move against him.
The third scenario, and the most likely for the foreseeable
future, continues the schizophrenic combination of reform and
repression that has marked the past ten years. Ben 'Ali continues
to repress criticism and contestation that he does not orchestrate.
The legal opposition parties continue to participate in an electoral
system that is stacked against them because it is the only game
in town and because it gives them an opportunity to build their
own organizations. They work to slowly expand their foothold in
the National Assembly, and the LTDH continues to press the government
on human rights. Ultimately, this scenario may be the most likely
to produce the kind of multi-party democracy that Ben 'Ali promised
a decade ago. But on the tenth anniversary of his "tranquil revolution,"
it still looks a long way off.
Christopher Alexanderis visiting professor in political science at Texas A & M University.
Endnotes
1 See Ridha Kefi, "L'equilibre carthaginois," Jeune Afrique
1837 (March 20-26, 1996), p. 73.
2 For a revealing
and disturbing account of this campaign, see Ahmed Manai's Supplice
tunisien: le jardin secret du Generale Ben 'Ali (Paris: La
Decouverte, 1995).
3 Susan E.
Waltz, Human Rights and Reform: Changing the Face of North
African Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1995), p. 72.
4 The Tunisian
National Salvation Front described the organization and activities
of this parallel security apparatus in an April, 1990 communique.
A copy of the text appears in Annuaire de l'Afrique du Nord
(1990), pp. 804-09.
5 See Zartman's
introduction to I. William Zartman, et al., Political Elites
in Arab North Africa (New York, 1982). See also Lisa Anderson,
"Democracy Frustrated: The Mzali Years in Tunisia," in Reeva S.
Simon, ed., The Middle East and North Africa: Essays in Honor
of J. C. Hurewitz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990),
pp. 185-86.
6 Ben 'Ali
dismissed Baccouche after the Prime Minister made comments critical
of the government's structural adjustment program. Ben 'Ali feared
that Baccouche might be posturing to build his own support base
on the left.
7 In a surprisingly
frank 1992 La Presse article, Mohsen Toumi openly criticized
Ben 'Ali for becoming too involved in the daily details of government
and for fearing a prime minister with a clear and decisive role.
See "Nos mille huit cents jours," La Presse, November 9,
1992. I thank Chedly Ayari, former Minister of National Economy,
for his insights on the difference in the status and power of
ministers under Bourguiba and Ben 'Ali.
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someone suggests that the US move to withdraw its troops, war supporters
cry “Havoc!”
True to form, when no less a figure than Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki stated he wants a timeline for a US pullout, John McCain
summoned the specter of dire consequences. “I’ve always
said we’ll come home with honor and with victory and not through
a set timetable,” McCain said. In his major foreign policy speech
on July 15, Barack Obama affirmed his support for a withdrawal timetable,
adding that the US must “get out as carefully as we were careless
getting in.” Obama’s position is the correct one, but he,
like many other war critics, has done too little to counter the refrain
that withdrawal is simply
“cutting and running,” a recipe for disaster. Full
Story>>
