Current Analysis Seeking "Stability" Stability is the least understood and most derided of the trio of strategic interests pursued by the United States in the Middle East since it became the region’s sole superpower. Vexing, because it is patently obvious code for coziness with kings, presidents-for-life and other unsavory autocrats. P Chris Toensing • 3 min read
Current Analysis Tunisia's Post-Ben Ali Challenge The January 14 departure of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali amidst popular protests was a long overdue demonstration of the possibility for genuine democratization in the Arab world. Mohamed Bouazizi, the street vendor whose self-immolation set off the protests, tapped a deep vein of ange Amy Aisen Kallander • 15 min read
Current Analysis Tunisia's Wall Has Fallen For the first time in decades, Tunisia is free of one-man rule. The extraordinary events of December 2010 and January 2011 have been nothing less than a political revolution: The consistent pressure of popular fury forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali first to make an unprecedented promise to re Nadia Marzouki • 13 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Winter 2010) Is it happenstance or harmonic convergence that the first reports on the Wikileaks cache of State Department cables hit the newsstands alongside stories about the fresh political salience of “American exceptionalism”? Something about the content of the diplomatic missives and, more to the point, the The Editors • 13 min read
MER Article Structural Adjustment and Rural Poverty in Tunisia World Bank and IMF sponsored neoliberal reforms can have different effects on the political and social structure of receiving nations. Reforms may fortify a status quo unfavorable to the poor, or may even make a bad situation considerably worse, or they may undermine the existing economic system, em Stephen King • 7 min read
MER Article How Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan and Even Egypt Became IMF "Success Stories" in the 1990s Just as European missionaries were the spiritual handmaidens of nineteenth-century colonialism, so has the International Monetary Fund (IMF) assumed a modern-day mission in support of world trade, finance and investment. The mission aims to convert the benighted heathen in developing countries to th Karen Pfeifer • 12 min read
MER Article Authoritarianism and Civil Society in Tunisia 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. Tru Christopher Alexander • 14 min read
MER Article Bezness Nouri Bouzid, Bezness (1992). What happens when a poor Arab country with a high birth rate, an enormous youth population and endemic unemployment bases a significant part of its development strategy on attracting European tourism? In Nouri Bouzid’s film, Bezness, the Tunisian coastal town of Souss Garay Menicucci • 5 min read
MER Article "Images from Elsewhere" “You chase colonialism out the door, it comes back through the sky,” observed the Algerian Press Service several years ago, alluding to the phenomenon of satellite broadcasting that has literally brought European television into the living rooms of North Africa. [1] More than 95 percent of urban hou Miriam Rosen • 7 min read
MER Article Tunisia's Uncertain Future The first months after Habib Bourguiba’s overthrow in November 1987 witnessed an ambiguous honeymoon between the new regime and the Islamists. Bourguiba himself was under a form of house arrest in Monastir, his native town. Squares named after his birthday, August 3, 1903, were renamed November 7, t Fred Halliday • 9 min read
MER Article State and Gender in the Maghrib Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco constitute a geocultural entity. They all went through a period of French colonization and they became independent during roughly the same period in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Despite the similarities, though, the three countries engaged in markedly different polici Mounira Charrad • 12 min read
MER Article North Africa Faces the 1990s The startling changes that have transformed the political landscape of Eastern Europe in 1989 may have no equivalent in the Middle East exactly, but that region has seen some remarkable developments nonetheless. The Arab versions of perestroika, or restructuring, while less profound in comparison wi Joe Stork • 11 min read
