State–Society Relations and Sustainable Growth in Tunisia Post-2011  

By Mohamed Ismail Sabry

This article is a shortened version of a MECAM Paper, originally published by the Merian Centre for Advanced Study in the Maghreb (MECAM) and the GIGA Institute in Hamburg, Germany, in 2024. The full version can be accessed here (also available in Arabic and French).

MECAM Papers | Number 06 | July 4, 2024 | https://dx.doi.org/10.25673/116445 | ISSN: 2751-6474 

---

In the post-2011 Revolution years, ideological polarisation and political instability weakened the Tunisian state, freeing much space for business tycoons to largely dominate the political realm. Such “state capture” had a deep impact on the enactment and/or implementation of various policies that would significantly affect inclusive and sustainable growth.

After 2011, tycoons benefitted from the lax and discretionary implementation of policies. Other social actors were unable to similarly gain from the open political system to match their power, with the exception of the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT). Tycoons’ market power remained unchallenged because of their control over the banking sector, the high barriers to entry in many industries, and the limited implementation of laws in favour of startups. All this negatively impacted on productivity and the adoption of greener technologies.

The UGTT managed to defend the salaries and labour rights of mainly public sector employees, while social protection for private sector ones diminished. Big business did not abide by these laws, while small and medium enterprises lacked the financial resources to comply. The same applies to the implementation of occupational health and safety hazards regulations.

The UGTT mostly placed environmental rights after social rights. The state often only consulted environmental civil society organisations (CSOs) for show. Mutual distrust between the UGTT and these CSOs prevented the formation of a strong political coalition between them.

CONTEXT

Social actors’ representative organisations and their effective participation in decision-making should be fostered through more collaborative governance institutions. Building mutual trust between different CSOs would also help here. This would prevent favouritism and provide more beneficial input to the state, both serving to promote more inclusive and sustainable growth for Tunisia.

POST -REVOLUTION STATE CAPTURE IN TUNISIA

The Tunisian Revolution of 2010/2011 is a remarkable event in the history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The subsequent democratic transformation – mixed with poor governance performance and ideological rivalries – set the conditions, however, for the emergence of state–society relations characterised by state capture, which was uncommon in the MENA region. Under “state capture,” managers and owners of large enterprises in terms of employment size or market share (“tycoons”) manipulate an (often newly established) open political system and accordingly dominate the state, legislation, and policymaking for their own gain (Hellman, Jones, and Kaufmann 2003; Hellman and Kaufmann 2001; Innes 2014). Factors such as labour segmentation along sectoral and ethnic divides and the inherent organisational problems facing the owners and managers (here called “entrepreneurs”) of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) limit the ability of other social actors to enjoy solid and cohesive organisational representation and thus to challenge tycoons’ dominance.

Accordingly, state capture enables tycoons to reap the benefits from the implemented policies and regulations. Unlike in other MENA countries, where they are subservient to the state, tycoons in state-capture settings are less compelled to tolerate the state’s pacifying measures vis-à-vis labour and society. This can result in growing income disparities, often at the expense of workers (González and Nazareno 2022). However, the extent of the losses encountered in terms of welfare and health and safety policies on the employee side is arguably subject to the organisational power of labour unions. The same challenges are true for entrepreneurs and their business associations.

The following analysis on the Tunisian case relies on qualitative data that was collected via several semi-structured interviews conducted by the author in 2022 in Tunis with representatives of key social organisations in the Tunisian industrial sector and civil society actors, as well as with figures from the academic milieu, in addition to data issued in other publications.[1]

Post-Revolution Tunisian state–society relations until 2021 may be described as state capture for a number of reasons. The Tunisian state then was generally weaker than it had been before 2011. One of the leading factors contributing to this outcome was the Islamist–secularist polarisation that reached its climax in 2013 and continued thereafter, as inducing constitutional deadlocks, frequent cabinet changes, general political instability (Carboni 2022; Tamburini 2022), power fragmentation and struggles between the president and government ministries, and ultimately the state’s inability to implement “a coherent long-term economic strategy” (Paciello 2013: 19). The bureaucratic apparatus was a particularly contentious arena for the competing Islamist and secularist political forces, with each camp trying to infiltrate and control it (Boubekeur 2016). Moreover, the administration that persisted from the era of former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1987–2011) as well as many of its constitutive elements – presented as independent technocrats (Carboni 2022) – were inherently hostile to the Islamist Al-Nahda party in power, contributing to blocked reform initiatives and diminished government effectiveness (Marzo 2019). This fragmentation and polarisation paralysed also parliament, negatively affecting its legislative capacity.

Against this background, tycoons’ power was freed from the political constraints of the Ben Ali state while at the same time they maintained connections with the surviving administration. In Tunisia, the term “tycoons” mainly refers to the big-business families who control large market shares in different industrial and other economic sectors. Enterprises controlled by these families through holding groups sometimes fit the definition of SMEs, whereby medium-sized enterprises typically have less than 250 employees (in the United States, up to 500). After the Revolution, tycoons joined dominant political parties, funded electoral campaigns, and won parliamentary seats. They also controlled a significant part of the banking system (Oubenal and Ben Hamouda 2018).

Democratisation opened the way as well for entrepreneurs to organise and defend their interests. Businesspeople were represented by the Union Tunisienne de l’Industrie, du Commerce et de l’Artisanat (UTICA) and the Confédération des Entreprises Citoyennes de Tunisie (CONECT), with the latter being more representative of SMEs. On the other hand, democratisation also unleashed the power of the biggest labour union in Tunisia, the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT), which evolved into a dominant political player and the most organised social actor. However, it mainly represented public sector workers and less so private sector one.

Click here to read the full paper.

---

Bibliography

Aliriza, Fadil (2020), What Democracy for Tunisian Workers?, Tunis: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Available at: https://rosaluxna.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/What-Democracy-for-Tunisian-Workers.pdf (Accessed: 31 August 2023).

Angel-Urdinola, Diego F., Antonio Nucifora, and David Rabalino (eds.) (2015), Labor Policy to Promote Good Jobs in Tunisia: Revisiting Labor Regulation, Social Security, and Active Labor Market Programs, Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Boubekeur, Amel (2016), Islamists, Secularists and Old Regime Elites in Tunisia: Bargained Competition, in: Mediterranean Politics, 21(1), pp. 107–127.

Carboni, Andrea (2022), Non-Party Ministers and Technocrats in Post-revolutionary Tunisia, in: The Journal of North African Studies, 28(1), pp. 151–178.

González, Lucas, and Marcelo Nazareno (2022), Resisting Equality: Subnational State Capture and the Unequal Distribution of Inequality, in: Comparative Politics, 54(2), pp. 303–325.

Guesmi, Khaled, and Jean-Yves Moisseron (2018), European Industrial Policies in Tunisia: A Bottom-Up Assessment, MEDRESET Working Papers 29, Roma: Istituto Affari Internazionali. Available at: https://www.iai.it/sites/default/files/medreset_wp_33.pdf (Accessed: 31 August 2023).

Hellman, Joel S., and Daniel Kaufmann (2001), Confronting the Challenge of State Capture in Transition Economies, in: Finance and Development, 38(3), pp. 31–35.

Hellman, Joel S., Geraint Jones, and Daniel Kaufmann (2003), Seize the State, Seize the Day: State Capture and Influence in Transition Economies, in: Journal of Comparative Economics, 31(4), pp. 751–773.

Innes, Abby (2014), The Political Economy of State Capture in Central Europe, in: Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(1), pp. 88–104.

Labiadh, Ines, and Mohamed Gaaloul (2020), Al-taḥarruqāt al-bī’iyya mā ba‘da al-thawra: Ashkāl iḥtijājiyya mutanawwi‘a min ajl istirdād al-ḥuqūq [The Post-Revolutionary Environmental Movements: Various Forms of Protest to Reclaim Rights], in: Forum Tunisien pour les Droits Economiques et Sociaux (ed.), Munāṣarat al-qaḍāyā al-bī’iyya: Min al-iḥtijāj ilā al-taqāḍī: Al-taqrīr al-sanawī li-qism al-‘adala al-bī’iyya [Supporting Environmental Issues: From Demonstrations to Litigation: The Annual Report of the Environmental Justice Section], Tunis: FTDES, pp. 9–29. Available at: https://www.ftdes.net/rapports/annuelenvi2020.ar.pdf (Accessed: 31 August 2023).

Marzo, Pietro (2019), Critical Junctures, Path Dependence and Al-Nahda’s Contribution to the Tunisian Transition to Democracy, in: Journal of North African Studies, 24(6), pp. 914–934.

Mouelhi, Rim Ben Ayed, and Monia Ghazali Ferchichi (2017), Micro Small and Medium Enterprises in Tunisia, in: Rym Ayadi and Emanuele Sessa (eds.), Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Development in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco & Tunisia: Structure, Obstacles and Policies, The Euro-Mediterranean Network of Economic Studies, pp. 64–74. Available at: https://euromed-economists.org/?wpdmdl=2398 (Accessed: 31 August 2023).

Oubenal, Mohamed, and Houda Ben Hamouda (2018), The Political Economy of Business Elites in Tunisia: Actors, Strategies and Identities, Working Paper 1273, Giza: The Economic Research Forum. Available at: https://erf.org.eg/app/uploads/2018/12/1273.pdf (Accessed: 31 August 2023).

Paciello, Maria Cristina (2013), Delivering the Revolution? Post-Uprising Socio-Economics in Tunisia and Egypt, in: International Spectator, 48(4), pp. 7–29.

Stölting, Sarah (2015), Neighbourhood SME Financing: Tunisia, Luxembourg: European Investment Bank. Available at: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/163413/1/876362994.pdf (Accessed: 31 August 2023).

Tamburini, Francesco (2022), “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Autocracy”: Kais Saied’s “Constitutional Self-Coup” in Tunisia, in: Journal of Asian and African Studies, 58(6), pp. 904–921.

Vatthauer, Jan-Philipp, and Irene Weipert-Fenner (2017), The Quest for Social Justice in Tunisia: Socioeconomic Protest and Political Democratization post 2011, Frankfurt am Main: Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. Available at: https://www.prif.org/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_downloads/prif143.pdf (Accessed: 31 August 2023).

---

Footnotes

[1] Accordingly, developments since summer 2021 and their not yet fully foreseeable consequences do not receive any further attention in this study.

---

Other Recent Articles in the TRAFO Series MECAM Papers

Julius Dihstelhoff, Rachid Ouaissa, and Thomas Richter, Reimagining the Maghreb: Navigating an Autonomous Region in Motion, 29 August 2024

---

About the Author

Mohamed Ismail Sabry is a Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is also a Lecturer at different Universities of Applied Sciences in Germany. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the American University in Cairo (AUC) and his PhD in Economics from Philipps University Marburg in 2013. His professional experience includes working in the field of development in a United Nations Development Programme project in Cairo, among other places. Sabry’s academic fields of interest are Institutional Economics, Economic Development, and Political Economy in the MENA region, and the focus of his research is on state–society relations, state–business relations, and industrial policy. He has published several books in English and Arabic and a number of academic papers in different peer-reviewed journals. From March to June 2022, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the IFG IV “Resources and Sustainability” at the MECAM in Tunis, where he conducted his field research for this paper.

---

Citation: Mohamed Ismail Sabry, State–Society Relations and Sustainable Growth in Tunisia Post-2011, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 24.09.2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/12cdt

---

---