Tunisia: Understanding Conflict 2012 - Johns Hopkins School of ...

well educated, but under or unemployed youth. Similarly, as Daniel Lawner argues,
Tunisia’s civil society was kept weak under the Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes, so that it
is only beginning to emerge one year after the revolution, taking advantage especially of
their access to the same social media that played such an important role in the revolution.
However, they have yet to exert their full impact on the political life of the country,
especially as advocates for human rights, though their influence may make itself more
broadly felt in the next round of parliamentary elections.
Much of the disenchantment with the early post-revolutionary scene stems from
frustration that the interim government has focused so much attention on writing the
constitution, and especially on the issue of the role of Islam in political life, that they
have largely neglected to pay sufficient attention to the most pressing economic problems
that were at the center of the 2011 revolution. Tunisia has a highly educated population,
especially by comparison with most neighboring states, but it also has a very high rate of
unemployment, especially among the youth including those with university degrees.
Furthermore, these economic problems are magnified by a clear bifurcation between the
relatively well-off coastal regions, where tourism and other industries had led to
substantial economic development, and the interior regions in the south and west, which
remain very poor. Furthermore, the short-term effects of the revolution have also
exacerbated the economic problems, by frightening away tourists who were a mainstay of
the country’s economy, and by discouraging new foreign investment. Therefore,
Rebekah Chang emphasizes the necessity for the new government to provide a sense of
security, especially as perceived from abroad, in order to encourage the return of tourists
to Tunisia’s beach resorts and famous historic sites dating from antiquity and to
encourage greater foreign investment and foreign assistance in a politically stable
environment.
From another perspective, Tony Tsai emphasizes the necessity of reforming
Tunisia’s educational system in order to match the skills of graduates with the demands
of Tunisia’s labor markets. Excessive reliance in the recent past on government as the
employer of last resort has left a generation of young graduates trained in skills that are
no longer in demand, while neglecting areas in which Tunisia’s comparative advantage in
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