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

eality,” signified by Tunisian perception. Interviews in Tunisia revealed that most
people considered the most significant post-January 14, 2011 change to be the manner in
which people interacted with others and saw themselves. Khadijah Arfaoui of the
Tunisian Association of Democratic Women believes “revolution” is not a misnomer.
She says that the real revolution was sociological because people’s behavior changed.
They talk to each other, speak out and are unafraid. “Havoc has occurred. People are
speaking where they’ve never spoken before. The first revolution was from
colonialism...this is the second.” (SAIS Group Meeting, 23 January 2012).
Ultimately, the existence of a revolution cannot be determined before the events
have reached a conclusion, which has not yet occurred in Tunisia as critical steps like the
writing of the new constitution are incomplete. In this context, one can conduct a
prospective analysis of events and take into consideration the internal, psychological
changes in the people which have reportedly already taken place and the perception that
this is a revolution by Arfaoui and other Tunisians. The perception that this is a
revolution can be attributed to the idea that the ancien regime was a democracy only in
name, and that Tunisia is now making a political transition to real democracy. For the
Tunisian people, it seems that a revolution exists merely because the majority agrees that
it does, and they are qualitatively changed by the events.
There are implications associated with designating the events as a revolution. The
implicit understanding of revolution is that a total and lasting change has occurred, which
may lead to the premature perception that there is no more work to be done. This would
be detrimental to Tunisia because, though progress has been made, many of the root
issues which began the movement have yet to be resolved.
For the purposes of this work, therefore, because the dust has yet to settle, it
would be premature to make a claim for or against the designation of “revolution”
without making assumptions about how the events will conclude. Therefore a more
accurate classification would be civil disobedience, and for the purposes of consistency,
this paper will refer to the events as “the movement.”
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