tunisia after 14 january and its social and political economy - Refworld

T U N I S I A A F T E R 1 4 J A N U A R Y A N D I T S S O C I A L A N D P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M YT H E I S S U E S A T S T A K E I N A R E C O N F I G U R A T I O N O F E U R O P E A N P O L I C Ythe other, the ability to reform and stabilise the country in macro-economic terms (controllingdeficits and inflation), to undertake liberalisation, especially with regard to foreign countries,as well as a variety of sector-based restructurings; and finally, the decision to take over thesocial question and to envisage liberalism only insofar as it can be combined with attentionto social issues. The centrality of ‘stability’ in the discourse on the economic ‘miracle’ was atrump card that the Ben Ali regime skilfully used in its relationships with its international partners,especially with the most important of these, the Europeans. In any case, the latter never ceasedto support the way priority was given to a ‘stability’ whose outlines still remained conceived invague and woolly terms. Europe’s susceptibility to this discourse often lay behind its conciliatoryattitude when faced with the economic failings that were noted (for instance, the need torestructure the banking sector, to clean up public finance or even to fight corruption and thepredatory practices that had intensified at the end of Ben Ali’s reign) and especially with theflipside of this discourse, comprising systematic violations of human rights, political freedomsand fundamental rights – violations that were carried out with complete impunity, in the nameof the war on extremist movements, seen as vectors of instability.25