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 YThis approach, simultaneously bureaucratic, managerial and liberal, is not without its politicaleffects: it leads to a perversion of the logics operating at the heart of the Partnership. A perversionof the economic-political logic, first and foremost. This applies to the rise of budget support insupport of the reforms, for purely managerial reasons: by falling in line with the initiatives of theWorld Bank and the IMF, and working together with them, Europe undermines its new strategyof association that presented itself, it must be remembered, as a break with traditional policiesof cooperation and aid; in particular, it has rendered meaningless the word ‘partnership’, asstructural adjustments and liberalization processes are treated in the South, wrongly or rightly, aswestern strategies of domination. In addition, this strategy of intervening initially in the form ofbudgetary support, following the reforms set out by the states in collaboration with the BrettonWoods institutions and controlling this aid by relatively loose indicators, means leaving a lot ofroom for manoeuvre to the Tunisian authorities and thereby guiding European aid accordingto the political logics of the regimes in power. The aforementioned examples of upgrading andprivatization suggest that, by coming to the support of policies implemented in very specificpolitical contexts in which power relations are also often deployed primarily in the economicfield, European bodies are contributing in spite of themselves to keeping these regimes firmly inpower. This illustrates the second and even more serious risk of perversion: the perversion of thedemocratic logic of the Barcelona Process and more generally of the Neighbourhood Policy. Bygiving primacy to management, community institutions support, de facto, authoritarian regimes.Tunisia is the greatest and now classic example, given its status as an economic model student:since the government can negotiate, projects go ahead properly in terms of deadlines andadministrative management, macroeconomic results are better than in other countries in theregion, so outgoings follow at the pace of this positive feedback, without any real account beingtaken of the political dimension, however theoretically present it may be in the Partnership.It is thus also important to deconstruct the Tunisian ‘miracle’ for another reason: it is this distortedimage which identifies the priorities for action on the part of the Tunisian authorities as well asTunisia’s partners, starting with the Europeans. In fact, contrary to the economic and socialrealities of the country, which unrest has laid bare, the diagnosis drawn up over many yearshas been generally very positive and optimistic. This view is shared by experts and officials ofthe European Union. Thus, in the National Indicative Program 2011-2013 for example, we readthat ‘the economic and social policies of the Tunisian State have achieved positive results inthe social sphere,’ and the same applies to the economic assessment of the country. Otherdocuments also highlight the gradual reduction in the unemployment rate, based on officialTunisian figures.49T h e r h e t o r i c o f ‘ s t a b i l i t y ’ a n d t h e e c o n o m i c ‘ m i r a c l e ’