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

II. 1. The uncertainty and the changing nature of thecurrent political situation: a bias towardscontinuity in economic optionsIt is obviously too risky to engage in an analysis of the developments now occurring in Tunisia,as the changes are recent, the situation evolving and uncertain, and the relations of force onthe ground changing and influencing day-to-day decisions, interpretations and behaviours.This uncertainty concerns the Tunisians primarily, but it also affects Europeans insofar as, in theabsence of a clear vision of what the authorities of the country want, it is difficult for themto propose changes in their approach and take into account a reality that often eludesthem. These uncertainties have increased, at European level, since bureaucratic actors are sonumerous, disagreements and differences of interpretation are no less so, the period in whichmodes of intervention can be reshaped is still in progress, political intentions sometimes findit difficult to materialize in the form of concrete actions and programs, so cumbersome is thefunctioning of these institutions, and so standardized their procedures. For all these reasons,the following analysis should therefore be read with caution. It seems, nonetheless, that thepervasive wait-and-see attitude, like the first interpretations of the situation and the first stepstaken, do point to one emerging trend: that of inertia and continuity as regards economic andsocial areas, in glaring contradiction to the political dynamic that was set in motion in January2011.II.1.A.The priority given to security and stability in a short-term visionSecurity and stability are the two watchwords of the government but also of most politicalactors. A detour through recent history is needed to take into account the political significanceand deeper meaning of these terms. Upon taking power, on 7 November 1987, President BenAli set himself the mission to ‘restore the prestige of the state and end chaos and laxity’ thathad in his view plunged the country into a spiral of debt and deficits so as to risk underminingits independence and sovereignty. Initiating the ‘change’ thus involved prudent debtmanagement, consolidation of public finances and macroeconomic stabilization undertakenwithin the context of the structural adjustment program, but also a strict control of the populationthrough monitoring by police and party. Originally conceived in technical and economic terms,‘stability’ was not, however, any less politically charged from the outset, which, moreover, was ahidden but very real legacy of Bourguiba. The centrality of ‘stability’ actually reflected a strategyof maintaining economic and social balance, and was part of a broader mode of ‘short-term’regulation of violence and conflict, playing simultaneously on fear, threats, and rewards (real orpromised).54Hand in hand with this undeniably repressive dimension, the legitimacy of the Ben Ali regimewas based in part on this vaunted (and supposed) capacity for providing stability, security andorder. The neo-Bourguibism embodied by the present Prime Minister seems to be reproducingthis vision by perpetuating a strategic and political use of restoration, adopting the samesymbolic slogan focused on the quest, for the state, of a prestige allegedly lost by the merefact of predatory behaviour unworthy of Ben Ali and his ‘clan’. We can better understand the