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

construction of these arrangements, on the question of inequality – the political questionpar excellence. Sometimes there is open discussion of the need to promote sustainabledevelopment and reduce inequalities; but this preoccupation remains purely verbaldiscursive insofar as almost all of the cooperation is realized through budget support andsupport for reforms set out by the Tunisian government. This dualism is now intensified bythe Treaty of Lisbon that has separated the external services (which defines the generalpolicy towards third countries) from the bureaucratic machine of the Commission (whichimplements economic programs). This construction of the economy as an object ofexpertise prevents one from taking into account what we have been analysing in thepreceding pages, namely the fact that the economy is a place for the exercise of power,that the economy is a space in which are deployed social relations, human relations -and thus, also, political relations.84