Abstract
What does the Tunisian economy look like after five decades of economic liberalization and a revolution? This work looks at the social structure characterizing capital in Tunisia by focusing on production relations between members of the capitalist class. Taking an approach grounded in Marx's definition of capital "as not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to a definite historical formation of society" and heterodox economic theories, it shows how the roll-back of the state after the short post-colonial socialist parenthesis of the 1960s, and the promotion of (neo-)liberal economic policies, capital ended up crystallized in a relatively stable network structure that shapes class solidarity between capitalists, the preservation of wealth and power within a small oligarchy with a core-periphery hierarchical structure. Following a mixed-methods approach, this study relies on an extensive empirical analysis of corporate networks in today's Tunisia to explore the anatomy of the dominant bourgeoisie. It confirms that capitalism does not follow the axioms of neoclassical economics that informed the “crony capitalism” literature where capitalists’ reliance on interpersonal connections is an anomaly specific to dictatorial regimes of the regime. It argues that social ties between elite business-owners play a critical role in facilitating cooperation and resource-pooling between capitalist class members. It concludes that, despite the continuous mobilization following the fall of the Ben Ali regime, the Tunisian revolution failed to get rid of the dominant oligarchy.
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