My paper will evaluate rival explanations for what drove the demonstrations in Tunisia. Competing approaches maintain that Tunisians mobilized for one or more of the following reasons: generalized political repression; the particularities of Ben Ali’s dictatorship, including the cult of personality and the regime’s infantilization of its citizens; the regime’s abysmal human rights record; blocked routes to economic prosperity for an increasingly sophisticated and well-educated population; and rich-poor gaps, exacerbated by anger at those whose wealth stemmed from corruption. The paper will begin by making the case for the relevance of these and other grievances in turn, assessing the evidence – both primary and secondary – that each was causally pivotal. Yet the sheer scale of the civic accomplishment of the Tunisian people suggests that no single social, economic, or political vector of grievance is sufficient to explain the outcome. In addition, in part because all of these explanations pertain solely to Tunisia’s domestic context, none of them accounts for the timing of the rupture satisfactorily. The paper therefore will explore the validity of arguments suggesting that two changes to Tunisia’s external political environment in the 2000’s facilitated popular willingness to amass, take risks, and alter the status quo. The first is the rhetorical change in U.S. foreign policy that saw President George W. Bush back away from unconditional support for friendly dictators in the region and call for democratization. President Obama’s speeches on Muslim soil about political pluralization reinforced the shift. While the shift was more rhetorical than actual, to those who were listening it may have been enabling, on the assumption that this rhetoric would function as a limiting factor on the degree to which the U.S. could in practice continue to back dictators in the face of movements demanding political inclusion. The second is a change in the landscape of political Islam. While the 1990s saw radical movements -- some of them violent -- operating on domestic soil in the region, by the 2000s the immediate domestic threat from radical Islam had dissipated. Algeria’s civil war had ended. Egypt had dismantled its Islamic Group. Tunisia’s MTI was in exile. What remained in domestic political arenas or in exile were less threatening, moderate (or moderating) Islamists. Absent the fear that changes demanded of the status quo would lead inexorably either to radical Islamist takeovers or violent regime-Islamist confrontations, citizens had less to fear from their activism.

My paper will trace a progression of the movement from the initial incident in the town of Sidi Bou Zid to the massive demonstrations in Tunis that brought down the Ben Ali regime. It will outline the narrative arc of the movement, highlighting particular moments as critical turning points. Throughout, the paper will pose the question: how were these demonstrations organized and what particular features gave local protests their symbolic power and momentum? I consider the interplay between protester violence (scorched earth vandalism) and non-violent marches in response to state efforts at violent crackdown. What role did cultural forms, like hip hop and rap play in consciousness-raising among the youth? The paper will introduce the notion that there is a historically salient "geography of protest" that manifested itself in a previous popular uprising, the Revolt of 1864 and also in the 1881 anti-colonial resistance.I will briefly compare the two uprisings of 2011 and 1864, tracing how participants in 2011 referred to the revolutionary tradition of the previous revolt. The paper argues that in the case of the 2011 Revolution what made the difference was the participation of a cross section of Tunisian society, demonstrations in Tunis capital, and a network for disseminating information about what was happening that took the event out of the interior, especially as Bouazizi lay dying in a burn unit in the capital. The informational nexus included the triangulation of demonstrators on the ground with cell phone cameras, who then uploaded videos onto known opposition sites, like nawaat.org, whose contents served as news feeds for satellite networks, like al-Jazeera. This feedback loop kept the story of Sidi Bou Zid alive and (inter)nationalized the rebellion. Using video archives, bloggers’ posts, various local and international press articles, and syndicalist communiqués, I will analyze the demands of the protesters and ask why these demands effective? Finally, with a view toward the historical comparison, the paper will critically examine the epithet “Jasmine Revolution."

The Tunisian revolution upended the authoritarian role of Ben Ali’s regime over media outlets in Tunisia. Faced with a popular uprising that was supported by young activists on Facebook and Twitter, Tunisian newspapers, television stations and radio struggled to adapt. This presentation will evaluate the evolution of Tunisian media in the immediate and chaotic aftermath of the Tunisian revolution through the summer of 2011. The presentation will rely on an analysis of media sources (radio broadcasts, television programs, and newspaper articles) for the bulk of paper’s conclusion. As conditions permit, interviews with journalists and other Tunisians who work in the media industries may also add to the paper’s conclusions. In conclusion, this paper will outline the key challenges facing Tunisian media in the aftermath of January 14, 2011. Journalistic freedom, objectivity in reporting and adequate source verification will be addressed. In addition to challenges, the paper will also address the potential for all types of Tunisian media to contribute to the political, economic and social debates that have become a hallmark of civic life in the aftermath of President Ben Ali’s regime. This paper will contain information and perspectives gathered first-hand by the author in Tunisia. From this unique perspective, the paper will deal with the freedom of expression as it applies to the press, the transformation of the media, and its role in a "free society." Some of the questions the paper hopes to address are: How does one go from state propaganda machine to a free press? How is the media trying to regain people's trust in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution? What are people demanding of their media after January 14, 2011?

“Leaderless” and “decentralized,” the revolution with which Tunisia recently surprised the world managed to act harmoniously and express itself with a single voice that toppled its president of 23 years as well as the newly formed interim government dominated by members of his party. The Tunisian people’s goals shifted throughout the different stages of the revolution. The essence of those changing goals was formulated and expressed collaboratively through verbal and non-verbal means. This talk will offer a look into the language of the rallying cries for freedom, solidarity and self-sacrifice that were collaboratively formulated and performed by the Tunisian people both during street protests in the form of slogans, chants and graffiti, as well as in cyber space on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook pages.

How is Tunisia remaking its political institutions after the uprising of January 2011? And how does the perception by Tunisians of their political history plays into the transition process? My paper will focus on the debates and discussions that took place during the year 2011 about the reform of the constitution and the laws organizing political life of Tunisia more generally. In particular, I will examine how democracy was defined throughout these debates, and how the participants (political parties, lawyers, representatives of civil associations….) redeployed narratives from Tunisian history: from reformism and early nationalism to the post-colonial period, in particular the Bourguibian period (1956-1987), but also from Islamic narratives, and from the repertoires of mobilization used by the demonstrators between December 2010 and January 2011 (slogans, messages posted on the internet etc..), to imagine the political future of Tunisia. I will also pay attention to the perception of the modes of transition in other parts of the region of the Middle East such as Egypt -and may be other countries. The paper will analyze televised debates, published materials such as periodicals and videos, as well as interviews that I will conduct in the summer of 2011 with legal scholars and representatives of civil society in Tunisia. It will contribute to a broader analysis of theories of transition.