This paper examines the struggle between local and national actors in Tunisia’s transition following 2011. One of the first measures taken by the Minister of Interior after Ben Ali’s flight established guidelines along which new ‘special delegations’ were created, replacing the country’s previous municipal councils. The directive came from above, but the special delegations were the result of local level negotiations and reflected local power structures. In the years that followed, some of the special delegations remained in place, yet others were changed despite the postponement of elections. Were these changes a result of bottom-up or top-down initiatives? Which actors, political, civil or administrative, played a role in the changes? What issues triggered them? This paper examines case studies of four municipalities, Hammamet, Gafsa, Zarzis, and Nefta, focusing on changes from October 2011-September 2013, a time in which they were under pressure from the Troika for change. It relies on elite and key-informant interviews with municipal council members, civil society actors, scholars, journalists and public administration employees conducted in 2012 and 2014, as well as a review of documents, to examine the pressures for change, the nature of the local stakeholders, and the outcome of the struggle over municipal control. The results of this paper raise important questions regarding the role of the local level in transitions. The literature on democratic transitions deals primarily at the national political level, (Linz & Stepan 1996; Przeworski 1986), yet this study, as well as literature from Latin American, Asian and post-Soviet transitions, indicates that the local and national level are an important part of the struggle during political transitions (Gonzalez 2013; Gary 2011; Gel’man 2003; Smith 1998).

On October 26, 2014, Tunisia held it’s second legislative election nearly three years after nationwide protests resulted in the resignation and departure of the country’s longtime dictator, Zine Abedine Ben Ali. While Tunisia’s transition to democracy is still very much a work in progress, it has become a cliché to describe it as the Arab Spring’s only success story. In 2011, the country’s premier Islamist party, the Ennahda Movement, cruised to victory with 37% of the popular vote: no other party received more than 10%. In 2014, Islamists lost handily to Nidaa Tounes, a loose coalition of secular rivals with links to the former regime. Nidaa Tounes received 38% of the popular vote, compared to Ennahda’s 27%. The magnitude of Ennahda’s loss is stunning: in absolute terms, the party lost over a third of its voters. This paper builds on an original dataset of electoral returns at the polling station level (N = 10,567) to account for vote switching and electoral volatility in the Tunisian context. I use evidence from four recent Tunisian elections: legislative elections in 2011, legislative elections in 2014, and the first and second round of presidential elections in 2014. The dataset is currently in the final stages of completion, and results of the analysis are not currently available. I also use delegation-level census data and demographic, economic, and social surveys from the National Institute of Statistics in Tunisia to analyze patterns of volatility over Tunisia’s first competitive elections.

This paper highlights Tunisia’s Truth and Reconciliation process following the 2011 revolution, which removed Zayn al-‘Abidin Ben ‘Ali’s authoritarian regime from power and installed a new democratic political order. It presents a comprehensive portrait of Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission, monitoring its emergence, ongoing work, leadership, and influence on public life. Beyond gaining greater familiarity with current developments in post-revolutionary Tunisia, this study carries broader ramifications that extend beyond Tunisia's borders. It offers lessons to other societies across the region currently experiencing similar processes, or hoping to initiate them in the future, and contributes to the wider debate concerning the impact Truth and Reconciliation processes in various settings. This paper charts the background to the establishment of the Truth and Dignity Commission in the context of Tunisia's pre and post-revolutionary history and politics, and the general theoretical literature concerning reconciliation processes. The 15 member commission was formally launched in June 2014. Its mandate was intended to employ judicial and non-judicial mechanisms to investigate gross human rights violations committed by the Tunisian state since its independence, provide compensation and rehabilitation to victims, and serve as an arbiter in corruption cases and human rights violations if agreed by victims. The paper then offers an overview of the commission's work, and its struggle to carry out its mission against the backdrop of increasing government efforts to reduce its mandate and influence. The government's 2015 legislative proposal that offers general amnesty for former officials, and allows Tunisia's president to handle cases of businessmen accused of misusing state funds, is a recent example of the commission's difficulty to pursue its goals. Finally, this paper assesses Tunisia's prospects of completing a reconciliation process, given its current political reality. Sources for this paper include official documents and legislation concerning the commission's establishment, interviews with its leading figures, reports about its work and impact on Tunisian society, and theoretical studies of Truth and Reconciliation projects. Its conclusions, which illuminate the commission's difficulties, raise doubts about the durability of the entire reconciliation process in Tunisia. Moving beyond obtaining a better understanding of Tunisia current politics, this paper adds alternative perspectives from Tunisia to the study of Truth and Reconciliation efforts, expanding the contours of the debate surrounding this topic.

In this paper we report findings from a mixed methods study of communication behavior and effects among young, educated Tunisians regarding the Parliamentary and Presidential elections of 2014. Specifically, we report results from statistical analyses of survey data provided by an opportunity sample of Tunisian university students in Spring 2015. The questionnaire is the third in a series, in which the first two asked about information sources, such as TV, newspapers, Internet and social media, regarding the 2011 uprising. The questionnaire reported in this paper asked participants which information sources they used to most often to get information related to the 2014 Presidential and Parliamentary elections (e.g., candidates, policies, protests). We use communication behavior theory to explain respondents’ use of different information sources, with a view to providing empirical data regarding the reliability of sources, the sharing of information with family and friends, and the respondents’ sense of being well-informed and knowledgeable (i.e., political information efficacy). Our results show that respondents not only used face-to-face communication, but also predominantly used the Internet, including social media, especially Facebook, to find information and to share it with family and friends. Very few respondents used Twitter; this is consistent with our two earlier surveys of young, educated Tunisians from the same university with regard to their use of different information sources to stay informed about the 2011 uprising. Even among those respondents who used Twitter, they did not rate it very reliable. Respondents predominantly used online sources of information and judged them to be more reliable than traditional broadcasting, with the exception of Al-Jazeera TV (whether online or broadcast). Regression analyses show that the use of perceived online sources and the sharing of information with family and friends predicted higher levels of political information efficacy. In prior studies, political information efficacy is strongly associated with increased political participation. Our finding of the use and sharing of online sources of information leading to higher political efficacy suggests that democratic tendencies in Tunisia are increasingly supported by online information sources.