Papers in this panel evaluate the evolving strategies of a diverse set of political actors critical to Tunisia’s 2010-11 uprising and ensuing transition—the military, the national labor federation, political parties, and foreign democracy promotion organizations. Using interviews, archival research, analysis of survey data, survey experiments, and text analysis, the papers in this panel use recent Tunisian politics as a grounds for developing new understandings of political dynamics with broad importance beyond Tunisia: the conditions under which militaries and labor organizations remain loyal to authoritarian regimes; why some social cleavages but not others become salient to electoral politics; and why some strategies of democracy promotion avoid the appearance of undermining national popular sovereignty.
The first two papers in the panel focus on the conditions under which institutions coopted by many authoritarian regimes—armies and labor unions—turn to confrontational strategies. The first paper focuses on the response of Tunisia’s military to the 2010-11 uprising, a critical period that facilitated the ensuing transition. Based upon interviews with retired officers, government officials, and security experts, the author argues that organizational culture—a function of institutional origins and historical political role—offers a better explanation for the behavior of Tunisian soldiers than does its alternatives. In the second paper, the author uses interviews and archival research to discuss the factors that allowed the Tunisian civil society to sustain the development of democracy. He suggests that the strategic and tactical choices made by the UGTT during its “war of position” with the state apparatus were critical in the definition of the prospects for democratization.
The next two papers focus on elements of party competition unique to transitions from authoritarian rule. In the first, the author examines the conditions under which claims to past suffering bolster the appeal of Islamist politicians in Turkey and Tunisia. Using novel survey experiments and interviews with Tunisian political party leaders, the paper theorizes that only some types of repression offer their victims an electoral boost with mainstream voters. In the second, the author uses computer-assisted text analysis of Tunisian party platforms to understand why distinctions in economic policy have played such a small role in political party competition in the 2011 and 2014 elections. Ultimately, the author argues that Tunisian parties have differentiated themselves most starkly through different visions of populism and technocracy, rather than the competing programs of taxation and redistribution political scientists often assume to universally structure party competition.
The final paper focuses on the issue of foreign democracy promotion, which poses puzzles given that international efforts to strengthen national sovereignty are often perceived as counterproductive. Using interviews to understand the unique strategies of the German foundations, this paper develops the idea of “horizontal” democracy promotion and finds support for it using survey evidence.
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Nathan Grubman
What have been the programmatic contents of party competition in postuprising Tunisia? Political scientists often assume a Left-Right cleavage—pitting the proponents of wealth protection against those of redistribution—to be a ubiquitous feature structuring political party systems. But this type of cleavage has been conspicuously understated or absent during recent party-system liberalization in some parts of the Arab world. With political party competition focusing primarily on questions of identity, Tunisian voters had trouble placing political parties according to their economic policies (Benstead, Lust, and Malouche 2012), Egyptian voters assumed Islamists to be more supportive of redistribution than Communists (Masoud 2014), and people throughout the region have shown little relationship between party choice and preferences for economic policy (Wegner and Cavatorta 2018). These areas of disconnect raise questions regarding the economic policy choices parties in the region present to voters. Have voters failed to understand the distinctions between parties or have parties failed to create distinctions that adhere to the expectations of researchers of comparative politics? To understand how parties have distinguished themselves from each other, especially on questions of economic policy, I use computer-assisted content analysis of the electoral platforms for 14 major political parties that competed in either Tunisia’s 2011 or 2014 elections, as well as interviews with some of their authors. Employing the WORDFISH method (Slapin and Proksch 2008), I present an ideological scaling of the documents as a whole, as well as the passages that focus on social and economic policy. I argue that in most areas of social and economic policy, major Tunisian parties have offered convergent policy platforms. Where they have differed most starkly in talking about economic issues is in their usage of technocratic or populist language. By examining the language Tunisian parties have used to distinguish themselves from each other, even as their policies converge, this paper aims to contribute to the ways in which party systems politicize economic issues in new democracies.
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Pietro Marzo
The power void resulting from the Tunisian regime change opened doors for domestic groups and opposition forces entering the political fray. Scholars have focused extensively on how new parties and civil society actors managed to gain social and political influence in the transitional period. The political vacuum also created opportunities for external actors to rethink their involvement in the country. While regional issues and neighbouring chaotic transitions inevitably affected Tunisia politics, the country seemed to have been less porous to anti-system influences than many of its regional counterparts. Tunisian transitional elites in fact welcomed technical and economic assistance from Western democracies. The US and a plethora of European countries thus entered Tunisia, eventually rebalancing the weight that traditionally Tunisian international partners - France and Italy - had before the revolution. This article explores the way Germany « seized » the opportunities to gain influence in the Tunisian transitional process by increasing the magnitude of its assistance to broad number of sectors, including economic cooperation, democracy promotion, environmental and security issues. The article draws from the theoretical concept of soft power to make sense of German assistance to Tunisia. Indeed, by deploying a number of bodies that reach and interact with a broad spectrum of Tunisian domestic groups, Germany has progressively raised its profile in the country’s political transition, mutating the ways Tunisians perceived Germany and German culture. Relying on qualitative analysis (interviews with German officials and Tunisians and discourse analysis) and survey data (the Arab Transformations Project) ) this study suggests that Tunisians appreciate the German diplomatic approach. This study presents two main findings that contribute to the understanding of Tunisia and Germany relations. First, it claims that the partnership between Germany and Tunisia is “horizontal” and the Germans tailor the assistance on the specific need of their Tunisian partners. In this regard, German foreign policy is not reproducing the top down, semi-imperialist foreign policy France had conducted since Tunisian independence. Second, the study argues that, while generally fulfilling the expectations of its Tunisian partners, Germany is stretching its cultural, economic and diplomatic influence in Tunisia, eventually creating assets for its domestic economy and for its leading role in European policy.
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Ms. Kimberly Guiler
Narratives of political persecution propel the careers of presidents, prime ministers, and prominent activists. Yet despite their seeming importance for gaining and wielding national power, the political psychology of victimhood rarely extends beyond anecdote. Under what conditions do leaders deploy such narratives? When does highlighting one's own political persecution “work” as a strategy of political mobilization? And how are these narratives perceived and acted upon by ordinary citizens? A theory linking political sacrifice to an electoral advantage is supported with evidence from Turkey and Tunisia—two countries where Islamist politicians experienced long-standing political repression. I posit that narratives of political persecution can be effectively deployed by both incumbent and opposition politicians to gain support. The nature of victimhood – whether it is experienced by a targeted group, or is more widespread – conditions when highlighting one’s political persecution mobilizes voters to action.
In a first step, I test the proposed link between political sacrifice and an electoral advantage though two survey experiments in Turkey. Results of the first experiment, conducted with 650 adult Turkish citizens between April and June 2015, reveal that exposure to information about an Islamist candidate's political imprisonment significantly improves respondents' levels of trust, closeness, and likelihood to vote for the candidate. Results of a second survey experiment, conducted with 430 adult Turkish citizens immediately following the July 2016 Turkish coup attempt, provide evidence that narratives of victimhood can also benefit incumbents when the nation feels threatened. Exposure to information that President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an was the victim of an assassination attempt during the failed coup increases trust in President Erdo?an.
Interview and survey data from Tunisia provide strong evidence for the theory’s generalizability, but also furnish its scope conditions. Fifty in-depth interviews with politicians from Tunisia’s nine largest political parties conducted in 2016 strongly suggest that politicians who were persecuted under the Tunisian dictatorship received an electoral advantage during the country’s first post-autocratic elections. Scope conditions are established, however, with null findings from a survey experiment conducted in February 2016, following a period of backlash against the Islamist Al-Nahda and the subsequent rise of an autocratic successor party Nidaa Tounes to power. Whereas narratives of persecution mobilize mainstream voters when repression is generalized, these narratives fall flat when repression is targeted or the actor is not or is no longer a credible victim.
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Mr. Mohamed Dhia Hammami
How can civil society organizations efficiently support a sustainable development of democracy and prevent a democratic breakdown ? This papers suggests that the type of the political regime is determined by the nature of power relationship between the state apparatus and the civil society. Focusing on the role of the Tunisian General Union of Labor (UGTT), I explain that both the organizational strength of civil society organizations and the government's toleration to pluralism are necessary but not sufficient conditions for democratization. The case study of Tunisia’s central union indicates that the engagement of the civil society in a continuous and progressive “war of position” with the state is a critical determinant of the regime type. The theory is built thought an analysis of archival documents and in-depth interviews conducted with current and former leaders and rank-and-file members of the UGTT, as well as political actors who interacted with the union since Bourguiba’s rule. While the strong organizational structure of the union didn’t see any significant change since the 1950s, its willingness to cooperate with the hegemonic political parties of Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes prevented it from exploiting multiple historical opportunity of political openness to advance democracy. In contrast, the combination of both strategic and tactical decisions taken by both the UGTT and the governing elite since the fall of Ben Ali regime in 2011 placed the Tunisian civil society in a posture that prevented the state from using its power to halt the democratization process, and forced it to make further concessions. In addition to the adoption of a militant approach similar to the one taken against Bourguiba regime to claim its independence from the ruling party, the union worked towards the accumulation of power through the exploitation of the divisions between the weakened political party sharing state-power. It only through the sustenance of this conflictual relationship with the state apparatus that the Tunisia’s main civil society organization was able to prevent a democratic backsliding.
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Mr. Nicholas Lotito
When authoritarian regimes face serious mass challenges, they often rely on military backing to remain in power. In revolutionary moments, institutional instability and competing legitimacy claims can severely undermine the principle of civilian control. With civilian leadership in question, soldiers must rely on the military’s organizational culture, a set of shared values, assumptions and beliefs, to guide their decision making. Military responses, from violent repression to complete disengagement, are driven by soldiers’ shared understandings about their proper roles and missions, duties and responsibilities, and relationship to both ruler and ruled. The paper identifies three initial sources of organizational culture in postcolonial armies: the military’s institutional origins, role in national independence, and relationship to the ruling party. Subsequently, organizational learning takes place as the military interacts with foreign military sponsors and the population at home.
The theory is elaborated through a case study of Tunisia during the Arab Spring. The role of the Tunisian Armed Forces in producing Tunisia’s largely nonviolent, prodemocratic regime transition has been widely lauded by scholars and policymakers alike. As such, Tunisia represents a “best case” scenario for civil-military relations during revolution. However, the conventional explanations for this outcome – the military’s weakness, the lack of regime patronage toward military officers, and Tunisia’s ethnic homogeneity – fail to predict the observed processes of revolution and military response. Original interviews with retired Tunisian military officers, government ministers, and security experts offer strong evidence of a cultural mechanism guiding the army’s response to mass protests in 2010-11.
A cross-national quantitative analysis generalizes the theory to a global sample of nonviolent revolutions from 1950-2013. The analysis employs original data on military responses to revolution, which record the use of violent repression by military forces during anti-regime campaigns. The data are designed to be compatible with the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) Data Project (Chenoweth and Lewis 2013). The analysis confirms that organizational culture explains military responses to revolution better than alternative arguments based on capacity, patronage, and ethnicity.
