4
Tunisia: Strong State, Strong Society

History spared independent Tunisia the pain of state-building. It did not, however, endow the newly self-governing nation with a well-rooted indigenous political culture of civil society. Under French colonial tutelage, Tunisians had participated in civic organizations as widely divergent as the scouts, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Young Tunisians, the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), and, eventually, the General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT), but the political independence of such organizations was not well enough established to resist corporatist pressures exerted by the renewed Tunisian state. Threats to the nationalist movement's survival had amplified its concerns for unity, and with the acquisition of power at independence, long-standing political strategies were not readily set aside. Even so, as political autonomy came within grasp in the mid 1950s and leaders of the Neo-Destour grappled with the question of what would constitute a desirable political framework, a model of competitive democracy did gather some support. By the early 1960s, however, single-party rule was well entrenched, and electoral competition had become unthinkable. For most of his countrymen, moreover, President Habib Bourguiba had become indistinguishable from the state. Indeed, Bourguiba promoted this view. To a journalist's question about Tunisia's political system he reportedly exploded, "What system? I am the system!"^[1]

Progressively over Bourguiba's thirty-year rule, those who did not share his views or belong to his party were excluded from effective political participation. The party that initially had promised to school citizens in democratic forms, encouraging rational discussion and constructive criticism,^[2] was reduced to a mouthpiece for directives issuing from the presidential palace at Carthage. The legislature was patently ineffective, and local party cells only offered Tunisian men a chance to sound off harm-

lessly. Over time, more and more Tunisians became disaffected with the regime and the socioeconomic measures it pressed; by the mid 1980s, a sizable segment of the population felt that Tunisian policies bore little relationship to Tunisian culture, and that the state served only a well-connected few. Tunisian society revealed its own strength in the form of a clandestine Islamist political movement, which managed to flourish despite concerted policies of repression.

Bourguiba's thirty-first and final year in power was a reign of chaos and terror marked by erratic cabinet shuffling and the arrest and detention of thousands of Islamists. When in November: 1987 Prime Minister Zine el Abidine Ben Ali orchestrated a coup that with little effort toppled the aging and enfeebled Bourguiba, Tunisians heaved a collective sigh of relief. The coup was publicly justified by Article 57 of the Constitution, which provided for transfer of state powers to the prime minister in the event of the president's incapacity, and a statement to that effect by seven of the country's leading physicians (including Bourguiba's own) was paraded at home and abroad. The rhetorical importance accorded to the legality of the transition did more than enhance perceptions of the new regime's legitimacy. It raised popular hopes that the impartiality of law might replace the vagaries of personal rule.

Few of those hopes have been fully met. Liberalizing legal measures proposed by Ben Ali's new government and adopted by a revitalized legislature in 1988 were followed just three years later by a new campaign of repression directed at the Islamists, who had still not been admitted to the formal political arena, but who nevertheless stubbornly refused to go away. The political game established at independence remained largely intact, and the dynamics of state-society relations in contemporary Tunisia continue to be shaped by patterns that evolved in the early years after independence. During that time the central state apparatus anchored itself firmly, and subsequent efforts to chip away at its powers have met with only limited success. The Tunisian state remains the strongest in North Africa, but the vicissitudes of personal rule have weakened its ability to meet political challenges, and the discordant voice of society has grown stronger. Before we turn to the implicit contest, the state itself, and the dynamics by which it came to serve patrimonial interests, must be examined more closely.

The Origins of a Strong State

The Tunisian state was born well before abrogation of the treaties of 1881–83 recognizing the French protectorate allowed it to govern independent of colonial oversight. Following six centuries of military dominion by a

succession of Arab and Berber dynasties, the preliminary work of state-building had been launched in the thirteenth century with the rise of the Hafsids dynasty. The Morocco-based al-Murabitin (Almoravids) had in the twelfth century A.D. successfully united the entire Maghrib, but in 1227 A.D. the descendants of a local governor, 'Abd al-Wahid ibn Abi Hafs, successfully claimed dominion over the territory known as Ifriqiya (Africa). In the early years of their rule, the Hafsids encouraged Andalusian Muslims fleeing Spain to resettle in the territory. They put the refugees' renowned craftsmanship and technical skills to good use in extensive public works projects that revitalized the city of Tunis. New fortifications were erected, the first consulates were established, and the university attached to the Zaytuna mosque acquired a reputation throughout the Islamic world as an important center of instruction in Maliki jurisprudence. Successive generations of Hafsid rulers relied on Arab nomads to consolidate their political hold and rewarded their service with land grants (iqtas ) to tribal leaders. The more stable economic base provided by the grants strengthened the Arabs' social position and allowed their influence to grow. Arab tribal shaykhs came to represent the Tunis government, Arabic emerged as the dominant language, and cultural distinctions that divided Arabs and autochthonous Berbers gradually faded. By the time of the dynasty's collapse in 1534, the eastern part of Ifriqiya had become Tunisia—the land of Tunis—and its people Tunisians.^[3]

More than 150 years elapsed before the Ottoman Turks, who succeeded the Hafsids, began to mold the emergent nation into a bona fide state. Early Ottoman rulers were locked in internal political struggles that spared little attention for state-building. Only when administrative leaders (beys ) established firm control over rival military commanders (deys ) in the early eighteenth century did the Ottoman occupiers actively set about integrating Turkish rule and Tunisian society. The beys further Arabized the bureaucracy and incorporated local religious leaders into decision-making structures. International commerce remained pivotal to the economy, although domestic production for export replaced corsair activity as a principal source of revenue. When an economic downturn toward the end of the eighteenth century dangerously inflated international debt and threatened to expose the Tunisian state to European designs, the Hussainid beys tried to strengthen their position through internal reforms. Ahmad Pasha (1837–55) took the process furthest, inducting Tunisian conscripts into his army, and investing local notables in the administration through the practice of tax farming.^[4] Beylical resolve to escape European domination inspired measures that despite disrupting the prosperity of Tunisian

society had the effect of shaping the Ottoman garrison into a Tunisian state.

In the end, beylical efforts to maintain independence were not successful. Economic investments did not yield sufficient returns; increased taxes led to uprisings in the countryside; and political reforms, including a brief constitutional experiment and the creation of an appointed legislative body, failed to engage the elite adequately.^[5] By 1869, Tunisia was effectively in European financial receivership, a poor position from which to stave off imperial designs. From 1873 to 1877, Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey's prime minister, Khayr al-Din Pasha, undertook fiscal, educational, and governmental reforms to avert a European takeover; it was only a matter of time, though, before the French, installed in Algeria since 1830, found the requisite excuse to move their troops eastward. A protectorate formally created in 1883 established the French resident general and what would soon become a substantial French bureaucracy as the effective governors of Tunisia. All the same, to encourage popular compliance with their regime, the new French masters left local structures intact (including the beylical throne), and over the next seventy years, the colonial power saw clear interest in strengthening the state. French colonists were the direct beneficiaries of efforts to develop the political and economic infrastructure, but Tunisia at independence would as a result inherit a territorial state with a relatively elaborate administration. Colonial policies extended the state's effective control beyond urban centers and eventually replaced kinship networks with territorial links as the basis of governance.

The first French effort was to organize a standing army, financial exigencies having obliged the bey to reduce the number of his troops in 1863. The French took a census in 1883 and under the provisions of an 1860 law that had fallen into disuse began drafting conscripts soon thereafter. The draft assured the French-run state's monopoly of force and at the same time allowed the state to extend its presence to the hinterland. Although residents of Tunis and sons of notables could be exempted from service, military recruitment was systematized; upon discharge, military pensions and other benefits assured reintegration of soldiers into civil society.^[6] Social control was otherwise assured by the extension of beylical administrative offices and by the creation of technical services within the state bureaucracy. Administrative duties that once had fallen to tribal leaders were by the turn of the century assigned on the basis of territorial districts. Public infrastructure and social services were overseen by offices within the Prime Ministry and under complete control of the French; they further oriented Tunisians toward the impersonal state and away from kinship ties.

Lisa Anderson notes that administrative reform, in addition to furthering social control, played a critical role in the process of colonial land acquisition. As part of their work to delimit administrative boundaries, colonial administrators also began establishing title to land in efforts to clarify and expand the real estate market.^[7] Basic elements of the Tunisian customary land-tenure system were overturned when colonial policies redefined mulk lands (fully alienable private property), restricted pasturage rights, and oversaw the sale of domain lands previously distributed as revocable land grants. Only clearly identified communal lands (arsh ) and inalienable lands (habus ), set aside in trust for the benefit of religious foundations or as the indivisible property of private families, continued to enjoy limited protection.^[8] In the process of expanding the supply of alienable property available to settlers, French policies also destroyed established patterns of transhumant pastoralism and led to the gradual replacement of the traditional sharecropping contract with seasonal wage labor. Both village solidarity and tribal social structures were consequently undermined, and the authority of central political forces was reinforced.^[9]

By the time Tunisia was granted independence in 1956, a process of political development spread over seven centuries had equipped the monarchy with all the elements of a modern state. A centralized administration levied taxes and its representatives were well integrated throughout the territory. Colonial interests had also seen to it that the central government established its right to monopolize force, recruiting and regulating police powers. Both the policies and the institutions of the protectorate had, however, been oriented to the needs of the colonial power. It was left to the newly independent government, reborn as a republic in 1957, to take the reins of state institutions and political mechanisms and redirect them to serve the interests and respond to the demands of the Tunisian people.

Co-opting the State: The Politics of Personal Rule

It was only in a technical sense that the French transferred the reins of state to Lamine Bey in 1955. Bourgeois merchants, artisans, community leaders, and certain 'ulama—most of them from Tunis—had formed the Destour (Constitution) party in the 1920s to call for modest political reforms. By the end of that decade, they had been joined by a class of young professionals, many of them from the coastal Sahel region and most of them educated in France, who were interested in more radical reforms. In 1934 the young professionals broke away from the Destour (subsequently

identified as the Vieux, or Old, Destour) to head a nationalist party, the Neo-Destour, that would call for increasing Tunisia's autonomy and ultimately secure independence. The lawyer and journalist Habib Bourguiba was recognized as the Neo-Destour's leader, although responsibility for the movement was shared within an expansive circle of associates and Bourguiba himself spent many of the years between 1934 and 1955 as a prisoner of the French. For more than two years a nationalist militia (fellagha ) waged a guerrilla war of raids and selective attacks against French colonists, and despite pressures from equally militant settlers, France wearied of the struggle. The French prime minister, Pierre Mendès-France, opened negotiations in July 1954, and from house arrest in France, Bourguiba served as chief adviser to the Tunisian negotiators. Recognizing the critical role he played, the French released him to participate more fully in the final, most sensitive stages of the talks.

Even before arrangements for the transfer of power were complete, the nationalist movement under Bourguiba's aegis began to appropriate institutions that had served the colonial power and the Ottoman beys before them. It helped that while the ex-prisoner Bourguiba was fêted as a visiting statesman in France, the ruling bey was thoroughly ignored. Unlike his predecessor, Moncef Bey, whose avowed nationalism had won him popular appreciation rarely enjoyed by a bey, Lamine Bey had been a more or less willing tool of the French since his installation in 1943. By the mid 1950s, even that power base had eroded. With accords for internal autonomy concluded, in 1955 the shift of real power was apparent to all, and the bey increasingly found himself bowing to pressures from the Neo-Destour.^[10] At their behest, he promulgated a series of decrees that sealed his own fate by vesting the right and power to choose the nature of future governance in a "Constituent Assembly."

What followed is well known. Newly enfranchised Tunisians elected a Constituent Assembly in March 1956 and with great fanfare acclaimed Bourguiba as their president. With the Neo-Destour's blessing a few weeks later, Bourguiba accepted the bey's invitation to form a government and assumed the office of prime minister. In July the following year, the assembly voted unanimously to depose the monarch, declaring Tunisia a republic. Habib Bourguiba was designated temporary head of state, a position solidified in 1959 when by provisions of the new Constitution, he was formally elected president. Already by that time, however, Bourguiba had come to embody the state. His hold on power, reinforced by a 1974 decision to name him president for life, remained strong up through his forcible removal from office in 1987.

However familiar, the chronicle of the transition from protectorate to republic bears reexamination. It was in this period that the rules that would govern state-society relations were drafted and the format of independent Tunisia's political game were established. A close look at the transition sheds light on the process by which the political system came to be dominated by a single individual and at the same time redirects attention to those shut out of power. Some of those opposed to Bourguiba were eliminated, and others were integrated into modern Tunisian society. Still others retreated to nurse their wounds, without surrendering the animosity they bore Habib Bouguiba and the Neo-Destour. This first political battle established basic divisions within Tunisian politics, which in turn inform contemporary social movements and will help clarify the political role eventually played by the Tunisian League of Human Rights.

Both to set the immediate stage and to anticipate enduring social divisions, it is important to establish that in 1955, Bourguiba's hold on the nationalist movement was not uncontested. Through Bourguiba's intermittent years in prison or exile, the Neo-Destour had developed alternative leadership structures. From nearly the time of its formal inception in 1934, Salah Ben Youssef, a politically astute young lawyer from the island of Djerba, played a pivotal role in the shadow party. A French policy of repression in 1938 generally succeeded in dismantling the Neo-Destour, and after Bourguiba exchanged police surveillance for exile to Cairo in 1945, it was Ben Youssef who, together with Mongi Slim, reassembled the party structure.^[11] Ben Youssef's ties to Djerban merchants helped him build the Tunisian Union of Crafts and Commerce (UTAC) and the General Union of Tunisian Farmers (UGAT); by 1947 he had become the party's real "patron."^[12] He collaborated closely with Bourguiba until 1954, but by the late 1940s a personal rivalry between the two nationalist leaders was already apparent. In 1948 they worked out a compromise that was approved despite procedural objections by delegates to the party congress: Ben Youssef would remain the Neo-Destour's secretary-general, and Bourguiba would become its president. With competition from three vice presidents, Bourguiba—still in Cairo—was marginalized within the party. Fears of being altogether excluded appear to have motivated Bourguiba's return to Tunisia in September 1949,^[13] and through the spring of 1950 he made concerted efforts to consolidate his own support. For different reasons, both the weakened bey and the French preferred Bouguiba to Ben Youssef, and Bourguiba finally secured the decisive edge over his rival by making himself indispensable in negotiations for internal autonomy.^[14]

In retrospect it is apparent that the political contest between Habib

Bourguiba and Ben Youssef had been largely decided by late 1955, but widespread criticism of the autonomy protocols signed in June provided Ben Youssef with fuel for his final drive to control the nationalist movement. It also heightened Bouguiba's insecurity. Historical accounts have stressed Ben Youssef's opportunism and his ultimate defeat,^[15] but the resonance of his Arab nationalism and Islamic rhetoric among large segments of the population is equally noteworthy. More than ten thousand people came to a meeting called by Ben Youssef on October 15, 1955, to protest his ouster from the Neo-Destour's political bureau a few days before. Ben Youssef had given a fiery speech denouncing the autonomy accords at the Zaytuna mosque on October 7, and the next day the Neo-Destour's political bureau quietly convened. Bahi Ladgham, who was influential as a party stalwart but also critical of the accords, was absent. Ben Youssef, apparently, was not invited.^[16] When party delegates, pressured by their leadership, confirmed Ben Youssef's expulsion at their congress in Sfax a few weeks later, twenty thousand Tunisians rallied to his support at the Géo André Stadium in Tunis and chanted slogans invoking a jihad against the French.^[17] About one-third of the Neo-Destour cells had been seen as pro-Youssef prior to the Sfax congress,^[18] and particularly in Youssefist strongholds in the south and in Tunis, the rupture within the party was not easily mended. In response to Ben Youssef's appeal, hundreds of fellaghas again resorted to arms, and only intervention by the French in a Tunisia nominally autonomous in its internal affairs staved off civil war in 1956. Even so, the rebellion inspired by Ben Youssef eventually claimed more than twice as many lives as had been lost during the two years of armed struggle against the French sanctioned by the Neo-Destour.^[19] Prominent Youssefist dissidents were eventually captured, tried, and in many cases executed. Salah Ben Youssef, who had escaped to Libya in January 1956, was himself assassinated in 1963. The Neo-Destour emerged intact from the internecine struggle between two gifted leaders, but apparent disloyalties were not forgotten, or forgiven, as policies were hammered out in the new republic.

The Ben Youssef affair signifies the emergence of an important social fissure, but the orchestration of his ouster also points to an emerging practice of procedural manipulations that signaled the beginnings of personal rule. Already in 1949, party members had met formally to complain about Bourguiba's proclivity to issue orders that bypassed the party hierarchy.^[20] The highly irregular vote to expel Ben Youssef was only the first such move by a regime that came to rely on extraformal mechanisms to achieve political ends. Such actions would mark the period of transition and generally characterize periods of difficulty faced by the republic over the next

thirty years. Political norms that undergirded a patrimonial view of the state developed in four distinct aspects of the political process. Electoral rules helped fuse party and state, reinforcing the family metaphor and the authority of the "father" at the structure's apex, discussed in Chapter 3. Both the legislature and the courts were stripped of their independence, and as they were curbed, checks on presidential power were removed. Finally, the state developed police powers to serve in extremis. Even with Ben Ali's new government in: 1987, the working rules that had been crafted three decades before would prove difficult to dislodge.

Electoral Rules

Tunisia prior to 1956 did not have a history of electoral process. Members of the legislative body established by the short-lived 1862 Constitution were appointed directly by the bey. Within the Neo-Destour, electoral procedures had generally been informal and consensual, despite sophisticated by-laws. The electoral procedures established shortly after the internal autonomy accords had been concluded anchored themselves well, however, and came firmly to establish who would be allowed to play the political game. In January 1956, Bourguiba personally—and with little prior consultation—pressured the bey to promulgate an electoral law setting up a system of straight majority list voting intended to produce a strong government. Voters within a district would effectively choose among lists of candidates assembled by different parties or independents without the possibility of panachage , combining candidates from the various lists. The system not only guaranteed Neo-Destour domination; from the start, the winner-take-all rules also eliminated even symbolic representation by party opponents and independents. The measure displeased many both on the basis of its content and for the manner in which it had been decided. Those in the opposition—including communists, remnants of the Vieux Destour, and most important, Youssefists—had argued for a proportional allocation of Assembly seats based on the distribution of votes across the lists, as had independents and many within the Neo-Destour itself. Neo-Destour leaders, for their part, were disturbed that Bourguiba had bypassed them to work out an essentially private deal with the bey.

As elections neared, the Neo-Destour formulated a national front that incorporated its affiliates as interest groups within the party. Candidate lists were drawn up by party chiefs after consultation with leaders of the UGTT, UTAC, and UNAT. Despite the odds, the Communist Party ran lists in two of the eighteen electoral districts, as did a group of independents in one district. In most circumscriptions, opponents of the Neo-Destour could

only express their discontent by nonparticipation—which they did in Tunis and the Youssefist stronghold of Djerba.^[21]

When municipal elections were held a year later, both independent lists and panachage were permitted. Once again the Neo-Destour swept the elections, but in this round victory was not so complete. Officially sanctioned slates were contested in several municipal districts, often by individuals who simply wanted to unseat a local clique. In three districts independents won a straight majority, but their victory was short-lived. To mitigate political and administrative confusion, the central government soon replaced the independent councils.^[22] At neither grassroots nor higher levels was the party prepared to accept pluralism.

Opposition parties would soon be altogether outlawed. In the early 1980s, they were allowed a cautious return, but the Neo-Destour (by then known as the Destourian Socialist Party, or PSD) still proved unwilling to share power. The results of the nominally contested legislative elections of 1984 were flagrantly falsified, and the PSD's stranglehold on the legislature, and the greater political system, was maintained.

Ben Ali's overthrow of Bourguiba did not in any way alter this aspect of the political game. Despite great fanfare about pluralism and the proliferation of parties in the first two years of his rule, the 1989 legislative elections delivered a blow to all who had hoped for significant change. Electoral reforms promulgated in 1988 essentially maintained the system intact: candidates were to be elected by district slates, and all candidates were required to obtain a signature indicating exclusive support (parrainage ) from seventy-five local voters. Small parties found it difficult even to field a slate of candidates, and where such hurdles were cleared, the winner-take-all rules of straight-list voting virtually excluded opposition. Thus while Islamists running as independents in some districts garnered as much as 30 percent of the popular vote, once again all seats were claimed by the Destourian Party, renamed the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD) in: 1988.

Widespread disaffection with a new political game that yielded results identical to the old led to a second set of reforms in 1993. Within a National Assembly expanded by 22 seats, 144 deputies would be elected on the basis of a straight majority list from 25 district-level slates—thus preserving the winner-take-all aspects of the election. The 19 remaining seats would be distributed among parties that did not win a clear majority, in proportion to their share of the popular vote. In this way, the Tunisian Parliament in March 1994 was opened to opposition parties: the MDS seated ten deputies; the Ettajdid Movement (formerly the Tunisian Com-

munist Party) won four deputies; the Union of Democratic Unionists (UDU), three; and the Party of Popular Unity (PUP), two.

For most of independent Tunisia's history, political leaders have not been able to conceive of opposition and contest as a positive process; "opponents" have effectively been excluded or incorporated into centralized political structures. Doubting the capacity of the new governmental edifice to withstand centrifugal pressures, early leaders did not allow the discourse of divergent interests, competition, and conflict to develop within independent Tunisia. That heritage was carried forward, and the result at the level of electoral procedure has been a fixed game. Of the 1956 electoral outcome, the pro-Youssefist daily As Sabah commented with bitterness: "The results were those known by everyone, in Paris and in Tunis, weeks in advance. This campaign was an artifice."^[23] The same could be written, with little more commentary, of every election over the following thirty-three years. The elections of March 1994 opened the door to parliamentary plu-ralism, but as will be discussed below, they did not give access to the largest segment of Tunisian oppositionists. Moreover, the legal requirement that a presidential candidate have the parrainage of deputies or mayors effectively precluded competition for the presidency.

Tunisia's electoral barriers did more than exclude opponents of the regime and limit the choice of president and the composition of parliament: by limiting competition over several decades, they promoted fusion of party and state. Reforms enacted in 1958 made party structures parallel with new administrative offices, and in the process they also abolished the most representative, and the most politically independent, structures within the Destour Party. By the end of the 1950s, administrative and party structures were both subjected to hierarchical control, and Bourguiba, as president and head of state, dominated both. The absence of electoral competition assured his ability to control all the political players, which he did with shrewd insight into personality and position. Those who failed to follow his prescriptions were simply removed from office, perhaps to be reintegrated into the higher echelons as time passed and circumstances altered.^[24] At the top level, players were rarely left in one place long enough to build up a personally loyal clientele, although from 1968 to the end of their marriage in 1986, Wassila Bourguiba exercised increasing influence. Many top officials owed primary loyalty to her, to the extent that Sophie Bessis and Souhayr Belhassen suggest that she was in fact, if not in title, Tunisia's vice president. Bourguiba sought and heeded her advice, but there were times when concern about Wassila's growing influence itself motivated reshuffling.^[25] In a political game of musical chairs, cabinet

members who managed to develop independent followings were soon transferred to new posts, and new clienteles. Alternatively, a budding rival's own lieutenants were removed from positions of power or politically discredited. The party's political bureau was not as easily controlled as the cabinet, but by frequently shuffling the cabinet, Bourguiba also weakened the political bureau. Bureau members who lost important government portfolios also lost their clients, and no one was allowed to forget that power bases were constructed at Bourguiba's pleasure and discretion.

Despite the fact that Ben Ali arrived in office raising high the standard of reform, the system of governance that Clement Moore dubbed "presidential monarchy" has largely survived the transition. Early analyses praised the new president for his apparent willingness to delegate responsibility to technically competent cabinet members and predicted a greater sharing of power. Several years into his rule, however, little appears to have been changed. As a military officer, Ben Ali had been prohibited from belonging to a party, and his footing within the PSD was far from secure. Like his predecessor, he soon took decisive measures to anchor himself within the party structures and thereby reduce the party's importance as a potentially independent political actor. Some 80 percent of the 2,500 delegates to the party's 1988 Congress of Healing were newcomers, and Ben Ali personally selected 122 of the central committee's 200 members even before the congress convened. Moreover, Ben Ali accepted the party's presidency, while at the same time the seat traditionally reserved for the party's secretary-general was quietly removed from the presidential cabinet.

Within the administration, cabinet shuffles continued. Ben Ali consulted regularly with his ministers, who were indeed expected to master their portfolios, but as time went by he appeared to rely more and more heavily on an informal coterie of advisers and involved family members in the affairs of state. Executive decisions are generally attributed to Ben Ali; the name of his prime minister is rarely heard.^[26]

Limiting the Legislature

The legislature established by the 1959 Constitution might theoretically have limited presidential powers, but a series of formal and informal decisions made from 1956 to 1959 ensured that that body would play a limited role in Tunisian politics. The right to a legislature that could limit the erstwhile untrammeled powers of the bey had been one of the principal elements in the nationalist program, and the story of how that goal came to be abandoned is integrally related to the rooting of patrimonial politics in independent Tunisia. Although prior to independence there was some

talk of establishing a republic, the nationalist movement was formally committed to retaining the monarchy, with powers limited by a constitution. For the first full year of the Constituent Assembly's deliberations, a constitutional monarchy was the model on which most projections of the new government rested. In late spring, a subtle shift in rhetoric appeared, and by early summer, Bourguiba was regularly and vociferously attacking the bey and the beylical throne. In July the Neo-Destour's political bureau laid plans to depose the monarch. On July 25 the party orchestrated a full day of assembly speeches denouncing royal shortcomings, culminating in Bourguiba's own two-hour tirade declaiming the lassitudes and treason of the Hussein dynasty. The decision followed swiftly: deputies voted to depose Lamine Bey and unanimously declared a republic. Nearly as quickly, they acclaimed Bourguiba as temporary president. As acting head of state, Bourguiba claimed all of the bey's executive and legislative powers. He replaced the bey's council of ministers with a cabinet responsible only to himself and nipped in the bud any dynamic legislative role envisioned by the Constituent Assembly. The assembly was steered away from debates and voting on government policies to the more restrictive role of constitution making, and under Bourguiba's guidance the first draft of that document was revised to limit the role of an eventual legislature. Early drafts of the Constitution envisioned a legislature in permanent session and endowed with the exclusive right to legislate. Investigative committees would furthermore have empowered the legislature to require explanations of the executive. The text finally approved in 1959 decidedly shifted power to the presidency. The legislature retained some ability to draft laws, but by constitutional mandate the president's legislative projects were assigned priority. The proposed "legislative committees" were dropped in the final draft, and the assembly's own regular sessions were to be limited to six months. For his part, the president acquired commensurate powers to legislate by decree when the assembly was not in session.

Moore describes at length the role played by the legislature in its early years. Because deputies to the National Assembly represented all the various interest groups incorporated into the Destourian family, party discipline was not automatically assured. Nevertheless, most measures received near-unanimous support, and some of the most heated debates concerned form and procedure rather than content. One early contest, for example, was over deputies' refusal to ratify ten decrees as a package rather than as separate measures.^[27] In subsequent years the legislature reviewed some matters more carefully, but its role remained an advisory one. Virtually

no legislation proposed by the presidency was rejected, and virtually no measures were initiated by the lawmakers themselves.

The legislature has historically offered no check on the presidency; indeed, by its default the executive has been strengthened. As prime minister—even before acceding to the new republic's presidency—Bourguiba began to wield the bey's old powers. His most celebrated and far-reaching pieces of legislation were all enacted by decree. Within weeks of assuming the prime ministry, he had taken steps toward bringing religion under the state's control, abolishing the politically compromised administrative structure that oversaw habus lands. By the time the monarchy was formally overthrown in July 1957, Tunisia's new ruler had abolished religious courts, under a liberal Code of Personal Status women had been granted the franchise as well as extensive rights in family law, and the practice of habus was altogether abolished. In 1958, the religious establishment sustained another serious blow when the university attached to the Zaytuna mosque was absorbed into the secular university system, leaving most of its 500 faculty members and 16,000 students without a clearly defined place in the educational system.

To be sure, Bourguiba consulted with his principal allies on legislative initiatives, especially those likely to be controversial. A master of political maneuver, he usually managed to secure at least the acquiescence of subordinates, and in some prominent instances he delayed promulgating a controversial edict until, through carefully cultivated debts of loyalty, he had assured the support of pivotal figures. It is doubtful whether many of the legal provisions held out by liberals today as acquis (literally, "gains") would have ever been realized without reliance on such tactics. Nevertheless, they came at the price of potential checks on the power vested in the presidency. The implicit social contract held no guarantees of shared power, a working rule that has not been altered since 1956.

During Bourguiba's rule, the National Assembly was less a place of political confrontation than a forum for the president to address the nation,^[28] and under Ben Ali that basic pattern has not been altered. A flurry of reform legislation was enacted during the first two years of the new government, but the legislature's own role was minimal. Ad hoc commissions were appointed to draft legislation, which were submitted to the legislature for consideration only after basic approval by the government. In subsequent years, government ministers have regularly briefed the legislature and entertained questions, particularly in times of crisis, but the top-down flow of information and initiative has been restored. Only the annual bud-

get consideration provokes extensive review and discussion, but even there the parliamentary function has been primarily one of review. Moreover, tight party control over the legislative process has assured not simply passage but unanimity on important measures. Thus as discussed in Chapter 9, a 1992 revision of the law of association that critically affected the functioning of the Tunisian League of Human Rights was approved unanimously despite extensive discussions in the halls of the legislature and much popular protest. Parliament has been largely peripheral to the political process, and in consequence, many deputies treat their responsibilities lightly: in 1990 the passage of several measures was held up for lack of a quorum.^[29]

Police Powers

Policies inaugurated by Bourguiba promoted modernism and progress, but the fact that they also effectively punished those who had resisted was a political reality not lost on observers. What could not be accomplished directly by decree or through the promise of an extensive patronage system was achieved by coercion. Shortly after the 1955 rupture between Bourguiba and Ben Youssef, the Neo-Destour created an anti-Youssefist militia known as "committees of vigilance," relying on them and UGTT dockworkers to assure security at the party's Sfax congress.^[30] In addition to the 1963 murder of Ben Youssef, popularly believed to have been carried out on his orders, Bourguiba is reported to have considered at least one assassination during the twenty years of his fight for independence.^[31]

Two police units were created shortly after independence to separately maintain control over urban and rural areas, but in 1967 after incidents that followed the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, these were brought together under a single Office of National Security, housed in the Ministry of the Interior. The National Guard (gendarmerie) continues to serve security purposes, particularly with regard to counterinsurgency, but its responsibilities more prominently include the patrolling of the country's highways and emergency response functions. The National Security Force (Sûreté) national, or SN), on the other hand, is primarily charged with maintaining public order. As it was originally configured, the SN was a decentralized organization, and its units were responsible to the governorates to which they were assigned. By the mid 1980s, the locus of their control had shifted, and the chain of command traced more directly back to the SN director, who at the time was General Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.^[32]

Ben Ali had previously served as SN chief from 1977 to 1980, but was reassigned as ambassador to Poland as punishment for having failed to

abort a January 1980 attack by Libyan-trained Tunisian commandos in the southern town of Gafsa. In 1984, following riots that spread across the country to protest price hikes in basic commodities, he was reappointed to his old post. By 1986, he had additionally acquired control of the National Guard and the ministerial post itself. As the final campaign of repression under Bourguiba's rule gathered steam, no one intervened in the chain of command between the general director of the national police force and the president himself.^[33]

Bourguiba had limited the mandate of earlier interior ministers, most of whom in addition served only a few years, and over the years, Ben Ali was allowed to accumulate more power than any single individual. (Within the greater political framework, the potential threat posed by a politically neutral officer appeared limited.) As director of the SN, Ben Ali oversaw not only the recognized national security police, but also two auxiliary forces concerned with riot control and intelligence. Each of these two specially trained forces, the Public Order Brigade and the plainclothes Office of Territorial Security, have participated in the arrest and detention of political opponents. Many have claimed they were tortured while held in the SN cells in the Ministry of the Interior.^[34]

A Dependent Judiciary

A cast of legality was lent to fundamentally authoritarian political postures through the courts. It had been the clear intent of the Constitutent Assembly to create a judiciary that was both independent and critical of the executive branch, balancing powers within the state. The 1959 Constitution provided for a council of state to arbitrate disputes between individuals and the administration, and in particular "those cases where the Administration is accused of exceeding its authority,"^[35] but it never materialized. In fact, the judiciary had been compromised well before the Constitution was promulgated.

Tunisia's first political trial, brought before a specially created High Court, opened even before the end of 1956. Tunisia's independent government first experienced the inconvenience of established legal procedure when confronted with the question of how to bring Youssefist rebels to intended justice. Virulent verbal attacks on Youssefists throughout 1956 left little doubt about the outcome sought and Bourguiba's unwillingness to tolerate adverse judgments from the courts. A significant problem was posed, however, in that the first Tunisian minister of justice from the Neo-Destour had been none other than Salah Ben Youssef.^[36] In consequence, the loyalty of the judiciary to Bourguiba could not be assured. The thorny

problem was resolved by creating a special court and staffing it with new judges—most of whom had no legal experience, and one of whom was illiterate.^[37] In two mass trials, the court convicted 113 Youssefists charged with plotting against state security, sentencing several of them to death.

In 1957, the Law of Ill-Gotten Gains and the Law of National Indignity extended the High Court's charge to include any person accused of having "collaborated" with the regime. The laws were applied broadly—to civil servants who had profited from their public offices, to the beylical family, to participants in regional and municipal councils, to anyone who had worked in the protectorate's security, press, or information services, and to anyone who had "directly or indirectly" aided protectorate authorities. Convictions were won with little regard for legal procedures and no possibility of appeal. By the time the Constitution was ratified, Tunisia had been purged of its old elite classes; the bey was destitute not only of legal powers but of money.

In subsequent years, as the target of repression shifted from "collaborators" to students and professors, Ba'thists, workers and trade unionists, and eventually Islamists, political trials were heard before military tribunals or a court of state security created in 1968. In time, many of the nonviolent political crimes prosecuted by the state came to be of an increasingly personal nature. In ten of the twenty-four mass trials held from 1973 to 1981, the defendants were charged with "defaming the head of state" or "attacking the dignity of the head of state." In 1979 two defendants were sent to prison for writing slogans on a statue of the president of the republic.^[38]

When Ben Ali assumed office in 1987, his decision to abolish the state security court brought him much positive press. Strictly speaking, however, the state has retained judicial tools that escape close scrutiny. Military tribunals, which in certain grave instances may be used to try civilians, have generally held their proceedings in secret.^[39] Civil courts, too, in prominent instances have failed to meet international standards of fair trial. In 1989 the secretary-general of the Popular Unity Party accused vigilante groups associated with the police of vandalizing property belonging to his party's leaders and was in turn charged with defaming the head of state. At the trial, his attorney presented evidence of police collaboration and was herself arrested and incarcerated for spreading false news, inciting unrest, and defaming the security forces.^[40] That story bears striking resemblance to a 1961 case in which a distinguished attorney was sentenced to three months of farm prison and suspended from the bar for having made a derogatory comment about a municipality on his way out of the courtroom.^[41]

One after another, political choices made in the period immediately following independence all served to undermine civil society and the rule of law. In and of themselves, few of the decisions were political anomalies or reprehensible, but in concert they acted to promote the effects of personal rule. Writing of Bourguiba's first year in office, Bessis and Belhassen observe:

Bourguiba [was] more than president of the [beylical cabinet]. Even while the Constituent Assembly was discussing the creation of a constitutional monarchy in Tunisia, he appeared more and more the exclusive source of power and legitimacy. . . . His tours of the interior of the country were surrounded with ceremony, which soon became immutable: the [streets of] cities and villages he crossed were lined with little girls in fancy clothes welcoming him with bouquets of flowers. He was beginning to be a "father."^[42]

Political improvisations set precedents, and precedents in turn evolved into patterns. Although at his own arrival in power, Ben Ali could depend on none of the charisma, the nationalist history or even the party ties that had undergirded Bourguiba's reign, the political game had acquired a force of its own. Instead of personal attributes, Ben Ali has relied on his extensive connections with the vast security network to assure control and stability, even as he promotes the notion of democracy, and the institutions that might reduce presidential power remain underdeveloped.

The Meaning of Opposition

Under Bourguiba's leadership, the Neo-Destour's commitment to "total unity through total organization"^[43] left little room for pluralistic expression. Not everyone, obviously, accepted this formula. Some within the Neo-Destour had hoped quite openly that Ben Youssef would succeed in creating a second party, if only to introduce a measure of political competition. Even with the eventual elimination of Ben Youssef and the suppression of his followers, there might have been a viable opposition party in the early years of Tunisian independence. No sooner than had the ink dried on the Tunisia's formal declaration of independence than a significant division developed within the ranks of the nationalist movement. Throughout the independence struggle, trade unionists had worked closely with the Neo-Destour, and the UGTT leader Ferhat Hached had shared many of Bourguiba's political convictions. Hached was assassinated by a French resistance organization in 1952, however, and his successor, Ahmad Ben Salah, sought political autonomy for the union. Neo-Destour leaders encouraged a scission within the UGTT to protect nationalist unity and suc-

cessfully isolated Ben Salah. After independence the party threw its weight behind a splinter group led by Habib Achour, and when the remnant UGTT had largely replaced Ben Salah and his supporters within its own leadership ranks, the two groups were rejoined. The new UGTT leadership was granted a certain liberty of action, in exchange for which it accepted a political role subordinate to the party. The vigorous trade union movement, which in the mid 1950s had boasted 150,000 members, amounting to half of the formal work force, was politically moribund just a decade later. Not only had workers' benefits declined relative to the cost of living but their political clout had been harnessed.^[44]

In the meantime, Ben Salah's star had risen again. When early policies of economic liberalism were declared a failure in 1961, he was returned from erstwhile disgrace to head up economic planning. As director of a superministry, he embarked Tunisia on a program of cooperatization that proved as disastrous in political terms as it was disappointing in economic ones. In 1969, following popular protest, Ben Salah was fired, and this time he was tried for treason as well. His forced departure from Tunisian politics offered a new lease of life to Achour and the UGTT, which again began to press a political agenda. After 1970, strikes took place with increasing frequency, particularly in the 1974–77 period as the economic situation deteriorated. A new cabinet formed in December 1977 toughened the government's stance toward the union and inspired plans for Tunisia's first general strike since independence. Tensions were fueled in January by the arrest of a regional UGTT official critical of prevailing politics and by Achour's resignation from the PSD's Political Bureau. In the mêlée that ensued, more than 1,000 union members—including Achour and other prominent leaders—were arrested.

Shortly before the 1981 legislative elections, the rift between the party and the union, and between Bourguiba and Achour, was temporarily patched up. Achour was released from prison, and by a narrow vote the UGTT agreed to run on a PSD ticket in the elections. The price tag of the new "unity," however, was rivalry and fractiousness within the UGTT. In Achour's absence, the union had elected a new secretary-general, more left-leaning than Achour, and Achour's return proved divisive. Problems were only exacerbated by the discomfort of the twenty-seven UGTT candidates elected to the National Assembly and under pressure to support governmental programs to which their union was opposed.

It was an announced increase in the price of bread rather than direct labor conflict that inspired widespread political violence in January 1984. Within weeks, however, the UGTT was at war with the government, and

the issue was Ben Ali's reappointment to head the SN; unionists considered him responsible for the bloodshed of 1978.^[45] Soon thereafter a new national union, the National Union of Tunisian Workers (UNTT) was given official blessing. Through 1984 and 1985, in the midst of a series of strikes and some talk of forming an independent labor party, several UGTT leaders were arrested for inciting to strike, distributing tracts, and attending illegal meetings.^[46] Achour was placed under house arrest in December 1985 and was eventually tried and convicted of charges of fraud and collusion with Libya; in ill health, he was again removed to house arrest in 1987, and finally released in 1988. In the meantime, repression had succeeded in reducing the UGTT's potential threat sufficiently to make the UNTT politically superfluous and even inconvenient for corporatist purposes: it was dismantled in 1987. The UGTT at the same time was restored to its former prominence, but not to its former independence or power.^[47] Privatization efforts since the mid 1980s have further eroded its clout, since the union has generally been shut out of the private sector.

Opposition within the party itself surfaced in 1971. Ben Salah's 1969 dismissal was accompanied by presidential promises of political as well as economic liberalization, but when these failed to materialize, liberals within the party made their unhappiness known. A PSD congress, held at Monastir in November 1971, uncharacteristically took matters into its own hands, passing resolutions on party organization and presidential succession that emphasized electoral processes, even as they heaped praise on Bourguiba. Most resolutions required further action—by Bourguiba and by the national legislature—for implementation, but one decision had immediate impact. In elections for the PSD central committee, delegates gave the greatest number of votes to Bahi Ladgham and to the most outspoken "liberal," Ahmed Mestiri; Bourguiba's favorite, Hedi Nouira, came in fifth. Within ten days, Bourguiba had found cause to dismiss Mestiri from the central committee, and it was only a matter of time before he was excluded from the party and the legislature as well. It took three more years to close up all the openings created by the 1971 Congress. When the PSD next convened in 1974, the mood of liberalism had fully dissipated. Although a handful of prominent party members protested the "undemocratic conditions" under which the assembly would meet, Bourguiba vehemently rejected the idea of political pluralism. The dissident liberals, including three former ministers, were expelled from the party. The national motto was changed from "Liberty, Order, Justice" to "Order, Liberty, Justice," and Bourguiba's presidential tenure was extended indefinitely.^[48]

After their ouster from the PSD, the "liberal group" associated with

Ahmed Mestiri continued to meet and discuss political reform efforts (one of which eventually would evolve into the Tunisian League of Human Rights). As early as 1976 the group began to call themselves social democrats, but seven years passed before they were formally recognized as a party, the Movement of Socialist Democrats (MDS). Electoral fraud was rampant in elections for which they stood in both 1981 (prior to being recognized)^[49] and 1985, and by the time a fairer contest was arranged in 1989, the momentum of popular politics had already passed to the Islamists. As a party, the MDS welcomed the Ben Ali transition and the opportunities it held out for opening up the political system, but Ben Ali's rhetoric of reform had immediate repercussions on the MDS. Many prominent democratic socialists who had for years been forced to the political sidelines simplified their lives by joining (or reaffiliating themselves with) the ruling party, which now seemed to promise genuine liberalization. Several defectors quickly rose to prominence in the revitalized Destourian Party, now the RCD, but their departure weakened the MDS and a poor showing in the 1989 elections only deepened divisions. Ahmed Mestiri resigned the leadership in 1990, and when the MDS was unable to achieve internal agreement on its stance vis-à-vis the government in 1992, many of its oldest and staunchest supporters parted company with it.^[50]

Other political parties have not fared better. The 1983 decision to legalize opposition parties reopened the playing field to them, at least in theory, but the political circumscription of civil society assured by the ruling party stymied their growth and development from the outset. In addition to the MDS, the Tunisian opposition includes three other recognized political parties,^[51] but all must operate in the long shadow of the RCD and none constitutes a significant counterweight. The inclusion of all major opposition groups in publicized debates about the new National Pact in 1988 generated enthusiastic response and raised hopes that pluralistic expression would be allowed, but those hopes were dashed by elections that left the RCD's legislative monopoly intact. Bourguiba and the Neo-Destour had passed on, but the new era looked very much like the old.

Strengthening Society: The Silent Find a Voice

Building on the Tunisian state's secure foundation, Habib Bourguiba had shaped a political system that through the structure of a single legitimized party allowed the development and incorporation of diverse interest groups even as it cultivated personal loyalty to him. Patronage oiled the

many cogs in the political machine.^[52] In the years following independence, Tunisia was a "mobilization regime": society was actively courted to participate in political affairs through the medium of the party.^[53] No serious dissent was brooked within the party, however, and the system inevitably excluded some from its fold.

Just what happened to the voiceless, and the sons of those so deprived, is a topic of some neglect in the study of Tunisian politics. Bourguiba's regime promoted the sons of the coastal Sahel region, some of whom married daughters of the displaced Tunis elite.^[54] Djerbans turned their attention to commerce. But the displaced graduates of the Zaytuna university and many former Youssefists continued to remain aloof from, and even hostile to, Bourguiba and the PSD. Neither patronage nor developmental infrastructure extended to the children of the country's southern reaches, who became the "new social periphery."^[55]

During the 1970s, many of the forgotten were discovering, and articulating, an antimodern political doctrine that, in revaluing Islamic tenets denigrated by Bourguiba, established a political alternative to the status quo and simultaneously accorded them a new dignity as political actors.^[56] By 1981, Islamism had coalesced to the extent that the Ittijah al-Islami (more commonly known as the Mouvement de la tendance islamique, or MTI) called a press conference and declared its intent to seek recognition as a political party. Within months, most of its leaders were serving 2- to 10-year prison terms for belonging to an unauthorized organization and having defamed the head of state.

Government attempts over the next several years to undermine support for the Islamists were ineffectual. A program of mosque-building was appreciated by a population whose religious devotion had apparently increased, but simultaneous efforts to discredit the MTI simply didn't work. On the contrary, the continued imprisonment of MTI leaders provoked international pressures in addition to domestic discontent. With Bourguiba's appointment of Ben Ali as minister of interior in 1986, a new initiative of conciliation was launched. Rachid Ghannouchi, Abdelfatah Mourou, and other MTI leaders were amnestied, and talks with government officials raised popular hopes that the movement would be officially recognized as a political party. Those hopes were dashed, and authorities made a second effort to quash the MTI. In early 1987, a concentrated effort was made to round up all those vocally critical of the government. Unionists and human rights leaders were arraigned, but the Islamists were by far the principal target. Through spring 1987, several hundred were arrested, and in August 1987, ninety leaders charged with capital offenses

were brought before the state security court. Recognized leaders of the MTI were spared the death penalty, but until it was foiled by the November 1987 coup, Bourguiba's intent to have them retried seemed sure to carry the country to the edge of a political precipice.

Political amnesty, legal liberalization, and the inclusion of the MTI in the negotiation of the national pact temporarily applied balm to political wounds, but the patch did not hold. To comply with new laws requiring full separation of politics from religion, the MTI changed its name to Hizb al-Nahda, the Renaissance Party, and once again made application for recognition as a political party. Despite the fact that legal status was once again denied, in the 1989 legislative elections, Islamists showed themselves to be the only viable political opposition. Running as independents, they managed to secure 14.5 percent of the overall vote, and nearly a third of the popular vote in Ben Arous, the working-class suburb of Tunis that has been home to Ghannouchi and many other urban immigrants from the south.

The election won them more repression rather than the legislative seats they had sought. In 1989, Ghannouchi elected for self-imposed exile; al-Nahda's publication el-Fajr was shut down after less than a year in operation. Islamists were arrested in large numbers during the Gulf War, and as discussed in Chapter 9, an isolated incident of violence followed by the discovery of an alleged plot was used to justify extending the campaign of repression in spring 1991. From 1990 to 1992, over 8,000 individuals were arrested, and for a third time the government sought to decapitate the Islamist organization. In July and August 1992, 279 al-Nahda members were tried before military tribunals; leaders in the government's custody were sentenced to life in prison.^[57]

The extent of the measures undertaken by the government, and their persistent application for more than ten years, testify sufficiently to the strength of the Islamist movement. Whether the government has now truly succeeded in convincing the broader public of the imminent danger posed by Islamism is not yet clear. What is clear is that the basic division between the state, as represented by its executive and a coterie of party elites, and a substantial segment of society has not been addressed. Originally drawing support from segments of the population once receptive to Salah Ben Youssef, the Islamist movement had by 1992 left few Tunisian families untouched. Students have been the most visible—and to some degree the most vocal—supporters, but those arrested in 1991 and 1992 included civil servants, teachers, and professionals from virtually every corner of the country. Economic and political discontent gave shape to the

movement in the 1970s, but it has been steadily fed by a deeper malaise that leaves many feeling culturally unanchored.^[58] The voice that gave it expression has at least in the short run been muffled, but the malaise itself has not yet disappeared.

Conclusion

By the mid 1970s, relations between state and society in Tunisia had arrived at an impasse out of which, despite several hopeful starts, they have yet to find their way. Mobilization policies that in the first decade of independent rule had generated enthusiasm among a good number of Tunisians as well as among diplomatic and academic observers were ringing hollow, and the state found it difficult to capture the hearts of increasing numbers of citizens. Neither the economic liberalism of the 1970s, the tepid approval of limited political pluralism in the 1980s, nor the dramatic change of leadership in 1987 fundamentally altered the situation. Opposition parties are marginalized, and the National Pact that generated widespread enthusiasm in the initial months of Ben Ali's presidency is now largely forgotten. At root of the dilemma is and a hierarchy of power that, although kept permeable by patronage and the extensive party network, has nevertheless remained fairly small. The price tag of patronage is political conformity, and many gifted and highly skilled Tunisians who have accepted a place within the existing political framework profess personal discomfort. There is simply no other effective avenue of participation, and the alternative, which some accept, is exclusion and alienation.

For as much as a quarter of the population, the alternative has not seemed a choice. Many of those who describe themselves as Islamists had by 1990 come to live beyond the reaches of the state—that is, in apparent disregard of the government's rules and legislation. Banning Hizb al-Nahda meant little, and a shadow majlis (Islamic parliament) supplied alternative, if elementary, governance. If the recent arrests, intimidation, and imprisonment of the Islamist leadership have in fact dismantled an organization alternative to the state in Tunisia, it is still not clear that noncoercive means exist to integrate the alienated periphery into the sphere of the state. Possibilities of negotiation that envision political compromise have repeatedly been rejected by the regime in favor of strategies that would revive corporatist structures or, alternatively, strengthen civil—secular—society.

Corporatist strategies are bankrupt. The existence of corporatist structures has often been offered as evidence of a strong state, but as Joel Migdal

has noted, state agencies themselves may be kept weak enough to serve only the interests of those at the top.^[59] Bourguiba was a master of the politics of survival, which kept rivals in check, and although both rhetoric and the particular pools of support have changed, the political game itself has not been dramatically altered. Ben Ali has derived his own power more from control of the security forces and the specter of an Islamic state than from popular choice.

The promotion of civil society is a slogan that has in effect yielded little. Ben Ali's government was not willing to make any political compromises that would allow the Islamists, the only opposition with a substantially different program and a sizable base of support, into the legitimized political arena. A legislature that might have included a handful of Islamists remains dominated by the party continuously in power since 1956, and neither the legislature nor the party have managed to balance executive powers. Political institutions in Tunisia have not been allowed to develop on their own and spread their roots in society. The state, which was strong at independence, has remained strong, but society has strengthened alongside it, and not necessarily within the parameters of state control.