Economic reform and Tunisia's hegemonic party: the end of the administrative elite.

During a period of accelerated economic liberalization, from 1986 until today, Tunisia's hegemonic party abandoned its representation of a broad segment of society and became a vehicle representing the interests of the rural bourgeoisie and urban manufacturers, many of whom had been rural notables. In addition, an increasingly globalized economy and stagnant state-led growth strategies within Tunisia led to constraints on state autonomy as international forces pressed for increased market reforms. An Islamist movement serves as the strongest organized resistance to the hegemonic party.

In the four decades since Tunisian independence in 1956, a single political party, under different names and leaders, has monopolized the political system. I interpret Tunisia's state party historically as a political movement led by an administrative elite(1) that was capable of resisting social forces both domestically and internationally in the sense that state policy reflected their needs and preferences. These state authorities had a strong influence on socioeconomic change in post-independence Tunisia. The administrative elite is defined here as the provincial elites, especially those from the Sahel, who in the 1930s took over national leadership in Tunisia from the traditional elites in urban areas. The new administrative elite, mostly embodied in the Neo-Destour party, were characterized by their modern, usually French, education and a commitment to creating a modern economy with greater social equity. Their mission was to transform Tunisia economically, socially, and technologically. Among the administrative elite, there have been differences in strategies to attain an industrialized economy. They have tried both a state state-led growth strategy and liberal economic policies to reach their goal.

The administrative elites autonomy, however, has always been vulnerable to one powerful social group: the rural bourgeoisie. The post-independence policy process has frequently reflected the elite's vulnerability to the vested interests of the rural bourgeoisie. Until relatively recently, however, the administrative elite attempted to use their control, first of the nationalist movement and then of state patronage and state policy, to create an umbrella political organization that attempted to respond to all constituencies in Tunisia, while still formulating an overall development strategy according to their own ideologies and goals. Their actions led to a populist nationalist movement and a populist political party, the Neo-Destour. At independence, the administrative elite led by President Habib Bourguiba, took control of the political apparatus of the state. Party leaders and the bureaucratic establishment form the membership of the administrative elite.

The inability of a single party to represent all social groups in Tunisia even modestly well was apparent by the 1970s, but the current identity of the state party was solidified during the economic reform process between 1986 and 1996. The party's increasing link with the rural bourgeoisie and its urban offshoot as well as its ties to transnational capital ends the era of an administrative elite in Tunisia that was willing and able to challenge the interests of the most powerful social forces within and outside of the country. Any pretense of a populist party that represented all Tunisians has ended. In terms of the literature on Tunisian and North African politics, international political economy variables and class analysis probably deserve more attention than the earlier emphasis on political elites, regime types, and ideology.(2)

During economic reform, the state has remained authoritarian leaving few options in the formal political system for the abandoned constituencies of the once populist party. This dire political picture is partially alleviated by relatively strong overall economic growth rates during the structural adjustment era(3) and by the civil war in neighboring Algeria which the current regime uses to justify a frozen political system. The regime has banned the participation of the only opposition political party with significant public support, the Islamist Al-Nahda party, and smothers the development of any other significant political threat, while society continues to rapidly change politically and economically.(4)

To maintain political coherence and stability the regime appears to be relying on market reforms to produce rapid economic growth (with little regard to equity in the distribution of benefits), and has assumed an adversarial position against an Islamist movement through use of repression. While Tunisian state authorities fundamentally reorganize the distribution of economic and political assets in favor of more dominant social groups, no political parties representing the interests of the peasantry or labor have been allowed to develop.

THE NEO-DESTOUR AND MODERNIZATION THEORY 

A generation of scholars, largely working within the modernization school, provided a base for an understanding of Tunisia's single (now hegemonic) party system. Modernization theory provided a liberal, pluralist interpretation of change. There was an optimism in this approach which in most versions predicted a nonviolent trajectory culminating in liberal democracy.(5) Developed partly as an alternative to Marxist approaches, political change was not tied to economic forces. Also very little was done to integrate the realms of domestic and international politics.

In the Tunisian version of modernization theory, the Neo-Destour "became Tunisia's key instrument of modernization."(6) In this line of thinking, a single party with a quasi-monopoly on political power could lead the march toward modernity and liberal democracy by "maintaining national cohesion and mobilizing the people along national and modernist lines while exercising a minimum of constraint and allowing a reasonable amount of discussion."(7) Political change entails an elite committed to modernization. This elite maintains national cohesion, mobilizes and educates the masses, and transforms values and structures. Eventually, the elite moves aside for the full operation of liberal democracy.(8) I differ with this linear, relatively non-conflictual view of change by asserting that in the course of the evolution of Tunisia's hegemonic party system a transformed rural bourgeoisie has overtaken the administrative elite, and for various reasons, the international arena has become central to economic policy making.

If they underestimated the vulnerability of the administrative elite to powerful social forces and missed in the predictions of the trajectory of the political system, modernization theorists were absolutely correct to be impressed by the dynamic group of new elites from the provinces that arose in the early part of the century to take over the nationalist movement from the stagnant, traditional urban elite. The Neo-Destour, founded in the 1930s by Habib Bourguiba, and his colleagues began as a break from the Destour party which was the first to challenge French colonial role. The Destour was essentially a party of Tunisia's traditional leadership based in the capital, Tunis: the administrators, religious leaders, and notables of the Ottoman Beys. Carl Brown described the Destours, a distinctive social class, which emerged to lead Tunisia's first national political party just after the end of World War I:

Like medieval Islamic society in general, this class was urban centered, but it was not the instrument of a commercial, industrial, or any other kind of revolution. It included the following: the religious leadership or ulema; the religio-judicial leadership, or muftis, caids and aduls (notaries); prominent merchants; leaders of the most respected crafts; and the informal leaders of various quarters of the cities. This traditional group was the most self-contained and thus the least open to western influence.(9)

Ultimately the Old Destour failed to mobilize popular support from rural areas in their struggle against the colonial regime. Popular nationalism could not be accommodated within the framework of the first nationalist organization. Instead the Destour was supplanted in the 1930s by the Neo-Destour. This party, largely, had its power base in the provinces.

The nationalist movement in Tunisia was captured by a new generation of elites who had little in common with the leadership of the Old Destour. The Neo-Destour leadership was comprised of a new intelligentsia of modest social origins, educated in Franco-Arab schools, especially Sadiki College. Founded by the Islamic reformer, Khaireddine, prime minister of Tunisia from 1873-1877, the mission of Sadiki College was to bring Western education to Tunisia in order to meet the challenge of the European powers.

Sadiki College served as an important channel to elite status for bright young people from rural areas. These new elites mastered French, learned to negotiate the colonial administration, and frequently went to France for advanced education in one of the liberal professions. The new party leaders were distinct due to the premium they placed on intellectuality in social leaders,(10) organization and activism in all sectors and areas of the country, and social control in a centralized hierarchical structure.

The most important Sadiki College graduate was Habib Bourguiba, the son of a low ranking government functionary in the Sahel town of Monastir. Trained in political science and law in France, Bourguiba became the founding father of modern Tunisia and the charismatic leader of the nationalist movement. He was deposed in 1987. Other French-educated founders of the party included Mahmoud Materi, Taher Safer, and Bahri Guiga, who all returned from France in the late 1920s. The group originally participated in the Destour party, but early on it became apparent to this young cadre that a nationalist movement would require more than the Old Destour had to offer. The new party they formed included some members of the traditional elite, but, significantly, reached beyond the old social order to the new proletariat in urban and rural areas.

The original Neo-Destour party animators were men of ordinary Sahelian origin who had taken full advantage of opportunities in modern education. The Sahel, an area of settled agriculture on the eastern coast of Tunisia, had experienced less of the negative effects of colonization than had other areas. Its strong village life coupled with a high concentration of private ownership prevented foreigners from buying land.(11) The region developed a tradition of sending its brightest sons to Sadiki College. "The widely distributed yeoman class of olive tree cultivators living in Sahel villages made thrifty sacrifices to send their sons, ambitious and hardworking students on the whole, to modern secondary schools and French Universities."(12)

The party also had strong ties to commercial agriculture in the Sahel, which provided much of the early party funding. Gallicized and intellectual, party elites aimed to overhaul the old social order. Their aim was to guide a mass nationalist movement toward socioeconomic change that would nevertheless remain under the guidance and control of the intellectuals at the top of the party. Various social groups - indeed all social groups from all areas of the country were considered legitimate constituents of this one party and social movement.

The emphasis of the Neo-Destour party was on modernization under the tutelage of intellectuals, the corporateness of society, and the ability of the party to represent all interest groups. In spite of the mass appeal of the party, major political decisions in the beginning reflected the ideologies and interests of state authorities. The notion of the relative independence of the Neo-Destour from vested interests is contestable, and certainly has not been the case throughout the history of the party's dominance of the Tunisian political system. Still there is some truth to characterizing the Neo-Destour as a party of modernizers who adopted a historical mission to transform their own society and were willing at times to challenge any group to achieve those ends. The transformation was to be guided by rationality and by use of the most modern technologies available. The administrative elite, through the bureaucracy and the new party, sought to guide the transformation in a hands-on controlling manner.

ELITE VERSES CLASS ANALYSIS: THE ADMINISTRATIVE ELITE AND THE COUNTRYSIDE

At some points in post-independence Tunisian politics, the administrative elite has been powerful enough to pursue policies independent of various social classes. The state, however, has always been linked in varying degrees with large landowners, making class analysis a tempting alternative to a focus on party and state elites. Teasing out the relationship between the state and the countryside, especially large landowners over time, will help clarify the relationship between the state and the rural bourgeoisie.

In a general sense, the Tunisian development process itself conditioned a tie between the state and the countryside since it was provincial elites who overthrew their urban forebearers. The triumph of the Neo-Destour over the original Destour required funding from large landowners and the mobilization of the rural masses. Samuel Huntington has noted the pivotal role of rural mobilization for political stability in the developing world.(13) Governments in late developing countries, or what Huntington termed changing societies, that have rural support are better able to withstand the widespread instability engendered by economic development and the socioeconomic changes of modernization. In an analysis that emphasized social control in order for political institutions to develop, Huntington viewed the countryside as the source for political stability. The combination of rural majority and urban growth in the Third World gives rise to "a distinctive pattern of politics in modernizing countries." The growing urban areas have different attitudes from the countryside and are more likely to be the source of opposition to the government.

Huntington mentions several countries as following the pattern of opposition support in cities, including Tunisia, India, Venezuela, Turkey, and Pakistan.(14) Winning rural support is the way governments withstand this opposition until they are able to build urban support and until urban areas grow to constitute the majority of the population. This task is more difficult because most political elites are from urban areas and hold attitudes similar to their urban counterparts. The ideal and unusual situation is a melting-pot party able to build support in both rural and urban areas simultaneously.

Tunisia fits Huntington's scheme for stability during the tumultuous times of modernization, as the author has noted.(15) A rural-urban struggle characterized the party at the outset. Unlike political parties in most of the late developing world, the core of Neo-Destour leadership came from the countryside. Lisa Anderson notes that the new elite was largely provincial, "the sons of or younger brothers of minor or government functionaries, like Habib Bourguiba of the Sahil, or of provincial landowners and merchant families, like Yusuf Rouissi of the Jarid and Salah Ben Youssef of Djerba."(16)

In the beginning of the party, the support of large landowners was probably more important than the backing of the rural masses. Important large landowners and rural merchants chose pragmatic collaboration with the French as the one sure way to get rich since the Protectorate controlled the country's purse strings. Those who cooperated with the French were an anathema to both the Destour and future Neo-Destour leadership,(17) but in a strategy that helped the nascent Neo-Destour take over the nationalist movement from the Destour, the administrative elite sought the backing of the rural bourgeoisie.

In 1933, the year prior to the formation of the Neo-Destour, Muhammad Chenik, one of Tunisia's wealthiest businessmen, president of the Tunisian Chamber of Commerce and president of the only exclusive Tunisian banking facility, the Cooperative Tunisienne de Credit, found himself in a major conflict with the Protectorate government, which ironically had advanced the funds to start the bank. The conflict arose when Chenik appealed directly to Paris for changes in Protectorate policy as Tunisian agriculture faced the grave problems of the 1930s depression. Most of the bank's business came from the olive growers and textile manufacturers of the Sahel. Angry at the appeal to Paris, Protectorate authorities accused Chenik of diverting funds from the Credit Cooperative. Opposed to the stance of most of the Destour leadership, Bourguiba defended Chenik and accused the Protectorate administration of sabotaging the self-help efforts of Tunisians at the instigation of the colons.(18)

Within a year Bourguiba and his supporters broke with the Destour leadership. The success of the dissident Destourians was facilitated by Chenik's support. He was to provide the nationalist leaders with financing. Chenik and most of his bank's clients, the rural bourgeoisie and large landowners particularly of the Sahel, gave their financial and political support to the newly formed Neo-Destour. This backing was critical to the party's ability to take over from the Old Destour and launch a nationwide movement against the Protectorate.(19) Thus, strong ties with large landowners, the landed commercial farmers centered in the Sahel, were central to the Neo-Destour at its inception and during national liberation. Historically, this has been the party's main source of support.(20)

However, not all of the administrative elite was happy with the incorporation of the rural bourgeoisie into the fold. In reaction to Bourguiba's defense of Chenik and the Credit Cooperative, party leader Hedi Nouria wrote in a personal letter to Bourguiba, "It is a delusion and great folly to pretend that our policy would attract the discontented bourgeois elements, and to found hope on those elements, which have been the allies if not the basis of colonization; it is to display an absence of political sense and a total incomprehensibility of our movement."(21) The incorporation of the rural bourgeoisie into the nationalist movement, as I will illustrate, meant that the state party would be gradualist and accomodationist in its policies that affected this group and would eventually capitulate to most of their political demands in the 1980s and 1990s.

THE ADMINISTRATIVE ELITE AND THE RURAL MASSES

As a national liberation movement, the Neo-Destour attempted to bring all Tunisian social forces into its sphere for the fight against the French. In rural areas, in addition to large landowners they sought support from small- and medium-scale peasants. The administrative elite had several advantages in regard to eliciting the support of the rural masses. First, they were aided by the rural roots of many members of the party and their familiarity with the small villages of the country. The party also aided in the establishment of an agricultural union in 1949, the Union Generale des Agriculteurs Tunisiens, and deliberately organized a liberation army composed of peasants.(22) Rather than focusing on economic concerns, the union established a political goal of national liberation. The general effectiveness of the party's organization aided them in their efforts. Party branches were installed throughout the countryside to recruit, discipline, and politically educate the new members.

The efforts of the Neo-Destour at rural mobilization were largely successful; both large landowners and the rural masses joined the party's liberation movement. If large landowners supplied the finance, "Its most reliable shock troops were country peasants and Tunis plebs."(23) Rural mobilization permitted the formation of a mass organization and also provided the future state party with a strong source of support.

The Neo-Destour would follow either of two basic strategies to maintain rural support in the years following independence in 1956: either they could try to dominate the countryside by directly dealing with the peasantry and providing them with state patronage; or they would deal with the small and medium peasantry through the intermediation of rural notables.

The Neo-Destour achieved what Huntington considered ideal for a political party in a late developing country: it bridged the rural-urban gap by acting as a melting pot where the peasant and city dweller met. Thus the party unified various strata of the population into one single stream oriented toward the political objective of national liberation and following the leadership of the administrative elite.(24) In addition to party branches in urban areas, the NeoDestour incorporated the central trade union, the Union Generale de Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT) into the party. After World War II, 80 percent of the union members were also members of the Neo-Destour.(25) Other "national organizations" were founded on party directives and controlled by the party including the Union Tunisiens des Artisans et Commercants (UTAC) and the Union Generale des Etudiants Tunisiens (UGET). Although the UGTT exercised some autonomy from the party, the general trend was toward party dominance of the national organizations.

In sum, the Neo-Destour was the first political organization to be truly open to Tunisians of all regions and classes.(26) Bourguiba and the rest of the administrative elite aimed squarely at the peasantry and labor while also courting the bourgeoisie. Rural and urban mobilization occurred as national unity and the fight for liberation took precedence over social cleavages and structural difficulties in the Tunisian economy.

THE ADMINISTRATIVE ELITE AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

With independence in the mid-1950s, the Neo-Destour leadership had to transform their party from a national movement to a stable government able to develop political institutions, promote economic growth and equity, and deal with the legacy of colonialism and relative economic backwardness. The administrative elite at independence set out to transform and modernize Tunisian society according to their own agenda while managing a range of constituencies of varying degrees of political power.

As soon as it had been formed in 1956, the Tunisian government was confronted with a series of urgent problems, including increased unemployment in urban and rural areas and an inequitable division of property into small holdings, large land ownership (partly Tunisian, but mainly foreign), communal tribal lands, and habous.(27) Traditional Tunisian agriculture suffered from low productivity and the country depended on French and other foreign agricultural enterprises. The biggest problem, however, was the low standard of living and the inadequate average income in Tunisia as a whole. It has been estimated by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) that in 1962 each of 4,000 French families held on average 240 hectares of land and each of 5,000 Tunisian families held 100 hectares. This means that 3 to 4 percent of all farmers possessed about half of the arable land.(28)

Overall, the Neo-Destour faced the challenge common to nearly all recently de-colonized countries: the creation of an industrial economy. In the Tunisian case, a scarcity of extractive resources (some oil but nothing like neighboring Algeria and Libya) and fertile land meant that leaders needed foreign aid, which was accompanied by a possible loss of economic independence, in order to accumulate capital for industrialization and to modernize agriculture. In the relative absence of capital for investment, few options remained other than transferring capital from agriculture to industry. This option would pit party leaders against their historical support from large landowners.

In spite of these difficult circumstances, the administrative elite had sufficient power at independence to attempt to meet the challenges of national development. Within the elite, some people preferred planning and state management of economic assets, the trade union elements of the party in particular. Others favored a liberal economic policy. The ideologies and interests of the administrative elites were diverse, but riding the wave of a populist nationalist movement, their political decisions at independence largely reflected the choices of these new gallacized elites from the provinces. Once established as the state party, the Neo-Destour faced few challenges to its call for national unity and development under the auspices of a single political party.

From 1956 to 1961 the Tunisian government practiced a liberal economic policy. Private investment and initiative, however, did not manifest itself. For example, the investment rate decreased from 19.5 percent in 1953 to 7.7 percent in 1957. The economic situation continued to worsen.(29) By 1961, a group of unionists and administrators within the higher ranks of the Neo-Destour convinced President Bourguiba to dismiss the liberal minister and adopt a 10-year plan for development, the Perspectives Decennales (1962-1971). The plan was put forth by a team of economists under the leadership of trade union head Ahmed Ben Salah who became the head of a superministry of planning and finance. The party name was changed to the Socialist Destour Party.

TUNISIAN SOCIALISM

The era of Tunisian socialism, from 1962 to 1969 when it ended abruptly, illuminates the extent and limitation of the administrative elite's autonomy from vested interests more than any other period. Ben Salah's program challenged the interests of the powerful rural bourgeoisie. It attempted to create support in the countryside through direct interaction with and support from the small peasantry, while also attempting to modernize this group in the image of the elites.

A cooperative system was at the center of the ten-year plan, first in agriculture, then in trade and other sectors of the economy, The cooperative system was geared primarily to the modernization of agriculture and to the support of the small peasantry.(30) Planners nationalized European land (on 12 May 1964) and the state retained ownership of it even though it was highly coveted by large landowners. The cooperatives were based on the colonial farms and the surrounding areas of small plots. These cooperatives were designed both to become the center of modern agriculture in Tunisia and to provide minimum sustenance to the small peasantry with inadequate access to land and employment who utilized traditional and less effective farming methods. Service cooperatives were also initiated. The diversification and intensification of production was an enormous investment for the state and came to constitute a heavy drain on the cooperative budget. Still, Ben Salah's team strived to reach its goal of increasing the annual income per family to a decent level (roughly US$250), balance the budget eventually, and, it was hoped, transfer surplus capital from the agricultural cooperatives to industry:

A cooperative unit was to be composed, ideally, of the original farm - about 200 hectares - along with 300 hectares of surrounding parcels. Thirty families were to farm this unit, with priority first given to the previous workers of the unit under colonialism and then to the peasants. This scheme was adopted to make full use of equipment, fertilizers, and crop rotation, and able also to transcend the bifurcation between modern and traditional agriculture.(31)

The government's capacity to anchor itself in the countryside by dealing directly with the small and medium peasantry through cooperatives failed in one sense: bureaucratic control of small holder property alienated the small peasantry. The power elite ran the program from the top down and the rural peasantry came to view the cooperative policy as illustrating elite restrictions on their freedom. Cooperateurs never felt ownership of the project, many desired their own individual piece of land, and most resented the program when targets were not met and their standard of living hardly improved.(32) Although the cooperateurs were represented in the administrative structure, in reality the units were managed through the state hierarchy of organizations and technicians. An official report noted, "The population installed does not really participate in the improvement work, except perhaps as salaried workers."(33)

It is difficult to underestimate the material and symbolic significance of the cooperative movement. This was the first substantial push at national development by the state party. Policy was used for both economic and social development. Party militants aided by governmental technicians launched a vast campaign to convert a major part of the best land into cooperatives and move peasants from traditional to modern agriculture. By the end of 1968, 30 percent of the nation's best land was in cooperatives holding more than 750,000 people and representing 27 percent of the rural population.(34)

For several reasons, the cooperative policy failed. For political reasons, the landless and near landless were included in cooperatives but more as subjects to be modernized than as full decision-making participants. The use of cooperatives to absorb surplus labor lessened the benefits to each member and limited the chances for profitability. Technical success also required that large landowners be included in cooperatives, testing the resolve of the party to challenge its most powerful constituents. While denying large landowners access to colonial lands, the Socialist Destour initially declined to alienate this group further by including their land in the cooperative system. A belated effort to do so in 1969 failed partially because by this time the small and medium peasantry had also turned against the project. Also, modernization of agriculture in the Tunisian context meant the conversion of cereal-producing lands to olive and fruit trees, which have long gestation periods before benefits can be seen. The investments made during the cooperative push came to fruition only after the policy had become unpopular. Eventually, foreign aid sources turned against the project. Confronted with increasing state farm deficits, representatives of the World Bank urged a period of consolidation and some representatives of USAID in Tunis privately urged an abolition of cooperatives.(35)

Eventually, the hostile forces within the country, especially the rural bourgeoisie urged a policy change. Taking advantage of their historical relationship, the 5,000 or so members of the largest landlord class went directly to President Bourguiba when the cooperatives targeted private large land holdings. They pointed to the inefficiency of the existing state farms, more than half of which were in extensive debt in 1968.(36) In 1969, Ben Salah was ousted and Bourguiba implemented a sweeping reshuffling of government. Economic policy switched to the maintenance of three sectors: private, state, and cooperative; but new emphasis would be placed on the private sector.

During the apex of Tunisian socialism, the administrative elite sought to transform the countryside. Rapid technical and socioeconomic changes were achieved but the overall policy still failed. Even the small peasantry turned against the cooperative system of which they were to be the primary beneficiaries. The administrative elite placed the goal of maintaining political support behind what they must have viewed as their historic mission to modernize the Tunisian economy and change traditional peasant patterns of life and values - including the central value of land ownership.

Elites were even willing to challenge the rural notables from which they originated, first by denying them access to the fertile colonial farms, and then by attempting to place their land in cooperatives. In the end, the party's overly bureaucratic approach that alienated the rural masses, the need for foreign aid in a resource poor small country, and the growing political mobilization of large landowners ended the strongest period of the political autonomy of the administrative elite.

GRADUAL ECONOMIC LIBERALIZATION

Tunisia's administrative elite broke the hold of the entrenched national elites of the Old Destour by mobilizing the countryside. In building a rural-centered political party to wrest power from urban elites, peasant support was developed through a patron/client-like relationship between the government and the peasantry. Peasants traded their support in hope of receiving a range of benefits: small amounts of land, credit, technical, and marketing assistance.(37) Their hopes were partially realized during the cooperative movement. A special relationship also developed between landed elites and the party. Once the NeoDestour captured the nationalist movement they were able to create a melting pot party that also incorporated the labor movement and the general support of the bourgeoisie.

Inevitably, after independence the interests of the various constituencies in the fold of the Neo-Destour party were pitted against one another. The cooperative movement which at first appeared to be extending to all sectors of the economy, illustrated the administrative elite's capacity to follow its own social and political program regardless of the vested interests of any social group. Its failure made closer constituency management an imperative for the government party.

From the beginning of economic liberalization in the 1970s, state policy revealed a bias in favor of the landed elite. For example, the general policy toward privatizing land after 1970 has involved distributing the lion's share of land under state control to large-scale farmers, while preserving a small percentage of farmland to small peasants to stabilize their families.(38) The law which officially shifted policy toward increasing privatization (the law of 9 September 1969 on the reform of agrarian structures) provided for the cession of land under cooperatives to agricultural workers on these lands.(39) In practice, however, only about 50 cooperatives were distributed to landless laborers and agricultural workers. Many of the 200 agricultural production cooperatives on the largest and best land (300,000 hectares, according to an FAO study) remained cooperatively-owned until they were distributed in long-term leasing arrangements exclusively to large landowners in the 1980s and 1990s.(40)

In addition to land policy, credit policy during economic liberalization also clearly favored large landowners. According to the government's own assessment, fewer than twenty percent of the landowners have been beneficiaries of credit, almost all of these in the category of those holding more than fifty hectares.(41) Most of the credit was in the form of grants; the rate of interest was significantly lower than that paid to banks, and purchases of materials and equipment were subsidized by the government when credit was used to make such purchases. Most importantly, no serious effort was made to ensure proper repayment, so that most loans, in fact, were not repaid. Agricultural credit thus essentially constituted transfer payments to large farmers.(42)

The rural bourgeoisie used its privileged access to the administrative elite to prevent land reform and partially sabotage Ben Salah's overall economic plan of the 1960s. Many of them also used their resources and political contacts to convert themselves into an urban bourgeoisie:

Ben Salah's policies favored the growth of a new commercial bourgeoisie in construction, public works, and tourism, and they had accumulated capital during the 1960s while consumer imports were restricted. Not a few of these entrepreneurs had been provincial landowners, and they had accumulated capital in the agricultural sector, buying habous properties for example, and increased their productivity through mechanization. They also diversified their investments beyond commercial agriculture to transport, construction, hotel management. Partly because of the continued significance of patronage, they enjoyed easy, often preferential, access to government and private credit. It was they who would profit from economic liberalization, and Bourguiba was to give them the opportunity in the 1970s.(43)

In the 1970s, the rural bourgeoisie and its new urban offshoot began to dominate government policy. A low wage policy was maintained to attract foreign investment and protect the profit margins of the indigenous bourgeoisie. Initially the promotion of the private sector produced a positive economic picture in the aggregate. Between 1970 and 1976 Gross Domestic Product grew 9 percent a year, well over double the rate of the 1960s, while the government's share of total new investment in manufacturing dropped to half of the 85 percent it held in the 1960s.

However, the picture worsened late in the decade. In 1977, growth in GDP dropped by half and unemployment doubled.(44) Discontent with the bias in government policy toward capitalists became evident as student and labor groups backed frequent demonstrations and strikes.(45) The late 1970s was one of the most unstable times in the Tunisian political system since independence. Strikes were numerous and involved both private and public sector workers protesting low wages. Outbreaks of violence during a strike in Ksar-Hellal, birthplace of the Neo-Destour, precipitated the first intervention of the Tunisian army to quell civil disturbances. The national union, the UGTT became the rallying point for opposition to the regime. In a sense, Huntington's focus on an opposition forming in the cities was born out in the Tunisian case:

... the party which was strong in the countryside normally secured control of the national government and inaugurated a regime characterized by a high degree of political stability. Where no party had a clear base of support in the countryside, some form of instability was the result. In some instances, urban revolts may overturn rural-based governments, but in general governments which are strong in the countryside are able to withstand, if not reduce or eliminate, the continuing opposition they confront in the cities.(46)

Government policy had weakened party support in the countryside while opposition grew in the city. However, by this time Tunisia likely had undergone enough change to reduce the relevance of a peasant base of support for political stability. According to Huntington's analysis, in the course of overall modernization eventually government stability depends on urban support as urban-rural political power changes:

If revolution is avoided, in due course the urban middle class changes significantly; it becomes more conservative as it becomes larger. The urban working class also begins to participate in politics, but it is either too weak to challenge the urban middle class or too conservative to want to do so. Thus as urbanization proceeds, the city comes to play a more effective role in the politics of the country, and the city itself becomes more conservative. The political system and the government come to depend more upon the support of the city than the countryside.(47)

In sum, the administrative elite faced a substantially different political environment in the late 1970s. Growing urban-based clientele groups became more politically important and exerted increasing influence on internal party politics. Government policy reacted by favoring the urban sector. Government food subsidies benefited the urban working class to the detriment of the rural poor by artificially depressing the prices of agricultural produce. Elites were still favored in the remaining agrarian reform program, and in addition, benefited from the government's interest in extracting resources from the agricultural sector to fund industrial expansion as they diversified their economic activities.(48)

The Socialist Destour appeared to recognize the growing importance of urban areas for their own stability and economic growth. The capitalist sector of the economy was much stronger than in the 1960s, thanks in part to significant foreign involvement, and the government neither needed nor wanted to incur its displeasure.(49) The administrative elite increased its link to capitalists and made some concessions to the urban masses in this period.

The government partially mollified rural masses by maintaining their two pronged agricultural strategy of using most state land to bolster capitalist agriculture while reserving some land to stabilize peasant families. The peasantry had developed a patron/client type relationship with the state and the Socialist Destour remained the only political organization with resources to offer. This reality kept much of the peasantry tied to the party even as their share of state resources dwindled dramatically.

Even with the policy shifts, the polity remained unstable in the early 1980s; strikes and civil disturbances continued. An Islamist movement, which had taken shape in the early 1970s as neglected sectors looked for a political voice, continued to grow.(50) As it became apparent that the single party was leaving too many groups dissatisfied, tension mounted for political liberalization. In 1980 a new prime minister, Mohammed Mzalim, was appointed by President Bourguiba. Mzali advocated political liberalization to match the state's general commitment to capitalist development.(51)

Until this point there had never been a strong push for political pluralism within the administrative elite. Modernizing Tunisia socially and economically was a project to be guided by state authorities and party leaders. All Tunisians were considered Destourians under the tutelage of the administrative elite as they led the country toward an industrial economy. However, by the 1980s the party could neither contain the growing cleavages among the elites nor those in larger society within a single party format.

Since independence, party methodology had consisted of choosing an economic policy direction while maintaining a gradualist approach of bargaining with groups disadvantaged by the policy. In fact, Bourguibism, with its longstanding hostility for doctrines, became a synonym for this type of pragmatism.(52) The large landowners kept their land during a policy of socializing agriculture; small peasants were to be stabilized during the promotion of capitalist agriculture. The liberal economic direction undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s eventually led to a break from Bourguibism, from pragmatic bargaining. The party began to align itself more firmly with private capitalists. Dissenters within the party were permitted to leave and form their own political organizations.

Members of the administrative elite themselves joined with social forces to contest state policy when the state permitted November 1981 National Assembly elections to be openly contested. A small communist party was formed by ex-Neo-Destour activists. Supporters of the deposed and exiled Ahmed Ben Salah ran lists as the Mouvement de l'Unite Populaire Il (MUP); former Defense Minister Ahmed Mestiri organized a party called the Social Democrats. Both the MUP II and the Social Democrats favored secular modernization, but were less enthusiastic about private sector capitalism.

Bourguiba hoped that the appearance of pluralism would defuse much of the articulate dissatisfaction with the regime.(53) However, the strongest opposition social force, the Mouvement de Tendance Islamique (MTI) was repressed and outlawed from formal political participation. Bourguiba's increasing persecution of this group and the resulting political upheaval would be a major reason for his ouster in 1987.

The 1981 elections fell far short of political pluralism. The National Front, an alliance of the Neo-Destour and the UGTT, swept the Assembly seats; not a single opposition candidate was elected. Apparently the Socialist Destour had second thoughts about political pluralism and arranged that no opposition group receive more than 5 percent of the vote.(54) The election - and the election irregularities - demonstrated that the Socialist Destour remained unchallenged in the countryside in spite of its policies that favored the urban sector. More than anything this was due to the exclusive access of local party functionaries to state patronage.(55)

The acceleration of economic liberalization since the mid-80s has been characterized by the state party's increasing abandonment of the rural masses while the ruling elite cements its ties with the rural and urban bourgeoisie and refuses to relinquish its firm control of the state apparatus.

ACCELERATED ECONOMIC LIBERALIZATION: THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION

The administrative elite chose a partial attempt at political pluralism to maintain what remained of their capacity to guide the development agenda. It was hoped that political competition would legitimize the regime's economic liberalism.(56) However, the ruling elite had no intention of allowing the formation of any serious competition, something illustrated by the corruption in election results and the persecution of Islamists in the 1981 elections. Continuing authoritarianism meant that electoral rules in the 1980s and 1990s would be manipulated to stifle the development of political competition. The political parties that formed as offshoots of the Socialist Destour continue to suffer from their agreement to play by Destour rules: they are largely not recognized as independent political forces.

Political competition has yet to be allowed to legitimize economic liberalism in Tunisia. Elections in 1988 and 1994 fell short of open competition. Repression has been effectively used to dismantle opposition. The peasantry view the Destour party as the only hope for access to state resources - a reasonable response of the vulnerable. Some dissenters have joined the clandestine Islamist movement. Many constituencies, like labor, continue to deal with the ruling party as if development strategy is still marked by gradualism and bargaining between the administrative elite and all constituencies in Tunisia. However, the union's demand for worker participation in the policy-making councils of government forming the capitalist strategy were refused in the 1970s.(57)

State policy in Tunisia since the 1970s has reflected an increasing unwillingness of the state to challenge capitalists and an increasing willingness to alienate other constituencies. The power of the rural and urban bourgeoisie within the hegemonic party indicates that political choices by this party over time came to serve the interests and ideologies of these groups rather than the values of a modernizing ruling elite independent of vested interests. Choices in economic policy have also been affected by international pressure for marketization and privatization.

The major political issue in Tunisia in the 1970s and 1980s concerned the degree of economic liberalism: people within and outside of the party fought the development of what they saw as unbridled private-sector capitalism; how much of the state-dominated economy should be privatized was hotly debated. In spite of the general liberal economic direction undertaken in the 70s, the government's share in total capital investment never dropped below 50 percent throughout the decade.(58) In the early 1980s, the state still seemed somewhat committed to public, cooperative, and private economic sectors.

International forces in this period swung sharply toward private sector capitalism. The collapse of the Soviet Union increased the power and international influence of Western industrialized economies. Access to finance capital from lending institutions began to be tied to market-oriented economic policies. The global context has been another spur for increasing economic liberalization in Tunisia and weakening the power of the administrative elite.

Since the 1980s all late developing countries (and advanced industrial ones for that matter) have had to deal with the growing transnationalization of markets, production, and finance in the international economy. Within the global context, local states tend to lose power and initiative if their economies falter. One of the defining features of underdevelopment is that international dynamics press more urgently on economic policy in Third World countries.(59) Like other late developing countries, Tunisia confronts these new challenges from a position of relative weakness due to a combination of internal and external economic and political developments: the seeming inadequacy of earlier stateled development strategies (resulting in low growth and balance of payment difficulties), the growing power of the EU, and the international financial institutions upon which Tunisia has increasingly had to depend. With its growing need for imported food and capital, its lack of significant natural resources like oil to produce external rent, Tunisia has little choice but to rely on access to international financial institutions and cooperation agreements with Europe.(60)

The Tunisian state since independence had committed itself, directly or indirectly, to fostering industrialization, as well as to maintaining social programs such as consumer subsidies. Neither a state-led nor private-sector-led growth strategy was effective in preventing fiscal deficits and inflation while the ruling elites pursued their goals. Even during the period of gradual economic liberalization the Tunisian economy suffered from rising inflation, shortages of food and consumer goods, and the inefficient use of capital - much of it borrowed. In the early 80s, the country experienced stagnant growth rates. Balance of payment difficulties led to borrowing and debt that reached a near crisis level in the mid-1980s. Like many other countries, Tunisia resorted to a short term macro-economic stabilization program and mid-term structural adjustment program in 1986 to gain access to finance capital that would relieve the crisis.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) stabilization and World Bank structural adjustment programs prescribe orthodox macroeconomic policy, trade liberalization, some form of privatization, deregulation, a general move toward increased reliance on market forces, and further integration into the world economy. At the core of these prescriptions is the notion that development should be achieved through competitive markets, not centralized planning.(61) The ideology of economic liberalism in a strong form entered Tunisia's economic policy circles more forcefully with agreements with these international financial institutions. The loans were also subject to the principle of conditionality, requiring market reforms for access to the loans. It is difficult to imagine that the debates in Tunisia about the degree of economic liberalism have not been affected by the state's increasing link to transnational capital.

STALLED DEMOCRATIZATION 

Until the 1980s, the variants of the Destour party largely viewed democracy as something that functioned within a single party framework. Party activists were organized in all areas of the country and directed their attention to all social groups. During economic liberalization, the party began to seek a less inclusive set of constituencies; opposition political parties were authorized and political pluralism established a toehold. The Socialist Destour continued, however, to monopolize the political system and fell far short of removing the association of the Socialist Destour with the State. While the structural adjustment program of 1986 further clarified economic liberalism as state policy, political liberalization proceeded much more fitfully.

One of the most volatile aspects of the Tunisian political system in the 1980s and 1990s is that the state party is shedding constituencies and moving toward unbridled private-sector capitalism while smothering the development of legal credible opposition parties. Liberal economic policies are being imposed by an illiberal political regime that hopes to combine what Clifford Geertz once characterized as a combination of a Smithian way of getting rich with a Hobbesian way of governing.(62)

The strain of authoritarianism and general discontent in Tunisia brought the country to the brink of civil strife in 1986. The Islamist movement, the MTI, served as the most important voice of the neglected Tunisians during economic liberalization. President Bourguiba personalized the conflict between the MTI and the state and attempted to eradicate the group. Members of the banned MTI and other Islamists were put on trial in the fall of 1986. Some were condemned to death and others given lighter sentences. Bourguiba demanded a retrial of Islamists who had received lesser sentences. Zinc al-Abidine Ben Ali, former national head of security as Interior Minister, who had been recently appointed Prime Minister, pointed out the illegality of this course of action and its civic danger.

Apparently, there was also a plot by the militant wing of the MTI to assassinate top political figures, including Bourguiba and Ben Ali, if the Islamists' trial was reopened. The brewing conflict and the octogenarian Bourguiba's failing mental state led to the accession of Ben Ali to power on the night of 6-7 November 1987. Ben Ali assembled seven doctors who declared Bourguiba incapable of governing.(63)

As President, Ben Ali immediately began to halt the de-stabilizing repression of the Islamists; indeed, his initial platform focused on the need for political pluralism. The hegemonic party name was changed to the Rally for Constitutional Democracy (RCD). On Ben Ali's first anniversary in power, he witnessed the signing of a National Pact by 16 political and social organizations, including the primary Islamist group. Initially, the Ben Ali political reforms were impressive. Clemency was granted to more than 3,000 political prisoners and bans were lifted on many long-term political exiles. Opposition forces were allowed new freedoms and steps were taken to legalize parties and allow for more press freedom. The presidential term of office was limited after Bourguiba had served as president for life.

The National Pact of November 1988 aimed to move all social forces in Tunisia in the same general direction. The MTI was allowed to participate in exchange for some important concessions: acceptance of the principle of competitive democracy, renunciation of violence, and recognition of the Code on Personal Status revised in 1957.(64) Soon after, the MTI formed a political party, al-Nahda (the renaissance). In the first post-transition election in April 1989, al-Nahda offered the only challenge to RCD hegemony. The "independent candidates" representing al-Nahda (legislative steps were being taken at the time to legalize the party) won nearly 14 percent of the vote nationally and up to 25 percent in some large cities, but in the winner-take-all electoral format, the RCD won every seat.

The RCD victory was the result, among other factors, of the belief by many that the party was the only one capable of delivering patronage resources. At the same time, RCD officials were alarmed by the strength of al-Nahda and quickly moved to make religious parties illegal. The combination of the two events seemed to make it clear that serious confrontations and bargaining remained among social forces before one could see Tunisia implementing liberal, democratic, and pluralistic rule. During this period, the Algerian fundamentalist movement, FIS, gained in strength leading up to electoral victory in municipal elections. A year later the FIS was poised for victory in national legislative elections when the military suspended the vote after the first round. Chilled by the ascent of the FIS and an evolving civil war in Algeria, the Tunisian government instituted implacable repression of al-Nahda. Some political Islamists reacted to repression with violence.

By the time of the legislative and presidential elections in March 1994, only compromised political parties were allowed to participate; the government had charted a new course which excluded organized religion from participation in formal politics. The hope that the National Pact would be a device for a transition from authoritarian rule seemed lost as the 1994 elections - won by the hegemonic RCD with nearly 98 percent of the vote - ended up being largely an empty exercise. In sum, a period of increasing marketization in Tunisia has coincided with, and probably contributed to increasing authoritarianism.

Guilain Denoeux described the electoral campaign run by the RCD in 1994 as a morose exercise in which the regime used the elections to hammer home favorite themes instead of allowing real pluralism. Economic prosperity through liberal economic policies and the fear of Islamic fundamentalism were used to justify a status quo in which the RCD retained hegemonic control of institutions. Power remained concentrated in the hands of the President, and the press remained a simple instrument of the party in power.

The gap continued to deepen between, on one hand, the democratic rhetoric of a regime incarnated by "the man of change," and the reality of a government personalized to the extreme and that tends to smother all competition in the name of stability. Certainly, the stability enjoyed by Tunisia is not only the result of a police system. One should not minimize the accomplishments of the regime, notably in education, the rights of women, economic growth, and the assistance given to the most disadvantaged classes and regions. But, in a country where the middle class is important and aspires to play a real political role, can the regime still legitimize itself exclusively by its engagement in favor of economic growth and its role of barrier against the green threat [of fundamentalism]? Doesn't the absence of a true political opening represent a significant source of instability in a society that continues to change rapidly economically and politically?(65)

A close look at the division of state benefits in the agricultural sectors raises questions about the assistance given to the most disadvantaged by the regime, noted here by Denoeux.

CONCLUSION: ECONOMIC REFORM AND CONTINUING AUTHORITARIANISM

Tunisia's post-independence political system has always been authoritarian. The issue has been whether or not the dominant political party and the bureaucratic establishment it colonized had autonomy from vested interests. The autonomy of the administrative elite meant that they could use the state to respond to all constituencies while promoting national development. The analysis of a generation of scholars witnessing Tunisia's independence movement and post-Colonial years of Tunisian role was that the Neo-Destour was a mass party, a populist party that stood out in the late developing world for its mobilization of all constituencies. The leadership of the party, in this view, promoted modern values and seemed destined to gradually transform Tunisia into a multi-party democracy and would yield their own power to that of society as a whole.

In the meantime, the administrative elite played the role of a patron state that bargained with and ensured some distribution to all social groups. Patronage, activism, and organization throughout the country along with repression when necessary helped to insure the Neo-Destour's monopoly of political power and maintained the perception that the state was for everyone. For a while, well into the 1970s, the administrative elite maintained their umbrella party and continued to play the most powerful role in economic policy making.

From the beginning of the nationalist movement, however, by funding and supplying the Neo-Destour with its early leadership, the rural bourgeoisie has had a special role in the mass party.(66) There were signs in the 1970s that the rural bourgeoisie and its urban offshoot had become powerful enough to dominate state policy. This trend seems to have become a fait accompli during structural adjustment.

A prime illustration of the link between the rural bourgeoisie and the state is the final dispensation of the agricultural production cooperatives that were the centerpiece of Tunisian socialism. Privatization of cooperatives pitted agricultural laborers and small landholders against large landowners who coveted this valuable agricultural land that had been initially slated for distribution to cooperative workers. Ultimately, the bulk of the land went to large landowners.

The government used an economic and technical efficiency rationale to justify the distribution of cooperatives to wealthy landowners even though evidence suggested that medium size farms of 10 to 20 hectares are the most efficient in Tunisia.(67) Large landowners have been a major disappointment in terms of increasing productivity and promoting modern, commercial farming through the post-independence era.(68)

A reasonable explanation for state policy favoring the rural bourgeoisie, while disregarding earlier bargaining with all affected groups including the rural poor, is the erosion of the administrative elite's power while the bourgeoisie increasingly made the state its vehicle. Discussions between the World Bank and the Tunisian government reveal the government's efforts to advance the interests of its most powerful allies and abandon other constituencies during economic reform:

Allocation of state-owned land and collective land to private title holders is occurring, with at best neutral, and probably negative consequences for the poor. The government is pursuing a policy of increasing productivity and promoting modern, commercial farming on the 0.8 million hectares of crop land that it owns. In the last several years the government has more aggressively pursued leasing state-owned crop lands to private commercial partnerships for up to 40 years. Although there may be some indirect benefit to the rural poor from this transfer of management through job creation that follows intensification, the government is expressly not distributing these lands to improve the land assets of the rural poor.(69)

Privatizing cooperatives has also increased rural unemployment as new management, i.e. large landowners, attempt to cut labor costs with mechanization and less labor-intensive crops. The net impact on rural employment is the opposite of the expectation of the World Bank. This is acknowledged in some of their documentation of the impact of structural adjustment. "There was almost no net job creation in agriculture; most of the growth in employment was in manufacturing and services."(70) Overall, official unemployment has increased during structural adjustment from 13.1 percent in 1984 to 16.1 percent in 1993.(71)

Agricultural policy during structural adjustment has driven home the reality of the near complete abandonment of the rural masses by the state. The dual strategy of favoring large commercial enterprises and also making a much smaller effort to stabilize family farms through state policy has ended. Peasants have noticed:

The workers have become beggars. The sun shines on everyone. Normally the state looks after us all. Why give the land to the rich? They already have land. If you give them more they will no longer think of the poor. What are they going to do with more, buy another car? It's no good. You find people with 1000 hectares while others won't even have one hectare. The poor wanted land. Some farmers before got land and they're doing well. (In the early 1970s, a small amount of state land was distributed to former cooperative workers.) If you have connections you can get land. Those who were fired like me always go the administration asking for work. We tell them you fired us, so give me something to buy bread. Nothing happens. The cooperative used to employ eighty people, but now only thirty work there. Those thirty are almost always women because they are paid less. They work for twelve hours a day with someone standing over them the whole time. Men require four dinars a day [One dinar is approximately equal to one U.S. dollar]. while the women work for three something. You know the ministry tells them to pay us five dinars a day.

The poor will always stay poor around here. The poor lack rain and grass for their animals. The rich won't allow them to graze on their land. Before you could graze your animals and they would also give you money. Now the rich don't give you anything. I went to a rich farmer and asked for a little wheat. He said, "Get out, God will help you." Another man, rich with a 404 truck, asked and he gave him the wheat. The rich and the administrators help each other. For example, the Hajj [Islamic term for a person who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Here, it refers to the man who is the largest landowner in his area] will give 10 or 20 kilos of wheat to the poor, but he'll give a lot more to the rich without them coming by.

If there is assistance from the state, the umda [local government administrator] will give out fifty per cent of it and give the rest to his friends or keep it. If you complain, the umda would create worse problems. To get assistance you go to the delegue. Before the delegue will help you, he asks the umda. [The delegue is the highest government representative in a town.] My four-year-old son needed medicine for heart disease, but the umda said I didn't need anything. That I'm doing fine. If you go into my house you'll know how poor I am. I went to the delegue when my son got sicker, he made the umda deliver the money for medicine to my door.(72)

The new market arrangements in Tunisia, which began in the early 1970s, have not been accompanied by democratization as some analysts suggest.(73) Rather, in Tunisia economic liberalization has been associated with continuing authoritarianism, growing ties between the bourgeoisie and the state, and the abandonment of many constituencies. There has also been an increasing influence of international financial institutions in economic policy making circles.

It should also be noted that Tunisia is a typical late developing country in many regards. It is situated in the semi-arid tropics, a vast zone girdling the world. Mexico, India, and much of the Middle East and Sahelian Africa lie in the same zone. Rain-fed agriculture supplemented with groundwater irrigation predominates as does village habitation. Land distribution is typically skewed and production varies enormously with rainfall. Many countries in the semi-arid tropics are undergoing structural adjustment, so the lessons one learns in Tunisia may have resonance in other parts of the world.

Economic reform places particular pressures on a dominant party state. While obviously not being even-handed with all social forces, Tunisia and other North African states had developed social contracts with labor, peasants, private investors, the middle class, and many other social groups. But the Tunisian state exchanged state-led economic activities, subsidies, and subventions for fealty; repression was used against those groups who questioned the new social order.(74) Even after the state clearly sought to organize a less inclusive set of constituencies, the expectation remained of a patron state accessible to all. In a political arena where a hegemonic party insists on monopolizing power, state agents continue to foster an inclusive rhetoric even after state policy has dramatically shifted to favor the true constituents of the party. Party operatives are still organized throughout the country and seek to maintain party hegemony; repression has become an even more important element of the political system.

The state party in Tunisia has responded politically to the social changes accompanying development and economic reform. As Huntington suggested, the political support in urban areas became more important to government stability than the countryside as demographics change over time. The urban middle class grows and becomes more conservative, industrialization expands. The rural masses in Tunisia, who helped the administrative elite from the provinces take power from the traditional urban-based elites in the 1930s, have become the most neglected constituents in state policy. Large landowners reap the benefits of agricultural policy and diversify into urban areas. To an extent, the peasantry adapts to these changes through clientage with rural notables and through the acceptance born of helplessness in the face of the increasingly paltry benefits of state patronage.

Market liberalism stresses export promotion and private investment domestic and foreign. The rural and urban bourgeoisie within Tunisia are in the best position to take advantage of such a strategy. Economic adjustment is a process that tends to lead to coalitions that favor commercial agriculture, private industrialists, and export sectors.(75) If the state was afraid to alienate the increasingly powerful capitalist sector in the 1970s,(76) then there is even more reason to assume that state policy reflects the vested interests of this group today.

Labor unions tend to lose much and gain little from economic reform: owners and managers gain greater freedom to hire and fire workers, food subsidies are reduced, and wages become tied to productivity not cost of living. Organized labor, simply by virtue of being organized, is usually in a better position to protest reform than other social groups.(77) However, there is evidence that the reform minded state in Tunisia has used negotiations to gain labor acceptance of structural adjustment and the market economy.(78)

Agricultural laborers and small peasants, according to the prevailing literature, are supposed to benefit from economic reform: "Government changes in producer prices for agricultural goods as part of broad structural reforms leads to demand for labor and improved wages. Thus urban bias is reversed and farm workers, and small and large landowners benefit."(79) This proposition is contradicted by the evidence in the Tunisian case where there has been a bias toward large landowners in the structural adjustment program. In addition to land policy increasing land concentration and increasing rural unemployment, price reform improved prices for the crops produced by the wealthy and had little or negative impact on the non-irrigated crops produced by the peasantry.(80)

It is likely that the Tunisian state party has created a coalition of commercial agriculture and industrialists from the remains of a once-populist party. Continuing negotiations with elements of labor that accept the state agenda and with private capitalists increase regime stability. Tunisia's recent economic growth rate has excited World Bank and IMF officials who tout the country as an example of successful structural adjustment. Within Tunisia the regime bases its legitimacy partially on their claims to guiding the country to economic prosperity.

Still, there are significant problems on the horizon. Ordinary Tunisians appear to react more forcefully to a sense of inequity in the economic reform process than a belief in the economic scorecard touted by the state and officials in international financial institutions. The sense of relative losses may be more important politically than aggregate economic growth. The Islamist movement remains strong and the only true opposition group. Repression has increased during Ben Ali's reign. Organizations such as Amnesty International and the Tunisian League of Human Rights often cite the government for detentions, possible torture, and general harassment of opposition figures, in particular members of organized religious movements.

Continued economic growth, a more efficient distribution of benefits, well-executed repression, and a fear of an Algeria-like situation, may keep the Tunisian Islamists at bay. However, ultimate political stability will require real political opening. The RCD will have to be recognized as having abandoned its historical commitments to equity to become a party representing the interests of rural notables, the urban bourgeoisie, and transnational finance. Political parties to represent labor and the peasantry must be allowed to develop and flourish in a truly competitive political system.

NOTES

1. Abdelkader Zghal has used the term administrative elite in discussions of Neo-Destour autonomy from the Sahelian Bourgeoisie and the rest of Tunisian Society. The Sahel is an agricultural region on Tunisia's eastern coast. It is known for settled villages and private land ownership that prevented French colonialism from making major in-roads into the region. These elites largely originated from the Sahel. Unpublished conference paper, "Peasant & Political Power in North Africa," 1973.

2. Rhys Payne makes the point that comparative analyses in the 1970s stressed the distinctions between the political orders of the Maglarib, but all four countries had similar socioeconomic problems in the 1980s and adopted similar structural adjustment programs in the 1990s regardless of regime type or ideology. See "Economic Crisis and Policy Reform in the 1980s," in Habib and Zartman, eds., Polity and Society in Contemporary North Africa (1993).

3. According to the World Bank GDP growth from 1987 until 1993 was 4.7% per year. From 1980-1986 the figure was 3.65% per year. World Bank, Republic of Tunisia Growth, Policies, and Poverty Alleviation, 1995, I.2.

4. Public fear of the "green threat of fundamentalism," partially fanned by Ben Ali's regime, state repression, and a government personalized to the extreme in the identity of the "man of change" are regime tendencies noted by Guilain Denoeux in his analysis of Tunisia's 1994 legislative and presidential elections, "Tunisle: Les Elections Presidentielles et Legislatives 20 Mars 1994," Monde Arabe: Maghreb Machrek 145 (July-Sept. 1994).

5. Lisa Anderson, "Policy Making and Theory Building" in Hisham Sharabi, ed., Theory, Politics and the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 54.

6. C.A. Micaud, ed., Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization (New York: Praeger, 1964), p. xii.

7. Ibid

8. Elements of modernization theory and a focus on elites can be found in Clement Henry Moore, Tunisia Since Independence: The Dynamics of One Party Government (Berkeley: University of California, 1965); Elbaki Hermassi, Leadership and National Development in North Africa (Berkeley: University of California, 1972); and Leon Carl Brown, "Stages in the Process of Change," in Micaud, ed., Tunisia: The Politics of Modernization (New York, Praeger Press, 1964). In varying degrees all three scholars viewed most of the original leadership of the party as coming from rural areas and as having significant ties with the rural masses.

9. Leon Carl Brown, "Stages in the Process of Change," in Micaud, op. Cit., 41.

10. A point made by Henri De Montety, "Old Families and New Elites in Tunisia," in William Zartman, ed., Man, State and Society in the Contemporary Maghrib (New York: Praeger, 1973), p. 176.

11. Clement Henry Moore, in Micaud, op cit., p. 81.

12. Ibid, p. 81.

13. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 433-461.

14. Ibid., p., 435.

15. Ibid., pp. 438-443.

16. Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 167.

17. Ibid., p. 169.

18. Ibid. Anderson recounts this incident and its significant for the party.

19. Ibid, pp. 170-172.

20. Hermassi, op. cit., pp. 165, 186.

21. Quoted in Hermassi, Ibid, pp. 126-127.

22. Hermassi, op. cit., p. 126.

23. Moore, op. cit., p. 81.

24. Huntington, op.cit., pp.433-434.

25. Hermassi, op. cit., p. 125.

26. Moore, op. cit., pp. 82-83.

27. Habous refers to a way of appropriating land in Muslim tradition. Habous was divided into public and private usage. Income derived from public habous is given over to the support of some public cause, such as a school, mosque or hospital. Any land committed to private habous was designated to support heirs of the owners, so long as the family line might continue. However, should the line of descent cease, the private habous would become public habous.

28. Cited in Hermassi, op. cit., p. 186.

29. Ibid., pp. 184-185.

30. Ibid., p. 186.

31. Ibid., pp. 186-187.

32. John Simmons, "Land Reform in Tunisia", USAID country paper, 1970.

33. Hermassi, op. cit., p. 187.

34. Ibid.

35. Simmons, op. cit., p. 62.

36. Ibid, p. 61.

37. John Duncan Powell, "Peasant Society and Clientelist Politics," American Political Science Review, 64 (June 1970), p. 422.

38. Mohammed Ellourni, "Politique Agricoles, Strategies Paysannes et Development Rural," Bulletin De L'IRMC (Spring, 1994), p.2.

39. United Nations, Food and Agricultural Organization, Etude Multidimensionnelle et Comparative Des Regimes De Tenures Foncieres Communales Et Privees En Afrique: Le Cas de Tunisie, 1994, 21.

40. Ibid, p. 22.

41. Samir Rawan, Vail Jamal and Ajit Ghose, Tunisia Rural Labour and Structural Transformation (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 38.42. Ibid, pp. 40-41.

43. Lisa Anderson, The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 240.

44. Ibid., pp. 241-242.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid., pp. 242-243

47. Huntington, op. cit., p. 77.

48. Anderson, op. cit, pp. 244-245.

49. Ibid., p. 246.

50. Ibid., p. 245.

51. Ibid., p. 246.

52. Hermassi, op. cit., p, 163.

53. Anderson, op. cit., pp. 248-249.

54. Ibid., p. 248.

55. Ibid., p. 249.

56. Ibid., p. 243.

57. Ibid., p. 243.

58. Ibid., 240.

59. See Dirk Vandewalle and Karen Pfeifer, introduction and chapter 1, North Africa: Development and Reform in a Changing Global Economy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996).

60. Ibid., p. 6.

61. Ibid., p. 9.

62. Quoted in Vandewalle and Pfeifer, op. cit., p. 13.

63. I. William Zartman, "The Conduct of Political Reform: The Path Toward Democracy," in Zartman, ed., Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991), pp. 12-13.

64. Guilain Denoeux, "Tunisie: Les Elections Preesidentielles et Legislatives 20 Mars 1994," Monde Arabe: Magreb Machrek 145 (July-Sept. 1994).

65. Ibid.

66. The analysis of Hermassi and Anderson, op.cit., tended to view the Neo-Destour as linked with large landowners more than most studies.

67. See Samir Rawan, Vali Jamal, and Ajit Ghose, Tunisia Rural Labour and Structural Transformation (London: Routledge, 1991).

68. Ibid.

69. World Bank, "Republic of Tunisia Growth, Policies, and Poverty Alleviation," (1995), II.Annex C.3, p. 5-6.

70. World Bank, "Republic of Tunisia Poverty Alleviation Preserving Progress While Preparing for the Future" (Washington, D.C., 1995) 1.6.

71. World Bank, Republic of Tunisia Growth, Policies, and Poverty Alleviation (1995), I.ii.

72. Stephen J. King, The Politics of Market Reform in Rural Tunisia, Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University (1997), p. 183.

73. Scholars who suggest that the processes of economic liberalization are conducive to democratization include Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Larry Diamond, "Economic Development and Democracy Reconsidered," American Behavioral Scientist 35,4 (March-June, 1992), 450-499; and Carlos Waisman, "Capitalism, the Market, and Democracy," American Behavioral Scientist 35,4 (March-June, 1992), 500-516.

74. Karen Pfeifer, op.cit., p. 26.

75. John Waterbury, "The Political Management of Economic Adjustment and Economic Reform," in Fragile Coalitions: The Politics of Economic Adjustment, Joan Nelson, ed., (Washington, D.C.: Overseas Development Council, 1989.)

76. Lisa Anderson, op.cit., p. 246.

77. John Waterbury, op.cit.

78. Chris Alexander, "State, Labor, and the New Global Economy in Tunisia," in Vandewalle and Pfeifer, eds., op.cit., p. 177.

79. Joan Nelson, "Poverty, Equity, and the Politics of Adjustment," in Haggard and Kaufinan, eds., The Politics of Economic Adjustment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 227.

80. World Bank, "Republic of Tunisia Growth Policies and Poverty Alleviation" (Washington, D.C., 1995), 1.20.

Stephen J. King is an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University. He is currently completing a manuscript on the politics of structural adjustment in Tunisia.