The Post-Arab Spring Social Contract in Tunisia: Social Actors’ Comparative Gains and Losses
39 Pages Posted: 29 Oct 2022 Last revised: 3 Apr 2024
Date Written: October 26, 2022
Abstract
This paper, first, identifies the characteristics of the social contract of post-2011 Revolution Tunisia and, second, investigates the comparative gains/losses of the different considered social actors from this contract. The social contract is perceived as a product of the prevailing state-society relations. State-society relations, on their turn, are analyzed based on the power relations between the main actors in the Tunisian industrial sector. The comparative gains/losses of these actors are investigated in terms of two broad policy fields: competition and welfare.
Depending on qualitative data collected from a number of semi-structured interviews and the literature, this research suggests that the social contract in post-2011 Revolution Tunisia was shaped by: a less dominant state, more powerful big business tycoons, more organizationally empowered but less influential small and medium enterprises’ entrepreneurs, much strengthened public sector labor as the most organizationally powerful actor, and less represented and organizationally weak private sector labor. The resultant social contract was one of a state capture characteristics, where tycoons mainly benefited from lax implementation of laws and regulations without yielding more economic prosperity. Entrepreneurs’ benefits from democratic empowerment of broad-based business associations were overshadowed by high favoritism and fragmentation of business representation. The welfare benefits brought by the strengthened labor organizational representation were largely confined to public sector labor, while private sector labor conditions comparatively deteriorated. Entrepreneurs and private sector labor’s losses were likely greater in this contract than in the former Ben Ali’s crony capitalist contract, making it even less sustainable than its predecessor.
Keywords: Social Contract, State Capture, Cronyism, Tunisia, State-Society Relations, State-Business-Labor Relations, State, Tycoons, Entrepreneurs, Labor.
JEL Classification: P52, O43, I38, O55
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