IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/medjxx/v05y2013i01ns179381201350003x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Making Of The Tunisian Revolution

Author

Listed:
  • FADHEL KABOUB

    (Denison University, Research Associate, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, USA)

Abstract

The rapid fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia on January 14, 2011 has not only sparked a wave of uprisings across the Arab region, but has also raised many questions about the rotes of socio-economic inequality, youth unemployment, corruption, and government oppression in the making of the Tunisian uprisings. This paper argues that what seemed to be an island of stability in the region was in fact a ticking time bomb that was set off by Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010. It further argues that the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime could not have taken place had it not been a leaderless revolt. As a result, the paper provides a critical analysis of the making of the Tunisian revolution by investigating the key factors that maintained stability, and the mechanisms that set the stage for the uprisings. In doing so, the analysis reveals the radical social transformation that took place since the early 1990s leading to the breakdown of the social contract, and the gradual drift of the middle class away from its implicit support of the Ben Ali regime. The new political landscape opens up a real opportunity for democratic transformation, vibrant civic engagement, and sustainable economic revival. Therefore, our analysis would be incomplete without a careful look at the new dynamic between the forces of political Islam, secularism, and the middle class. Finally, the paper closes with a summary and some concluding remarks.

Suggested Citation

  • Fadhel Kaboub, 2013. "The Making Of The Tunisian Revolution," Middle East Development Journal (MEDJ), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(01), pages 1-21.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:medjxx:v:05:y:2013:i:01:n:s179381201350003x
    DOI: 10.1142/S179381201350003X
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S179381201350003X
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S179381201350003X?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emma C. Murphy, 1999. "Economic and Political change in Tunisia," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-333-98358-4, December.
    2. Fadhel Kaboub, 2007. "ELR-led Economic Development: A Plan for Tunisia," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_499, Levy Economics Institute.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Melani Cammett & Nisreen Salti, 2016. "Popular Grievances and Perceptions of Socioeconomic Conditions in the Arab Region Prior to the Uprisings," Working Papers 1006, Economic Research Forum, revised May 2016.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ben Jelili, Riadh & Goaied, Mohamed, 2009. "Entry, Exit, and Productivity in Tunisian Manufacturing Industries," MPRA Paper 52222, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2008.
    2. Erdle, Steffen, 2011. "Industrial policy in Tunisia," IDOS Discussion Papers 1/2011, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    3. Sami Zemni, 2017. "The Tunisian Revolution: Neoliberalism, Urban Contentious Politics and the Right to the City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 70-83, January.
    4. Md. Muddassir Quamar, 2015. "Tunisia: Presidential and Parliamentary Elections, 2014," Contemporary Review of the Middle East, , vol. 2(3), pages 269-288, September.
    5. Anis Omri & Amel Sassi-Tmar, 2015. "Linking FDI Inflows to Economic Growth in North African Countries," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 6(1), pages 90-104, March.
    6. Gerald Epstein, 2020. "The Empirical and Institutional Limits of Modern Money Theory," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 772-780, December.
    7. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-558 is not listed on IDEAS

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:medjxx:v:05:y:2013:i:01:n:s179381201350003x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/medj/medj.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.