Following an unprecedented period of political consensus building, Tunisia and its international partners have launched a new coordination mechanism to boost long-term investment and facilitate private-sector growth, notes a new report. However, for this effort to succeed, a bottom-up approach must also be taken to address more urgent challenges such as youth unemployment, corruption, centralized governance, and public distrust.
This will require instituting broad-based economic and political reforms that democratize market access, engage local actors, and meet the needs of all citizens, especially those marginalized in interior regions, according to Capitalizing on Tunisia’s Transition: The Role of Broad-Based Reform, a report from the Carnegie Endowment.
Tunisia’s 2014 constitution represents a progressive charter that aspires to found a pluralistic, inclusive, transparent, accountable, just, and representative governing system with checks and balances, adds the report, authored by analysts Marwan Muasher, Marc Pierini and Fadil Aliriza. Moreover, the process of writing this constitution was a shining example of “deep compromise,” in the words of one scholar, between different political actors with conflicting ideologies and a history of antagonism, violence, and even torture. Overcoming these differences, particularly between Islamists and non-Islamists, was a remarkable example of political consensus building.
Tunisia is the one country where a new social contract has begun to replace rentierism, Muwasher writes for Project Syndicate:
The rest of the Arab world faces two alternatives. Its leaders can begin fighting the cancer of an unsustainable status quo, with all the pain and uncertainty that such a struggle entails; or they can wait for the cancer to become a terminal condition, and be devoured by it.
Key points:
- Although Tunisia has made significant progress toward consolidating its democracy, consensus among political parties has not translated into public buy-in of the reform process.
- Substantial inequality remains among citizens, depending on geographic location, age, and political and social status.
- The November 2016 international investment conference, Tunisia 2020, is part of a strategy to secure the country’s long-term economic development, but there are major, near-term obstacles to its effective implementation.
- Increased spending on public wages and debt has left little room for investment in Tunisia’s budget.
- Pervasive corruption and nepotism and prohibitive customs and tax regimes are barriers to small and medium-sized enterprises and achieving shared prosperity.
- Difficult reforms, such as reducing public-sector employment, could exacerbate political and social tensions.
- The kind of investment made and level of civic society engagement will be important factors in building a resilient economic, political, and social order in Tunisia.
Marwan Muasher is vice president for studies at Carnegie, where he oversees research in Washington and Beirut on the Middle East. Follow him on Twitter @MarwanMuasher. Marc Pierini is a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, where his research focuses on developments in the Middle East and Turkey from a European perspective. Follow him on Twitter @MarcPierini1. Fadil Aliriza is Tunisia project manager at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has worked as a researcher, an analyst, and a journalist focusing on the politics of Tunisia and Libya since the 2011 uprisings. Follow him on Twitter @FadilAliriza.
