Stop the Presses! Media freedom in authoritarian regimes: A case study of Ben Ali’s Tunisia

Stop the Presses! Media Freedom in Authoritarian Regimes: A Case Study of Ben Ali’s Tunisia Eoghan Stafford This is a preprint manuscript of an article that appeared in the Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2017, Vol. 8, No. 4: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21520844.2017.1401884 Abstract Why did Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali introduce greater freedom of the press when he took power in Tunisia in 1987, only to start clawing back these new freedoms two years later? The article presents a general theory of such cases, arguing that dictators who face both powerful rivals within their governments and threats of social unrest are more likely than other authoritarian rulers to reduce restrictions on the news media. Freedom of the press acts as a commitment device, bolstering the credibility of the concessions that dictators in such circumstances—frequently new dictators—often promise to opposition groups. The article tests the theory on the case of Tunisia during Ben Ali’s first five years in office, from 1987 to 1992, detailing the threats he faced from inside and outside his government, and how he used press freedom to consolidate power while containing social unrest. Finally, the study shows how unforeseen political developments upended the bargain between Ben Ali and the opposition, leading to the end of Tunisia’s brief experiment with press freedom. KEYWORDS: Tunisia, Ben Ali, freedom of the press, commitment dilemmas, succession 1) Introduction: A Theory of Media Freedom in Authoritarian Regimes When Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali seized power in Tunisia in November 1987, many observers inside and outside the country believed he would be a political reformer. One of the reforms he promised in the early morning hours after his coup was greater freedom of the press. While Ben Ali never abolished censorship of the press, he reduced it significantly during his first few years in office, in comparison to the final years of rule by his predecessor, Habib Bourguiba. The New York Times reported in December 1987 that, “news organizations can now criticize the government with impunity” and referred to Ben Ali’s press reforms as part of a set of “changes that were unthinkable under the regime of Habib Bourguiba.”1 Yet within a few years of the coup, Ben Ali had reversed his own press reforms. By 1998, Ben Ali had made it onto a list of the world’s top ten “Enemies of the Press,” published by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a watchdog organization.2 What motivated Ben Ali to crack down on Tunisia’s journalistic sphere after initially liberalizing it? And why did he implement press reforms in the first place? Ben Ali’s early years in power are just one example of a surprisingly common phenomenon in authoritarian politics. Allowing even partial freedom to the press to report on abuses by government officials, policy failures, or criticism of the government, or to present the alternative agendas of opposition groups, poses a considerable risk to autocratic rulers. After all, negative news about the government may turn loyal, or at least quiescent, citizens into opponents of the regime. Publicizing citizens’ grievances can cause individual dissidents to realize that they are not alone in their opposition. And allowing opposition groups a public platform can make it easier for them to rally citizens to rebel against a regime. It is therefore puzzling that numerous leaders across the Middle East and North Africa have chosen this strategy of introducing partial press freedom upon taking power, only to later reintroduce heavy censorship, including Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani in Qatar, and Bashar al Asad in Syria.3 What generally motivates these episodes of ephemeral freedom? Paul Delaney, “New Tunis Chief Begins Democratic Changes,” New York Times (December 13, 1987). “Enemies of the Press: The 10 Worst Offenders of 1998,” Committee to Protect Journalists, retrieved December 9, 2016, https://cpj.org/x/204f 3 Some incumbents who have been in power for a long time have also temporarily liberalized restrictions on the press, including Hassan Goulded Aptidon in Djibouti in the mid 1990s and Mubarak in Egypt in the mid 2000s. Both of these dictators faced significant unrest (although on different scales: civil war in the first case, major protests and strikes in the second), which they sought to defuse by offering to share more power with groups outside their regimes (Jenifer Whitten-Woodring and Douglas A. Van Belle, Historical Guide to World Media Freedom: A Country-By-Country Analysis [Washington, DC: Sage, 2014], 154 & 164). Nor is the phenomenon of media liberalization by authoritarian regimes limited to the Arab countries, as the examples of the “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia, “glasnost” in 1 2 Dictators are often at their weakest when they first come to power, especially if they are not the founders of their regimes. The governing institutions—the cabinet, the ruling party, the security apparatus, et cetera—are often led by other powerful individuals, in many cases the new leader’s erstwhile competitors in the struggle to succeed the old leader. Thus, someone who recently has gained power must be particularly concerned about the possibility of a takeover by regime insiders, including so-called palace coups by civilian elites.4 Faced with this need to consolidate power over his rivals within the regime, a new dictator is particularly vulnerable to any threat of social unrest.5 On the one hand, strikes, protests, or riots might lead regime elites to support the ouster of the new leader by a rival. Therefore, at a minimum, the ruler would want to ensure that opposition groups and most of the public do not actively oppose him. On the other hand, if a rival in the government did attempt to oust him, resistance by opposition groups and the public might be necessary to defeat the coup. 6 The prospect of such resistance might deter an ouster attempt in the first place. Thus, a new dictator will sometimes offer a truce to his opponents outside the regime, while he removes or sidelines his rivals inside the regime, by promising certain policy concessions to opposition groups outside the government in exchange for supporting or at least not challenging him. Such policy reforms may also be aimed at winning support from the broader public. Yet an authoritarian leader might be tempted to the Soviet Union, Mexico under the PRI, Burkina Faso under Captain Blaise Campaoré, and Cambodia in the mid-2000s attest (“Prague Spring,” Encyclopedia Britannica, retrieved October 17, 2017, https://www.britannica.com/event/Prague-Spring; Jonathon Green and Nicholas J. Karolides [reviser], Encyclopedia of Censorship, New Edition [New York: Facts on File, 2005], 589; Whitten-Woodring and Van Belle, Historical Guide to World Media Freedom, 101, 106, & 306-307). 4 Throughout this article, the term “coup” refers to an attempt by any members of the government to remove the leader from office (against the latter’s will), whether or not it is led by the armed forces. This usage is essentially the same as that employed by Milan W. Svolik, (The Politics of Authoritarian Rule [New York: Cambridge UP, 2012], 4). 5 Masculine pronouns are used in this article to reflect the reality that—with the possible exception of Indira Gandhi during India’s period of emergency rule—all modern dictators have been men. 6 Famous cases of mass protests defeating coups include the attempts against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 and Hugo Chávez in 2002 (“Chronology of a Failed Coup,” The Toronto Star [August 22, 1991]; Barbara Geddes, “Why Parties and Elections in Authoritarian Regimes?” presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association [2005]). On the other hand, popular mobilization against an incumbent can also facilitate a coup, as Egypt’s Muhammad Mursī learned the hard way in 2013 (Denis J. Sullivan and Alice Verticelli, “Egypt: History,” The Middle East and North Africa, Europa World Online, retrieved October 17, 2017, http://www.europaworld.com/entry/eg.hi). break these promises after consolidating control over the levers of power, when the support of opposition groups and citizens would become less vital. Indeed, once the dictator is sufficiently sure that no one in his regime remains strong enough to form an alliance with the opposition against him, he may be tempted to repress his antagonists outside the regime. So why would anyone believe his promises in the first place? It is precisely because of this credibility problem that new dictators who offer major policy reforms often include among those changes a loosening of restrictions on the press. Press freedom can be a commitment device: an arrangement that raises the cost of breaking one’s promises. As North and Weingast have noted, dictators sometimes face a commitment dilemma. 7 An authoritarian ruler may need to make concessions to an opponent now—when the dictator is weak—but the opponent realizes that the dictator may be stronger, and thus tempted to renege on the concessions, in the future. Political commitment devices are ways that governments make their promises credible now by raising the cost of breaking them in the future. Often this means finding a way to limit their future power relative to that of their opponents. By constraining their own power, dictators can avoid losing it all. Granting some freedom to the press may be one such way that authoritarian leaders sometimes constrain their future power. Thus, tactical press liberalization can persuade opposition leaders that they will be able to deter the dictator from reneging on his promises of reform in the future. Specifically, allowing the press some freedom to criticize existing government policies and report on the activities of his opponents (without always attacking them), as well as allowing the opposition the right to publish its own papers, improves the chances that critics will be able to build public support for their organizations and agenda and thus to mobilize citizens to protest if the dictator breaks his promises. Therefore, a critical press can help the opposition to preserve its leverage into the future. Even as the new leader consolidates power over the government, so that any given level of mobilization becomes less threatening, increased public support for opponents and for the promised reforms gives opposition leaders the ability to mobilize larger protests if the dictator were to break his promises. In essence, the 7 Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” The Journal of Economic History 49, Issue 4 (1989): 803-832. authoritarian ruler uses press freedom to preserve his adversaries’ ability to threaten him with protests, thus making his promises of concessions credible, and persuading the opposition not to mobilize protests. In summary, this theory suggests that the authoritarian leaders who are most likely to provide some freedom to the news media are new dictators—who did not found their regimes—in societies where citizens have serious grievances (especially in the presence of organized opposition groups) that create a significant threat of social unrest. Simultaneous threats from inside and outside a regime create a strong incentive for rulers to mollify societal opposition groups with concessions. At the same time, if a leader survives long enough to make good on his promises, it will typically be because he has managed to get rid of (in whatever sense necessary) his most dangerous rivals inside the regime. Therefore, the dictator’s need to appease the opposition is likely to diminish in the future, rendering his promises non-credible now, unless he can entrench his opponents’ leverage by granting them access to the media. Nonetheless, media freedom does not provide the opposition with an absolute guarantee that concessions will last. Rather, such liberty is best thought of as a contingent commitment device: it improves the odds that the opposition will remain strong enough to hold the dictator to his promises, but there always remains a possibility that the ruler will become too powerful to challenge. The authoritarian leader may be more successful in consolidating personal power, or the opposition’s message may be less persuasive to the public, than opponents initially expected. In such cases, despite having given the opposition the benefit of relatively free media, the dictator will nonetheless be able to avoid making the concessions he had promised when he was weaker, and will likely be able to reintroduce heavy censorship, with his adversaries in no position to resist. Yet such an ex-post failure for the opposition would not change the fact that its earlier decision to support (or at least not challenge) the new leader was ex-ante rational. Given what opponents knew when the dictator made his promises, and that he backed up those promises by liberalizing the press, cooperation with the new ruler may have been a sensible bet at the time. After all, there are cases where the commitment mechanism seems to work. Authoritarian regimes that have made transitions to democracy after periods of relatively loose controls on journalists (in comparison to most dictatorships) include Mexico (2000), The Comoros (2006), and Mauritania (2007). 8 In some cases, including Mexico under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), as well as Kuwait today, relative media freedom has coexisted with stable authoritarian rule for decades. During these periods, media freedom may serve as a guarantee of concessions to citizens other than outright democratization. 9 While this theory may explain much of the variation in censorship in modern dictatorships generally, this article will test the plausibility of the theory through a single case study, exploring variation in press freedom over the first five years of Ben Ali’s rule in Tunisia, from late 1987 to 1992. The investigation draws on news articles and reports by human rights monitors from that period, historical accounts, and interviews carried out by the author in Tunis during May and June 2016. 10 Section 2 situates this work’s argument in the literature on commitment dilemmas in authoritarian political systems, which has shown how various kinds of political reforms can serve as solutions to this dilemma. The theory will also be grounded in the literature on intra-regime rivalries and leadership succession in authoritarian regimes. This section also contrasts the theory of this study with other explanations of relative media freedom in non-democracies. Section 3 describes the rise of media freedom during the first two years of Ben Ali’s rule—in comparison to the situation during the last few years of rule by his predecessor, Habib Bourguiba—and how this brief opening was dramatically reversed in the next three years. Section 4 discusses the threats to Ben Ali’s rule from inside and outside of the regime when he first came to power. Section 5 8 Whitten-Woodring and Van Belle, Historical Guide to World Media Freedom, 128, 302, and 306-307; Barbara Geddes, Erica Frantz, and Joseph Wright, “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 2 (June 2014); “The Comoros: Recent History,” Africa South of the Sahara, Europa World Online, retrieved October 17, 2017, http://www.europaworld.com/entry/km.hi 9 Freedom House has categorized Kuwait’s media as “Partly Free” since 1995 (“About Freedom of the Press,” Freedom House, retrieved October 17, 2017, https://freedomhouse.org/report-types/freedompress). Kuwait’s liberalization of the media in the mid 1990s came at a time when Kuwait’s National Assembly was challenging Emir Jubir as-Sabah in an attempt to expand its powers relative to the crown and to remove its unelected members (Jill Crystal, “Kuwait: History,” The Middle East and North Africa, Europa World Online, retrieved October 17, 2017, http://www.europaworld.com/entry/kw.hi). 10 Interviewees spoke in Arabic, French, and English. Quotations of interviewees who spoke in English are indicated as “verbatim.” Some quotes are indicated as “author’s translation” from Arabic or French. The author’s research assistant, Mohamed Ashraf Ayadi, translated all other quotations of interviewees from Arabic or French. describes the reforms that Ben Ali promised when he came to power—pledges he started to implement during the first two years of his rule—and how media liberalization helped to convince opposition leaders and much of the public to believe those assurances initially. Section 6 describes how Ben Ali came not only to break his promises of political reform, but also began heavily to repress the opposition he had once courted, particularly the main Islamist movement. Section 7 explains why press reforms ultimately proved to be insufficient constraints on Ben Ali, because of three developments opponents could not reasonably have anticipated: Ben Ali’s skill in marginalizing the old guard from Bourguiba’s administration, the failure of the secular opposition to expand its popular support, and the sudden rise of a powerful Islamist movement in neighboring Algeria. Section 8 concludes this study. 2) Literature Review: Regimes, Rivals, and Reforms There is an extensive literature that explains a wide array of authoritarian institutions by showing how they solve commitment dilemmas, benefiting dictators by, counter-intuitively, restraining their powers. North and Weingast, for instance, discuss institutional changes after England’s Glorious Revolution that strengthened parliament and the common law courts relative to the king. By taking away the crown’s ability to renege on repaying loans, these changes made it possible for monarchs to raise more revenues.11 Gelbach and Keefer argue that single-party regimes sometimes create intraparty institutions that encourage economic investments by party members, solving the problem of credibly committing the government not to expropriate investors’ profits by actually facilitating the ability of party cadres to engage in collective action against the central leadership. 12 Some authors have seen certain authoritarian institutions as facilitating powersharing agreements among regime elites. Magaloni, for instance, argues that elections 11 12 North and Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment.” Scott Gehlbach and Philip Keefer, “Investment without democracy: Ruling-party institutionalization and credible commitment in autocracies,” Journal of Comparative Economics 39, Issue 2 (2011), 123–139. are a way to solve the commitment problem of rewarding loyal government supporters.13 Boix and Svolic see institutions such as “parties, legislatures, and advisory councils” as ways for dictators to commit to sharing power with their key allies.14 Most relevant to the theory presented in this article, other authors have argued that institutions can facilitate bargains between authoritarian rulers and outsiders who pose a threat to a regime, thus preventing protest or revolt. Acemoglu and Robinson contend that some autocratic leaders have gradually expanded suffrage in order credibly to commit to redistributive policies to the working class, and thus avoid revolution. 15 Similarly, Gandhi and Przeworksi argue that establishing a legislature can help a dictator prevent rebellion by co-opting opposition groups. 16 The theory tested in this article applies the logic of the commitment dilemma to the case of press liberalization under authoritarian rule. Media freedom (even partial freedom) can make it easier for the opposition to mobilize protests, thus making it costlier for the dictator to renege on promised concessions, and so convincing opposition activists not to protest. It is important to note that an institution can facilitate an agreement between ruler and ruled without providing absolute constraints on the former’s ability to renege on the agreement. Suppose that under a particular institution there is a non-trivial probability that the dictator will ultimately have an incentive to renege on a bargain, due to uncertain factors that will affect the leader’s future preferences or powers or both. The institution may nonetheless be both necessary and sufficient to convince the dictator’s counterparts to agree to the bargain, provided the institution substantially reduces the risk of reneging. Boix and Svolik have argued that institutions such as ruling parties, legislatures, and advisory councils may facilitate power-sharing between authoritarian rulers and their elite allies for a while, only to break down if and when other factors cause the balance of Beatriz Magaloni, “Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule,” Comparative Political Studies: 41, no. 4-5 (April 1, 2008): 715-741. 14 Carles Boix and Milan W. Svolik, “The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government: Institutions, Commitment, and Power-Sharing in Dictatorships,” The Journal of Politics 75, no. 2 (April 2013): 300-316. 15 Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (New York: Cambridge UP, 2006). 16 Jennifer Gandhi and Adam Przeworski, “Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats,” Comparative Political Studies 40, no. 11 (November 2007): 1279-1301. 13 power to shift in favor of the ruler. 17 The theory presented in this article argues that unforeseeable factors that increase dictators’ power relative to groups outside the regime may also undermine institutions designed to facilitate cooperation between them. In particular, an environment of press freedom that raised the ex ante probability of cooperation between a dictator and opposition groups may break down if the dictator manages to accrue too much power due to factors opposition leaders could not predict with certainty when they agreed to the bargain. The literature on authoritarian institutions as solutions to commitment dilemmas also provides an answer to the frequent contention that ostensible political reforms by dictators are mere “window-dressing”: that dictators enact them because they are a costless way to give the appearance of democracy without placing any real constraint on their powers.18 The literature acknowledges that such reforms are often intended to prolong authoritarian rule, not bring about full democratization. But often reforms enable rulers to hold on to power for longer only by limiting their power. Moreover, we might wonder why all dictators do not adopt political reforms, including media liberalization, if such reforms are costless. But in fact, as the literature has pointed out, political reforms by authoritarian rulers are not always devoid of risk. For example, many dictators hold elections despite the risks of either provoking protests if they are seen as too fraudulent or actually losing them if they are not fraudulent enough.19 Similarly, liberalizing the media can be risky, because of the important roles the media often play in facilitating collective action by citizens against governments. An extensive literature highlights this media-protest connection, including studies that have shown that the media can make protest easier by creating common knowledge of grievances,20 publicizing the message of protestors to a broader audience, 21 or disseminating logistical information on the timing and location of planned protest Boix and Svolik, “The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government,” 307. Gandhi and Przeworski, “Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats.” 19 Carl Henrik Knutsen, Havard Mokliev Nygard, and Tore Wig. “Autocratic Elections: Stabilizing Tool or Force for Change?,” World Politics 69, no. 1 (January 2017), 98–143. 20 Michael Suk-Young Chwe, Rational Ritual: Culture, Coordination, and Common Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001). 21 Pamela E. Oliver and Daniel J. Myers, “How Events Enter the Public Sphere: Conflict, Location, and Sponsorship in Local Newspaper Coverage of Public Events,” American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 1 (July 1999): 38-87. 17 18 events.22 For this reason, scholars generally argue that the main motivation for censoring the media in the first place is to make it more difficult for citizens who oppose a government to coordinate with one another against it.23 Given the risks to a dictator of loosening media restrictions, it appears that there must be some potential benefit for autocratic rulers who do choose to do so anyway. In recent years, a rich literature has identified some potential benefits. One group of scholars has argued that some dictators grant a measure of freedom to the media in order to uncover public grievances, policy failures, or corruption by low-level officials— problems about which it might otherwise be difficult for a dictator to obtain information24—in order to resolve these issues before they lead to uncontrollable political unrest.25 Other theories declare that censorship undermines the ability of regimes to communicate information to the public, and that dictators can only restore the credibility of the media by granting them freedom sometimes to report facts that are inconvenient for the rulers. 26 These theories are not mutually exclusive; there may be a variety of motives that lead dictators to allow some media freedom in different circumstances. This study extends this literature by adding another motive: making bargains with the opposition credible. The theory’s novelty is in addressing how media freedom can affect the strength of opposition groups over time and how this dynamic effect can make Stefaan Walgrave and Jan Manssens, “The Making of the White March: The Mass Media as a Mobilizing Alternative to Movement Organizations,” Mobilization: An International Journal 5, no. 2 (September 2000): 217-239. 23 Timur Kuran, “Now Out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics 44, no. 1 (October 1991): 7-48; Susanne Lohmann, “The Dynamics of Informational Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 1989-91,” World Politics 47, no. 1 (October 1994): 42-101; Georgy Egorov, Sergei Guriev, and Konstantin Sonin, “Why Resource-poor Dictators Allow Freer Media: A Theory and Evidence from Panel Data,” American Political Science Review 103, no. 4 (November 2009), 645-668; Scott Gehlbach and Konstantin Sonin, “Government Control of the Media,” Journal of Public Economics 118 (October 2014): 163-171; Peter Lorentzen, “China’s Strategic Censorship,” American Journal of Political Science 58, no. 2 (April 2014): 402– 414; Mehdi Shadmehr and Dan Bernhardt, “A Theory of State Censorship,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, 2012; and Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression,” American Political Science Review: 107 no. 2 (May 2013): 326-343. 24 Donald Wintrobe, The Political Economy of Dictatorship (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998). 25 Egorov, Guriev, and Sonin, “Why Resource-poor Dictators Allow Freer Media”; and King, Pan, and Roberts, “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression”; Lorentzen, “China’s Strategic Censorship.” 26 Gelbach and Sonin, “Government Control of the Media”; Shadmehr and Bernhardt, “A Theory of State Censorship.” 22 concessions credible. Moreover, this interpretation underscores that the danger that the media present for dictators—their potential to facilitate collective action against a government—is also what makes a dictator’s promises of concessions more credible. Finally, the theory draws on the literature that has shown that the greatest threats an authoritarian leader faces in maintaining his hold on power typically come from within the regime itself. Svolik finds that, among all dictators who left office between 1946 and 2008, the most common way they lost power was through coups. 27 Frantz, Geddes, and Wright argue that the early years in office can be particularly dangerous for a dictator. Moreover, compared to founders of authoritarian regimes, it is more challenging for autocratic rulers who succeed a previous leader of the regime to consolidate personal power. First, there is a selection effect: the other elites in the ruling circle generally will not permit a leader with too much experience or too many resources to succeed the old dictator in the first place. At the same time, the ruling elites themselves tend to have extensive political experience and independent power bases. Finally, subsequent leaders are likely to inherit factionalized inner circles, and have reason to fear that the factions they were not part of will try to replace them with one of their own. 28 This article maintains that the struggle to consolidate power over rivals within the regime is crucial to understanding why new dictators who face the potential for social unrest sometimes choose to loosen restrictions on the media. A new dictator must pick his battles, or at least stagger them: rather than confront opponents outside and inside the regime at once, the newly ascendant leader might be better off co-opting opposition groups, and granting them access to the media to make his offer sufficiently credible. He will then have a freer hand to marginalize or exclude (or even arrest or kill) his rivals in the government. This may mean empowering the opposition in the long run, forcing the ruler to make good on his promises. Yet if he is particularly successful in consolidating power, he may ultimately be able to renege on the deal. 27 28 Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule, 4 & 41. Erica Frantz, Barbara Geddes, and Joseph Wright, How Dictatorships Work (forthcoming book). 3) “Recess for the Press:”29 Ben Ali’s Brief Opening of the Press Between independence from the French in 1956, and the “Jasmine Revolution” of 2011, only two individuals ruled Tunisia: Habib Bourguiba and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Having led the fight for independence, Bourguiba then ruled the country for three decades as the head of the Parti Socialiste Destourien (PSD, Destourian Socialist Party),30 which monopolized power over the state. During Bourguiba’s rule, Ben Ali rose through the military intelligence service and the security apparatus to the post of interior minister and, just a month before the coup, prime minister. 31 The last three years of Bourguiba’s rule saw a heavy crackdown on the press. 32 In 1986, the last full year of Bourguiba’s presidency, the government suspended five opposition journals for six months each. 33 One independent newspaper, Realités (Facts), was seized or suspended ten times in 1984. 34 This wave of repression “virtually shut down the independent press.”35 In comparison to this heavy-handed treatment of the press in 1984-1987, the first couple years of Ben Ali’s rule saw a period of expanded freedom of the press. For instance, the regime legalized many previously banned opposition journals and also permitted the appearance of several new opposition publications. Within a few months of Ben Ali’s coup, his government ended the bans on the party newspapers of two legal This phrase is the author’s translation of a hybrid French-Arabic phrase: “récréation pour as-sahafa,” and comes from an interview with Slaheddine Jourchi (discussion with the author, May 2016). 30 Destourien is a Francification of the Arabic word dustūrī, meaning “constitutional.” 31 Steffen Erdle, Ben Ali’s ‘New Tunisia’ (1987-2009): A Case Study of Authoritarian Modernization in the Arab World (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 2009), 196. 32 Francis Ghiles, “Tunisia Gains A Well-Organised Leader: The exit from power after 30 years of a statesman of stature,” Financial Times (November 9, 1987); Harold D. Nelson, editor. Tunisia: a country study (Washington, D.C.: American University Foreign Area Studies, 1987), 249. 33 United States Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1986 (February 1987). 34 Nelson, Tunisia: a country study, 250. According to the same source (250-251): “Even the PSD magazine, Dialogue, was suspended for three months, reportedly because it gave less prominence to Bourguiba’s meeting with Algerian president Chadli Bendjedid than to [Prime Minister] Mzali’s visit to India.” 35 “Ben Ali tackles reforms in post-Bourguiba Tunisia,” Africa Report (January-February 1988), 8. For more information on Bourguiba’s repression of the press, see Moncef Marzouki, “Winning Freedom,” Index on Censorship, no. 1 (January 1989), 23-25 and Emma C. Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia (London: Macmillan, 1999), 168. 29 opposition parties, the Mouvement des Démocrates Socialistes (MDS, Movement of Socialist Democrats) and the Parti Communiste Tunisien (PCT, Tunisian Communist Party).36 Even the banned Parti Communiste des Ouvriers de Tunisie (PCOT, Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party) was allowed to publish its previously clandestine newspaper Sawt Echaab (Voice of the People).37As late as 1990, new opposition journals, such as the PCOT’s Al-Badil (The Alternative), Al-Fajr (The Dawn, by the Islamist Ennahda party), and Al-Watan (The Nation, by the pan-Arabist Union Démocratique Unioniste [UDU, Democratic Unionist Union]) began publishing.38 In addition, in March 1988, the authorities released several journalists from prison.39 All fines imposed by Bourguiba’s government against opposition journals were abrogated in May.40 The National Assembly then passed a package of reforms to the press code in July. Officials now allowed journalists accused of defaming public officials to prove the truth of what they had written as a legal defense. The government’s authority to seize and suspend newspapers, while not abolished, was transferred from the minister of the interior to the courts. 41 Tellingly, even the publication Index on Censorship, in its “Index” section, which primarily catalogues violations of freedom of expression around the world, reported three positive developments for freedom of the press in Tunisia during Ben Ali’s first year in office.42 It recounted no positive developments (and several negative ones) in the two years preceding the coup. “Ben Ali tackles reforms in post-Bourguiba Tunisia,” Africa Report, 8. Ahmed Mouelhi, a member of the PCOT during the Ben Ali era, discussion with the author, May 2016. 38 Larbi Chouikha, Kamel Labidi, and Hassen Jouini, “Etat de la liberté de la presse en Tunisie de janvier 1990 à mai 1991,” in L’Information au Maghreb, Pierre Albert et al., editors, (Tunis: Cérès Productions, 1992), 101-103. 39 “Index”, Index on Censorship, Issue 6 (June 1988), 40. 40 Larbi Chouikha, La Difficile Transformations des Médias: Des années de l’indépendance à la veille des elections de 2014 (Tunis: Editions Finzi, 2015), 34. 41 D. R. Harris, “Tunisia,” in The Middle East and North Africa 1989 (London: Europa Publications, 1988), 822-823. 42 The Index on Censorship (“Index”, Issue 4 [April 1988], 39) reported that, in January 1988, a Tunisian high court had acquitted the Secretary General of the Tunisian League of Human Rights, Khemais Chamari, who had been charged by Bourguiba’s government with disseminating false information for speaking with foreign journalists (“Index”, Index on Censorship, Issue 7 [July 1987], 40). It reported the release of several journalists from prison in March 1988 (“Index”, Index on Censorship, Issue 6 [June 1988], 40). It also commented approvingly on the reforms to the press code: “A new law passed by the parliament in July substantially alters the provisions of the press code in favour of freedom of expression. . . .” (“Index”, Index on Censorship, Issue 8 [September 1988], 48). 36 37 A large majority of the interviewees stated that Ben Ali’s early policies toward the press represented a significant improvement over those of Bourguiba, and created a freer—though far from completely free—environment for Tunisian journalists. They were also in striking concordance about the timing of this opening, with nearly all dating the liberalization from the immediate aftermath of the November 1987 coup to 1989 or 1990. The consensus crossed a wide political spectrum. Mohamed Néjib Ouerghi, who wrote for the state-owned La Presse de Tunisie (The Press of Tunisia)43 under Bourguiba and Ben Ali,44 claims there was “some freedom for journalists and media” (verbatim) from 1987 to 1990, in contrast to the years before and after. Human rights lawyer Radhia Nasraoui also attests to a period of relative press freedom from 1987 to 1990. The journalist Manoubi Marrouki of La Presse referred to “a new era” (author’s translation) for press freedom between the 1987 coup and 1989, after which the press environment was “closed.” Ahmed Mouelhi, a member of the banned Communist Party of Tunisian Workers during the Ben Ali era, described “a margin of liberty” from 1987 to 1991 or 1992.45 The journalist Slaheddine Jourchi of Errai (Opinion), which was aligned with the opposition MDS,46 said that the years 1988 to 1990 were a “spring” or “recess for the press” (author’s translation). 47 To be sure, there were serious limitations on the press even during Ben Ali’s first year in office, the height of the media opening. Khadija Cherif, a human rights activist, described the liberalization of the press as “very controlled” (author’s translation). The reform of the press code’s provisions on defamation did not extend to criticism of the president or his ministers, for example.48 Samir Taieb, a former member of the 43 Kenneth J. Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 3rd edition, (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2016), 215. Ouerghi later became editor-in-chief of the ruling party’s Le Renouveau (The Renewal) and president of the official Agence Tunis Afrique Presse (Tunis Africa Press Agency) or TAP (“Biographie de M. Mohamed Néjib Ouerghi,” La Presse [January 8, 2012], retrieved September 23, 2016, http://www.lapresse.tn/19062016/43248/biographie-de-m.-mohamed-nejib-ouerghi.html). 45 Discussions with the author, May-June 2016. 46 James Phillip Jeter, International Afro Mass Media: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996), 128. 47 Discussion with the author, May 2016. 48 Harris, The Middle East and North Africa 1989, 822. More generally, according to Amnesty International (“Tunisia: Rhetoric vs Reality: The Failure of a Human Rights Bureaucracy,” January 12 1994, 4): “Amendments to the existing Press Code [in 1988] . . . only very slightly curtailed the executive's wide powers to control freedom of expression.” 44 opposition Harakat Ettajdid (“Movement of Renewal”) party, 49 and an editor of its journal, confirmed that even during the liberalization period, criticism of the president and his family was not tolerated. Jourchi agreed, and added that criticism of the defense ministry was also forbidden. 50 Nonetheless, the years 1988 and 1989, and to a lesser extent 1990, seem to have been periods of partial but significant press freedoms in comparison to the Bourguiba era, particularly its final years from 1984 through 1987. There was near universal acknowledgement by interviewees of all political stripes that they had witnessed a period of relative press freedom, agreement on the small set of topics on which critical coverage remained forbidden, and a rough consensus about the timing of the liberalization’s end. Perhaps most tellingly, as Jourchi noted, the press itself felt that such liberalization was underway at the time. 51 These early years of the Ben Ali era also stand in stark contrast to the two decades that were to follow. Beginning in the run-up to the 1989 elections, Ben Ali began gradually to roll back the new freedoms he had extended to the press. In early 1989, the PUP’s Al-Wahda and the Communist Party’s Attariq al-Jadid both closed down, ostensibly because of financial difficulties, but also due to mounting political interference.52 Saadok Sghiri, a journalist for Al-Fajr, said the regime’s toleration of independent newspapers ended at the time of the April 1989 elections. Ahmed Mestiri, the leader of the MDS when Ben Ali came to power, reported that Ben Ali’s government did not interfere with his party’s weekly, Al-Moustaqbal, until those elections, when it went after all opposition newspapers. 53 A New York Times article from January 1989 suggests that, indeed, this rollback of press freedom began a few months before the elections: “[T]he government has begun seizing copies of opposition newspapers, instructing editors not to cover the activities of some of its opponents. . . .” Although the government allowed Ennahda to publish the journal Al-Fajr beginning in April 1990, on multiple occasions issues were seized or the journal was 49 Movement of Renewal was the name adopted by the former Communist Party of Tunisia, after it shifted its Communist ideology to a center-left one (Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 211). 50 Discussions with the author, May 2016. 51 Discussion with the author, May 2016. 52 Chouikha, Labidi, and Jouini, L’Information au Maghreb, 103. 53 Discussions with the author, May 2016. temporarily suspended, and the government shut down Al-Fajr completely in December of that year.54 Its editor, Hamadi Jebali, was charged in July 1990 over an article criticizing the military courts, and sentenced to one year in prison in January 1991. 55 The government suspended the PCOT’s Al-Badil for six months in October 1990; in April 1991 a court shut it down completely and sentenced the director, Hamma Hamami, to twelve-and-a-half years in prison. Several opposition journals closed during late 1990 and early 1991, in part because of financial difficulties, but also because of constant harassment by the government, including Al-Watan, Al-Mawqif, and Al-Moustaqbal.56 In early 1991, officials expelled Reuters’s correspondent Jonathan Wright from Tunisia for reporting on the widespread use of torture against Islamists. 57 In July of that year, the Tunisian Human Rights League released a communiqué decrying a “serious deterioration of freedoms of the press and of opinion such as never seen before,” including the closing of opposition and independent newspapers.58 One can distill this overall rise and fall of press freedom in Tunisia by tracking three specific types of press violations: the number of issues of newspapers that were banned (blocked from distribution or seized after being distributed), the number of newspapers that were suspended (ordered not to publish for periods of typically three to six months), and the number of journalists arrested. Table 1 shows the number of such incidents that were reported in the Index on Censorship’s “Index” feature. The first five years of Ben Ali’s rule are shown, with the last two years of Bourguiba’s rule included for comparison.59 (Each row corresponds to a period from November to the following October. The Ben Ali years are in bold.) These figures should be thought of as lower bounds on the number of press violations that took place, as Index on Censorship may 54 Saadok Sghiri, discussion with the author, May 2016; Attacks on the Press 1990: A Worldwide Survey (New York: Committee to Protect Journalists, 1991), 120-121. 55 “Western Groups Ask Tunisia to Drop Measures Against Islamists,” Reuters News (July 26, 1990). “Tunisia: Imprisonment of Journalist,” Amnesty International, February 1, 1991, accessed October 17, 2017, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde30/006/1991/en/ 56 Chouikha, Labidi, and Jouini, L’Information au Maghreb, 102-103. 57 “IFJ Urges Tunisia to Revoke Reuter Correspondent’s Expulsion,” Reuters News (April 12, 1991). 58 “Tunisian Rights League Denounces Press Freedom Violations,” Reuters News (July 27, 1991). 59 The time period of each row refers to when the incidents occurred, not when they were reported, because incidents were often reported with a few months’ delay. For this reason, every “Index” section for every issue from November 1985 (starting with Issue 6 [December 1985], since there was no November issue that year) through the last issue of 1993 (Issue 10 [November 1993]) was reviewed. have been unaware of, or chosen not to report, some incidents. Nonetheless, this table conveys the trends in attacks on the press. The period from November 1985 through October 1987 saw a high number of issues banned, journals suspended, and journalists arrested, confirming both historians’ and interviewees’ accounts of a severe crackdown on the press during Bourguiba’s last years in power. From November 1987 through October 1989, there were some violations of the press, but far fewer than before. In the years of November 1989 through October 1991, one sees a sharp jump in attacks on the press, as Ben Ali reversed the press freedoms he had initially introduced. During Ben Ali’s fifth year in power, Index on Censorship records only one arrest of a journalist, and no banned issues or suspended papers. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily contradict historians’ and interviewees’ claims that press freedom under Ben Ali never returned to the level enjoyed in 1988 and 1989. A relative lack of overt repressive acts may have a very different meaning when a leader first comes to power, with unknown intentions and promising a more permissive environment for the press, compared to when that leader has just pursued a policy of intense repression of journalists for two years. It is likely that, after the spike in repression between late 1989 and late 1991, the press was simply intimidated into silence. Overall, these figures are consistent with what other evidence suggests took place in Ben Ali’s first five years in power: a brief opening to the press followed by the dramatic return of strict controls.60 60 In theory, bias could be introduced into these measures of press violations if the likelihood that Index on Censorship either learned of or decided to report violations varied significantly over time. Yet for such bias to completely explain the pattern of attacks first falling in 1987-1989 and then rising in 19891991, we would have to believe that the journal was less likely to learn of or choose to report violations that occurred during Ben Ali’s first two years in power, compared to the years immediately before or after. In fact, the opposite is more plausible: Ben Ali’s coup is likely to have brought more attention to Tunisia by international monitors and news media, and his promises of expanded press freedom are likely to have drawn greater scrutiny from Index on Censorship to the conditions facing the Tunisian press. The fact that Index on Censorship reports so few violations during Ben Ali’s first two years is thus all the more remarkable, considering this likely heightened attention. Conversely, the high levels of repression reported before and after may actually be biased downwards, on account of Tunisia receiving less international attention during these periods. Table 1: Press Freedom Violations in Tunisia Year Newspaper Newspapers Journalists Issues Banned Suspended Arrested 85 – 86 6 3 5 86 – 87 5 2 0 87 – 88 0 1 1 88 – 89 1 0 0 89 – 90 5 2 4 90 – 91 4 2 9 91 – 92 0 0 1 4) “Not a Political Man:”61 Internal and External Threats to Ben Ali’s Power Ben Ali had to offer the opposition a modicum of press freedom at first because he faced threats both inside and outside his government, and he could not fight all his opponents at once. When he seized the presidency, Ben Ali found himself in charge of a government in which he was, as Erdle writes, an “outsider.” He had spent his career in the military and the ministry of interior, in a regime dominated by academics and party elites. Thus, when he became president, “the only real power bases he had were in the interior ministry and security apparatus, but not in the ruling party, or in the government bureaucracy as such.”62 Moreover, Tunisia’s military had historically played a very minimal role in politics.63 (Ben Ali became the first military officer to hold a cabinet position when he was appointed secretary of state for national security in 1984.64) As Christopher Alexander elaborates: Many longtime party barons resented Ben Ali for preempting their own plans for stepping into the presidency. From the beginning of his rule, Ben Ali feared that one of these established politicians, or one of his own ministers, would use their networks in the party, the Marrouki, discussion with the author, May 2016 (author’s translation). Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 98. 63 Zoltan Barany, “The Role of the Military,” Journal of Democracy 22, no. 4 (October 2011): 24-35. Eva Bellin, “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative Politics 44, no. 2 (January 2012): 127-149. 64 Legum, Africa Contemporary Record 1986-1987, B 602. 61 62 state bureaucracy, and other organizations to undermine him. As a relative newcomer to ruling party politics, Ben Ali lacked the social bases and patronage networks so vital to Bourguiba’s style of political management. He did not have the political resources to referee and manipulate effectively an ongoing competition between powerful politicians and the social actors they rallied to their camps.65 Yet while he was dealing with threats within the regime, the specter of social unrest also loomed. Amid economic stagnation, massive protests had broken out in 1978 and 1984 against the Bourguiba government’s austerity measures.66 Tunisia’s 1986 agreement with the IMF and the World Bank to move further toward a market-based economy promised continued social tension.67 Ben Ali needed to convince ordinary Tunisians that their interests would be protected through greater political pluralism in order to prevent protests from breaking out again, lest regime elites be tempted to take advantage of the chaos to remove him, as he had ousted Bourguiba. Ben Ali faced several organized opposition groups that, to varying degrees, could either enflame or calm social tensions. For instance, the national trade union, the Union Générale Tunisienne de Travail (UGTT, Tunisian General Labor Union), was officially a state organization, but had clashed with Bourguiba’s government on a few occasions during the previous decade, including when it organized the general strike of 1978. 68 Various secular political parties were led by dissident elites who had left the PSD, including the politically liberal MDS, led by former Interior Minister Ahmed Mestiri and the leftist/Arab unionist parties Mouvement de l’Unite Populaire (MUP, Popular Unity Movement), led by the exiled former Economy Minister Ahmed Ben Salah, and the PUP, which had broken off from the MUP under the leadership of Mohamed Bel Haj Amor. (The MDS and the PUP, but not the MUP, had been legally recognized by Bourguiba.) Christopher Alexander, “Authoritarianism and Civil Society in Tunisia: Back from the Democratic Brink,” Middle East Report 205 (October-December 1997): 34-38. 66 David Seddon, “Riot and Rebellion: Political Responses to Economic Crisis in North Africa, Tunisia, Morocco and Sudan,” School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Discussion Paper No. 196, October 1986. “The Riots of 1984 and Their Aftermath,” Global Security, retrieved October 17, 2017, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/tunisia/politics-1984.htm 67 Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 104. 68 “Union Generale des Travailleurs Tunisiens: UGTT,” Global Security, retrieved October 14, 2017, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/tunisia/ugtt.htm) 65 There were also far-left (and secular) parties, such as the (legal) Parti Communiste Tunisien (PCT, Tunisian Communist Party) and the (banned) PCOT. 69 The strongest opposition group was the Mouvement de la Tendance Islamique (MTI, Islamic Tendency Movement), which would change its name in 1989 to Harakat Ennahda (“The Renaissance Movement”) in 1989, in a bid to avoid the ban on parties with a religious basis.70 Whereas the MDS’s ideology and policy agenda were not substantially different from the PSD—renamed the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD, Democratic Constitutional Rally) in 198871—during the early years of Ben Ali’s presidency, the MTI challenged the secularism that was a pillar of the ruling party’s credo.72 Unlike the secular opposition parties, the MTI was a grassroots movement with broad public support, and none of its leaders had ever been part of the ruling party.73 In any case, Ben Ali had to consider not only the threat posed by each opposition group individually, but also the aggregate threat posed by all of them as a whole. While there were major ideological differences among the opposition—within the Islamist and secular camps as well as between them—there was also broad agreement about certain demands. Both the MTI and the MDS, for instance, called for a democratic political system and a more egalitarian economy. 74 At the time Ben Ali came to power, the MTI had representatives on the executive committee of the Ligue Tunisienne des Droits de Neil Partrick, “Tunisia: History,” in The Middle East and North Africa, Europa World Online, retrieved October 17, 2017, http://www.europaworld.com/entry/tn.hi; Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 169-170. Smaller parties included the Rassemblement Socialiste Progressiste (RSP, Progressive Socialist Rally) and the UDU, both unrecognized at the time of the coup (Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 70; Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 252). 70 Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 185. 71 Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 99. 72 I. William Zartman, “The Conduct of Political Reform: The Path Toward Democracy,” in Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform, ed. I. William Zartman (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1991), 24. 73 Kenneth J. Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, (New York: Cambridge UP, 2016), 168. Although many of its leaders were in prison when Ben Ali came to power, the MTI retained a significant capacity to challenge the regime. As a correspondent for The Times of London noted at the time: “The MTI proved its strength with its continued ability to preach against the regime in the mosques and organize public demonstrations despite the hunting down and imprisonment of its leaders” (Susan MacDonald, “Ben Ali sheds old guard; Cabinet reshuffle in Tunisia,” The Times, August 5, 1988). 74 Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi, The Politicisation of Islam: A Case Study of Tunisia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 42-43; Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 165-166. 69 l’Homme (LTDH, Tunisian League of Human Rights), which was close to the MDS.75 In 1986, the MTI, the MDS, the PCT, the PUP, and the RSP had formed a committee to coordinate their activities.76 Ali Laarayedh, a leader in the MTI, remarked that ties between the Islamist and secular opposition groups grew stronger in the 1980s, an observation echoed by numerous interviewees. 77 So while some of the opposition groups were individually weak, Ben Ali nonetheless had to make concessions to them to prevent a broad coalition from rising up against him. 78 Ben Ali’s weaknesses as a politician only made the challenge of asserting power over the government and society more difficult. As Marrouki put it, Ben Ali was not “a political man” (author’s translation): he lacked Bourguiba’s skills for mobilizing the masses. He entered office with a “deficit of popularity” (verbatim) according to Rachid Khechana, an opposition journalist during the Ben Ali era.79 Even a high-level official who worked for both Bourgiba and Ben Ali—for decades in the latter case—implied that Ben Ali lacked Bourgiba’s charisma.80 5) “No Card to Play but Democracy:”81 Ben Ali’s Bargain with the Opposition Following the coup, Ben Ali was a man full of promises. Moreover, at first, he seemed to be fulfilling his pledge to transform Tunisia into a real multiparty democracy. In the early years of Ben Ali’s rule, Tunisia witnessed, in Samir Taieb’s words, “a great 75 Hamdi, The Politicisation of Islam, 50. Hamdi also notes (54) that, when Bourguiba began a new crackdown on the MTI in 1987: “Almost all of the leaders of the opposition liberal and leftist parties stood by the Islamists,” by protesting and publicly denouncing the repression. 76 Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 70. 77 Discussion with the author, May 2016. The leftist Samir Taieb (May 2016) and the Islamists Abdelhamid Jelassi (May 2016) and Saadok Sghiri (May 2016) confirmed the existence of cooperation between the Islamist and secular opposition during this period. 78 As Perkins (A History of Modern Tunisia, 168) notes, discussing the years just before Ben Ali came to power: “The specter of an alliance, however unlikely, between the MTI and one or another of the secular opposition parties alarmed the [Bourguiba] government enough for [Prime Minister] Mzali to attempt to forestall it in 1983 by recognizing as political parties the MDS and the Parti d’Unité Populaire. . . .” 79 Khechana wrote for Al Mawqif (The Stance), the journal of the Rassemblement Socialiste Progressiste (RSP, Progressive Socialist Rally). 80 Discussions with the author, May-June 2016. When asked to contrast the two presidents’ leadership styles, the former official described Bourguiba’s charisma at length, and then declined to comment on that of Ben Ali. 81 Comment by Ahmed Mestiri, discussion with the author, May 2016. This translation was made by a friend of Mestiri who was present during the interview. opening on the political landscape.” That opening began and ended in almost perfect synchrony with the liberalization of the press. From Ali Laarayedh, a leader in the MTI, to the high-level official who worked in the Bourguiba and Ben Ali governments, interviewees agreed that there was a political opening in the first two years of Ben Ali’s presidency, after which he broke his promises of democratic reform. 82 Ben Ali began his time in office by releasing thousands of political prisoners, including leftists, UGTT activists, and Islamists. 83 In November 1987, Ben Ali released UGTT leader Habib Achour from prison, and in May 1988, he released Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the MTI. 84 He appointed well-known dissidents to his cabinet. Describing these early years as the best of Ben Ali’s twenty-three years in office, Cherif noted that Mohamed Charfi, president of the LTDH, was made a minister in Ben Ali’s government,85 as were other leaders of the LTDH, PSD dissidents, and leaders of the MDS.86 Some concessions were specifically aimed at the MTI and their supporters. Ben Ali legalized the MTI-aligned student union, the Union Générale Tunisienne des Etudiants (UGTE, General Tunisian Union of Students),87 had the Islamic calls to prayer broadcast on television and radio, gave the status of a theological university to the historic Zeitouna mosque in Tunis, and created an Islamic High Council (with the secretary-general of the MTI as a member), as well as a Ministry for Religious Affairs. 88 Ben Ali also introduced institutional changes that seemed to herald Tunisia’s transformation into a democracy. In 1975, the National Assembly had declared Bourguiba “President for Life.”89 In 1988, however, the legislature amended the constitution so that presidents would have to retire after three terms of five years each and could not run for reelection if they were over seventy years old. 90 Ben Ali legalized 82 Discussions with the author, May 2016. Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 168. 84 “Ben Ali brings glasnost to Tunisia in hopes of promoting reconciliation,” Africa Report (SeptemberOctober 1988), 10. 85 Discussion with the author, May 2016. 86 Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 183; Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 165. 87 Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 179. 88 Hamdi, The Politicisation of Islam, 65-66. 89 “Habib Bourguiba: Habib Ben Ali Bourguiba, successor to Hannibal, died on April 6th, aged 96,” The Economist, April 13, 2000. 90 Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 99. 83 three new parties,91 and moved up elections for the National Assembly originally scheduled for 1991 to April 1989.92 The Tunisian public and opposition viewed these elections as the key test of whether Ben Ali really meant to carry out his promises of democratization. As Reuters reported about the National Assembly election in the week before the vote: “Tunisians see it as [a] test of his pledge to end the vote rigging of the past.”93 Likewise, the New York Times quoted the leader of the MDS: “‘The next election,’ Mr. Mestiri said, ‘will be the true test of the Government's credibility.’” 94 Nonetheless, opposition leaders would only accept this bargain—democracy in exchange for support for the new government—if they believed that Ben Ali would follow through on his end of the deal. His promises might have been straightforwardly credible if the opposition believed that the relative balance of power between them and the government would remain the same for the foreseeable future. In that case, if Ben Ali later reneged on democratization, the opposition could take to the streets and force him to fulfill his promises. But in fact, opponents could not be sure that Ben Ali would not grow stronger. He might manage to achieve such tight personal control over political elites that the government would stand united if an uprising broke out; or he might become so popular that many Tunisians would refuse to demonstrate against him. In either case, Ben Ali might eventually be emboldened to abandon democratization and maintain an autocratic grip on power.95 Accordingly, the opposition showed signs of skepticism toward Ben Ali when he came to power. Marrouki claims some Tunisians opposed Ben Ali from the beginning on account of his military background and having served in Bourguiba’s government. 96 Mestiri worried just before the 1989 elections that: “There is still the mentality of the 91 Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 189. Colin Legum, Africa Contemporary Record 1987-1988 (New York: Africana Publishing, 1989), B 552; “Tunisia: After the honeymoon,” Africa Confidential 30, no. 7 (March 31, 1989). 93 “Islamic Movement Deplores Press Campaign,” Reuters, March 29, 1989. 94 Alan Cowell, “An Opening In Tunisia, A More Open North Africa?” New York Times, March 5, 1989. 95 As well as uncertainty about how much Ben Ali’s power would increase over time, there was uncertainty about his preferences for repression versus conciliation. Zartman (“The Conduct of Political Reform,” 15) writes: “[B]en Ali came to power with a mixed reputation of firmness and humanity.” On the one hand, his military background and the fact that, as Interior Minister, he had largely overseen the campaign of repression against the Islamists in the last few years of Bourguiba’s rule raised concerns among opposition activists. Yet on the other hand, “Ben Ali soon became known as the person who argued for legality in dealing with the fundamentalists. From the beginning, his entry was given a mixed welcome. . . .” 96 Discussion with the author, May 2016. 92 one-party state.”97 That same month, the human rights activist Moncef Marzouki worried, in an article in the Index on Censorship, that the newly won press freedoms could be reversed. “The real question is whether all this will prove to be a flash in the pan, or whether what we have witnessed is the beginning of a new relationship between the press, literature and the authorities. . . . To be sure, liberty has won a great victory in Tunisia, but the state's censors haven't put away their scissors yet. . . .”98 Therefore, Ben Ali needed to convince the opposition that they would remain strong enough in the future to hold him to his promises, even as he himself might be gaining greater control of the state apparatus. Thus, he needed to shift some power to the opposition groups, lest they feel their best option was to take to the streets to get more concessions now, because future concessions were too uncertain. Releasing opposition leaders from prison and legalizing political parties were ways to strengthen opposition groups. Relaxing government controls on the press was another way to tactically shift a measure of power to opposition groups. By allowing critical voices access to the press and even allowing opponents to publish their own newspapers, Ben Ali gave the opposition a way to spread its message and increase its public support. Interviewees from opposition parties suggested this access to the press was valuable for them at the time. Mouelhi said that the PCOT wanted a platform to present alternatives to the Tunisian people, in order to change public opinion in favor of democratic and peaceful change. The legalization of its journal Sawt Echaab allowed the party to make its program and policies familiar to the public. Sghiri claimed that, besides secret petitions, Al-Fajr was the only way Ennahda could spread its message.99 Granted, many of the opposition groups only managed to sell a small number of papers, primarily in the capital. Taieb remarked that most Tunisians were too nervous to buy opposition newspapers or did not think they had any reason to follow politics. The opposition papers were mostly “the journals of the elites” (author’s translation) and “the activists” (verbatim). Khechana, a journalist for the RSP’s Al-Mawqif, said of the journal that, during the Ben Ali era, “the elites were with us” (verbatim). Nonetheless, these political Cowell, “An Opening in Tunisia.” Moncef Marzouki, “Winning Freedom,” Index on Censorship 18, no. 1 (January 1989), 25. 99 Ennahda also disseminated its message through mosques (Hamdi, The Politicisation of Islam, 66). Nonetheless, Sghiri’s point that Al-Fajr was among the few effective means the party had to communicate with the public clearly stands. 97 98 and economic elites may have been well positioned to organize protests and otherwise pressure the government. As a result of these measures to empower the opposition, including liberalizing the press, most opposition leaders and the broader public placed substantial trust in Ben Ali for the first couple years. This confidence was not based on faith in Ben Ali’s character, but in the strategic constraints Ben Ali faced. MDS leader Ahmed Mestiri summed up the opposition’s view of Ben Ali prior to 1989: “We thought he had no card to play but democracy.” Taieb says Tunisians in general didn’t think the situation could get worse than it had been under Bourguiba and expected Ben Ali to bring a balance between “freedom and security.” The former MTI/Ennahda leader Abdelfattah Mourou recalled that, until 1989, Ben Ali succeeded in being seen as a reformer. The journalist Ouerghi noted that MTI leader Gannouchi, PCOT leader Hamami, and other opposition leaders had at first supported Ben Ali, because they believed he would deliver democracy and a role for the opposition. 100 The interviewees’ recollections are consistent with opposition leaders’ public statements at the time. In 1988, Ghannouchi declared publicly that he was confident in God and Ben Ali. 101 In the month before the 1989 elections, Mestiri expressed cautious optimism, telling journalists: “We still have confidence in Ben Ali” 102 and: “This time the rigging will be limited, in line with the instructions of the president. . . . I think the government has no interest in having a parliament where the opposition is absent.” 103 The opposition’s trust was reflected in cooperative deeds as well as supportive words. Mestiri, leader of the MDS, and Bel Hadj Amor, leader of the PUP,104 publicly endorsed Ben Ali’s reforms at the first RCD Congress in 1988.105 Representatives for 100 Discussions with the author, May-June 2016. Alaya Allani, “The Islamists in Tunisia between confrontation and participation: 1980–2008,” The Journal of North African Studies 14, no. 2 (June 2009), 269 (fn 25). 102 Cowell, “An Opening in Tunisia.” 103 Jonathan Wright, “Moslem Challenge Unwelcome to Main Tunisian Opposition,” Reuters News, March 27, 1989. It is possible that Mestiri harbored more concern about Ben Ali than he let on publicly at this point, and made these comments in order to discourage Ben Ali from rigging the elections. Yet if that was the case, the fact that he believed the president was open to such persuasion shows Ben Ali had not completely lost the opposition’s trust at that point. The Tunisian public appears to have shared opposition leaders’ initial optimism. In the summer of 1998 Africa Confidential (“Tunisia: Ben Ali’s boys,” 29, no. 17 [August 26, 1988], 7) reported: “The majority have taken heart from the upsurge in democracy. . . .” 104 Perkins, Historical Dictonary of Tunisia, 169. 105 The Middle East and North Africa 1990 (New York: Europa, 1991), 855. 101 most of the opposition parties, as well as the MTI, signed the National Pact, a plan for political reform that also enshrined much of Tunisia’s secular legacy. 106 Six opposition parties and numerous Ennahda-aligned independents participated in the 1989 legislative elections, and most parties endorsed Ben Ali in the simultaneous presidential election.107 6) Broken Promises: Ben Ali’s Turn to Authoritarianism The 1989 election not only coincided with the beginning of the end of the press liberalization but also marked the definitive breaking of Ben Ali’s promise of genuine democracy. The hopes of democrats were dashed when the Assembly elections turned out to be fundamentally flawed. The electoral rules made it extremely difficult for minority parties or independents to win seats. 108 Despite the fact that opposition parties and Ennahda independents officially won approximately twenty percent of the votes, the ruling RCD party won every seat. 109 Furthermore, the opposition’s vote totals appear to have been depressed by RCD interference that kept thousands of potential voters, particularly in areas where Ennahda was popular, from registering to vote. 110 Most interviewees viewed the 1989 National Assembly elections as the turning point in Ben Ali’s relationship with the opposition. Khechana called the elections a “deception” (verbatim), and the start of the crisis between Ben Ali and the opposition. Likewise, Taieb claimed the political opening began to close in 1989, pointing to fraud in 106 Marion E. Doro, Colin Legum, Barbara Newson, and Ronald Watson, Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1988-1989, (New York: Africana: 1992), C7. 107 “Fundamentalists Mount Strong Election Push,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 1989. As well as winning the trust of the opposition, the press opening may have served Ben Ali’s interests in another way. By selectively allowing criticism of Bourguiba-era policies and officials—but never of himself—the controlled liberalization of the press may have served as another tool for undermining Bourguiba holdovers in the government and party whom Ben Ali wanted to sideline. As Perkins (A History of Modern Tunisia, 206) writes: “In the early days of his presidency, ben Ali often reminded Tunisians that Bourguiba’s contributions to the nation entitle him to their respect. Nevertheless, the new regime did not muzzle critics of the old. Pointing out the deficiencies of Bourguiba and the failure of policies pursued at his direction served, after all, to underscore the legitimacy of those who had shouldered him aside.” 108 Jonathan Wright, “Tunisian Moslems Clear First Election Hurdle,” Reuters, March 11, 1989. “Fundamentalists Mount Strong Election Push,” Sydney Morning Herald. 109 Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 189-190. 110 Francis Ghiles, “Tunisian Ruling Party Finds Its Polling Habits Hard To Break: The turn-out was low in yesterday's elections,” Financial Times (April 3, 1989). the elections, which revealed Ben Ali’s “real face” as an authoritarian ruler.111 The RSP and the UDU joined Ennahda in officially complaining about “electoral violations.”112 Nasraoui noted that there were protests by groups across the political spectrum in 1989.113 Yet trust between Ben Ali and the opposition unraveled gradually over 1989 and 1990, paralleling Ben Ali’s gradual reinstatement of restrictions on the press during this time period.114 In the weeks after the April 1989 elections, Ben Ali sought to mollify the opposition by appointing leading members of the LTDH and the MDS to his cabinet and announcing an amnesty for over 5,000 political activists imprisoned by Bourguiba, including MTI members. The last 48 Islamists remaining in prison at the time were released the following month. 115 Khechana recalled that, soon after the April 1989 elections, the secular opposition decided to “give him [Ben Ali] another chance” (verbatim). 116 The MDS declined to challenge the election results. 117 At the time, Mestiri pinned the blame for the election’s flaws on the old guard: “It is true that we are having perestroika in Tunisia, but we are running up against the opposition of the apparatchiks.”118 The legal opposition parties initially agreed to participate in local elections scheduled for June 1990, before ultimately boycotting them, largely over intimidation of opposition groups by RCD supporters. 119 The MTI leadership also did not immediately abandon all hope in Ben Ali, as it continued to appeal for legal recognition as a party. After the election, Ghannouchi told a Discussions with the author, May 2016. In addition to the election rigging, the opposition’s ire was stoked by Ben Ali’s acceleration of IMF-mandated economic structural adjustment policies that had a “deleterious impact on middle- and working-class Tunisians” (Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 191). Furthermore, to the chagrin of Ennahda, the regime began a campaign to secularize the school system in the summer of 1989 (Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 110). 112 “Opposition Contests Election Results,” Reuters News, April 8, 1989. 113 Discussion with the author, May 2016. At the time, Africa Confidential (“Tunisia: The problems of democracy,” 7) observed: “Ben Ali’s honeymoon ended after the elections.” 114 “From many points of view, the time between 1989 and 1991 constituted a sort of ‘entre-deux-ères’ [“between two eras”] in Tunisian politics. These two years witnessed first the faltering, and then the foundering, of the ceasefire between regime and opposition” (Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 104) 115 D. R. Harris, “Tunisia,” in The Middle East and North Africa 1991 (London: Europa Publications, 1990), 856. 116 Discussion with the author, May 2016. 117 “Opposition Contests Election Results,” Reuters News, April 8, 1989. 118 James M. Markham, “Tunisia is Pulling a Democratic Rabbit Out of a Dictator’s Hat,” The New York Times (April 10, 1989). 119 Legum, Africa Contemporary Record 1990-92, B 519 – B 520. 111 journalist: “We believe that the decision to legalize our party should be made soon, because we have respected the law. . . . Our activity is not a revolutionary one. It is more one of reform.”120 (Nonetheless, Ghannouchi went into voluntary exile in France.) Even after its application for legal recognition was refused in June 1989, Ennahda applied again that year. 121 In December 1989, Ennahda’s second application for party status was rejected, and the movement became more confrontational. Ninety-six student supporters of the Islamist movement staged a hunger strike that same month, and the following February, members of the UGTE student union, allied with Ennahda, protested and fought police, who arrested about 600 protestors. Early 1990 also saw a strike by about 10,000 municipal workers organized by Ennahda.122 Ben Ali cracked down harshly, arresting mounting numbers of Ennahda supporters over the course of 1990. Approximately three hundred of the group’s members were arrested between October and December, including many of its leaders. 123 MDS leaders condemned this repression of the Islamists at their congress in December 1990, as well as the lack of democratization and the acceleration of structural adjustments. The following month, the six legal parties issued a joint declaration, calling for a real democracy that would include secularists and Islamists alike. 124 Protests by Islamists in February 1991 were “violently suppressed.” 125 Thousands more Islamists were arrested during 1991,126 the UGTE was disbanded, and Amnesty International reported that over one hundred prisoners, mostly members of Ennahda, had been tortured. 127 The following year, 279 members of Ennahda were tried and given lengthy sentences, with many of the leaders sentenced to life imprisonment.128 By mid1992, “the Islamist opposition had effectively ceased to exist as an organized force on the James M. Markham, “Tunis Journal; A Song of Democracy in a Distinctly Islamic Key,” The New York Times (April 14, 1989). 121 Harris, “Tunisia,” 856. 122 Ibid. 123 Legum, Africa Contemporary Record 1990-92, B 523. 124 Legum, Africa Contemporary Record 1990-92, B 520. 125 Harris, The Middle East and North Africa 1994, 851. 126 Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 109. 127 Harris, Middle East and North Africa 1994, 851. 128 Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 109; Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 186. 120 ground.”129 In the coming years, Ben Ali focused increasingly on harassing, arresting, and torturing liberal and left wing human rights activists, such as Taoufik Ben Brik,130 Sihem Ben Sedrine, 131 Moncef Marzouki, 132 Radhia Nasraoui,133 and Hamma Hamami. 134 The legal opposition parties ultimately resigned themselves to working within Ben Ali’s democratic façade. Ahmed Mestiri’s successor at the helm of the MDS, Mohamed Moadda, publicly praised Ben Ali’s policies in 1992 and moved the MDS program closer to the RCD’s. 135 The Tunisian Communist Party abandoned Marxism for a moderate social democratic program, renaming itself Harakat Ettajdid.136 For the remainder of Ben Ali’s time in power, most of the legal opposition parties offered little serious challenge to Ben Ali and the RCD. Both Abir Moussi and Raouf Khamassi, former members of the RCD central committee, referred to these parties as the “cartooneeya opposition,” literally the “cartoon opposition.” 137 7) The Tyro Tyrant Triumphs: Ben Ali’s Consolidation of Power If the opposition’s initial belief that Ben Ali would introduce democratic reforms had been reasonable, why did he ultimately break those promises? The contingencies that the opposition had, with good reason, believed to be unlikely, ultimately did transpire. Most importantly, Ben Ali was more successful in consolidating power over the government and the ruling party than the opposition had expected. Having thoroughly removed the threat of regime elites conspiring against him, he had far less reason to worry that they might ally themselves with opposition groups. Therefore, social unrest was less threatening and concessions no longer urgently required. Moreover, he had a Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 109. Partrick, The Middle East and North Africa. 131 Dégage: La Révolution Tunisienne, (Tunis: Alif/Editions du Layeur, 2011), 201. 132 Partrick, The Middle East and North Africa. 133 “Radhia Nasraoui, Tunisia, 2000, Human Rights Defender,” Amnesty International, retrieved October 17, 2017, http://static.amnesty.org/ai50/radhia_nasraoui_en.pdf 134 Ibid. 135 Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 210; Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 195. In 1995, Moada began taking a more confrontational approach toward the RCD and found himself in jail within a few months (Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 215). 136 Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia, 211. 137 Discussions with the author, May 2016. 129 130 free hand to repress opponents, with little fear that members of his government would use a crackdown as an excuse to oust him, as he had done to Bourguiba. Ben Ali had managed to replace most of the governing elite with his own allies. His attempts to supplant Bourguiba’s allies in government with his own began on the very day of the coup, when Ben Ali appointed Hedi Baccouche, “a long-time ally,” as Prime Minister.138 Frequent cabinet shuffles replaced “PSD barons” with Ben Ali loyalists: “Three groups particularly profited from this: the middle echelons of the state bureaucracy, former PSD dissidents, and collaborative intellectuals.” 139 Military and security officials were brought into high positions in the government. 140 Ben Ali also brought in “a younger generation of technocrats that answered to him.” 141 The frequent cabinet shuffles and Ben Ali’s close involvement in the running of each ministry also helped him ensure that none of his ministers developed independent power bases. 142 While Ben Ali took some immediate steps to consolidate power, the entire process was gradual. 143 On the eve of Ben Ali’s coup, there were twenty-one ministers in Bourguiba’s cabinet, besides Ben Ali himself. Only four were removed immediately. Yet through relentless reshuffling, Ben Ali ultimately excluded all but three of Bourguiba’s ministers from his cabinet during the first few years of his presidency. Table 2 shows the number of ministers from Bourguiba’s final cabinet that remained in Ben Ali’s cabinet after each occasion on which one or more of them were removed during the first five years.144 The gradual pace of exclusion attests to the difficulty of “Tunisian Prime Minister Promises Multi-Party State,” Reuters. Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 100. 140 Joel Krieger, The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (New York: Oxford UP, 2003). 141 Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 196. 142 Alexander, “Authoritarianism and Civil Society in Tunisia.” 143 Three months after the coup, a Washington Post foreign correspondent portrayed a leader not fully in control of his regime: “Dominated for 30 years by the force of one man and the political institutions he created in his image, Tunisia is now adjusting to a government headed by a half-dozen strong personalities who are debating with each other over the directions this North African nation should take. The debate is directed and contained by the new Tunisian president, Zine Abidine Ben Ali, who is in turn adjusting to the paradox that the strongest resistance to his proposals for political change comes from the national political party that he now heads rather than from his regime's declared Islamic and secular opponents” (Jim Hoagland, “Tunisia, Used to One-Man Rule, Adjusts to Measure of Pluralism,” The Washington Post [February 18, 1988]). 144 “Ex-Premier Sfar Elected President of Tunisian Parliament,” Reuters News (October 13, 1987). “Tunisian President Reshuffles Cabinet, Stresses Economy,” Reuters News (October 27 1987). “Hedi Baccouche Becomes New Tunisian Prime Minister,” Reuters News (November 7 1987). Legum, Africa Contemporary Record 1987-1988, B 551 & B 553. “The new cabinet, formed on April 11, 1989, is as follows,” Reuters News (April 12, 1989) 138 139 marginalizing Bourguiba’s powerful lieutenants. But as the table shows, he was ultimately quite successful in replacing Bourguiba holdovers with handpicked allies.145 Table 2: Ministers from Bourguiba’s Last Cabinet in Ben Ali’s Cabinets Nov 1987 17 Apr 1988 12 Jul 1988 8 Apr 1989 5 Sep 1989 4 Aug 1990 3 Ben Ali was also surprisingly adept at tightening his grip on the ruling party. Within two weeks of the coup, he purged three members of the party’s political bureau that had been particularly close to Bourguiba.146 A month after the coup, Ben Ali reduced the political bureau from twenty to twelve members, purging Bourguiba’s son among several other individuals, leaving only three Bourguiba appointees. At the same time, he added several new members, many of whom had backgrounds in the military or the Interior ministry, including Habib Ammar, a former classmate of Ben Ali from the St. Cyr military academy in France. 147 In July 1988, Ben Ali reduced the bureau to just six members, with Baccouche as the sole remaining Bourguiba appointee. For good measure, Ben Ali also added another classmate from St. Cyr to the bureau, former army chief of staff Abdelhamid Becheikh.148 “Government of Tunisia,” Middle East Economic Digest (August 19, 1988). “Government List,” Reuters News (November 22, 1992). Neil Partrick, “Tunisia: History.” 145 Not only did Ben Ali manage to stack his cabinet with loyalists, he also managed to reduce its power over time and take policy into his own hands. By early 1991, Africa Confidential (“Tunisia: Old habits return,” vol. 32, no. 4 [February 22, 1991]) reported: “The cabinet as a whole is declining in influence as the presidency takes on new powers . . . The [presidential] Palace increasingly houses a shadow government” of advisors. 146 “Bourguiba Aides Expelled From Tunisian Party Leadership,” Reuters News (November 18, 1987). “Tunisian President Sacks Ruling Party’s Old Guard,” Reuters News (December 8, 1987. 147 “Tunisian President Sacks Ruling Party’s Old Guard,” Reuters. “Retirement of President Bourguiba - Other internal developments - Economy - Foreign relations,” Keesing’s Record of World Events 34, no. 3 (March 1988), 35801. “Tunisia: Ben Ali’s boys,” Africa Confidential, 7. 148 “Tunisian President Reshuffles Ruling Party Leadership,” Reuters News (August 1, 1988). At a February 1988 meeting, the RCD central committee confirmed Ben Ali as leader of the party (chairman), and his position was formally ratified at the party congress in July of that year. 149 The congress also selected a new central committee of the party, with Ben Ali personally appointing 122 of the 200 members. 150 Several former Bourguiba ministers were removed from the central committee, including Rachid Sfar, Ben Ali’s predecessor as Prime Minister. 151 In 1989, the RCD renominated only twenty of the 125 incumbents in the National Assembly to run for reelection. After the 1994 elections, only five of the RCD’s deputies had been in the Assembly before the coup.152 At the level of mass mobilization, Ben Ali expanded RCD membership from 900,000 to 1.5 million between 1987 and 1989, creating a large cohort who owed its new opportunities to Ben Ali. 153 While Ben Ali’s liberalization of the press had convinced opposition leaders that they could hold him to his democratic promises, he slipped through their grasp. With the government and party firmly under his control, he turned on the opposition: first the Islamists, then the secularists. Furthermore, the threat posed to Ben Ali’s power by the secular opposition, already limited in comparison to that of Ennahda, had diminished after the 1989 National Assembly elections. The Tunisian Communist Party, “fearing humiliation at the polls, declined to participate” in the 1989 legislative elections at all.154 Those secular opposition parties that did participate won a combined five percent of the vote, an unexpectedly poor result even in light of the RCD’s election rigging.155 The strongest Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 99-100. Rumors in the weeks before the conference that Ben Ali would not seek to continue personally leading the party attest to the uncertainty about his consolidation of power during this period (Harris, The Middle East and North Africa 1991, 855). That summer, Ben Ali also appointed an Interior ministry veteran, Abderrahim Zouari, as second-in-command (secretarygeneral) of the party (Ben Ali’s boys,” Africa Confidential, 7; Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 100). 150 Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 100. 151 Charles Dick, “Tunisian Ruling Party Sets New Course After Bourguiba Era,” Reuters News (July 31, 1988). Nonetheless, Ben Ali’s purge of the central committee was not complete, as “many other personalities linked with the Bourguiba era remained in the committee.” 152 Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 218-220. 153 Erdle, Ben Ali’s New Tunisia, 100. 154 Harris, The Middle East and North Africa 1994, 831. 155 Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 190. 149 party, the MDS, won just four percent of the vote, compared to thirteen percent for the Ennahda-aligned independent candidates.156 At the same time, the dramatic rise of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Islamic Salvation Front) in Algeria, during the period of political liberalization in that country that followed riots in late 1988, also raised concerns among Tunisia’s many secularists about the potential growth of Ennahda’s popularity. Legalized in 1989, the FIS swept the June 1990 local and provincial elections, and appeared all but certain to win a majority in the country’s parliament in January 1992 when the military intervened to cancel the second round of voting. Many Tunisians’ fears about Ennahda were further enflamed when Algeria descended into civil war between Islamists and the military after the coup.157 Ennahda had outperformed most observers’ expectations in the 1989 elections, winning a significant share of the vote despite the party’s unrecognized status and substantial vote rigging. (One of Ennahda’s leaders, Abdelhamid Jelassi, recalled: “Even we were surprised!”158) In light of both this result and the example of the FIS next door, Ben Ali may have concluded that continuing to allow Ennahda to run candidates in elections (let alone to recognize them as a party and not hinder their supporters from voting) and continuing to grant them even limited access to the media could cause their popularity to grow more rapidly than he had initially predicted.159 In addition, many Tunisian citizens’ fears that their country could descend into violent conflict if Ennahda were to develop the following that the FIS had acquired in Algeria gave Ben Ali greater latitude to crush his Islamist enemies.160 156 Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 164. Harris, The Middle East and North Africa 1994, 831. 157 Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 28-29. Ahmed Aghrout and Yahia Zoubir, “Algeria: History,” in The Middle East and North Africa, Europa World Online, retrieved October 18, 2017, http://www.europaworld.com/entry/dz.hi Phillip C. Naylor, Historical Dictionary of Algeria, 4th ed, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 269-270. 158 Discussion with the author, May 2016. 159 An analyst in the New York Times observed immediately after the 1989 election: “If the President legalizes Ghannouchi’s renamed Renaissance Party, it may well enlarge its following. . . .” (Markham, “Tunis Journal; A Song of Democracy in a Distinctly Islamic Key”) 160 “The repression [of Ennahda] that ensued [in 1991] was made more palatable for many Tunisians by neighboring Algeria’s descent into chaos, rooted in politicized religious unrest. Looking across their western border in horror, they endorsed, or at least did not oppose, the harsh measures to rein in al- 8) Conclusion This article presents a novel theory of relative media freedom in authoritarian regimes. In particular, freedom for opposition groups to build public support by publishing their own media can serve as a commitment device, making a dictator’s promises of policy concessions to the opposition more credible. An autocratic ruler who faces both strong rivals within the regime (often new authoritarian leaders who did not found their regimes) and a serious possibility of protest against the government are most likely to employ this strategy. On the one hand, the new ruler’s need to reduce the number of opponents actively challenging him gives him a strong incentive to make concessions to opposition groups. On the other hand, once the neophyte Nero has eliminated his most dangerous intra-regime challengers, he may face a temptation to renege on the deal he made with the opposition. Hence, to win opposition groups’ support, the abecedarian autocrat may need to grant them media access, so that they can build enough leverage over the long-term to hold the new dictator to his promises. In some cases, this arrangement may be stable. But contingent factors may help the new ruler to accrue more power than initially seemed likely, enabling him to renege on the promised concessions and re-impose censorship. The theory was tested by applying it to the puzzle of why Ben Ali promised and began to deliver democratic reforms and press freedom, why he then reversed course regarding both, and why opposition leaders were initially willing to trust his promises. Ben Ali faced the dual problems of consolidating personal control over the regime he inherited and defusing the social unrest that had plagued Bourguiba. Rather than face down all his opponents simultaneously, he forged a truce with opposition groups and Tunisian society, trading the promise of political reform for social stability, while he steadily replaced the old guard in the government and the party with more pliant and loyal individuals. Ben Ali granted new freedoms to the press to reassure the opposition that they would still have the leverage to hold him to his promises in the future. Nahda, lest its clash with the government unleash a nightmare scenario replicating the Algerian tragedy” (Perkins, Historical Dictionary of Tunisia, 44). Opposition leaders’ belief that this arrangement would work in their interests was reasonable given the information they had at the time. It appeared that Ben Ali would have a difficult time establishing his power over the regime and that he would therefore continue to need the opposition’s cooperation for quite some time. When Ben Ali managed to defy these expectations by acquiring considerable personal power within a couple years, he no longer needed to make concessions to the opposition, while repressing his adversaries became less risky than it had been. At the same time, his secular opponents were revealed to be weaker than they initially appeared. The Islamist opposition, though stronger than its secular counterparts, found itself in the position of being weak enough for Ben Ali to crush, yet having the long-run potential to pose a more serious threat to the regime. As a result, Ben Ali ultimately maintained single-party rule, cracked down on the Islamist and secular opposition, and reintroduced harsh censorship of the press. Further testing of this theory through case studies of other leaders and countries and with large-scale quantitative data will determine whether it provides a general explanation of why new authoritarian leaders often liberalize the media, and why they also frequently reverse their media reforms. The case study in this article, which tests the hypothesis by investigating variation over time within the rule of a single leader, suggests the plausibility of this theory of media freedom in authoritarian regimes. Acknowledgements The author is grateful for extensive feedback on drafts of this article from Ceren Abi, James DeNardo, Barbara Geddes, and two anonymous reviewers. The research conducted in Tunis for this article greatly benefitted from the efforts of the author’s research assistant, Mohamed Ashraf Ayadi. A grant from the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) made the fieldwork possible. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of ASMEA, in Washington, DC, where it won the prize for Best Paper by a Student. Author information EOGHAN STAFFORD is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his AB in Social Studies from Harvard and his MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research looks at the interrelations between the media, protest, and political change in the Middle East and North Africa.