Papers by Intissar Kherigi
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), May 4, 2021
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Abstract
The 2010-11 Tunisian uprising brought to the fore questions of space, identity and the ... more Abstract
The 2010-11 Tunisian uprising brought to the fore questions of space, identity and the territorial distribution of power in a country with a history of extreme centralization. From the 1800s onwards, state-building processes and a colonial settler economy led to an extreme concentration of power in the capital, Tunis, and the Sahel (coastal regions) from which the president and much of the ruling party hailed. These territorial inequalities have profoundly shaped the country’s political transition and debates in the past decade. When the country turned to drafting a new constitution in 2011, there was a cross-party and cross-ideological consensus on one element alone – decentralization. The resulting 2014 constitution dedicates an entire chapter to decentralization as a systemic solution to decades of highly centralized rule and deep territorial inequalities.
This thesis examines the politics of decentralization reforms in post-revolution Tunisia. It applies a public policy framework, seldom applied to analyze politics in the Arab world, to decentralization policy-making processes between 2011 and 2020. It analyzes the various stages of Tunisia’s decentralization policy-making process between 2011 and 2020, starting with the problematization of territorial inequalities and their placing on the governmental agenda (problem emergence and perception, and agenda-setting). Drawing on the constructivist literature on problem definition, policy paradigms and discursive coalitions, it examines the processes by which public demands for territorial justice were re-interpreted by a new class of counter-elites to introduce decentralization, designed to transform the state, disrupt existing central-local elite networks, and produce new local elites.
The thesis asks three main research questions: 1) How do we make sense of the choice to decentralize after the revolution in Tunisia? What is the conceptual link between revolution and decentralization? 2) In the context of a political transition, who controls policy-making and how are power relations between actors reshaped? 3) How do decentralization reforms engage with the realities of different spatial contexts, as populated by diverse practices, representations and identities? The thesis combines public policy frameworks with an ethnographic approach to produce a sociological analysis of policy-making. It draws on two and a half years of fieldwork involving 257 in-depth interviews, archival work, observation and ethnographic case studies in eight different regions of Tunisia.
The thesis challenges the dominant theory in decentralization literature, which seeks to explain the “fundamental puzzle” that decentralization poses by reference purely to electoral interests. Instead, it argues for understanding decentralization in a post-authoritarian context as a strategy by incoming counter-elites who represent politically, economically and socially marginalized social groups that faced repression under the former regime. In this context, decentralization is best understood as a means by counter-elites to entrench democracy and provide a form of self-protection by marginalizing local elites associated with the former regime.
In addition, the thesis questions the decentralization literature’s exclusive focus on political elites while overlooking the role of bureaucracies. The thesis analyzes in detail the bureaucratic politics involved in the decentralization process, which occur not just between politicians and bureaucrats but also between the various government agencies involved. It also analyzes the roles of other actors such as business interests, civil society and international organizations, while being sensitive to dynamics and conflicts within these groups themselves.
The thesis seeks to fill a gap in the current literature by applying classical public policy concepts to analyzing a policy process in the Arab world. Furthermore, unlike most studies of Tunisia’s political transition, it sets the ambitious aim of analyzing policy-making as a relational process shaped by power relations between a multitude of actors, rather than focusing on a single actor or group of actors, such as Islamist or secular parties, trade unions, civil society or international organizations.
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Federalism and Decentralization in the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa, Cambridge University Press, Jan 5, 2023
This chapter examines Tunisia’s decentralization process from the start of the constitution-draft... more This chapter examines Tunisia’s decentralization process from the start of the constitution-drafting process in 2011 to adoption of the Local Authorities Code and holding of municipal elections in 2018. It begins with a brief historical overview of regional inequalities in order to reflect the historical temporal register through which these inequalities were debated. The chapter adopts an actor-centered approach and analyzes how two key factors – institutional venue and party system coherence – shape the incentives and capacities of political and bureaucratic officials to shape decentralization. It draws on the literature on decentralization in other transitioning and developing countries and reveals the need for further research on the role of political parties in post-authoritarian and transitional contexts, the balance of power between political and administrative actors in such contexts, and how choices regarding process design and policy venue at the outset of decentralization reforms shape subsequent outcomes.
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Al-Muntaqa: New Perspectives on Arab Studies, 2020
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Program on Local Governance and Development Working Paper Series, 2020
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Tumultes, 2018
Le rôle et la position des femmes ont été l’objet d’une attention particulière dans les analyses ... more Le rôle et la position des femmes ont été l’objet d’une attention particulière dans les analyses du Printemps arabe, et on s’est demandé si les soulèvements conduiraient à des progrès structurels dans le domaine des droits des femmes et dans celui de leurs vécus. A été posée de façon récurrente la question de savoir si l’apparition en nombre des acteurs se référant au religieux — en particulier les partis islamistes — aurait un impact sur les droits des femmes. Nombre de recherches ont pris pour objet les femmes, mais peu se sont intéressées aux femmes comme agents politiques, à la fois dans les institutions et dans les partis politiques ; en Tunisie, en particulier, les femmes ont joué un rôle clé comme actrices centrales de la révolution. Elles ont été en première ligne lors des manifestations et très présentes dans le processus politique, comme sujets au centre des revendications et des débats des acteurs politiques. Les partis sont entrés en compétition pour s’approprier la question des droits des femmes, chacun d’entre eux cherchant à se présenter comme le représentant de « la femme musulmane », conformément à sa propre définition de la féminité tunisienne. La Tunisie offre un cas particulièrement intéressant pour étudier à la fois le rôle des femmes dans les institutions politiques, et la relation entre femmes sécularistes et islamistes, étant donné la complexité de la relation entre religion et sécularisme. Habib Bourguiba, premier président de la Tunisie après l’indépendance, a poursuivi un programme agressif de sécularisation qui a fait des droits des femmes un pilier de la modernisation…
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Arab Reform Initiative, 2020
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Program on Governance and Local Development Working Paper Series, 2021
This paper examines Tunisia’s 2015-17 municipal boundary reform process, undertaken in preparatio... more This paper examines Tunisia’s 2015-17 municipal boundary reform process, undertaken in preparation for the decentralization process mandated under the 2014 constitution. It analyzes how municipal boundary decisions were made, the actors who were involved, and the logic that shaped the reform process. Through extensive fieldwork in the capital, Tunis, and in eight municipalities around Tunisia, this paper explores how the underpinning logics of national decision-making collide with the spatial realities of local actors. This paper argues that the municipal boundary reforms were guided by a combination of security-based and clientelist logics that imposed centralized conceptions of space and failed to engage with territories as lived spaces.
Furthermore, it argues that, by failing to address the social, economic and spatial implications of boundary reforms, the reforms contributing to producing a despatialized decentralization process that ultimately has little meaning for residents and proves problematic for the resulting municipalities and their constituent relations. The process thus replicates many of the same logics and conceptions of space that have shaped territorial governance since the colonial era.
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IEMED - Assessing the role and potential of civil society in the Euro-Mediterranean region, 2020
Tunisia is a useful case study through which to explore the changing role of civil society in a w... more Tunisia is a useful case study through which to explore the changing role of civil society in a world experiencing multiple transitions. While Tunisia is going through a complex democratic transition that sets it apart in many respects, its civil society faces similar challenges to those to the South and North of the Mediterranean when it comes to operating in a context of dwindling trust in public institutions, rise in populist discourses, high levels of inequality, an urban/rural divide, and disengagement from traditional forms of political and social activism.
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University of Gothenburg, Program on Governance and Local Development, 2020
The 2010-2011 Tunisian Revolution brought to the fore the issue of regional inequalities, which w... more The 2010-2011 Tunisian Revolution brought to the fore the issue of regional inequalities, which was at the heart of the demands put forward by protesters during the uprising and has continued to be a burning issue in its aftermath (Daoud, 2011; Gana, 2012). The uprising led to the election of a national constituent assembly, charged with drafting and adopting a new constitutional framework. The constitutional drafting process was riven with conflicts but there was one notable point of consensus: decentralization. Chapter Seven of the constitution, titled “Local Authority” (al-solta al-mahaliyya) affirms elected local and regional government as being autonomous institutions with financial and administrative autonomy and significant powers, and is a radical departure from a historically highly centralized framework in Tunisia and much of the Arab world (Harb and Atallah, 2015; Kherigi, 2017).
However, there is a significant gap between Chapter Seven and its implementing legislation, the Local Authorities Code adopted in 2018. The municipal councils elected in May 2018 have found huge challenges in governing effectively at the local level, given a framework that continues to be extremely centralized, and in which there is significant resistance to decentralization by other state institutions. The evolution of the decentralization process in Tunisia mirrors the finding in the decentralization literature that the initial decision to decentralize, even if it involves a high degree of political consensus, often triggers intense struggles, both between and among political and bureaucratic actors.
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Arab Reform Initiatives / Chatham House, 2020
Since the 1980s, decentralisation has been championed as a driver to develop marginalised periphe... more Since the 1980s, decentralisation has been championed as a driver to develop marginalised peripheries in Arab countries. In practice, many decentralisation efforts ended up as mere transfers of authority from a central state to an under-resourced and over-burdened local government, with limited positive effects to citizens. This article explores whether a renewed push for decentralisation in Tunisia can finally address the demands for inclusion and development. It argues that in order to succeed, central state institutions need to fundamentally reform the way they function.
This piece is published by Arab Reform Initiative in collaboration with Chatham House. It is part of a series which addresses the future of governance and security in the Middle East and North Africa, and their impact on the role of the state in the region.
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Middle East Law and Governance, 2015
This paper examines the rise of policy research institutes ("think tanks") in Tunisia and their r... more This paper examines the rise of policy research institutes ("think tanks") in Tunisia and their role in the policy making process since the 2011 uprising. Our research suggests that such institutes are developing a stake in the policymaking process in Tunisia, using expanded public space to raise policy issues, scrutinise governmental action, and challenge existing policy frameworks. The paper examines the the changing nature of public policy making since 2011, the challenges facing policy research institutes, and the obstacles to greater public engagement in policy making processes.
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Papers by Intissar Kherigi
The 2010-11 Tunisian uprising brought to the fore questions of space, identity and the territorial distribution of power in a country with a history of extreme centralization. From the 1800s onwards, state-building processes and a colonial settler economy led to an extreme concentration of power in the capital, Tunis, and the Sahel (coastal regions) from which the president and much of the ruling party hailed. These territorial inequalities have profoundly shaped the country’s political transition and debates in the past decade. When the country turned to drafting a new constitution in 2011, there was a cross-party and cross-ideological consensus on one element alone – decentralization. The resulting 2014 constitution dedicates an entire chapter to decentralization as a systemic solution to decades of highly centralized rule and deep territorial inequalities.
This thesis examines the politics of decentralization reforms in post-revolution Tunisia. It applies a public policy framework, seldom applied to analyze politics in the Arab world, to decentralization policy-making processes between 2011 and 2020. It analyzes the various stages of Tunisia’s decentralization policy-making process between 2011 and 2020, starting with the problematization of territorial inequalities and their placing on the governmental agenda (problem emergence and perception, and agenda-setting). Drawing on the constructivist literature on problem definition, policy paradigms and discursive coalitions, it examines the processes by which public demands for territorial justice were re-interpreted by a new class of counter-elites to introduce decentralization, designed to transform the state, disrupt existing central-local elite networks, and produce new local elites.
The thesis asks three main research questions: 1) How do we make sense of the choice to decentralize after the revolution in Tunisia? What is the conceptual link between revolution and decentralization? 2) In the context of a political transition, who controls policy-making and how are power relations between actors reshaped? 3) How do decentralization reforms engage with the realities of different spatial contexts, as populated by diverse practices, representations and identities? The thesis combines public policy frameworks with an ethnographic approach to produce a sociological analysis of policy-making. It draws on two and a half years of fieldwork involving 257 in-depth interviews, archival work, observation and ethnographic case studies in eight different regions of Tunisia.
The thesis challenges the dominant theory in decentralization literature, which seeks to explain the “fundamental puzzle” that decentralization poses by reference purely to electoral interests. Instead, it argues for understanding decentralization in a post-authoritarian context as a strategy by incoming counter-elites who represent politically, economically and socially marginalized social groups that faced repression under the former regime. In this context, decentralization is best understood as a means by counter-elites to entrench democracy and provide a form of self-protection by marginalizing local elites associated with the former regime.
In addition, the thesis questions the decentralization literature’s exclusive focus on political elites while overlooking the role of bureaucracies. The thesis analyzes in detail the bureaucratic politics involved in the decentralization process, which occur not just between politicians and bureaucrats but also between the various government agencies involved. It also analyzes the roles of other actors such as business interests, civil society and international organizations, while being sensitive to dynamics and conflicts within these groups themselves.
The thesis seeks to fill a gap in the current literature by applying classical public policy concepts to analyzing a policy process in the Arab world. Furthermore, unlike most studies of Tunisia’s political transition, it sets the ambitious aim of analyzing policy-making as a relational process shaped by power relations between a multitude of actors, rather than focusing on a single actor or group of actors, such as Islamist or secular parties, trade unions, civil society or international organizations.
Furthermore, it argues that, by failing to address the social, economic and spatial implications of boundary reforms, the reforms contributing to producing a despatialized decentralization process that ultimately has little meaning for residents and proves problematic for the resulting municipalities and their constituent relations. The process thus replicates many of the same logics and conceptions of space that have shaped territorial governance since the colonial era.
However, there is a significant gap between Chapter Seven and its implementing legislation, the Local Authorities Code adopted in 2018. The municipal councils elected in May 2018 have found huge challenges in governing effectively at the local level, given a framework that continues to be extremely centralized, and in which there is significant resistance to decentralization by other state institutions. The evolution of the decentralization process in Tunisia mirrors the finding in the decentralization literature that the initial decision to decentralize, even if it involves a high degree of political consensus, often triggers intense struggles, both between and among political and bureaucratic actors.
This piece is published by Arab Reform Initiative in collaboration with Chatham House. It is part of a series which addresses the future of governance and security in the Middle East and North Africa, and their impact on the role of the state in the region.
The 2010-11 Tunisian uprising brought to the fore questions of space, identity and the territorial distribution of power in a country with a history of extreme centralization. From the 1800s onwards, state-building processes and a colonial settler economy led to an extreme concentration of power in the capital, Tunis, and the Sahel (coastal regions) from which the president and much of the ruling party hailed. These territorial inequalities have profoundly shaped the country’s political transition and debates in the past decade. When the country turned to drafting a new constitution in 2011, there was a cross-party and cross-ideological consensus on one element alone – decentralization. The resulting 2014 constitution dedicates an entire chapter to decentralization as a systemic solution to decades of highly centralized rule and deep territorial inequalities.
This thesis examines the politics of decentralization reforms in post-revolution Tunisia. It applies a public policy framework, seldom applied to analyze politics in the Arab world, to decentralization policy-making processes between 2011 and 2020. It analyzes the various stages of Tunisia’s decentralization policy-making process between 2011 and 2020, starting with the problematization of territorial inequalities and their placing on the governmental agenda (problem emergence and perception, and agenda-setting). Drawing on the constructivist literature on problem definition, policy paradigms and discursive coalitions, it examines the processes by which public demands for territorial justice were re-interpreted by a new class of counter-elites to introduce decentralization, designed to transform the state, disrupt existing central-local elite networks, and produce new local elites.
The thesis asks three main research questions: 1) How do we make sense of the choice to decentralize after the revolution in Tunisia? What is the conceptual link between revolution and decentralization? 2) In the context of a political transition, who controls policy-making and how are power relations between actors reshaped? 3) How do decentralization reforms engage with the realities of different spatial contexts, as populated by diverse practices, representations and identities? The thesis combines public policy frameworks with an ethnographic approach to produce a sociological analysis of policy-making. It draws on two and a half years of fieldwork involving 257 in-depth interviews, archival work, observation and ethnographic case studies in eight different regions of Tunisia.
The thesis challenges the dominant theory in decentralization literature, which seeks to explain the “fundamental puzzle” that decentralization poses by reference purely to electoral interests. Instead, it argues for understanding decentralization in a post-authoritarian context as a strategy by incoming counter-elites who represent politically, economically and socially marginalized social groups that faced repression under the former regime. In this context, decentralization is best understood as a means by counter-elites to entrench democracy and provide a form of self-protection by marginalizing local elites associated with the former regime.
In addition, the thesis questions the decentralization literature’s exclusive focus on political elites while overlooking the role of bureaucracies. The thesis analyzes in detail the bureaucratic politics involved in the decentralization process, which occur not just between politicians and bureaucrats but also between the various government agencies involved. It also analyzes the roles of other actors such as business interests, civil society and international organizations, while being sensitive to dynamics and conflicts within these groups themselves.
The thesis seeks to fill a gap in the current literature by applying classical public policy concepts to analyzing a policy process in the Arab world. Furthermore, unlike most studies of Tunisia’s political transition, it sets the ambitious aim of analyzing policy-making as a relational process shaped by power relations between a multitude of actors, rather than focusing on a single actor or group of actors, such as Islamist or secular parties, trade unions, civil society or international organizations.
Furthermore, it argues that, by failing to address the social, economic and spatial implications of boundary reforms, the reforms contributing to producing a despatialized decentralization process that ultimately has little meaning for residents and proves problematic for the resulting municipalities and their constituent relations. The process thus replicates many of the same logics and conceptions of space that have shaped territorial governance since the colonial era.
However, there is a significant gap between Chapter Seven and its implementing legislation, the Local Authorities Code adopted in 2018. The municipal councils elected in May 2018 have found huge challenges in governing effectively at the local level, given a framework that continues to be extremely centralized, and in which there is significant resistance to decentralization by other state institutions. The evolution of the decentralization process in Tunisia mirrors the finding in the decentralization literature that the initial decision to decentralize, even if it involves a high degree of political consensus, often triggers intense struggles, both between and among political and bureaucratic actors.
This piece is published by Arab Reform Initiative in collaboration with Chatham House. It is part of a series which addresses the future of governance and security in the Middle East and North Africa, and their impact on the role of the state in the region.