The Expansion of International Civil Society: the Case of Tunisia Alejandro Colas Krauter Thesis submitted in completion of Ph.D in International Relations London School of Economics and Political Science University of London 1999 1 UMI Number: U615580 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615580 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This thesis aims to examine the role of collective social and political agency in international relations through an elaboration of the category ‘international civil society’. It does so by adopting a distinctly modem understanding of collective agency associated to the concept of civil society, then to argue that the social movements operating within this domain have displayed international characteristics from their inception. Specifically, the study considers the way in which modem social and political movements (trade unions, socialist and nationalist parties) emerged and developed in Tunisia from the turn of the century through to independence in 1956, as a result of this country’s interaction with the international system. Hence, the thesis is primarily concerned with the mechanisms responsible for the extension of modes of social and political organisation across national, ethnic and religious boundaries. In doing so, however, it also seeks to uncover practices of transnational solidarity among social movements and to evaluate the relevance of such practices for our understanding of international society. In short, the central purpose of the thesis is to illustrate how the concept of ‘international civil society’ can serve on the one hand as an analytical tool for the study of international political agency and its impact upon international relations; and on the other hand, as a normatively charged category, capable of recovering the past history of internationalist political activity and illuminating its future potential. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for financial support through a Research Studentship; to the University of London Central Research Fund for a travel grant that allowed me to cany out research in Morocco during the spring of 1996; and to the LSE’s Department of International Relations for awarding me a Montague Burton Studentship in 1997. Important as material backing is in completing a thesis, I owe just as much to the moral and intellectual support of countless individuals. Many friends and colleagues in the Maghreb and elsewhere offered their time, advice and hospitality throughout the writing of this thesis. Fred Halliday has been an exemplary supervisor in his support and encouragement through the years, while the friends and comrades (not always the same thing) at the successive research rooms and research workshops at the London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) have unfailingly provided for good times and intellectual stimulation necessary in writing the thesis. To my parents, Barbara Krauter and Jose Antonio Colas, I owe the greatest debt of gratitude, not least for, despite themselves, instilling in me the values of internationalism. 3 Contents I. Introduction: Preliminary Definitions 6 1.1 The Universal and the Particular: Tunisia as a Case-Study 7 1.2 Non-State Actors in International Relations 11 1.3 Civil Society and International Relations Theory 20 1.4 Agents and Structures in International Relations 31 1.5 Conclusions: Towards a Historical Sociology of International Political Agency 38 II. Civil Society: The Challenge of the International 42 2.1 Three Components of Civil Society 42 2.2 The International Dimensions of Civil Society 70 2.3 Conclusions: The Promises of International Civil Society 82 III. International Society From Below: The Role of Civil Society in IR 91 3.1 International Society: A Malleable Concept 91 3.2 State Sovereignty: the Popular Contribution 100 3.3 The Standard of Civilisation as the Expansion of Capitalism 113 3.4 The Revolt Against the West: Popular Sovereignty and National Liberation 123 3.5 Conclusions: International Civil Society and International Society 131 IV. The International Origins of Tunisian Civil Society 1900-1924 136 4.1 Colonialism and its Consequences 140 4.2 The Impact of the Salafiyya Movement 146 4 4.3 Constitutionalist Reformism 153 4.4 The Working-Class Movements 165 4.5 Conclusions: The Genesis of Civil Society in Tunisia 172 V. Tunisian Civil Society and the Inter-War Crisis 1934-1938 176 5.1 Mass Nationalism in Tunisia 177 5.2 Tunisia, the Popular Front and Internationalism 186 5.3 Conclusions: The Contradictions of International Civil Society 196 VI. Civil Society and International Society in the Struggle for Tunisian Independence 1943-1956 200 6.1 The International Setting of the Tunisian Struggle for Independence 204 6.2 Nationalism and Internationalism in the Struggle for Tunisian Independence 218 6.3 The United Nations and Tunisian Independence 227 6.4 Conclusions: Civil Society and International Society in Post-War Tunisia 234 VI. Conclusions: The Uses of International Civil Society 237 7.1 The Meaningsof International Civil Society 239 7.2 The Question of Internationalism 244 7.3 The Contemporary Implications of International Civil Society: the Western Mediterranean Today 247 7.4 The Uses of International Civil Society 254 Bibliography 257 5 Chapter One Introduction This aim of this thesis is to argue for the relevance of collective social and political agency in international relations. The term ‘civil society’ is initially adopted to describe that social domain where modern collective political agency takes shape. From this premise, I go on to argue that the social movements operating within civil society have displayed international characteristics from their inception, thus warranting the introduction of the term ‘international civil society’ as a category capable of explaining the dynamics and consequences of collective social and political agency at an international level. The historical and sociological implications of deploying this concept will be considered with specific reference to the case of Tunisia. I shall examine the way in which modern social movements emerged and developed in Tunisia between the turn of the century and independence in 1956, due fundamentally to the country’s interaction with the international system. One of the central concerns of this thesis, therefore, is the examination of the mechanisms responsible for the reproduction of modes of social and political organisation across national, ethnic and religious boundaries. The aim of such an exercise is to uncover and recover for the study of international relations, the practices of transnational solidarity among social movements and to evaluate the relevance of these practices for our understanding of international society. In short, the central purpose of the chapters that follow is to illustrate how the concept of ‘international civil society’ can serve on the one hand as an analytical tool for the study of international political agency and its impact upon international relations; and on the other hand, as a normatively charged category, capable of recovering the past history of internationalist political activity and illuminating its future potential. These broad objectives raise two immediate questions to be addressed in this introductory chapter. The first set of considerations relate to the choice of Tunisia as case study: what is relevance of this country for the expansion of international civil society?; and can the conceptual tools derived from the European experience be applied to the study of a north African society? A second, and perhaps more Chapter One: Introduction important question concerns the novelty of the idea of international civil society: in what ways does this category contribute to or depart from existing approaches to International Relations (IR) with similar concerns? This introductory chapter seeks to answer these questions explicitly, but the responses provided here will hopefully also be implicit throughout the rest of the thesis. The chapter is organised in the following way: a first section will briefly defend the universal currency of categories derived from modern social science and highlight the reasons for considering the expansion of international civil society to Tunisia as an instance of this validity. The remaining sections aim to distinguish my own treatment of questions such as agency, transnationalism and civil society from those prevailing within the discipline, thereby placing the concept of international civil society within the wider debates in IR. One important reason for these differences, I maintain, lies in the broadly-defined historical-sociological method adopted in this study. The concluding section of the chapter is therefore dedicated to the definition and justification of such an approach. 1.1 The Universal and the Particular: Tunisia as a Case-Study One of the central aims of this thesis