The International Dimension of Tunisia's Transition to Democracy

The International Dimension of Tunisia’s Transition to Democracy. From Consensus over Democracy to Competitiveness within Democracy

Thèse

Pietro Marzo

Doctorat en science politique Philosophiæ doctor (Ph. D.)

Québec, Canada

The International Dimension of Tunisia’s Transition to Democracy. From Consensus over Democracy to Competitiveness within Democracy

Thèse

Pietro Marzo

Doctorat en Science Politique

Philosophiæ doctor (Ph.D)

Québec, Canada

Sous la direction de:

Francesco Cavatorta, Directeur de Recherche

Résumé

Après le déclenchement des révoltes arabes en 2010, la Tunisie est le seul pays arabe à s'être démocratisé avec succès, dans une région où un repli autoritaire est en train de sévir. Les chercheurs ont étudié la transition démocratique tunisienne en se concentrant principalement sur ses facteurs internes, alors qu'ils ont accordé peu d'attention à l'impact des facteurs internationaux et des influences externes sur le processus de transition. S'appuyant sur une analyse qualitative, cette étude examine la dimension internationale de la transition de la Tunisie vers la démocratie et soutient que les facteurs et influences internationaux ont joué un rôle important dans le processus de démocratisation. Cette recherche se concentre sur l'impact que l'agence des promoteurs internationaux de la démocratie a eu sur la structure nationale tunisienne. Il met en évidence la façon dont l'interaction entre les acteurs internationaux et les groupes nationaux tunisiens a contribué au processus de démocratisation, sans soutenir que les facteurs externes ont imposé les choix et des acteurs politiques et sociaux tunisiens. L'étude expose trois résultats théoriques qui contribuent au débat sur la dimension internationale de la démocratisation. Premièrement, cette recherche suggère que lorsque les promoteurs internationaux de la démocratie soutiennent les oppositions nationales à développer une confiance mutuelle à renforcer leurs liens, et de combler les divisions, il favorise l'émergence des nouveaux ‘centres de pouvoir’. Les données empiriques fournies par cette étude démontrent que les programmes d'aide à la démocratie et les influences libérales internationales ont favorisé la création d'une coalition tunisienne pro-démocratie d'opposition au régime de Ben Ali. Deuxièmement, cette étude avance que le faible niveau de la bataille étrangère pour l'influence en Tunisie a facilité le processus de négociation entre les élites de transition pendant le processus de démocratisation. Troisémement, cette étude soutient que lors de la transition tunisienne vers la démocratie, les promoteurs internationaux de la démocratie ont aidé les partis politiques tunisiens à passer d'un consensus initial sur la mise en place d'un système politique démocratique à une concurrence au sein du système démocratique mis en place. Bien que cette étude se concentre uniquement sur le cas de la Tunisie, tous les chapitres fournissent des preuves comparatives avec d'autres contextes régionaux.

Abstract

Following the outbreak of the Arab revolts in late 2010, Tunisia is the only Arab country that has democratized successfully in a region where authoritarian retrenchment prevails. Scholars have studied the Tunisian transition to democracy focusing mainly on domestic factors, devoting little attention to the role international factors and external influences played in the transitional process. Relying on qualitative analysis, this study investigates the international dimension of Tunisia’s transition to democracy and argues that international factors and influences played a relevant role in the democratization process. This research focuses on the impact the agency of international democracy promoters had on Tunisian national structure during the transition to democracy, without downplaying the agency of Tunisian political and social actors. It highlights how the interplay between international actors and Tunisia domestic groups contributed to the making of the democratization process.

The study lays out three theoretical findings that contribute to the debates on the international dimension of democratization and democracy promotion. First, it suggests that when international democracy promoters support domestic oppositions in developing mutual trust, strengthening ties and bridging divisions, they enhance the emergence of new alternative ‘centres of power’ to the regime. Second, this study argues that the low level of foreign squabbling for influence in Tunisia facilitated the bargaining process among transitional elites during the democratization process. Third, this study suggests that during the Tunisian transition to democracy, international democracy promoters helped Tunisian transition elites to move from the initial consensus over democracy to competition within the democracy. While this study focuses only on the Tunisia’s case, all the chapters provide comparative evidence with other countries in the Middle East and North Africa to back up the empirical findings and the theoretical reflections.

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Contents

Résumé ...... ii Abstract ...... iii Contents ...... iv List of abbreviations and acronyms ...... vii Acknowledgements ...... x Forewords ...... xii Introduction ...... 1 What democracy? Definitions of democracy...... 1 The evolution of the debate on the international dimension of democratisation: from the bipolar to the unipolar world ...... 6 The end of the unipolar world and the decline of the debate on the international dimension of democratization ...... 14 Studying the International Dimension of Democracy in Age of Multipolarity ...... 16 The International Dimension of Democratization in the MENA Region ...... 22 Justification for the Study and Outline of the Chapters ...... 28 Bibliography ...... 33 Chapter 1. La Dimension Internationale de la Transition Démocratique en Tunisie. Défis Méthodologiques d’une Recherche Qualitative...... 48 1.1 Résumé ...... 49 1.2 Abstract...... 50 1.3 Introduction ...... 51 1.4 Identifier les acteurs: l’importance du terrain exploratoire ...... 54 1.5 Le recrutement: la technique de ‘boule de neige’ et le rôle des intermédiaires ou ‘fixeurs’ .... 58 1.6 Réduire la subjectivée des récits pendant les entrevues: ‘la triangulation progressive’ des données...... 62 1.7 Conclusion ...... 66 1.8 Bibliographie ...... 67 Chapter 2. Solving the Security-Democracy Dilemma. The US Foreign Policy in Tunisia post-9/11 ...... 70 2.1 Résumé ...... 71 2.2 Abstract ...... 73 2.3 Introduction ...... 74 2.4 Rethinking the US foreign policy in the MENA Region. A framework of analysis ...... 76

2.5 US-Tunisia relations before 9/11: alliances with autocrats to secure the US strategic interests ...... 81 2.6 The US foreign policy in Tunisia post 9/11: Maintaining Formal Relations with Ben Ali while empowering Alternative Centres of Power...... 83 2.7 ‘Ben Ali, What Happens Next?’ Worsening Relations Between 2008 and the Revolution...... 91 2.8 Conclusion ...... 95 2.9 Bibliography ...... 97 Chapter 3. Supporting political debate while building patterns of trust: the role of the German political foundations in Tunisia (1989 – 2017) ...... 102 3.1 Résumé ...... 103 3.2 Abstract ...... 104 3.3 Introduction ...... 105 3.4 The International Dimension of Democratisation ...... 108 3.5 German Political Foundations: A ‘Unique’ Type of Democratic Promoter ...... 112 3.6 The German political foundation in Tunisia before the revolution: ‘The unintended consequences of Ben Ali’s upgraded authoritarianism’...... 115 3.7 The German foundations after the revolution: soft power in Tunisia’s democratisation...... 124 3.8 Conclusion ...... 128 3.9 Bibliography ...... 129 Chapter 4. International Democracy Promoters and Transitional Elites: Favourable Conditions for Successful Partnership. Evidence from Tunisia’s Democratization...... 135 4.1 Résumé ...... 136 4.2 Abstract ...... 136 4.3 Introduction ...... 138 4.4 Data and Method ...... 142 4.5 Rethinking the International Democracy Promotion in MENA Democratization Studies...... 144 4.6 From Electoral monitoring to Democratic Promotion: The International Assistance Shift in Tunisia ...... 147 4.7 From Consensus Over Democracy to Competition Within Democracy: Lowering tensions among political parties...... 153 4.8 Enhancing the Autonomy of Civil Society and Empowering Independent National Institutions ...... 157 4.9 Conclusion: What is new about democratic promotion in Tunisia? ...... 163 4.10 Bibliography ...... 164

Chapter 5. The international dimension of authoritarianism in the MENA region. An examination of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria ...... 172 5.1 Résumé ...... 173 5.2 Abstract ...... 174 5.3 Introduction ...... 175 5.4 Theoretical Framework: The International Politics of authoritarian rule ...... 178 5.5 Egypt: An International Supportive Environment for Authoritarian Rule ...... 181 5.6 Libya Revolution: A Contested Environment for Authoritarianism ...... 183 5.7 Tunisia: An International Constraining Environment for Authoritarianism...... 184 5.8 Algeria: a permissive environment for Authoritarianism? ...... 187 5.9 Conclusion ...... 189 5.10 Bibliography ...... 190 Conclusion ...... 194 Main findings ...... 195 Limits of the Research ...... 201 Future Research ...... 203 Bibliography ...... 204 ANNEX A. Methodological Details ...... 231

List of abbreviations and acronyms

AFTURD: Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour la Recherche sur le Développement AMT: Association des Magistrats Tunisiens ARFORGHE: Association des Responsables de Formation et de Gestion Humaine dans les Entreprises ATFD: Association Tunisienne de Femmes Démocrates ATIDE: Association Tunisienne pour l’Intégrité de la Démocratie des Élections ATUGE: Association des Tunisiens Diplômés des Grandes Écoles CAPJC: Centre Africain de Perfectionnement des Journalistes et Communicateurs CFAD Centre de Formation et d’Appui à la Décentralisation en Tunisie CIA: Central Intelligence Agency CDU: Christlich Demokratische Union CSDHLF: Comité Supérieur des Droits de l’Homme et des Libertés Fondamentales CPR: Congrés pour la République CSID: Centre for Study of Islam and Democracy ENA: École d’Administration Nationale EU: European Union FDTL: Forum Démocratique pour le Travail et les Libertés FH: Freedom House FES: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung FNS: Friedrich Naumann Stiftung FOAP: Forum de l’Académie Politique GNC: General National Congress KAS: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung GIZ: Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit HAICA: Haute Autorité Indépendante de la Communication Audiovisuelle HBS Heinrich Böll Stiftung HSS: Hanns Seidel Stiftung IACE: Institut Arabe des Chefs d’Entreprises IDP: International Democracy Promoters INGO: International Non-governmental Organization INLUCC: Instance National de Lutte Contre la Corruption IO: International Organization IPSI: Institut de Presse and Science informatique IRI: International Republican Institute ISIE: Instance Supérieure Indépendante pour les Élections IVD: Instance de Verité et Dignité LTDH: Ligue Tunisienne des Droits de l’Homme MENA: Middle East and North Africa MEPI: Middle Eastern Partnership Initiative NDI: National Democratic Institute NED: National Endowment for Democracy NTC: National Transitional Council NGO: Non Governamental Organization

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PASC: Programme d’Appui à la Société Civile PDP: Parti Démocrate Progressiste PSD: Parti Socialiste Destourien PSL: Parti Social-Libéral PVP: Parti Vert pour le Progrès PUP: Parti de l’Unité Populaire OMT: Organisation Mondial contre la Torture ONAT: Ordre National des Avocats Tunisiens SPD: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands RCD: Rassemblement Constitutionel Démocratique RLS: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung RCD: Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique TAN: Transnational advocacy networks UAE: United Arab Emirates UGTT: Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens UDU: Union démocratique Unioniste

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to my family, Alietty, Antonio, Sara and Alberto

Acknowledgements

This thesis is the result of four-year work during my Ph.D program at the Department of Political Science at Laval University. I am indebted to countless individuals who contributed in different ways to the making of this work.

The Department of Political Science at Laval University, with its faculty and brilliant doctoral and master students, was an incredible environment to carry out my work, providing me with solid theoretical and methodological training. I am grateful to the members of my doctoral committee, Professor Marie Brossier, Professor Jonathan Paquin and Professor Philippe Borbeau for the guidance offered alongside the process of thinking about and writing this dissertation.

The Interdisciplinary Centre for the study of Africa and Middle East – CIRAM – at Laval University has enhanced my comprehension of the social and political issues of the MENA region more broadly. Professor Muriel Gomez-Perez (Department of History) and Professor Monique Cardinal (Department of Theology) have commented earlier drafts of my chapters before they were submitted to academic journals. In depth conversations with my colleagues Alessandra Bonci, Nidhal Mekki, Bader Ben Mansour, Jean-Francois Lettournau and Olfa Riahi Ibrahim helped to refine my understanding of Tunisian political and social affairs.

A considerable number of researchers, policy makers, friends and colleagues helped me during my research on the ground in Tunisia and Washington, DC. I would like to thank Professor Haitem M’rar (University of Carthage) and Professor Mohammed Kerrou (University of Tunis El Manar) for the academic mentorship they provided in Tunisia; my friends Jean-Louis Romanet, Matt Gordner, Leo Siebert, Omezzine Khelifa, Imen Ben Mohammed, Alessandra Menegon, Giordano Segneri, Matteo Malvani, and Nicholas Noe.

While I was conducting interviews in Washington, DC, Dr Kareem Mezran, Dr Amy Hawthorne and Dr Sarah Yerkes made my fieldwork more successful, connecting me with key respondents for my research.

I would like to thank the personnel of the German Political Foundations and the US NGOs for their availability and their patience in responding to my queries during in-person interviews and the many long-distance follow-ups.

My supervisor Francesco Cavatorta deserves a special mention for the incredible support he provided since our first mail exchanges back in 2015, well before I began my Ph.D program in September 2016. I encountered hundreds of Ph.D students at international conferences and in the field and I have rarely heard a level of satisfaction for mentorship as the one I received from Francesco. While I am entirely responsible for the strengths and weaknesses of the dissertation, working with Francesco was intellectually fascinating and this thesis would not be the same without his guidance. I am thankful to him for transferring part of his knowledge and expertise to me and for helping me with practical suggestions. I am particularly grateful to him because through his ethical conduct, humble and supportive behaviour he showed me what it means being an outstanding researcher.

Forewords

This is an articles-based dissertation. The work presented henceforth has been published in international peer reviewed journals. The remainder of the preface clarifies my contribution to each of the manuscripts that constitute the chapters of this thesis. The reader should note that each of the empirical chapters introduced in this dissertation is distinct and intended to ‘stand alone’ as published work. Although each article is self-contained, each of them addresses questions of theoretical and methodological importance in the common thread that runs through this thesis.

Chapter 1 has been published in the francophone review Recherches Qualitatives in June 2020. Thus, it appears here in the original French language. The article is part of a special issue I have co-edited with Professor Muriel Gomez-Perez on methodological challenges and fieldwork practises in Africa and Middle East. I am the only author of the article. In the chapter I present my fieldwork experience in Tunisia, exploring the methodological dilemmas and challenges I have encountered during my research on the international dimension of Tunisia’s transition to democracy. I provide more detail on data collection in the Annexe1 at the end of the thesis.

Chapter 2 has been published in Third World Quarterly (impact factor 2.15) in May 2020. I am the only author of the article. The chapter explores US foreign policy in Tunisia post 9/11 and it highlights how the US gradually realised that, unlike other countries across the region, regime change in Tunisia would not pose security challenges to its security and geopolitical interests. Most importantly, compared with other MENA countries, a large and heterogenous coalition of oppositions began to emerge in the 2000s, including the Islamist party Al-Nahda. Relying on interviews with Washington policy makers, US ambassadors and Tunisian political activists, the chapter offers evidence to rethink US foreign policy’s impact on Tunisian politics. Contrary to what the vast majority of the literature on US foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa contends, it refutes the idea that during the 2000s the US ‘liberal’ foreign policy in Tunisia – and its emphasis on democratic promotion – merely reinforced the incumbent. It rather shows that the US strategy ‘democracy assistance’ in Tunisia consisted in supporting a Tunisian democratic coalition

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of opposition inside and outside Tunisia, which contributed to undermining Ben Ali’s regime.

Chapter 3 has been published in Middle Eastern Studies (impact factor 0.3) in January 2019. I am the only author of the article. Building on evidence from semi-structured interviews and data triangulation, the article shows that since the late 1980s four German political foundations operating in Tunisia created platforms for ‘political debate’ – alternative to the regime’s but not necessarily subversive – and encouraged political training where opposition voices could be heard and could share their ideas. The article posits that initially the German political foundations helped Ben Ali’s regime in making his ‘façade’ liberalisation, but in the long run their activities generated unintended consequences that in part undermined authoritarianism. The article finally points out that their long-standing presence on the ground allowed German political foundations to develop patterns of trust with and between political and civil groups, ultimately improving their capacity to play a constructive role in the aftermath of the revolution.

Chapter 4 has been published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs (impact factor 0.7) in July 2019. I am the only author of the article. The chapter argues that international promotion of democracy in Tunisia was an essential asset for the transitional process and contributed to the beginning of democratic consolidation. By buttressing the formal institutions as the only space to resolve political conflicts, international partners contributed to driving Tunisian transitional political parties from consensus over democracy to competition within democracy, reducing the risk of regression to authoritarian practices. Likewise, international democracy promoters (IDPs) assistance can foster the professionalization of civic leaders and can strengthen the capacity of independent national institutions to operate with a more solid legal framework. The chapter suggests that three conditions were indispensable for the fruitful partnership between IDPs and domestic groups. First, when the transition away from authoritarianism can count on the elites’ broad agreement on the political system to establish, IDPs have a more effective capacity to enhance the achievements of their partners. Second, the IDPs’ ability to work more effectively also depended on the foreign antisystem forces’ reaction to the power vacuum in the transitional period. Indeed, IDPs in Tunisia were successful in enhancing national

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democratic accomplishments because their assistance was not disrupted by external conflicts penetrating the country. Third, external and internal favourable conditions removed the potential tension in democracy promotion resulting from the Western clash of interests between promoting democratization and pursuing other crucial foreign policy goals.

Chapter 5 has been published in the Tunisia Review of Political Science in September 2019. I am the only author of this article. The chapter employs Oisin Tansey’s model (2016) to examine how international factors support or undermine authoritarianism in four countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria. The article argues that the Egyptian regime is now ruling in a supportive international environment for authoritarianism, as it enjoys considerable foreign backing for its strong repressive politics, while democracy promoters cannot pressure the incumbent. After Qaddafi’s demise, Libya’s has operated in an international contested environment for authoritarianism because some foreign actors exert pressure for democratization, others back authoritarianism, and others still waver in their support between democratic governance and the stability a ‘strong man’ is perceived to bring. The article suggests that the Algerian regime is ruling in an international permissive environment for authoritarianism because it receives low external pressure to democratize democratic actors and low external pressure to maintain its authoritarian structures of power from pro-authoritarianism actors. Finally, the article argues that following Ben Ali’s fall, low external pressure from pro-authoritarianism forces and high pressure from pro- democracy forces have created an international constraining environment for authoritarianism in Tunisia. This helped the Tunisian democratization journey unfold quite smoothly, avoiding authoritarian backsliding.

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Introduction

What democracy? Definitions of democracy. Political theorists have devoted considerable effort to the conceptualisation of democracy, proposing such a high number of definitions that some scholars have advanced the idea of employing ‘democracy with adjectives’ (Collier and Levitsky 1997) to make sense of the “theoretical chaos deriving from the plethora of variants being posited” (Schedler 1998, 92).

Irrespective of the departure point that democracy is an essentially contested concept, scholarly debate in political science is divided into three main approaches to understand the meaning of democracy. A first group of scholars put forth an ‘epistemic’ conception of democracy as a process of truth-seeking (Cohen 1986, Habermas, 1992, Estlund 1997). Theorists of ‘epistemic democracy’ argue that “political participation and public deliberation can serve to articulate and advance a general will” (Cohen 1986, 26). These scholars see “democratic deliberations as a justification process of our beliefs oriented to political rightness or truth, or towards the single correct answer to political problems” (Cortois 2004). In this respect, the epistemic approach is often associated with a ‘populist’ notion of democracy. Advocates of ‘populist democracy’ adverse the voting system of liberal democracies and its procedures, claiming that liberal democratic institutions produce arbitrary social choices instead of fulfilling the people’s will (Coleman 1986, 19).

Another conceptualization of democracy stems from the Marxist school. Theorists of “social democracy” try to reconcile socialist ideas with democratic politics, conceptualising democracy as political systems oriented toward social progress (Padgett and Paterson 1991, Esping Andersen and Van Kersbergen 1992). These scholars desire a politically and economically equal society, where the functions of democratic institutions go beyond the mere fulfilment of procedures and rules. In the attempt to bridge socialist ideas and liberal democratic values these scholars focus on the social results that democracy can generate for people (Keman 1993). For instance, drawing on the logic of Marxist class structures, Esping Andersen (1985) emphasises the importance of building democratic society where

political and social actors (parties and unions) can generate social progress and societal development.

A third definition of democracy originates from the Schumpeterian theorization of liberal ‘procedural democracy’ as a competitive method for selecting leaders. Schumpeter conceives democracy as an “institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individual acquires the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote” (Schumpeter, 1942, 269). Following Schumpeter, Przeworski (1999, 12) argues that democracy is a “system in which people select their rulers through competitive elections”. These scholars conceptualise their vision of democracy as a rational answer to totalitarianism and authoritarianism. However, by emphasising the role of political competition and elections as the essence of democracy, Schumpeter and Przeworski offer a minimalist conceptualisation of democracy that “does not take into account political equality as a key dimension of procedural democracy” (Saffon and Urbinati 2013, 456). Political theorists Saffon and Urbinati provides a more complete conceptualisation of procedural democracy, refining the idea of a simply functionalistic method devoid of normative values:

Procedural democracy is minimalist in the Schumpeter sense as it refers only to the procedures and not the outcomes it may achieve, that is the only relevant traits of these outcomes are their compliance with procedural rules. But, contra Schumpeter and Przeworski it focuses not only on democracy's capacity to replace violent politics but also and especially on its protections of political equality, which consists not only in political competitions between factions but also in the effective participation of all individuals (Saffon and Urbinati 2013, 460).

In this vein, drawing on the Schumpeter’s procedural model, a number of scholars have highlighted other components (contents and results) that define the ‘quality’ of a procedural democracy (Altman and Pérez-Linan 2002, Powell 2004, Morlino and Diamond 2005, Robert 2010). Morlino (2011) summarizes this debate, providing a list of factors that permits to gauge the quality of a democracy beyond its procedures: the rule of law, the responsiveness of elected officials, fair competition among political parties, citizens’

political freedom and political equality, people’s political participation and the institutional accountability.

While political theorists and sociologists continue to debate the conceptualisation of democracy, the scholarly debate on democratic transitions has articulated its paradigm of analysis relying on the theoretical tenets of procedural democracy model. The rise of democratic transitions across the world in 1970s and 1980s (Southern Europe, Latin America and Eastern Asia) - what Huntington calls the third wave - generated a pressing need among Western scholars of democracy (especially in the US) to adopt an inclusive and comprehensive framework of analysis to study the global democratization trend. The academic knowledge originating from the Schumpeter’s conceptualization of democracy was apt for this purpose because it focuses overwhelmingly on democratic procedures and institutional achievements as separate therefore from discussions about the actual quality of democracy (Lipset 1959; Rustow 1970, O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, Huntington 1991, Schmitter and Karl 1991, Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens, 1992, Boix and Stoke 2003, Dahl 2011, Treisman 2019). In particular it provided a set of indicators that allowed political scientists - often living in the West - to examine processes of democratization occurring in non-Western countries through measurable institutional changes. Thus, the elaboration of a framework of analysis to study democratization processes, the so-called democracy transition paradigm, drew extensively from the electoral and minimalist conceptualization of democratization.

The seminal books of O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) and Samuel Huntington (1991) became the backbone of the democratic transition paradigm. Following Schumpeter, these scholars conceptualise democracy as a political system encompassing a set of rules and procedures, mainly free and fair elections and oppositional rights. Most importantly, they put forth a template that included three phases through which one could examine transitions to democracy. In their understanding, processes of economic and social liberalisation encapsulate the first phase of democratic transition, a sort of opening step that paves the ground for authoritarian breakdown. This phase displays democratic ferment, demands for liberalisation and the de-alignment of political and economic elites formerly supportive of the regime.

The authoritarian breakdown opens the second phase – democratization - or what O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) call breakthrough. This period highlights the emergence of a new democratic system where power is distributed among national political groups. Political leaders are selected through competitive, free and fair elections and they rule within a democratic institutional structure, which is regulated by a new Constitution. As Schmitter and Karl (1991, 82) suggest, democracy works only if “who wins greater electoral support on influence over policy will not use their temporary superiority in the future, and that in exchange for this opportunity to keep competing for power and place, momentary losers will respect the winners’ right to make binding decisions”. According to Huntington (1991) during the democratization, two rounds of free and fair competitive multiparty elections prove that a country has moved from the transitional phase to the beginning of democratic consolidation.

The phase of consolidation represents the process by which a new democracy thrives, gradually eradicating the risk to regression to authoritarianism. During the consolidation process the resilience of a democratic system, alongside with its associated democratic institutions and actors, increases. According to Morlino (1988), a new Constitution, shared among parties and organizations, may be considered the beginning of the consolidation process. Linz (1990, 156) suggests that a democracy consolidates when “none of the major political actors, parties, or organized interests, forces, or institutions consider that there is any alternative to democratic processes to gain power, and no political institution or group has a claim to veto the action of democratically elected decision makers”. In this vein, the higher is the awareness among significant political groups about the democratic institutions as the only arena for political debates, the higher the level of democratic consolidation (Ghunter 1996). One of the most important elements to measure the process of consolidation of a given democracy is the level of legitimation achieved. This occurs successfully when citizens believe that existing institutions and the system itself is the best alternative, and this regardless the level of personal satisfaction within the democratic system (Schedler 1997). In short, in a consolidating democracy, political and social actors begin to perceive democratic institutions as part of normal order of things.

While these scholars generated a useful framework of analysis to examine democratic transitions, the paradigm they elaborated relied on the minimalist “Western interpretation of democratization and the patterns of democratic change taking place” (Carothers 2002, 6). In this regard, the transition paradigm has recently met criticism for being a catch-all teleological framework of analysis that places excessive emphasis on competitive elections and procedures as indicators of democratic achievements (Carothers 2002). Whitehead (2009, 36), criticises the paradigm of democratic transition for being “at once too permissive and ‘too exacting’ to measure up to the diverse tapestry of transitions in the real world”. The paradigm of democratic transition has also drawn criticism because it offers a linear and normative template that does not fit with the real processes of democratisation. Sadiki (2009, 15) noted that limiting the analysis of democratic transition to a set of “fixed and inflexible theoretical propositions, which may be drawn from specific and ideal-typical case studies” fail to illustrate the functioning mechanism of ‘hybrid regimes’ (Diamond and O’Donnell 2002) that hold elections but are not democratic.

However, despite the transition paradigm - and the conception of procedural democracy on which it is built – suffering from flaws in grasping the real strength of a democratization process, and to gauge the quality of a democracy, another established framework of analysis to explore democratization process does not exist. Therefore, in order to investigate the international dimension of Tunisia’s democratization this study relies on the conceptualisation of procedural democracy and the transition paradigm that stems from it. Democracy hereafter is understood as a set of functioning procedures and processes that ensure the rule of law, free and fair competitive and multiparty elections, political participation, freedom to contest, and (inter)institutional accountability. The democratization process is examined through the theoretical tenets of the democratic transition paradigm.

Crucially, this conceptual choice is associated with the main goal of this study. The aim of this research is to understand what international factors contributed to authoritarian breakdown and democratization process in Tunisia. The conceptualization of procedural democracy (Schumpeter 1942, Prezworksy 1999, Saffon and Urbinati 2013) - and the paradigm of democratic transition that stems from it (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986,

Huntington 1991) - is the most apt framework for this research purpose. Indeed, it enables to investigate how international factors accelerated authoritarian breakdown and enhanced institutional building and competitive politics during Tunisia’s democratization process. In other words, it permits to highlight what international conditions helped Tunisia to become the first functioning procedural democracy in the Arab world. The limit of such theoretical choice is that this research investigates the Tunisian democratization process through a minimastilistic and Western-made framework of analysis. This framework will not permit to grasp the impact that international political economy had in the democratization process. In particular this research will not examine the relation between the agency of international economic actors (i.e. World Bank, International Monetary Fund) and the level of social justice and economic distribution during the country’s democratization. Likewise, it will not investigate whether international influences impacted the satisfaction of Tunisians with the democratic system put in place. This worthy research questions are beyond the scope of this research. They would require a different conceptualization of democracy that goes beyond the definition of procedural democracy and the analytical approach that the transitional paradigm provides.

The evolution of the debate on the international dimension of democratisation: from the bipolar to the unipolar world The scholarly effort to develop and conceptualize knowledge related to the international dimension of democratization has followed the ‘polarity’ of the world system. During the Cold War, scholars claimed that Western powers – especially the US – secured authoritarian allies in power in Latin and Central America, Middle East and Eastern Asia - to prevent communist forces from taking over (Meernick, Krueger and Poe 1998). The Soviet Union, for its part, was not interested in democratization and it focused on exporting its socialist and centralist model in the countries under its sphere of influence (Roberts 1999). Therefore, as the international conditions were not intuitively favourable to democratization in the 1970s and 1980s, the scholarly debate argued that democratization processes had an exclusive domestic dimension and therefore focused on national political and social actors playing the game of the transition (Rustow 1970, Casanova 1983, Mainwaring and Viola 1985, O'Donnell and Schmmitter 1986, Diamond and Linz 1989). Scholars in that period investigated democratization processes as overwhelmingly

endogenous and associated with “national forces, calculations and factors” (O'Donnel and Schmmitter, 1986, 5), with the international aspect playing at best a secondary role. In the introduction of their seminal book focusing on the wave of democratic transitions in Latin America, Diamond and Linz (1989, 47) argued that “without exception, each of our authors attributes the course of political development and regime change primarily to internal structures and actions, while acknowledging the way structures have been shaped historically by international factors”. These scholars studied democratization through the analytical tools of comparative politics, “where the dismissal of international factors has been more pronounced than in the other fields” (Yilmaz, 2002, 68), thereby screening out international factors.

A remarkable exception to this dominant approach was Alfred Tovias’ study (1984) on the international dimension of transitions to democracy in Southern Europe. Employing the case of Spain, Tovias illustrated how international agreements with foreign liberal states, especially in the domains of economics and security, accelerated the process of transition to democracy, as they created opportunities and incentives for a country entering the democratic coalition of states. The US and its West European allies had no concerns that authoritarian breakdown and democratization in Spain would bring the country into the communist camp. Indeed, the strong economic linkage and security cooperation Spain had with US and European countries made it very unlikely (Tzortzis 2019). Tovias argued that during democratic transition foreign actors offered assistance and partnership on condition that countries complied with a number of requirements and responded to a set of demands. These opportunities pushed domestic groups to take decisions that avoided regression to authoritarianism in volatile transnational periods. In this regard, the European Union was a crucial actor in accelerating democratization in Spain Portugal and Greece. In addition, international protective umbrellas in the domains of economics and security were a shortcut to resolve troubles when the country was exposed to risks (financial difficulties, domestic insurgence, and external threats) that may have escalated into chaos.

Tovias’ theoretical elaboration heralded a larger and more consistent debate on the significance of the international dimension of democratisation that took place in the 1990s and 2000s. Indeed, some scholars of democratisation gradually changed their approach and

took into account international variables as having a facilitating impact in transitions or playing a prominent role in setting them off (Starr 1991, Pridham 1991, Chalmers 1993, Pridham et al. 1994, Shin 1994). In his seminal book The Third Wave, Samuel Huntington (1991, 85) concluded that “democratization in a country may be influenced, perhaps decisively, by the actions of governments and institutions external to that country”.

Four main elements bolstered a new research effort to explore the international dimension of regime change and democratization. First, US liberal hegemony dominated the new unipolar world system favouring the expansion of democracy in “non-Western countries” (Krauthammer, 1990). The US ushered in a more liberal approach in foreign policy because the demise of Soviet Union had reduced security and geopolitical concerns (Smith 2000). US INGOs speciliased on democracy promotion mushroomed and began to diffuse their influence globally. For instance, starting from the late-1980s US groups such as Freedom House, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute began promoting democracy around the world under the umbrella of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) founded in 1983.

Second, the relentless growth of globalisation began to impact the domestic level, driving social and national political processes (Schwartzman 1998). With globalisation progressing in every domain, neoliberal practices and influences lowered the significance of nation states’ control over national economies and domestic social processes. Studying the cases of the South African and the Brazilian transitions to democracy, Seidmans (1994, 97) demonstrated how elites and social classes who had been loyal and cooperative with the authoritarian rulers, as they depended economically upon it, began to contest the political system as new forms of wealth derived from transnational markets and global ties. Huntington (1991, 66) argued that in the later phase of the third wave the expansion of economic integration and the rise of global communications and transportation, “provided greater resources for distribution and compromise, create nongovernmental sources of wealth and influence, and open societies to the impact of the democratic ideas prevailing in the industrialized world”. In short, new international processes triggered by globalisation challenged the image of the state that realists provided, as external influences and global

processes constrained and limited the action of authoritarian rulers (Opello and Rosow, 1999, Haynes 2001).

Third, the demise of the Soviet Union encouraged scholars to develop theoretical tools for better explaining how the interplay between international and domestic factors could enhance democratization processes. Indeed, the analysis of democratic transitions in Eastern Europe highlighted more neatly that geopolitical factors and international influence could not be divorced from national processes of democratization (Pridham, Herring and Sanford 1994). Kumar (1992, 441) underlined how the democratic transitions taking place in Eastern Union after the Soviet Union dissolution “were an international phenomenon right from the start”.

Fourth, starting from the mi-1990s, the agency of the European Union (EU) gained increasing relevance in the debate of the international dimension of democratization as the EU weaponised its instruments for democracy promotion through a number of direct assistance programs (McFaul, Mager and Stone-Weiss 2007). Most importantly, the EU imposed a set of socio-economic and political reforms – ‘conditionality’ - for granting EU membership to countries in transition to democracy. This reinforced the liberalisation processes in former communist countries across Eastern and Central Europe (Rose and Haerpfer 1995, Ágh 1999, Cichowski 2000, Kubicek 2003 and 2005, Schimmelfennig 2007). The European Union also demonstrated its potential to attract neighbouring states outside Europe to embrace democracy, as they would eventually benefit from joining the European common framework. Scholars argued that Turkey (Kubicek 2005) and Tunisia (Sadiki and Powell 2010) had chances to democratise, as political and economic negotiation with the EU would generate democratic socio-political reforms and economic liberalisation.

IR scholars hailed the impact of international influence on democratization processes in Eastern Europe and Latin and Central America as the triumph of international liberalism, highlighting the democratizing ability of a range of Western democracy promoters. The great emphasis on international organizations’ and INGOs democratizing ability brought the democratization debate into the broader debate between IR theorists. Although realist scholars (Mearshmeir 1994, Mastanduno 1997) resisted the ideas that international

liberalism and democratization could lead to the ‘end of history’ (Fukuyama 1989), evidence suggested that international liberalism was allowing democratic momentum to spread around the world. Liberalists argued that the US liberal hegemony in the world system was favouring the expansion of liberal democracy. Indeed, the ‘democratizing force’ of the European Union and other international organizations helped emphasising the importance of the liberal tenets of international cooperation (Keohane and Martin 1995) and democratic peace (Owen 1994).

In light of the changes in the global environment, some scholars of democratization realised that time had come to consider international factors as crucial – not simply secondary or facilitating - in the study democratic transitions (Pridham 1991, Chalmers 1993, Pridham et al. 1994, Shin 1994). By investigating how international factors were correlated to democratic transitions, these scholars situated their research agenda at the crossroad between comparative politics and international relations (Haynes 2003), trying to reduce the “theoretical gulf in the two subfields of political science” (Moravcsik and Smith, 1993, 41), which seemed increasingly intertwined and interrelated. Pridham (1991, 9) was the first to challenge the assumption that international context had only a secondary role on democratic transitions, raising the attention on the heightened ability of multifaceted international forces to wield influence onto the national level. His work urged transitologists to consider the weight of the international dimension, as none of the democratizing world region seemed immune from the interplay between the national and international levels. Exploring transitions to democracy in Eastern Europe, Pridham and its colleagues (1994) proposed the concept of systemic penetration, arguing that instability during the transition process may lead domestic actors to seek aid beyond the country’s borders. They considered international factors as a dependent variable largely shaped by opportunities and conditions that domestic regimes offered at a given point, emphasising “the case-specificity of the interplay between regime change and international causes” (Pridham et al. 1994, 13).

Domestic politics across the globe, though to different degrees, had acquired an international dimension, whose investigation was essential to fully understand cases of authoritarian breakdown and subsequent democratic transition. Yet, this did not mean that

external influences had a common denominator, as international actors were diverse in their nature and objectives. In addition to international organizations with their specific missions and state actors with their geopolitical interests, a considerable number of new international actors were operating into a globalised world, penetrating specific countries long before regimes change and democratization, wielding a degree of sway on domestic political, institutional and social processes. This included international NGOs, transnational advocacy networks and human right groups (Keck and Sikkink 1998, Finnemore and Sikking 1998, Risse-Kappen et al. 1999) and ideological and religious movements (Haynes 2001), among others. These studies raised the scholarly attention on the capacity of human right groups and advocacy network - Amnesty International, Human Rights Group, Lawyers Without Borders, among other - to target illiberal governments and their abuses in countries such as Guatemala, Tunisia, Morocco, Uganda and Kenya.

INGOs, international human rights and transnational advocacy networks entered the foreign national ground, establishing offices in third countries and diffusing international liberal norms. Researchers pointed out the capacity of these groups to accelerate liberalization processes in countries such as Chile, Ecuador, Philippine, and Poland among others (Risse- Kappen et al. 1999, 2). Their activities offered empirical evidence for elaborating new theoretical frameworks for scholars studying transitions. According to Chalmers (1993, 14) a new template of research considering “internationalised domestic politics” better enabled the assessment of international factors into trajectories of regime change. Analysing the role of external actors in transitions to democracy in Latin America, he introduced the concept of internationally based actors. This notion referred to any actor involved in a country’s domestic politics over a period of time, becoming embedded into the political institutions of the country and being identified as an international source of power. A number of scholars backed up this broad conceptualisation with in-depth case studies. Opello focused on the case of Portugal transition to democracy (1991) and Hurrell (1996) employed the case of Brazilian democratization. Both highlighted indirect external aspects of democratisation, which in their understanding produced a more diffuse impact on the political system. Hurrell (1996, 157), for instance, explained how in 1980s the rise of pressure that INGOs wielded on the Brazilian military regime stimulated domestic concerns on the deteriorating human rights records and the regime’s arbitrary rule of law. Hurrell

(1996, 153) also highlighted the role that the Catholic Church played in the ‘resurrection of civil society’ in the 1970s and the growth of popular opposition to military rule. In this regard the notion of international civil society was part of the debate. The rise of transnational movements suggested that democratic entrepreneurs could diffuse democratic norms through a number of organizations and procedures. Likewise, new channels of communication and the emergence of global civil society had emerged at the forefront of campaigns to promote democracy and good governance, and to check the abuse of political and human rights in many countries of the world (Florini 2000).

While in early 1990s scholars began to raise the attention on the impact of international agents of democratization, the debate was missing conceptualisation and theoretical refinement. Laurence Whitehead (1996) attempted to systematise the knowledge by sketching three theoretical typologies to investigate the international dimension of democracy: contagion, control and consent. Contagion has to do with the “neutral transmission mechanisms that might induce countries bordering on democracies to replicate the political institutions of their neighbours” (Whitehead 1996, 7). The theory drew from democratisation as a ‘domino sequence’ (Starr 1991) among bordering countries, assuming that relevant changes in one country’s political institutions spread to neighbouring countries, and so on (O’Loughlin 1998). The second category Whitehead put forth is control, which implies more direct international interference into the process of regime change, sketching a casual mechanism between the agency of external forces and its direct impact on the changing structures at the domestic level. As Whitehead (1996, 58) argues, hegemonic countries such as the USA “through the allocation of aid and other economic concessions could encourage, redirect, or resist democratising impulses, even if it could not strongly control them”. The third path to democratisation – consent - refers to the capacity of global actors to enhance the consolidation phase of democratising countries. In this regard, one may argue that democratic consolidation and its mainstays – institutional arrangements, electoral routinization, and law enforcement - must have a prominently domestic dimension. Yet, international actors delivering expertise, financial aid and assistance may enhance the capacity building of their national partners in accomplishing the essential steps of democratic consolidation.

Whitehead theoretical elaboration, however, focused mainly on state actors – with great emphasis on the US influence in Latin America’s democratisations - and devoted less attention to non-state actors. The debate was missing an encompassing theoretical framework enabling scholars to measure the international dimension beyond the agency of specific international actors on single regional cases. In this respect, Yilmaz’s (2001) study was groundbreaking as he offered a systemic model for the examination of the international factors. His theoretical model was important because, unlike previous studies, it encompassed the agency of diverse international actors, ranging from states to international organizations to non-state actors. Drawing from Dahl’s (1971) assumption that internal factors would bring about democratic change if the internal costs of suppression exceeded the internal costs of toleration, he introduced two intervening variables that could constrain the government actions: the expected external costs of suppression and the expected external costs of toleration. He argued that:

Where an authoritarian state inhabits a democracy-promoting international environment, the leadership could and probably would inaugurate democratic reforms if it judged the internal costs of toleration to be lower than the external costs of suppression. From the state’s perspective, the external costs of suppression could present themselves in two forms, either in the form of the imposition of external sanctions (for example, a trade embargo) or in the form of the suspension of external rewards (for example, membership in a prestigious international organization). By so doing, the external costs of suppression help transform the internal relations of force in such a way as to raise the internal costs of suppression above the level of the internal costs of toleration. The principal role the external factors play in a democratic transition is to bring about that inversion in the initial internal relations of force. (Yilmaz 2001, 81-82)

Levitsky and Way (2006 and 2010), for their part, went on to build an additional model to explain different outcomes among authoritarian regimes in transition, illustrating why some of them democratised, other experienced political turnover without democratisation or remained authoritarianism. They demonstrated that the end of the Cold War caused a sharp drop in the international tolerance vis-à-vis authoritarian regimes and their undemocratic practices to retain power. International pressure on authoritarian governance forced many

regimes created formal ‘liberal institutions’ to hold on to power, eventually transforming into what Levitsky and Way called competitive authoritarianism. By introducing two concepts - Western leverage and linkage to the West - they argued that leverage increases the cost of authoritarian abuses through economic sanctions, threatens to rule countries out of international agreements, but linkages to the West has to complement Western leverage to generate real effects in democratising countries. Linkages to the West can vary in their nature, including economic, geopolitical, social and communication linkages and they argue that such linkages bring about significant results in targeting authoritarianism. First, they allow domestic opponents to have a more global outreach. Second, they improve the capacity of foreign actors to react to the autocrat’s blatant abuses and assist local actors. Third they widen the spectrum of national actors who develop a pro-democracy attitude.

The end of the unipolar world and the decline of the debate on the international dimension of democratization Recent studies on the international dimension of democratization have refined the Levitsky and Way’s model (Tolstrup 2013) or applied it to a specific region (Hill 2016). Research on the international dimension of democratization continues to appear on specific cases (Gamal 2015) and comparative studies on regional democratization touch upon international aspects (Morlino 2012, Mainwaring and Pèrez-Linan 2013). Yet, the growing interest characterising the scholarly debate on the international dimension of democratization between 1990s and early 2000s has visibly slowed down in the last decade. Over the last decade, the debate on the international dimension of democratization has lost momentum and the research agenda did not progress, whereas new attempts to investigate the international politics of authoritarianism gained traction (Yom and Al-Momani 2008, Tolstrup 2009; Brownlee 2012, Heydemann and Leenders 2013, Soest 2015, Bader 2015, Tansey 2016). Such an abrupt shift of agenda has followed the mutated conditions of the international system. The decline of the US unipolar moment and the rise of a multipolar world, crisscrossed by rivalries and confrontations for hegemony, downgraded the significance of the theories suggesting that international influence and factors can play a decisive role in enhancing democratization. A number of factors also contributed to lowering the scholarly attention to study the international dimension of democratization.

First, the idea that liberal democracy is a benign and teleological ideology is losing its power in driving the foreign policy of Western hegemonic powers (Whitehead 2015). Many Western democracies, although continuing to centre their domestic narrative on democratic values, are showing a preference for authoritarian rulers abroad when the democratic narrative is transformed into foreign policy options (Richter 2015, Tansey 2016, 72). Second, great autocratic powers have regained ground in influencing the domestic politics of third countries, overtly challenging the dominance of Western states and their liberal institutions. Third, the liberal democracy model has been under severe criticism for its failure to fulfil people’s needs and democratic governance and liberal institutions are under attack for generating increasing social inequality (Krastev 2016, Dixon and Suk 2018). In addition, scholars have pointed out that the governance of democratic states shares some governance features with authoritarian systems (Cavatorta, 2010).

Indicators of freedom and civil rights highlight the retrenchment to authoritarian practices. After thirty years of democratic expansion, world-renown observers and eminent scholars’ express pessimism on the future of global democracy (Colgan and Keohane 2017, Castells 2018, Galston 2018). Scholars have shifted their research efforts to the study of the international dimension of authoritarianism because new evidence is suggesting that democratic regression and authoritarianism resurgence characterise the political trend worldwide (Luhmann and Lindber 2019).

There is little doubt that in the last years democratic indicators around the world have been regressing. The 2019 Freedom House’s report Freedom in the World titled ‘Democracy in retreat’, showing that democratic indicators have declined across the world in 71 countries in 2017 and 68 countries in 2018, while they have improved in 35 countries in 2017 and 50 countries in 2018.1 This means that the number of countries experiencing democratic backsliding exceeds those where democracy is improving. Yet, processes of authoritarian breakdown and democratic transitions are still taking place in a globalised and interconnected world where the number and the outreach of ‘international democracy promoters’ has increased. Therefore, the investigation of the international context of democratization is still theoretically relevant. The comprehension of the mechanism

1 To see the full report : https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2019/democracy-retreat

through which international factors impact on the democratization process is particularly important because we are living in an age of multipolarity, where the conditions through which international actors boost or thwart democratization has changed compared to the past. The academic knowledge that scholars elaborated during the unipolar moment needs refinement to highlight how specific external variables are conducive to democratization in a multipolar world system where great and regional powers are battling across borders for hegemony, preserving or extending their influence. In other words, scholarly debate needs new conceptualisations that explain how the mutated world conditions constrain or create opportunities for international actors and factors accelerating authoritarian breakdown and boosting democratization, or conversely empowering authoritarianism.

Studying the International Dimension of Democracy in Age of Multipolarity

Scholars suggest that democratization processes have more chance to emerge and succeed when the world system (or a regional system) is dominated by a liberal superpower, which wields its democratic influence unchallenged (Boix 2011; Mearshmeir 2018). In regional or national settings that show low internal conflicts and are not porous to foreign struggles for influence, liberal hegemonic powers can promote democracy without jeopardising their hegemony because the risk that regime change would draw interference from rival states is low. By exploring the structure of the international systems in long-term macro periods, Boix (2011, 814) builds an interesting argument showing how the conditions of the world system had a crucial impact on the development of democracy. He argues that the advancement or retreat of democracy correlates with global systemic changes. In what he called ‘constrained systems’ (Boix 2011, 815), where rival great powers confront each other for hegemony, “hegemonic states might well tolerate – and even support - authoritarian regimes”. Instead, in periods of liberal and authoritarian hegemonies - what Boix (2011) calls ‘unconstrained system’s - “the great powers are more likely to promote like-minded regimes” (Boix 2011, 815).

Following this reasoning, realist scholar John Mearshmeier (2018) points out that occasionally a liberal democracy encounters such a favourable balance of power that it is able to embrace liberal hegemony. According to Mearshmeier (2018, 23), that situation is most likely to “arise in a unipolar world, where the single great power does not have to worry about being attacked by another great power since there is none”. Indeed, in a unipolar world, regime change does not jeopardize the interests of the hegemon because it manages to control the political void that surrounds democratization through its exclusive influence, driving the political and economic choices of the transitional elites toward its preferences and model. Therefore, in periods of liberal unipolarity, democratization processes are likely to put in power political elites that align with the economic and political preferences of the hegemon. Hegemonic powers impose considerable constrained to national actors, limiting their capacity to structure their own political and social model and reducing the options they have to frame other international alliances with enemies of the hegemon. In this regard, by supporting regime change and democratization, a liberal hegemon may have been willing to replace an authoritarian regime whose illiberal management of the domestic economy limits the advancement of its economic interests and foreign policy goals.

This reasoning on state actors behavior also binds the capacity of liberal international organizations and democratic entrepreneurs to advance democracy or enhance democratic consolidation in third countries to the contingent geopolitical situation of the world system, or the specific situation at the regional level. Indeed, the evidence on the democratizing actions of international organizations and INGOs, hailed as the triumph of liberalism during the unipolar post-cold War world, has recently diminished in strength within a multipolar and conflicting world. While a number of scholars demonstrated that international organizations have a positive effect on democratization and human rights (Pevehouse 2002, Mansfield and Pevehouse 2006) and that IOs can promote democratic consolidation (Hafner-Burton 2009), new scholarship shows that they are unsuccessful in tackling processes of authoritarian backlash during democratic transitional periods (Paust and Urpelainen 2015). Liberal international organizations and other democratic entrepreneurs can contribute to the emergence of democracy, as they possess skills and expertise to target authoritarian rulers such as naming-and-shaming, conditionality or even membership

removal. Yet, they do not possess adequate tools to deter democratic regression as they lack key resources (i.e. weapons, army) to intervene into conflicts, that is “they cannot enforce policy or directly intervene in conflicts, so they cannot protect transitional democracies from coups and revolutions” (Paust and Urpelainen 2015, 49). Such changing ability thus goes hand to hand with the features of the international or regional system wherein they wield their agency. In periods where the world system – or a specific region - is crisscrossed by ideological and hegemonic rivalries and confrontations, the likelihood that countries living democratic transitions become battleground for great powers confrontation (either establishing proxy wars or backing military coups that prevent enemies to gain influence) lowers the democratizing capacity of international organizations.

There is a bourgeoning literature debating the capacity of international NGOs, global civil society and transnational movements to advance social and political causes in third countries (Keck and Sikkink 1998). For instance, INGOs, democracy promoters, transnational advocacy network and international civil society wielded a decisive influence in bringing about liberalisation processes in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Southern Asia and Africa (Risse-Kappen 1994). However, these explanations that helped to interpret the post-Cold War unipolar world system are less adaptable to a multipolar and conflicting world. The emphasis on INGOs and democracy promoters as international agents of political change toward democracy has faded over the last decade. According to Marlene Spoerri (2015, 1) “the past decade has not been kind to the world’s democracy promoters”. New studies examine in fact how their actions are increasingly ineffective, contradictory or disempowering, as conflicting interests characterised the state's foreign policy (Grimm and Leininger 2012, Börzel 2015, Bush 2015, Leininger et al. 2017).

In short, in an age of multipolarity the capacity and the agency of democratic entrepreneurs – democratic state actors, international organizations and INGOs involved in democracy promotion - cannot be divorced from the contingent geopolitical situation. Most of the great powers prefer to maintain the political status quo in those countries where ruling elites align with their foreign policy preferences and secure their economic interests, regardless of bottom-up challenges and demands for liberal political reforms and economic redistribution. For a great power holding a degree of influence in a given country, the stake

in supporting democratic opposition movements in their effort to overthrow the authoritarian regime – and therefore potentially challenging the international status quo - is to create a political vacuum rival powers could potentially penetrate, gaining influence to the detriment of the main foreign patron.

Against this background, an interesting research direction to investigate how international variables may enhance democratization in an age of multipolarity is to focus on how international democracy promoters support the emergence of alternative pro-democracy coalitions that include large and heterogeneous opposition to authoritarian regimes. Authoritarian regimes allow harmless oppositions to participate into politics, because they help constructing a façade democracy. The repressive system of authoritarian regimes, however, monitors interactions among opposition groups to prevent them from undermining the ruler (Bellin 2004). The more opposition groups against the regime are disconnected from each other, the less they pose a threat to the regime, because they do not have the possibility to transform their single claims into embedded political alternatives.

As the thesis shows in chapters 2 and 3, international democracy promoters can promote initiatives that create - or empower - platforms where individuals critical of the regime’s policies can discuss and alternative ideas on how to rule the country. Through the promotion of specific programs that favour interactions and foster political dialogue among different oppositions groups – or groups of individuals holding critical views about the regime - international democratic entrepreneurs can enhance the emergence of “alternative centres of power” to the regime’s. Favoring interactions and enhancing trust among opposition groups do not necessarily create subversion. Instead, these strategies of democratic assistance eventually enhance the emergence of pro-democracy coalitions of opposition that are prepared to take over when the regime falls. In this respect, writing in 2002, Thomas Carothers noted, “in dominant-power systems, democracy promoters should devote significant attention to the challenge of helping to encourage the growth of alternative centres of power. Merely helping finance the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations is an inadequate approach to this challenge.” Cases of transition to democracy such as Bulgaria and Romania in 1996, Slovakia in 1998, Croatia and Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan in 2005, showed how international

democracy promotion groups can accelerate interactions among diverse opposition actors, helping them to bridge ideological divisions (Spoerri 2015).

The contention here is that when international democracy promotion entrepreneurs support dialogue among - and built pattern of trust with - groups of opposition, they may contribute to fostering the emergence of pro-democracy Western-friendly ‘alternative centres of power’, which share political and economic goals that coincide with the preferences of the Western states. A country’s democratic impulse, thus, encounters favorable international conditions precisely because Western state actors realize that regime change and political transition would not challenge their geostrategic interests. From a theoretical point of view, liberalism’s influence may generate results that serve and coincide with realist calculations of Western state foreign policy, although this process may be incidental and un-structured.

In contrast, when authoritarian breakdown occurs in settings where structured pro- democracy coalition of opposition do not exist, the likelihood that a democratic transition will fail increases. This reasoning is particularly useful in an age of multipolarity and dispute for hegemony, where countries going through regime change and political transition become extremely porous to the confrontation of rival regional and world powers. Evidence from cases where Western states endorsed pro-democracy protesters to remove the authoritarian leaders (Egypt) or directly intervened to oust the dictators (US invasion in Iraq in 2001 and NATO-led coalition in Libya in 2011) are instructive. These cases show that, following authoritarian breakdown, the absence of a pro-democracy coalition of opposition actors ready to that take over leads quickly to a power vacuum, rendering the country porous to external rivalries. Regime change becomes then a battleground for rival state actors to preserve interests or gain advantages from the power vacuum, exacerbating domestic conflicts by furthering the fractionalisation of national groups. This is a crucial point to emphasise because it marginalises the capacity of national actors to manage the transitional period, as external struggles for influence limit their autonomy. The more a transition to democracy attracts external rivalries the less it is likely to succeed.

This article-based research demonstrates that Western democracy promoters can reduce the fractionalisation of political groups by empowering coalitions of oppositions to structure prodemocracy ideas and policies, becoming de facto an alternative centre of power ready to

fill the political void the authoritarian breakdown triggers. The study of the international dimension surrounding a transition to democracy is therefore relevant, and this regardless whether the transition fails or succeed, because it helps to understand the external mechanisms and factors that contribute to enhancing the democratization process or conversely determining its failure. This research demonstrated that Western-sponsored programs and liberal interactions between Western groups and Tunisian political activists empowered the shape pro-democracy coalitions of political oppositions, including Islamist groups. Western democracy promoters provided political oppositions with different ideologies and background platform for debate, helping them to bridge divisions, developing mutual trust, discussing policies and ideas alternative to the regime’s. This contibuted to the emergence of ‘new centres of power’ well before the Tunisia’s revolution began.

When popular revolution took place in Tunisia in 2010, US and other European states assessed that regime change would not have posed a threat to their geopolitical interests in the region precisely because most of the political oppositions had pro-democracy a Western-friendly position. This allowed Western democracy promoters to structure a comprehensive plan of democracy assistance that reached a large spectrum of political elites. This study shows that during the uninterrupted cooperation between international democracy promoters and Tunisian partners generated an important mechanism that was beneficial to the establishment of procedural democracy in Tunisia. The agency of democracy promotion accelerated the process through which Tunisian transitional elites move from large consensus over democracy to compete within the democratic framework and democratic institutions. While this study validates this reasoning for the Tunisia case, this dissertation offers evidence that international conditions surrounding regime change and democracy transitions in other MENA countries were not favourable to democratization. In countries such as Egypt, Libya, or Yemen, political oppositions emerged from authoritarian breakdown much more fractionalised, absorbing anti-western influences during the democratic transition. The next section further develops this argument.

The International Dimension of Democratization in the MENA Region

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been extensively portrayed as an ‘exceptional’ context for the survival of authoritarianism (Lewis 2002, Camau 2006, Bellin 2012, Hinnebusch 2015). Before the outbreak of the Arab revolts in 2011, the region appeared immunized from the ‘three waves’ of democratization that crisscrossed other areas of the world in the last two centuries (Lust 2011). While during 1990s and 2000s processes of democratic transitions mushroomed across the world – and democracy emerged in former deeply illiberal settings - the political profile of the Arab World remained firmly authoritarian (Pousney 2004, Albrecht and Schlumberger 2004).

The resilience of authoritarianism has led scholars to focus on how international factors favour the survival of authoritarianism (Yom and Al Momani 2008, Brownlee 2012, Ambrosio 2014, Soest 2015). Experts of the MENA’s international relations argued that the region is extremely porous to external influences (Halliday 2005) and that external state actors have had a considerable impact in shaping its authoritarian political structures (Yom 2017, Fawcett 2018). The region is also crisscrossed by a high level of conflict hampering democratization processes. In a seminal study for instance, Lebovic and Thompson (2006) have shown the relationship between the Arab-Israel conflict and authoritarian repression across the region. Inter-states rivalries often overlap with sectarian tensions and great powers geopolitical confrontation for the control of resources. The resurgence of Russian influence, aggressive Iranian and Israeli foreign policy and the rise of an intra-Sunni rivalry among UAE, Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have recently magnified the level of conflict. In this respect, as Marzo and Cavatorta (2019) noted, IR scholars portrayed the region as the “quintessential of realism”, where the concepts of anarchy, self-help, and band wagoning dominate the relations among regional states and between foreign powers and countries in the region.

In addition, while Western foreign policy has contributed to boosting democratization in other regions of the world – as outlined earlier - scholars argued that in the MENA Western state actors have thwarted democratization processes (Ayoob 2005, Cavatorta 2009) and Western democracy promotion has reinforced the incumbent (Durac and Cavatorta 2009,

Pace 2009, Bush 2015, Van Hullen 2015, Kakhee 2017). The US and its Western allies (European states and Israel) feared that democratization and competitive politics in the region could increase the chances for anti-western forces (leftist parties during the Cold War and fundamentalist Islamic forces since the late 1980s) to gain power through competitive elections. This would have eventually undermined the Western economic and security interests in the region. As this thesis’ chapter 3 on the US foreign policy in MENA shows, this was the case of competitive elections taking place in mid-2000 in Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. The Freedom agenda that US President G.W. Bush launched in 2003 aimed to pressure regional authoritarian allies to liberalise politics. Yet, this policy had the unintended consequence of rewarding Islamist parties such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood at ballot box. Paradoxically, the US considered them all anti- western terrorist groups. The Western blind support for anti-Islamist, ‘pro-western’ authoritarian ruling elites, yet collaborative with West, therefore secured the preservation of status quo and avoided that regime change and democratization would reward anti-western or anti-system actors.

In spite of these factors entrenching authoritarianism across the region, however, some scholars in mid-2000s suggested that liberalization and democratization in the region were not out of reach. In his seminal article on authoritarian persistence, democratization theory and the Middle East, Raymond Hinnebusch (2006, 392) argues that although authoritarianism “is the modal form of governance in the Middle East … paths to democratization are possible”, also suggesting that the “liabilities of incumbent regimes remain unresolved, regime collapse might provide the conditions for a negotiated democratization pact cutting across the state–society divide.” The idea that processes of democratization were possible in the MENA hinged on the rise of international influences penetrating the countries. Although Heydemann (2007) explained that authoritarian regime undertook liberalization reforms as ‘façade strategy’ for securing their hold on power – or as it conceptualises for ‘upgrading authoritarianism’ – the growth of transnational interactions, the globalization of information and markets were impacting the political and social affairs of many countries across the region (Sadiki 2009).

In 2010-2011 a wave of domestic uprisings swept across the region, from Morocco to Bahrain. Although transitional processes derailed into full-blown civil wars in Yemen, Syria and other transitions to democracy failed (Egypt) or stalemated (Libya), other regional countries are living authoritarian breakdown. In 2019, Algeria and Sudan also experienced national uprisings against their authoritarian regimes. Mass mobilization ousted the rulers and the two countries are now navigating a complex transitional period (Dunne 2020, Grewal et al. 2020). In this respect, when it comes to analyse democratization processes taking place in the region, regardless if they succeed or fail, scholars have employed mainly domestic lenses and do not take into consideration the impact international variables and factors can have in favouring or undermining democratization. This is somewhat surprising considering that since 2010 the MENA is the region where most domestic revolts successfully ousted authoritarian rulers and where a number of democratic transitions have started. The growth of authoritarian breakdown and the emergence of democratic transitions do not explain the exclusive scholarly approach on the international dimension of authoritarian survival. It rather calls for new specific research shedding light on how international factors contributed to the success or failure of democratization.

Crucially though, while most democratic transitions have failed or stalemated across the region, the Tunisian democratization process has succeeded. The country managed to build liberal democratic institutions in a short time span and it routinely holds free and fair competitive elections. There is a degree of scepticism over the new democratic political system to address people’s demands (Marzouki 2015, Yardi Tür 2018), but from a procedural and institutional point of view democracy is consolidating. Tunisian held three rounds of free and fair competitive legislative elections respectively in 2011, 2014 and 2019. Competitive elections brought to power different political parties and shaped governmental coalitions including parties with diverse political ideologies. The country has enshired a National Constitution in 2014, which is deemed to be the most liberal Constitution in the region.2 Political parties are competing for power within the democratic framework that the 2014 Constitution established. Tunisia is by far the Arab country where

2 Please see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/25/tunisia-arab-world-democracy- elections

civil rights have progressed the most in the last decade and the country possesses a high level of individual and social freedoms.3 Religious and identitarian minorities are respected and included in social and political affairs. Despite occasional tensions between authorities and journalists,4 freedom of expression in the country is fairly good. Tunisians have the right to protest and to participate in peaceful demonstrations, although some episodes of police brutality against demonstrators occurred.

Some observers have warned about the rise of political cynicism and disengagement of among ordinary citizens. Others pointed out the low satisfaction of Tunisians with the country democratic institutions and political parties, which do not provide responses to the people’s needs and demand (Teti et al. 2019). This evidence cast doubts on the definition of ‘democratic success’ that scholars tend to apply to the country, questioning its reliance on a Western-made set of indicators which fail to grasp the satisfaction that Tunisian people have of their democracy.Yet, examining the quality of Tunisian democracy and the satisfaction of Tunisian people with their own democratic system is beyond the scope of this research. According to the theoretical framework adopted here, Tunisia complies with the definition of procedural democracy provided because it has established a system in which people select their rulers through competitive elections (Przeworski 1999) and it held regular free and fair rounds of competitive elections (Huntington 1991). Political equality is ensured, as every political party is free to run for office through free and fair competitive elections. From an institutional point of view, Tunisian democracy is consolidating precisely because it displays a number of elements outlined earlier (Schmitter and Karl 1991, Ghunter 1996, Schendler 1997). First, political parties have understood that democratic institutions are the only arenas for political debates and political competition. Second, despite ordinary citizens having conflicting ideas about what democracy really means and regardless their low satisfaction with the ‘democracy’ they have (Teti et al. 2019), they still believe that the democratic system in place is the best alternative for the country’s governance. That is, they still prefer democracy (Robbins 2015).

3 Please see https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190209-tunisia-tops-freedom-index-in-arab-world/ 4 On this topic, please see the Human Right Watch 2019 World report https://www.hrw.org/world- report/2019/country-chapters/tunisia

Scholars have pointed to a number of factors to explain how the country avoided backsliding and returning to authoritarianism. Anderson (2011) argued that the apolitical role of the Tunisian armed forces - which are de facto under civilian rule since the Bourguiba era – avoided the emergence of strong military leadership which could carry out a military coup to solve political conflicts during the transitional period. In this regard, the absence of a parallel military leadership to the civilian one compels parties to bargain into the institutional arena to resolve political disputes. A second explanation hinges on the moderation of the Islamic party al-Nahda, the political compromise the party did with secular forces and its adherence to the ‘political game’ of democracy (McCarthy 2015). Some scholars pointed out that the fear of being excluded from the political arena – especially following the Egyptian military coup in 2013 - accelerated the process by which the Islamist party al-Nahda decide to moderate and to play the democratic game (Cavatorta and Merone 2013). Boubekeur (2018) argues that the progressive inclusion into the democratic system helped the party to moderate its political ideology, becoming a ‘Party of Muslim Democrats’ (Ghannouchi 2016). Scholars also pointed to the role that civil society (M’rad 2015) and labour unions (Ly Netterstrøm 2016, Bishara 2020) played in the National Dialogue and the negotiation among political parties that led to the ratification of the 2014 Constitution. Other scholars argue that civil society and Tunisian NGOs also played an oversight role to make political parties and national institutions accountable (Murphy 2013, Martin 2015).

All this research provides convincing accounts that contribute to explaining Tunisia’s transition to democracy. Yet, these studies focus on the impact of domestic factors and do not take into account the role of international factors and external influences. Scholarly debate devoted very little attention to the role that external factors have been played in enhancing the Tunisian transition to democracy. The international dimension surrounding the Tunisia’s democratization has received very little scholarly attention despite political transitions not happening in an international vacuum. The impact of external influences and factors cannot be neglected if one considers that between 2012 and 2019, Tunisia has been

one of the world's largest recipients of foreign aid and assistance.5 It is surprising that scholars have not examined in-depth the international context of Tunisian democratization and that academic knowledge on external influence in the country is scattered and not systematised. Some scholars have explored the European Union democracy promotion strategy in Tunisia after the revolution (Mouhib 2014, Dandashly 2018, Van Hüllen 2019), but they focus on EU foreign policy in the Maghreb and say little on the mechanisms through which the EU might have impacted Tunisian domestic politics. The interplay between international actors and national partners since the start of the democratization process in January 2011 has been poorly investigated and deserves greater scholarly attention.

The international dimension of pre-revolutionary period that led to the authoritarian breakdown has also received little attention. The academic debate has hitherto explained the Ben Ali’s fall as an exclusive domestic phenomenon and there is little knowledge of how international factors might have contributed to authoritarian breakdown. The ‘domestic’ approach to the study of authoritarian breakdown in Tunisia is uncomplete because it inaccurately portrays the country as immunized by the impact of external influences and global mechanisms. There are, however, a couple of exceptions. The most significant one is Hill’s study (2016). In his work on the democratization in the Maghreb, Hill (2016) applied the Levitsky and Way’s model to argue that Tunisia’s had more linkages to the West compared to its regional counterparts. His study, however, focuses more on economic linkages that Ben Ali’s regime entertained with the West and does not take into account how transnational factors helped to shape the coalition of counterpower that lowered the geopolitical challenges hampering Tunisia’s democratisation in 1980s and 1990s (Cavatorta 2004). The chapters 4, 5 and 6 offer deeper and more fine-grained discussion of Hill’s book and other authors that investigated the international dimension of democratization.

5 Robert Kubinec in 2016 on the Washington Post wrote: “Tunisia will soon become one of the world’s largest recipients of foreign aid” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/19/how- foreign-assistance-can-hurt-not-help-tunisias-democratic-transition/

Justification for the Study and Outline of the Chapters

This article-based dissertation aims to study the Tunisia’s democratization beyond the dominant internal approach. This research investigates the international dimension of Tunisia’s democratization through the analysis of the interplay between international and national actors. It focuses on the Tunisian case because it is the only country that successfully democratise, at least from an institutional perspective, among a set of countries in the region which have experienced authoritarian breakdown in 2011. However, through the examination of the Tunisian this research aims to generate knowledge and theoretical reflections that can help to understand a larger set of units. In this respect, it is important to provide a methodological note. Research based on single case studies has encountered large criticism in the literature (King et al. 1994). Scholars believe that single case studies offer limited evidence about issues, failing to say something about broader phenomena. Laitin (2003) argues that even in-depth analysis of a single case does not generate valid and representative findings for other examinations of similar phenomena. Yet, although case study methodology is increasingly criticised, much of the world ontology is drawn evidence from case studies. Particularly in social sciences, a significant proportion of research generated in the discipline relies on case studies (Gerring 2004). Gerring’s seminal work (2004, 342) defines case studies as “an intensive study of a single unit for the purpose of understanding a larger class of (similar) units”. This reasoning epitomises the methodological drive of this research and the selection of Tunisian case. Tunisia is the only case of regime change that successfully democratised among a number of countries across the region that experienced the same initial process: domestic uprising, authoritarian breakdown and the start of democratic transition. The strength of its examination is to demonstrate that Tunisia single unit covariation offers theoretical explanations to illuminate a large set of units.

All the chapters in this study investigate the Tunisian case as deviant unit in a region-wide process of uprising and demands for more political liberalisation, by assuming a number of international factors and interplay between international and national actors favoured the

success of processes. From a methodological point of view the study of Tunisia’s international dimension of democratization offers theoretical explanations to explain outcomes in other regional settings. Indeed, this study suggests that the absence of the favourable international conditions enhancing Tunisian democratization process contributed to thwarting the democratic transition in other failed MENA countries. While the five chapters focus only the Tunisian case, they draw on primary sources and secondary analysis to provide comparative evidence for arguing that international factors enhancing Tunisian democratization were absent– or were different – in other regional countries such as Libya, Algeria, Yemen and, especially, Egypt.

These countries show a high degree of sectarian and political fractionalization among transitional elites which draw external rival states to intervene. In this regard, this study suggests that in countries where confrontation for hegemony prevails, the absence of a prepared pro-democracy group of political parties – which hold ideological divisions but have agreed on how to manage the transitional period - is likely to draw foreign rival states into the country. Indeed, deadlock moments and strong divisions in transitional processes end up to call for external intervention to solve the stalemate, ultimately hijacking the process through backing military coup or further fractionalizing domestic political groups with their battle for influence. For instance, countries such as Yemen (Al-Muslimi 2015) and Sirya (Phillips 2016) show how the international struggle for influence inside the country plays a crucial role in exacerbating internal divisions during the transitional period. Likewise, the removal of General Qaddafi in Libya triggered a political vacuum that fractionalized the diverse domestic tribal groups, absorbing external rivalries (Romanet- Perroux 2019).

This dissertation includes four original research articles that highlight how specific interplays between international and Tunisian actors have enhanced the Tunisia’s democratization (Marzo 2019a, 2019b, 2019c and 2020) and one methodological chapter explaining the problems encountered during the fieldwork (Marzo 2020). The study of the international context of the Tunisian democratization suggests that since the early 2000s the agency of democracy promoters in Tunisia enhanced the emergence of pro-democracy coalitions of oppositions. By empowering connections and ties among Tunisian opposition

groups – and bridging individual critical of Ben Ali - international democracy promoters enhanced the emergence of alternative centre of counterpower to the regime.

The first chapter relies on my fieldwork experience in Tunisia to explain the methodological choices, constraints and challenges I have encountered during my research. The chapter provides a number of methodological strategies and practices employed to tackle the challenges and accomplish my research goals.

The second chapter analyses US foreign policy in Tunisia since the early 2000s. It shows that US democracy promotion groups intercepted and empowered (mostly out of the country) a number of Tunisian political activists, providing them with resources to target the Ben Ali regime and shielded some of them from regime harassment. Most importantly the chapter demonstrates that by supporting a nascent opposition coalition - the October 2005 Coalition - the US progressively realised that a large group of democratic pro-western counter power, including Islamist, existed in Tunisia. When popular revolts challenged the Ben Ali regime, the US assessed that regime change and democratization would not pose a threat to their challenges. The article uses secondary literature and discourse analysis to compare the Tunisian case with the Egyptian one, which experience authoritarian breakdown and the beginning of a democratic transition in February 2011, a month after Tunisia. The article highlights that in Egypt, international actors did not manage to bridge them into a structured, pro-democracy and Western-friendly alternative of power, mostly because the Muslims Brotherhood did not convince the US (Cook 2017, 172) and failed to shape democratic coalition with left, secular forces against Mubarak (Stacher 2020). This was despite the fact that coalitions of opposition to Mubarak had emerged in 2000s and the included the Brotherhood. For instance, the Kefaya and April 6 coalition included leaders with different ideologies, but as a 2005 International Crisis Group’s report noted, these groups did not possess a clear strategy for change.6 Most importantly, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood proved to be an unreliable ally within these coalitions. As Stacher noted, ‘distrust and tensions were on display during the 2005 mobilizations against Mubarak’ (Stacher 2020, 34). The analysis of the statements from US leaders between from 2005 to

6 International Crisis Group, “Reforming Egypt.” https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/46-reforming-egypt- in-search-of-a-strategy.pdf

the Egyptian revolution in 2011 suggests that the US did not want regime change in Egypt. Indeed, there was an agreement among US policy makers that Mubarak’s fall would have unleashed unpredictable implications, entering uncharted territory.

Relying on an extensive literature on the role German political foundations played in transition to democracy in Latin and Central America, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe (Pinto and Dutzinschy 1991, Phillips 1995, Dawoska 2005), the third chapter investigates the role of the German political foundations in Tunisia’s democratization. It shows how German foundations supported would-be political elites in developing ties, mutual trust and policy preferences, connecting diverse groups of political opposition to Ben Ali that would have otherwise lacked space of debating alternative politics. The German political foundations had established ties and set up partnerships in Tunisia since the early 1960s. Their effective action in the country increased from the late 1990s, when Ben Ali not only perceived their profile of ‘democratic promoters’ as not challenging for his hold on power, but he welcomed their transnational influence for upgrading authoritarianism and creating a façade democracy that benefited from international recognition. Against this backdrop, the chapter shows how in the 1990s and 2000s the four German foundations were more active in Tunisia than in any other country of the region. In countries such as Libya and Syria the German political foundations never established offices. In others such as Yemen, Iraq, Algeria and Lebanon the foundations’ offices were short-lived or were forced to move out because of the brutality of civil wars. In Egypt, the foundations had turbulent relations with the regime both under Mubarak and in the post-revolutionary period, especially after the police arrested two employees of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Such an event disrupted the nascent commitment to encourage freedom of expression in post- revolutionary Egypt, prompting the foundation to close its office and stop field missions. The discontinuous presence or complete absence of field offices thwarted the capacity of the German political foundations to cooperate with post-revolutionary elites in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria.

Cahpter 4 explores the agency of international democracy promotion in Tunisia after the 2011 revolution, suggesting that democracy promotion played an important role in the democratization and the beginning of the consolidation processes. The chapter

demonstrates how international democracy promoters (IDPs) enhanced two crucial transformative processes in their national Tunisian partners. First, they bolstered the autonomous capacity of civil society groups and independent national institutions to manage the challenges of the democratic transition, including monitoring rounds of competitive, fair and free elections. Second, they delivered technical training to political parties, progressively tailored on their needs, improving the understanding of the boundaries of competitive politics, narrowing the distance on policies and fostering political compromises. IDPs helped political actors to evolve from political consensus over democracy to competitiveness within democracy. The chapter argues that the ‘geopolitical neutrality’ and the Tunisian transitional elites’ agreement over the political direction the transition had to take solved the Western dilemma between promoting democracy and preserving security and economic objectives, ultimately permitting international democracy promoters to deliver reasonably smooth and uninterrupted democratic assistance. At the same time, the Tunisia's democratization did not draw regional rivalries or great power confrontation, as the transitional elite had established pattern of trust with foreign actors and immediately cooperated to make the transition work. The US, the EU and German foundations organised talks and interacted in the aftermath of the revolutions with all the post-revolutionary forces, with whom they had developed trust and ties. Crucially, compared to other countries across the region, the majority of transitional elites, including the Islamists, agreed on the political direction the regime change should have taken and cooperated with international democracy promoters.

Applying the Tansey’s model (2016) to Egypt Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria, chapter 5 explains how specific international variables contribute to enhancing the ability of authoritarian regimes to reappear after regime change and democratic transition. It suggests that the international conditions surrounding the Tunisian democratization created constrains to authoritarian regression. The chapter argues that the Egyptian transition to democracy unfolded instead in a supportive international environment for authoritarianism, as foreign actors supported repressive politics. In Libya’s democratic transition international actors wavered in their support for democratization and authoritarianism, generating an international contested environment for authoritarianism. Algeria is living a transitional moment following the Bouteflika’s resignation. However, the chapter suggests

that, unless major changes take place, the international environment surrounding Algerian politics will remain a permissive environment for authoritarian rule. Tunisia is the outlier of the region, wherein an international constraining environment for authoritarianism allowed the democratization journey to unfold, avoiding regression to authoritarianism. While chapter 5 does not rely on first-hand data on Egypt, Algeria and Libya, it is included in this thesis for two reasons. First it provides a comparative examination in tune with the theoretical reflections the thesis puts forward. Second, it connects my doctoral research with future research projects I am undertaking, which I lay out in the conclusion.

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Chapter 1. La Dimension Internationale de la Transition Démocratique en Tunisie. Défis Méthodologiques d’une Recherche Qualitative.

1.1 Résumé

Malgré un débat académique qui offre un cadre conceptuel riche quant aux influences de certains acteurs internationaux sur la scène nationale, les chercheurs éprouvent des difficultés méthodologiques quand il s’agit de mesurer qualitativement l’impact des influences externes dans une transition démocratique. Ces enjeux sont plus marqués lorsque la recherche cible un pays du monde arabo-musulman. L’identification des acteurs impliqués, l’accès aux informateurs, les biais d’interaction lors des entretiens et le positionnement du chercheur face à un sujet complexe constituent quelques-uns des obstacles rencontrés. Comment, alors, mener une étude sur le contexte international d’une transition démocratique dans le monde arabe? En s’appuyant sur les expériences de recherche de l’auteur sur le terrain, cet article propose diverses stratégies susceptibles d’augmenter les chances de réussite d’une enquête qualitative sur l’impact des influences externes dans un processus de démocratisation d’un pays du monde arabe, tel que la Tunisie.

1.2 Abstract. Although the academic debate provides a rich conceptual framework on how international actors and factors impact the national level, researchers are experiencing methodological difficulties when it comes to qualitatively measuring the impact of external influences in a democratic transition. These difficulties increase when the research unfolds in country in the Arab-Muslim world. The identification of the actors involved, the access to informants, the interaction biases during interviews and the positioning of the researcher constitute some of the obstacles that scholars may encounter on the ground. How, then, to conduct a study on the international context of a democratic transition in the Arab world? Drawing on the author research experiences in Tunisia, this article proposes various strategies that increase the chances of success of a qualitative research on the impact of external influences in a process of democratization of a country of the Arab world.

1.3 Introduction

Suite au soulèvement populaire en Tunisie contre le régime de Ben Ali en décembre 2010, une vague de révoltes défiant les régimes autoritaires a traversé le monde arabe. La Tunisie, petit pays d’environ 11 millions d’habitants, relativement marginal dans les enjeux politiques de la région MENA – Moyen-Orient et Nord Afrique – a soudain beaucoup attiré l'attention des médias internationaux et des chercheurs en sciences sociales en tant que pays déclencheur des révoltes arabes ou ‘printemps arabes’. En effet, la révolution tunisienne a eu un effet domino dans l’ensemble de la région, encourageant les citoyens arabes des pays voisins à prendre massivement la rue pour demander à leurs propres leaders de quitter le pouvoir. Toutefois, après un élan démocratique à l’échelle régionale (Kaldor 2011), les trajectoires de démocratisation de plusieurs pays de la région ont dramatiquement échoué.7

La Tunisie est, à l’heure actuelle, le seul pays de la région à avoir connu une transition démocratique réussie, bien que fragile. Des chercheurs ont démontré comment des facteurs internes ont contribué à la bonne marche de la transition démocratique : le rôle apolitique de l’armée (Anderson 2011), la négociation et les compromis entre partis politiques (Nachi 2017), la modération du parti islamiste Ennahdha (Cavatorta and Merone 2013, McCarthy 2015), le rôle des réseaux sociaux (Breuer et al. 2015), ou encore la contribution de la société civile (Murphy 2013, Martin 2015, M’rad 2015). D’autres chercheurs ont analysé les mutations culturelles et sociales profondes que le pays a vécues depuis son ouverture démocratique (Allal and Geisser 2018). Des études d’envergure sur les aspects internes de la transition démocratique tunisienne ont aidé à comprendre que certains facteurs ont été décisifs dans la réussite de la transition tunisienne. Bien que les facteurs endogènes tels que la révolution et le processus de démocratisation en Tunisie soient souvent avancés comme facteurs explicatifs, j’ai jugé plausible que l'impact des influences extérieures ait aussi favorisé le processus de démocratisation. Ceci m'a conduit à mener mon projet doctoral sur

7 Certains pays – Libye, Yémen –, après avoir vécu un changement de régime qui a ouvert la possibilité d’une transition démocratique, ont sombré dans des guerres civiles qui ont fait échouer le processus de démocratisation. D’autres pays comme l’Égypte, après avoir vécu une brève période de démocratisation, ont reculé vers un régime autoritaire. En 2019, trois autres pays de la région – l’Algérie, le Soudan et le Liban – ont vécu des révoltes internes amenant à un changement à la tête de leur exécutif. Malgré cela, ces trois pays vivent présentement une impasse et le processus de transition démocratique est au point mort.

le sujet qui a débuté en 2016, d'autant que cette avenue n'était que peu documentée. Certains collègues experts du sujet étaient très sceptiques quant au potentiel d'une telle recherche et m'avertissaient des obstacles que je risquais de rencontrer tels que celui de ne pas parvenir à collecter des données empiriques pertinentes. Mon directeur de recherche m’a cependant encouragé à poursuivre mes objectifs, car il avait vécu une situation similaire lors de sa recherche sur la dimension internationale de la transition démocratique algérienne (Cavatorta 2009).

Il n'en demeure pas moins que mener des recherches sur la dimension externe du processus de démocratisation dans un pays du monde arabe en train de vivre une transition et une ouverture sur le monde extérieur, après une longue période de répression, m’exposait à des difficultés d'ordre méthodologique. Si, d’un point de vue théorique, je disposais d’une littérature riche quant aux influences des acteurs internationaux sur le processus de démocratisation dans plusieurs régions du monde8, mesurer l’impact de ces influences externes dans le cas de la transition démocratique tunisienne demeurait complexe. En me lançant dans une étude pionnière, le premier défi consistait à identifier précisément des acteurs à recruter et à interviewer. Au lendemain de la révolution, la présence des certains acteurs internationaux était certes plus visible, mais il manquait des études systématiques sur les résultats de leur interaction avec les groupes nationaux. Parmi ces derniers, il était difficile de savoir lesquels avaient interagi avec des groupes internationaux avant la révolution. De même, la question de la répartition de l’aide internationale en leur faveur, après la chute du régime de Ben Ali, restait relativement peu connue et peu explorée par les chercheurs.

Par ailleurs, j'étais confronté à un deuxième défi: le processus de recrutement des informateurs, voire l’accès aux informateurs ciblés, tâche qui rencontrait des obstacles. La facilité d'entrée des chercheurs en Tunisie qui contraste avec la fermeture et les risques

8 La littérature, portant sur les transitions démocratiques, a connu un renouveau à partir de la ‘troisième vague de démocratisation’ (Huntington, 1993). Dans les années 1980, les chercheurs soutenaient que les transitions découlaient plus de variables internes, donnant en revanche un rôle marginal au contexte international (Diamond et Linz 1989). Plus tard, les chercheurs ont commencé à émettre l’hypothèse que les transitions démocratiques devaient être analysées en fonction de variables d’ordre plus global (Whitehead, 1996; Yilmaz, 2002; Pevehouse, 2005; Levitsky, Way, 2010; Mainwaring, Pérez-Liñán, 2013). Selon ces chercheurs, expliquer la transition vers la démocratie, par le biais du national, fournit un portrait tronqué du processus.

présentés par d'autres pays (Glacius et al. 2017, Clark and Cavatorta 2018) conduit à une situation paradoxale. Depuis la chute du régime de Ben Ali9, le 14 janvier 2011, de nombreux chercheurs qualitativistes ont mené des enquêtes dans ce pays et ce, sans risque particulier; ce contexte a conduit à ce que certains dirigeants politiques ou activistes civils soient très sollicités et imposent des ‘filtres’ dans la sélection des demandes d'entrevue. Mon statut de chercheur universitaire occidental, européen et basé dans une université nord-américaine rendait par ailleurs plus ardue ma tâche, celle de savoir si des facteurs externes avaient contribué au succès de la transition. En général, pour des raisons historiques et culturelles liées au colonialisme, les interactions entre chercheurs occidentaux et sujets interrogés dans le monde arabe sont basées sur un faible niveau de confiance initiale (Tessler and Jamal 2006), car certains répondants recrutés perçoivent le chercheur occidental comme invasif et ‘orientaliste’ (Tessler 2011).

Un troisième défi se posait dans la mesure où je me suis heurté à des enjeux liés à l’interaction avec les répondants. En recrutant les acteurs directement impliqués dans le processus, j’ai rencontré des informateurs qui donnaient ‘des récits très subjectifs’, ce qui pouvait constituer un biais. Dans mon cas, cette subjectivité s’accentuait lorsque les répondants nationaux percevaient que ma recherche tendait à réduire ou à repenser le rôle des acteurs internes à la chute du régime autoritaire et au succès de la démocratisation. Bien que la Tunisie postrévolutionnaire ne fût pas considérée comme une destination à risque, ma recherche de terrain devenait sensible dans la mesure où elle visait à proposer des lectures analytiques complémentaires à celles formulées au cours du processus révolutionnaire.

En s’appuyant sur mon expérience de recherche de terrain en Tunisie entre 2017 et 201910, cet article propose diverses stratégies susceptibles de conduire à une enquête qualitative sur

9 Ben Ali a été Président de la République tunisienne entre 1987 et 2011. Plusieurs organismes internationaux (Freedom House) ont qualifié son régime d’autoritaire et de répressif et la justice transitionnelle tunisienne a entamé un processus pour dévoiler l’ensemble des abus commis par les élites au pouvoir pendant les cinq mandats de Ben Ali. 10 J’ai mené ma recherche de terrain avec des allers et retours vers mon université d’attache. Depuis le pré- terrain d’un mois en janvier 2017, je suis allé sur le terrain cinq mois de mai à octobre 2017, deux mois en 2018 et un mois en mars 2019.

la dimension internationale d’une transition démocratique dans un pays arabe. L’article porte sur le choix de mener un pré-terrain afin de faciliter l’identification des acteurs et des répondants et d’améliorer l’accès à ces derniers lors du début de la recherche de terrain. L'article dévoile, par la suite, des techniques mises en œuvre pour améliorer le recrutement des participants à la recherche. La troisième section présente les stratégies méthodologiques employées afin de réduire le biais provenant des récits très subjectifs d'informateurs, notamment au cours des entretiens avec les Tunisiens.

1.4 Identifier les acteurs: l’importance du terrain exploratoire Après une période de préparation théorique sur le sujet de ma recherche et une étude approfondie de la littérature sur l'histoire politique du pays, j'ai commencé à réaliser que je ne disposais pas d’un portrait clair des acteurs internationaux influents et des dynamiques d’interaction qu’ils pouvaient avoir eues avec les acteurs nationaux. Conduire un terrain exploratoire me semblait dès lors primordial afin de commencer à identifier les acteurs internationaux impliqués dans le processus de transition démocratique et leurs partenaires tunisiens.

Bien que le terrain exploratoire soit une technique davantage pratiquée par les anthropologues et ancrée dans la tradition ethnographique, il s’avère très utile aussi pour la recherche du politiste en contexte sensible. Caine et ses collègues (2009, 491) définissent le pré-terrain comme “l’ensemble des étapes formatrices de la recherche sur le terrain qui permettent l'exploration, la réflexivité, la créativité, l'échange mutuel et l'interaction grâce à l'établissement de relations de recherche avec les populations locales souvent avant le développement de protocoles de recherche et applications éthiques”. Le travail de pré- terrain peut en effet être considéré comme une activité qui accroît les liens et la compréhension de contextes complexes, aide comme outil de repositionnement pour poser des questions pendant la recherche et aide à accéder plus profondément aux expériences vécues des autres (Carrier, 2006). Une expérience de terrain préliminaire peut relier la théorie au contexte et à la pratique et, dans certains cas, donner un nouveau sens à la théorie (Douglas 1994).

À l’occasion d’un atelier, Tunis exchange, organisé dans la capitale du pays (Tunis) en janvier 2017, j'ai conduit un terrain exploratoire de 30 jours. Mon directeur de recherche m’avait fortement encouragé à postuler à cet atelier et à y participer, car certaines des personnalités les plus importantes de la Tunisie faisaient partie des intervenants. Cet atelier a été clairement pensé pour faciliter l’accès des chercheurs et des journalistes étrangers au pays, en leur permettant très rapidement de développer un réseau de contacts hétérogènes et de haute qualité. En effet, l’organisateur Nicholas Noe, un analyste spécialisé dans la région, sélectionne deux fois par an un groupe d’environ 20 participants (la plupart sont chercheurs) et les exposent à deux semaines intensives de conférences et rencontres de groupes avec des dirigeants politiques tunisiens, des membres de la société civile, des journalistes et analystes locaux, des activistes, des syndicalistes et des dirigeants provenant du monde des entreprises. L’atelier m'a donné l'opportunité de discuter directement avec des personnalités de premier plan dans le contexte tunisien (acteurs politiques et économiques) qui pouvaient avoir une connaissance précise de mon sujet de recherche et, surtout, pouvaient me suggérer des pistes de recherche ou me fournir des contacts.

Bien que les deux semaines d'atelier se soient avérées peu fructueuses en termes de données empiriques -les diverses présentations portant plutôt sur l’actualité nationale du pays- j'ai pu néanmoins identifier certains premiers groupes internationaux, des acteurs politiques et des activistes tunisiens qui pouvaient m'aider dans mes objectifs de recherche. Par exemple, en discutant de mes objectifs de recherche avec un membre de Inkifada (un journal de presse d’enquête tunisienne très actif après la révolution), celui-ci m'a dit:

Votre sujet c’est très intéressant…aussi pour nous, parce qu’on ne connait pas vraiment ces phénomènes. Franchement je ne suis pas un connaisseur des interactions avec les acteurs externes, j’étais simplement un dentiste avant la révolution et je me suis impliqué dans INKIFADA qu’en 2013, mais je peux vous donner le contact d’une collègue qui collaborait souvent avec Freedom House entre 2005 et 2010.

Une fois le Tunis Exchange terminé, je suis resté à Tunis deux semaines supplémentaires, car j’envisageais de discuter plus profondément, et dans un contexte moins formel, avec des chercheurs, des journalistes et des analystes politiques tunisiens. Pendant ces deux semaines, j’ai employé deux stratégies pour préparer ma collecte de données officielle, en

prévision des contraintes liées à l’identification et au recrutement de mes informateurs. Premièrement, à travers des contacts fournis au préalable par mon directeur de recherche et grâce aux contacts donnés par certains intervenants de l'atelier, j’ai rencontré des Tunisiens, connaisseurs de l’histoire politique contemporaine de la Tunisie, notamment deux professeurs en science politique, deux journalistes blogueurs et un analyste politique tunisien.

Lors de ces interactions informelles, souvent autour d’un café, j’ai discuté de mon sujet d’étude et partagé mes hypothèses de recherche. La participation à l'atelier m'a ainsi permis de me sentir plus à l'aise pour conduire une conversation sur les thématiques que j'avais préalablement ciblées, au lieu d'écouter et de prendre passivement en note les propos de mes interlocuteurs. Lors de ce pré-terrain, je n'avais toutefois pas encore les outils appropriés pour procéder à la collecte officielle des données, même si je commençais à avoir une idée plus fine des interactions possibles à explorer entre les acteurs internationaux et nationaux. En effet, je n'avais ni des canevas d'entrevues structurés, ni même de certificat d’approbation du comité d'éthique qui m'aurait officiellement permis d'utiliser les données recueillies lors des entretiens au moment de la rédaction de ma thèse. Mes conversations étaient donc de nature exploratoire et visaient souvent à saisir la diversité des acteurs en jeu. Par exemple, pendant une conversation avec un professeur de science politique à l’université de Carthage et fin connaisseur de l’histoire politique tunisienne, j’ai abordé la question des réseaux de plaidoyer internationaux actifs en Tunisie depuis 1990 et de leurs partenaires directs en Tunisie. À la fin de la discussion, j’avais une liste assez complète de ces réseaux en Tunisie, qui incluaient l’Organisation mondiale contre la torture (OMT), la Ligue Internationale de Droits Humains, Human Rights Watch, ou encore Amnesty International. Les conversations avec ces informateurs (deux professeurs, deux journalistes et un analyste politique) m’ont ainsi aidé à affiner ma compréhension des acteurs internationaux impliqués dans le processus de transition démocratique. Ils m’ont permis, par exemple, de percevoir l’implication majeure des fondations politiques allemandes dans le pays à partir des années 1990, qui se sont plus tard révélées un pilier central de ma recherche (Marzo 2019a).

En parallèle, une deuxième stratégie, adoptée pendant les deux semaines restantes, a consisté à me créer un réseau de ‘contacts amicaux’, spécialement avec des individus d'origine italienne (comme moi) qui travaillaient dans le domaine des relations internationales en Tunisie. Avant de débuter mon doctorat au Canada, j'avais eu des expériences professionnelles dans des organisations internationales, notamment dans le cadre d'un stage aux Nations Unies (en Allemagne) et dans le cadre de recherches au sein de l'Institut des Affaires internationales à Rome et de l’European Council on Foreign Relations à Rome portant sur les enjeux politiques en Afrique du Nord.

J'ai donc demandé à d’anciens collègues experts du pays de m’introduire auprès de leurs contacts sur le terrain. Grâce à cela, j'ai pu rencontrer des Italiens qui travaillaient en Tunisie: par exemple le représentant de la coopération internationale à l'ambassade d'Italie à Tunis, un fonctionnaire italien qui travaillait pour les Nations Unies, des parlementaires italo-tunisiens qui venaient d'être élus dans la circonscription ‘italiens de l’étranger’ englobant la Tunisie, un dirigeant de la Croix rouge et une fonctionnaire de l'Union européenne. Dans la plupart des cas, ces rencontres visaient à établir des liens plutôt qu'à obtenir des informations sur mes recherches, voire à construire un réseau des contacts de confiance à mobiliser plus tard lors du processus de recrutement officiel. Cette stratégie visait à réduire les obstacles liés au recrutement des informateurs.

Une fois ciblé l’informateur à interviewer, obtenir des entretiens dans les pays de la région peut s’avérer relativement difficile surtout si le sujet de recherche est relativement complexe comme le mien. La capacité de recruter certains informateurs et d’obtenir des entretiens est souvent proportionnelle aux réseaux et aux connaissances dont on bénéficie (Scogging 2014, Clark 2018). Dans ma recherche de terrain, la mobilisation de réseaux construits au préalable s'est avérée essentielle pour faciliter l'accès aux informateurs. La section suivante présente les techniques spécifiques utilisées pour contourner les obstacles qui ont surgi lors du processus de recrutement des participants aux entretiens.

1.5 Le recrutement: la technique de ‘boule de neige’ et le rôle des intermédiaires ou ‘fixeurs’ Cinq mois après mon pré-terrain, j’étais de retour en Tunisie pour effectuer la première partie de mon terrain ‘officiel’ entre mai et novembre 2017. Bien que le pré-terrain m'ait facilité l’accès à certains milieux politiques et civils et m'ait permis d’identifier des acteurs centraux dans ma recherche, le processus de recrutement demeurait un enjeu. En étudiant un phénomène tel que les influences externes dans un processus politique national, l’objectif de ma recherche visait à constituer un échantillon comprenant les principaux acteurs ayant participé aux événements. En même temps, bien que mes informateurs devaient être sélectionnés de façon non aléatoire et raisonnée (purposive sample), mon enquête ciblait une population difficile à joindre (Marpsat and Razafindratsima 2010), à la fois non visible, méfiante et surexposée aux chercheurs.

À cet égard, j’ai choisi d’utiliser la technique de recrutement dite de boule-de-neige (snowballing sampling) qui, comme le suggèrent plusieurs chercheurs, s’avère être un “outil assez efficace quand la population à recruter n’était pas visible” (Tansey 2007, 766) ou est ‘caché’ (Cohen and Arieti, 2010).11 Cette technique peut aussi contenir un biais dans le processus de recrutement dans la mesure où les informateurs suggèrent souvent d'autres personnes partageant les mêmes caractéristiques et perspectives (Van Meter 1990). Je me suis donc assuré que le groupe initial d'informateurs était suffisamment diversifié tant du point de vue de leurs activités professionnelles que de leur origine géographique pour que l’échantillon me permette de mesurer deux choses: la diversité des acteurs qui ont joué un rôle dans le tournant politique vécu par la Tunisie, mais aussi et surtout l'influence des acteurs internationaux au regard des réseaux créés par les acteurs nationaux et de la politique de la communauté internationale (États, organisations internationales gouvernementales, organisations internationales non-gouvernementales). C'est ainsi que les premiers entretiens ont été menés auprès d'un membre d'une organisation régionale des

11 Cette méthode consiste à identifier un ensemble initial de répondants pertinents pour la recherche et à leur demander de suggérer d'autres sujets potentiels partageant des caractéristiques similaires ou ayant une certaine pertinence pour l'objet de l'étude. Le processus se poursuit jusqu'à ce que le chercheur estime que l'échantillon est suffisamment grand pour les besoins de l'étude ou que les répondants commencent à donner les mêmes noms au point que de nouveaux informateurs sont peu susceptibles de donner de nouvelles informations significatives

droits de l'homme, d'un responsable d'une fondation politique allemand, d'un délégué de l'Union européenne et d'un diplomate américain qui avait travaillé en Tunisie.

Dans le cas d’une transition démocratique, les acteurs nationaux sont plus réticents à reconnaitre les apports des acteurs internationaux dans la transition (Schmitter 1996). J’ai alors choisi de commencer les entrevues semi-dirigées auprès des acteurs internationaux non seulement dans le but de dresser un portrait plus clair des interactions entre les acteurs internationaux et leurs partenaires nationaux, avant et après la révolution, mais aussi de me fournir une liste des groupes et acteurs nationaux pertinents pour continuer mon enquête. Il reste que la collecte de données est restée modeste à l'issue des toutes premières entrevues car, l'informateur était parfois un fonctionnaire vivant dans le pays depuis peu de temps et ne connaissait pas assez les dynamiques politiques du pays. Je savais qu'en envoyant une demande d'entretien à un groupe international opérant en Tunisie en 2017 pour poser des questions sur des interactions qui s'étaient souvent produites cinq ou dix ans auparavant, j'avais besoin de discuter avec un informateur ayant une mémoire historique des faits et ayant vécu une expérience au moins pluriannuelle en Tunisie. En prévision de cela, mon courriel de recrutement incluait, parmi les critères de sélection, le fait que l'informateur ait au moins cinq ans d'expérience professionnelle (pas forcément de présence sur le territoire) en Tunisie. Il reste que, dans un premier temps, j'ai rencontré des fonctionnaires en place, même si ceux-ci avaient moins cette mémoire longitudinale des faits dont j'avais besoin.

Mais ces rencontres se sont révélées cruciales pour étoffer mon carnet d'adresses auprès d'acteurs ayant une connaissance plus directe et profonde du pays et du sujet de ma recherche. C'est ainsi que, par le biais d’une entrevue avec le fonctionnaire d’une fondation allemande en Tunisie, j'ai pu, par exemple, joindre ses prédécesseurs plus impliqués dans le processus de transition, qui avaient choisi de s’établir dans le pays pour leur retraite. La rencontre avec l'ancien directeur de la fondation Friedrich Ebert a été d'un apport majeur pour ma recherche, afin de mieux comprendre le rôle protecteur que certaines fondations allemandes avaient joué auprès des groupes tunisiens d'opposition avant la révolution.

Souvent, des informateurs liés à l’international et directement impliqués dans les processus transitionnels m’indiquaient des noms précis des groupes et des individus tunisiens ayant entretenu une collaboration directe avec eux, tout en me fournissant des informations

précieuses sur les dynamiques de l’interaction. Dans certains cas, il s'agissait de militants politiques, de journalistes ou de militants qui avaient coopéré plus ou moins clandestinement avec des acteurs étrangers avant la chute de Ben Ali. Dans d'autres cas, j'avais des informations sur des groupes politiques et civils qui avaient plutôt été aidés par la communauté internationale depuis la révolution. Mon objectif était de les rencontrer pour évaluer davantage le type de soutien, d'accompagnement dont ils avaient bénéficié de la part des partenaires internationaux.

Toutefois, pour parvenir à interviewer certains informateurs tunisiens, la technique du recrutement de boule de neige s'est révélée moins efficace que pour le recrutement des acteurs internationaux. J'ai été, en réalité, confronté à des difficultés de recrutement quand j’ai essayé de rejoindre un militant politique tunisien qui s'était rangé du côté du régime, ou un individu qui avait eu des relations avec les ambassades étrangères occidentales durant les dernières années de Ben Ali, ou encore un blogueur qui avait obtenu une formation à l'étranger pour contourner la censure imposée par le régime. Souvent très sollicités par les médias et les chercheurs mais aussi méfiants face à certains analystes qui proposent des raccourcis pour expliquer des situations et des enjeux complexes, je ne recevais aucune réponse, malgré mes demandes répétées d'entrevue par courriel ou message téléphonique. Bien que la liberté d’expression individuelle soit en croissance et que s'opère une meilleure confiance interpersonnelle suite à la révolution, contrairement à ce qui est observé dans la région (Jamal 2007, Mekouar 2014), le niveau de confiance envers les étrangers et l’intérêt à interagir avec ces derniers sur des sujets sensibles demeure en effet faible. Un chercheur qui arrive de l’étranger et mène une recherche liée aux relations internationales du pays peut être perçu comme un journaliste ou un ‘espion’ voulant faire un reportage sur le pays et en dresser un tableau négatif.

C'est alors que j'ai dû avoir recours à des intermédiaires, d'autant qu'au fil des discussions avec des collègues et des amis sur le terrain, j'ai compris que les itinéraires d'individus évoluent et donnent à voir un contexte changeant, des logiques d'affiliation, de réseautage diversifiées et flexibles. Les intermédiaires ou ‘fixeurs’ apparaissaient comme des figures importantes “de points de connexion au sein de systèmes et de relations complexes” (Lewis and Mosse 2006, 12) voire essentielles, afin de comprendre les ‘règles du jeu’ locales dans

un contexte complexe (Schiltz and Buscher 2016), d'obtenir des informations et de bénéficier de contacts autrement inaccessibles (Hoffmann 2014). Très souvent, pour obtenir un entretien, j'avais besoin de mobiliser un contact ‘de confiance’ qui connaissait bien l’informateur ciblé et qui agissait comme intermédiaire afin d’expliquer au préalable les contours de ma recherche, de préciser mon identité, mon parcours et mon professionnalisme et de rendre compte de mes bonnes relations avec le fixeur lui-même pour fixer un rendez-vous. Grâce à des intermédiaires qui étaient proches du milieu des informateurs ciblés, j’ai ainsi réussi à interviewer des activistes tunisiens ayant eu, selon mes fixeurs, des interactions avec des diplomates américains et des groupes de promotion de la démocratie étrangers avant la révolution.

Par ailleurs, pour réussir à rejoindre des répondants ‘difficiles’ ou très sollicités, il ne s’agit pas seulement d’obtenir l’entretien grâce à l’intervention du contact, mais le chercheur doit ensuite être proactif dans l’approche du répondant, préférablement par téléphone (approche commune dans le pays). Ainsi, lorsque je recevais la confirmation que l’entretien m'était accordé, je demandais la permission de téléphoner au potentiel informateur afin de confirmer le lieu du rendez-vous. J’évaluais aussi son niveau de disponibilité à parler d'un sujet sensible, susceptible d’impliquer des questions liées à des épisodes émotionnels ou risqués relativement forts. Cependant et malgré ces précautions, j’ai rencontré certains problèmes pour gagner la confiance de certains informateurs. Ce fut par exemple le cas lors d'un entretien avec un militant politique central pour ma recherche. Suite à son emprisonnement par Ben Ali, le procès judiciaire de cet enquêté avait été surveillé par les diplomates américains et sa famille protégée par l’ambassade américaine. Or, après avoir obtenu une interview grâce à un ami tunisien (en 2019 après diverses tentatives vaines d'approche), j’obtenais un lieu de rendez-vous dans un café du quartier El Kram de Tunis. Après vingt minutes d'attente, scrutant la clientèle du café pour essayer de repérer mon informateur (j'avais vu des photographies de lui en ligne), un homme s'est finalement approché de moi et a débuté la discussion ainsi:

Bonjour, Monsieur Marzo?! Excusez-moi, mais j'ai l'habitude d'observer la personne qui veut me parler pendant quelques minutes. Il est important pour moi de comprendre à qui je transfère des informations. J'ai été interviewé par des

dizaines de journalistes étrangers, tous sujets confondus, surtout depuis que j'ai formé mon parti politique. Vous êtes peut-être le deuxième ou le troisième chercheur qui par contre me demande un entretien sur ma relation avec les Américains. Ce thème a été le résultat de grandes spéculations et mystifications, j'aime donc observer mon interlocuteur. Excusez-moi, mais après tout, vous êtes amis avec X et X n'a que de bons amis. On peut commencer, je vais essayer de vous être utile.

Lors de certaines entrevues avec des informateurs nationaux, ceux-ci peuvent demeurer méfiants envers un chercheur étranger et réticents à répondre à certaines questions. Expliquer minutieusement le but de ma recherche avant de démarrer l’entretien, souligner l’anonymat total des informations, m’introduire en tant que chercheur universitaire en parlant de mon expérience en Tunisie et des activités extra-professionnelles que j'y menais telles que l’apprentissage du dialecte tunisien local ou l’implication dans des groupes sportifs à Tunis a aidé à réduire la méfiance de mes informateurs tunisiens. L'identification progressive des informateurs et leur accessibilité se sont améliorées grâce à mes techniques d'approche et de réseautage. J'étais néanmoins confronté à un autre biais: la subjectivité dans les récits des informateurs nationaux.

1.6 Réduire la subjectivée des récits pendant les entrevues: ‘la triangulation progressive’ des données En Tunisie, où le processus de transition démocratique est assez récent - le pays vit présentement la consolidation de la démocratisation - l’avantage des entrevues est de pouvoir interroger des témoins des événements en question (Mosley 2015, Clark 2018). Mais cet avantage peut se révéler une ‘épée à double tranchant’. Bien que les entrevues restent la meilleure stratégie pour connaître la vision et l'interprétation d'un groupe de personnes sur un événement ou une série d'événements, ou leurs actions passées ou envisagées (Aberbach and Rockman 2002, 47), le risque demeure élevé de rencontrer des informateurs qui veulent surtout raconter leurs expériences vécues, leurs combats, leurs actions, leurs prises de position et ainsi, mettre en exergue leur rôle prépondérant dans un contexte d'effondrement d'un régime autoritaire et d'émergence d'un processus de transition démocratique (Katzenstein and Keohane, 2007, 32) d'une part, et réduire l'importance de l'assistance internationale dans ce même processus d'autre part. Schmitter (1996, 26)

observe en effet que les élites de la transition “sont incitées à minimiser le rôle des acteurs extérieurs et l’impact des forces internationals”. Or mon objectif était d'analyser non seulement le type d'échanges entre les acteurs internationaux (membres d’organisations internationales gouvernementales et non gouvernementales, diplomates étrangers, lobbyistes) et leurs partenaires nationaux (membres de la société civile, diplomates nationaux, activistes politiques et responsables politiques) mais aussi de voir comment cette coopération avait favorisé la transition démocratique tunisienne.

Lors de mes entrevues en Tunisie, j'ai opté pour la technique de triangulation afin d’améliorer la validité de l’information collectée. Tout d’abord, avant de débuter les entrevues semi-dirigées, j’ai analysé une série de documents sur l’assistance au processus transitionnel tunisien publiés par certains groupes internationaux. Les documents et autres sources d’archive peuvent fournir des compte-rendus détaillés pour donner de la substance aux entrevues (Berry 2002). Cette analyse m’a été utile pour déterminer les tendances générales et les objectifs communs en matière de coopération des acteurs internationaux et parfois m'informait comment les partenaires locaux recevaient et évaluaient l’assistance. Cela m’a aussi permis de suivre l’évolution des différentes formes d’assistance internationale, en soulignant les avancées décisives et l’évolution des priorités tout au long du processus de transition démocratique, dimension très importante de ma recherche. J’ai analysé des rapports officiels des Nations Unies, de l’Union européenne ou des ONG internationales que j’ambitionnais d’approcher au fil de mon terrain d'enquêtes.

J’ai choisi de poursuivre mon analyse documentaire en parallèle aux entrevues, ce qui permettait de trianguler les informations et de confirmer, au fur et à mesure, la validité des certaines réponses. À cet égard, en mobilisant mes contacts, j’ai aussi réussi à obtenir des documents de travail de certaines organisations (rapport d’évaluation de partenariats, commentaires et notes) qui n’avaient pas été utilisés auparavant par la communauté scientifique. Ainsi, en promettant de ne pas faire circuler les documents, j’ai eu accès à un éventail de sources inédites, tout en montrant les forces et faiblesses de la coopération entre acteurs internationaux et partenaires nationaux.

Le fait de construire progressivement l’information en passant par des acteurs internationaux impliqués en Tunisie et par la collecte de documents m'a permis de recentrer

les conversations menées avec les acteurs nationaux. Opter pour des entretiens semi-dirigés m'a été précieux dans la mesure où cette technique laisse une certaine liberté de propos aux informateurs, permet d'entamer un dialogue avec l'informateur (Savoie-Zac 2009), de procéder à des relances, de recentrer la discussion au fil des échanges et donc, dans le cadre de ma recherche, d'insister sur les interactions et de limiter la narration d’éléments trop subjectifs (Kapiszewski et coll. 2015).

Un informateur tunisien a, par exemple, absolument tenu à souligner ceci: « la révolution c’est nous, nous avons abattu le régime, les états étrangers étaient alignés avec Ben Ali ». Plus je l’exposais à des questions issues d’informations détaillées, obtenues dans mes entrevues avec les acteurs étrangers ou par des sources documentaires, plus l'informateur faisait ressortir les volets de coopération avec des groupes étrangers: “oui, c’est vrai l’ambassadeur américain X nous a soutenu beaucoup dans cet episode”. La triangulation m'a ainsi permis de vivifier la mémoire de certains informateurs, de les faire réagir sur des faits précis et d'animer nos échanges. Ce type d'échanges m'a permis progressivement d'approcher la réalité du processus démocratique sous toutes ces facettes et de replacer le rôle de chaque type d'acteurs.

Le cas contraire s’est aussi vérifié, car d'autres informateurs tunisiens ont eu tendance à exagérer le poids de la coopération avec des groupes étrangers, car ils bénéficiaient probablement d'un soutien logistique et économique. Parfois, je recevais des opinions extrêmement positives sur l'impact de l'assistance internationale parce que l'informateur craignait que j’aie pu signaler ses commentaires négatifs au partenaire international et des implications potentielles sur leur partenariat. Par ailleurs, pour minimiser le biais provenant des récits subjectifs, la chronologie de mes entretiens a été stratégiquement divisée en trois phases principales, en utilisant aussi des critères bien définis concernant la formulation des questions et les sujets à traiter. Au début de ma recherche, mes questions étaient moins directes pour obtenir des informations générales, tandis qu'au fur et à mesure que la recherche progressait et que mes données triangulées devenaient plus précises, les questions étaient plus incisives. Dans les premiers entretiens avec des membres des organisations internationales, mon but était de comprendre les informations de base du partenariat avec les groupes nationaux: le volume d’aide, la technique de coopération, les priorités d’action,

l’évolution au fil du temps, le retour des partenariats sur de projets complétés, le bilan et les idées pour de futurs projets. Le canevas d’entrevue était construit stratégiquement pour ne pas interroger directement sur l’impact de leur travail sur la chute du régime et sur certains acquis de la révolution. Mes questions n’abordaient pas ouvertement des enjeux sensibles, car certains groupes internationaux, tels que les ONG américaines (Freedom House, National Democratic Institute et National Endowment for Democracy) ont peu intérêt à apparaître comme des ‘facilitateurs’ de la transition démocratique, car ce profil peut compromettre leur travail dans des contextes autoritaires dans lesquels ils disposent d’une marge de manœuvre très étroite.

Pour interviewer les informateurs nationaux, j’ai toujours alterné des questions sur l’opinion générale des répondants sur la transition démocratique du pays ou sur le rôle de leur organisation au sein du processus - moins intéressantes pour ma recherche - et des questions portant plutôt sur l’objectif crucial de la recherche, comme l’interaction directe de l’interviewé - et/ou de son organisation/parti politique - avec des partenaires internationaux. Cette technique m’a permis de réduire l’impression que la recherche visait à réduire la contribution des groupes nationaux au processus de démocratisation. De plus, afin d'accroître la validité des réponses clés, j’ai employé des questions contre-factuelles qui répétaient les questions à différents moments de l’entrevue.

Cela a produit des réponses parfois contradictoires, me permettant de discuter plus en détail avec les informateurs qui nuançaient souvent leurs réponses initiales. Un informateur de l'Association tunisienne pour l'Intégrité et la Démocratie des Élections (ATIDE) avait initialement répondu, avec peu d'enthousiasme, sur le rôle de l'assistance internationale, mettant en évidence des éléments de complexité générale de la coopération internationale en tant que telle. À l'aide de questions contre-factuelles, ont été formulées des réponses dans lesquelles l'informateur considérait que l'aide reçue de l'étranger avait été cruciale pour son ONG. À une question précise sur l’impact de l’assistance internationale après la révolution, il répondait:

On n’avait pas beaucoup d’experts surtout en 2011, 2012 et 2013. Les organisations internationales partenaires ont apporté beaucoup de soutien à la société civile quant aux mécanismes et aux plans de travail et pour tous les aspects qui s’intéressent aux élections et tout le processus électoral. Je crois

enfin que sans l’assistance financière notre association, comme beaucoup d’autres, aurait fermé ses portes. (…) Surtout des années 2011 à 2014 ces acteurs internationaux ont beaucoup coopéré avec la société civile et les partis politiques et l’assemblée constituante.

Avec le matériel récolté auprès des groupes nationaux, j’ai mené une deuxième série d'entretiens avec des informateurs internationaux déjà interviewés. Cette démarche visait à trianguler davantage les informations obtenues auprès des informateurs nationaux. La triangulation progressive des informations entre deux catégories d’acteurs pour lesquels on veut mesurer l’impact d’une ‘coopération complexe’ s'est révélée très efficace (Flick 2002, Wilson 2014). Cette stratégie m'a permis d'identifier les dynamiques de ces interactions entre les deux types d'acteurs ciblés, leurs logiques, leurs évolutions et le poids des acteurs internationaux pour proposer une lecture nuancée du processus de transition politique et ce, sous un angle peu couvert dans la littérature (Marzo 2019a, Marzo 2019b).

1.7 Conclusion

En m’appuyant sur mon expérience de terrain en Tunisie, je fournis des stratégies pour optimiser les étapes méthodologiques d’une recherche qualitative sur le contexte international d’une transition démocratique dans la région MENA. Bien que l’effondrement d’un régime autoritaire déclenche une ouverture du pays aux chercheurs qui souhaitent analyser des enjeux sociaux et politiques, le terrain demeure sensible surtout par rapport à certains sujets liés aux influences extérieures dans le processus de transition démocratique. Trois aspects méthodologiques compliquent la recherche de terrain sur les influences extérieures d'une transition démocratique. Tout d'abord, pour identifier la population à interroger, il est très précieux de mener un pré-terrain, surtout si la recherche est menée dans les années qui suivent le début du processus. Un bon pré-terrain qui construit un réseau de contacts et facilite l'identification de certains groupes de recherche intéressants n'épuise cependant pas les obstacles que présentent les recherches sur le contexte international d'une transition démocratique.

Le processus de recrutement de certains informateurs reste compliqué en raison de la surexposition de la Tunisie aux chercheurs et de la difficulté d'approcher un objet de recherche qui vise à revisiter et compléter le récit de la révolution nationale. En raison du

faible niveau de confiance envers les chercheurs étrangers, j'ai donc dû alterner les techniques dites de boule-de-neige, plus utiles pour les informateurs internationaux, et la mobilisation effective des intermédiaires ou ‘fixeurs’ pour la plupart des informateurs nationaux. La technique dite de boule-de-neige, avec un éventail d'acteurs initiaux relativement grand et "hétérogène" obtenu lors d'un pré-terrain augmente considérablement la capacité de rejoindre des acteurs peu visibles, mais importants. Ces derniers ont été essentiels pour me permettre d'obtenir des entretiens avec certains des principaux acteurs nationaux tunisiens, souvent très sollicités par les chercheurs sur le terrain. De plus, la présentation directe de mon profil et de mes recherches à l’informateur ciblé, par le biais d'un intermédiaire influent auprès de son réseau ou milieu, a servi à canaliser les soupçons à propos des objectifs potentiellement non explicités, jetant les bases d'un entretien de qualité. Pour limiter la subjectivité dans la narration lors de l’interaction, la triangulation des entrevues s'est aussi révélée être une stratégie assez gagnante.

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Chapter 2. Solving the Security-Democracy Dilemma. The US Foreign Policy in Tunisia post-9/11

2.1 Résumé

Le consensus scientifique postule qu’il existe un contraste marqué entre les valeurs libérales et les intérêts réalistes de la politique étrangère américaine dans la région MENA,

qui trouve son expression dans le dilemme ‘sécurité-démocratie’. Cela signifie que la détermination rhétorique des États-Unis à respecter les valeurs d’une politique étrangère ‘libérale’ est neutralisée par la priorité « réaliste » de maintenir les intérêts stratégiques des États-Unis, ce qui nécessite le soutien aux régimes autoritaires dans la région. Les chercheurs tendent à appliquer ce raisonnement de manière indistincte à l'ensemble de la région, fournissant un cadre d'analyse englobant pour comprendre la politique étrangère américaine. Cette étude remet en question cette hypothèse théorique et fait valoir que si les États-Unis pourraient effectivement avoir une approche régionale globale dans la région MENA, la politique étrangère qui en résulte suit des trajectoires nationales qui répondent aux spécificités nationales et aux implications perçues pour les intérêts stratégiques américains. Unis. Explorant la politique étrangère des États-Unis dans la région MENA après le 11 septembre, l’article démontre que si le libéralisme des Etats-Unis s’est effondré dans la plupart des états face aux problèmes de sécurité, l’approche libérale à l’égard de la Tunisie est restée plus cohérente. Bien que les États-Unis aient poursuivi leur coopération formelle avec le régime de Ben Ali, ils ont donné le pouvoir à une coalition d’opposants démocratiques, résolvant le dilemme sécurité-démocratie tout en influençant positivement la démocratisation tunisienne.

2.2 Abstract

Scholarly consensus postulates that a sharp contrast exists between liberal values and realist interests in US foreign policy in the MENA region, which finds its expression in the ‘security-democracy’ dilemma. This means that US rhetorical determination to abide by the values of a ‘liberal’ foreign policy is neutralized by the ‘realist’ priority of maintaining US strategic interests, which requires support for friendly authoritarian rulers. Scholarship tends to apply this reasoning indistinctly to the entire region, providing an encompassing framework of analysis for understanding US foreign policy, which is valid across time and space. This study challenges this theoretical assumption and argues that while the US might indeed have a comprehensive regional approach in the MENA, the resulting foreign policy follows country-based trajectories that respond to national specificities and the perceived implications for US strategic interests. Exploring US foreign policy in the MENA after 9/11, the article demonstrates that while US emphasis on liberalism crumbled when faced with security issues, the US liberal approach to Tunisia unfolded more consistently. Although the US continued formal cooperation with the Ben Ali’s regime, it empowered at the same time a coalition of democratic opponents, solving the security-democracy dilemma and positively influencing the Tunisian democratization.

2.3 Introduction

During the Cold War, the US anchored its foreign policy on securing strategic and economic interests with little attention paid to how dissonant with liberal democratic values the means employed to pursue these interests abroad were. Scholars argued that the US emphasized strategic calculations in foreign policy, as the costs of losing influence in the confrontation with Soviet Union exceeded the benefits of spreading liberal values (Poe and Meernik 1995). The Soviet Union’s disappearance triggered divisions within academia on how to interpret the US foreign policy after the end of the Cold War. Liberal scholars argued that the US’s foreign policy could draw more on international liberalism to lead a global process of democratization (Allison and Beschel 1992, Diamond 1992, Gaddis 1992), with some suggesting that the US had less security constraints in projecting liberal democracy abroad (Meernick et al. 1998). Realist scholars, instead, continued to emphasize that the US foreign policy responded to strategic calculations and material interests to preserve its leadership in a ‘unipolar world’ (Mastanduno 1997). According to realists, the US supported democracy ‘only when doing so is in its interest’ (Smith 2000, 63) furthering democratization in those countries when national elites accepted subordination to US hegemony (Mearshmeier 2001). Conversely, this meant backing dictators where free elections could propel unfriendly, non-collaborative, or worse, anti-American political actors to power (Owen and Poznansky 2014).

While the broader analysis of the US post-cold war foreign policy was framed in the debate between liberals and realists, the specific study of the US policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remained a realist affair. During the 1990s and early 2000s, US support for authoritarian regimes in the MENA contributed to solidifying authoritarian regimes in the region (Hinnebusch 2006). The 9/11 terrorist attacks, however, opened the door for rethinking US foreign policy in the MENA. A degree of genuine self-criticism characterized the debate, with some policy-makers suggesting that direct US support for autocrats in the Arab world had become too costly, as it had turned into a source of instability with destructive consequences for US domestic security. Arab leaders and ruling

elites had exploited US support to rule ruthlessly, clamping down on internal dissent, eventually paving the way for widespread anti-Americanism (Fabbrini 2011).

Thus, post 9/11, the postulate of ‘authoritarian stability’ that until then had driven the US in framing its foreign policy in the MENA, was up for discussion. Accordingly, some US policy makers applied the ‘democratic peace theory’ to the MENA, furthering the idea that Arab “democratic states would have been better partners” (Cook 2017, 24). The contention was that the ‘security-democracy dilemma’ – the puzzle of how to promote democracy while preserving security – could be solved with a value-based approach. The ideas that democratization could be the ‘antidote’ to terrorism and could finally endow Arabs with political and social freedoms (Ottaway and Carothers 2004) gained momentum. Thus, the Bush administration began to promote liberal democracy in the Arab World, demanding that autocratic regional allies reform their illiberal political systems. In late 2002 Bush formalized the launch of the Freedom Agenda in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) to support Arab countries in their political reforms.

The new impetus on exporting liberal democracy, however, did not ignore the preservation of the US interests. Indeed, the US government also conceived democratization in the MENA as key to US geostrategic interests, a “means of advancing American standing in the region and other material benefits” (Sadiki 2009, 18). In this regard, in a short time, it became clear that conflicting interests were intrinsic to the promotion of democracy. While the US supported liberal reforms and competitive politics, it also worried about the electoral results that such approach generated. Islamist parties had performed well in the 2005 Egyptian legislative elections and in the 2006 Palestinian and Lebanese ones, defeating US allies (Selim 2015, 91-92). This led the US to retreat to a more realist approach that could achieve strategic political results without challenging the political status quo (Poppe 2019). By the mid-2000s it seemed to most scholars the US had retrenched towards a realist approach in the whole MENA region, preferring regional stability rather than encouraging democracy.

This study challenges in part this assumption and suggests that US foreign policy in MENA countries did not unfold uniformly. Rather, it took on country-based trajectories that responded to national specificities and the perceived implications for US strategic interests. Specifically, the article argues that Tunisia is a divergent case in the way the US framed its foreign policy from 2001 onward when compared to its regional counterparts. Relying on interviews with former US diplomats and policy-makers, Tunisian activists and opposition leaders, in addition to documental analysis from the US State Department, this research shows that the US promoted a more consistent liberal foreign policy towards Tunisia. Although the US continued to cooperate formally with the Ben Ali’s regime, it empowered a crosscutting democratic coalition of opposition actors, solving the security-democracy dilemma and having a positive impact on the trajectory of Tunisian democratization. While the interviews and the data collected refer only to the Tunisian case, the article relies on secondary literature on US foreign policy in Egypt in the 2000s to offer a comparative analysis.

2.4 Rethinking the US foreign policy in the MENA Region. A framework of analysis

The international political situation shapes the way the US allocates its foreign funding, selects recipient countries and imposes conditionalities. Major shifts in global politics explain fluctuations in the magnitude of US foreign aid (Scott and Carter 2010 and 2014). During the Cold War, the US overarching priority to counter the Soviets through militarization had downgraded the interest in allocating funding for democracy promotion (Lebovic 1988, Meernik et al. 1998). As Huber (2015, 51) noted, “stability took precedence over values and the fight against communism over the promotion of democracy”. The demise of the Soviet Empire opened the door for attracting new states into the orbit of the US, boosting funding devoted to promoting Western liberal democracy.

The analysis of the US Foreign Aid Greenbook shows that during the Cold War the US overwhelmingly devoted its aid to provide military resources for enhancing allied

countries’ ability to counter the communist threat. From 1989 onward, instead, data show that while allocations for military cooperation remained constant in strategic settings, the US allocated increased funding for democratic assistance through the National Endowment for Democracy. In particular, the volume of the US ‘democratic assistance’ spiked in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America.12

Cox, Ikenberry and Inoguchi (2010, 743) noted that after the Cold War, “US democracy promotion filled the missionary gap left behind by the collapse of international communism”. Yet, US post-cold war democracy promotion and liberal narrative still contrasted with the broader US foreign policy. On the one hand, during the 1990s and 2000s, democracy promotion encapsulated the image the US wanted to project abroad, as the direction all countries should embrace in the free unipolar world the US dominated (Monten 2005). On the other hand, scholars have pointed out that US democratic assistance continued to be a means to pursue economic and geopolitical interests in the countries targeted (Markakis 2015) regardless of the political and social impact of the program itself. Indeed, the post-Cold War US foreign policy pursued the expansion of hegemony – Lake (2014) called it relational authority - by managing external relations to preserve an international order that furthered US economic growth (Owen and Poznasky 2014).

In this regard, when it comes specifically to the Arab World, US foreign policy shows a sharp contrast between values and interests. US liberal democracy promotion met therefore with considerable criticism for its lack of efficacy (Dalacoura 2005), its reinforcement of authoritarian rule (Bush 2015) and, most importantly, its disconnect between the rhetoric of democracy promotion and its actual implementation on the ground (Poppe 2019, 532). Some scholars have convincingly demonstrated that the liberal premises driving the definition of US democracy promotion, when applied to the Arab countries, have proved to be inconsistent with operational decisions ‘on the ground’ (Murphy and Gause 1997, Cavatorta 2010, Brownlee 2012). Academic debate has also pointed out that, despite the liberal commitment periodically made, the US reverts back to a realist approach when it comes to take decisions that could jeopardize what are considered vital interests, no matter

12 Dataset on US foreign funds are available at https://www.usaid.gov/data/dataset/49c01560-6cd7-4bbc-bfef- 7a1991867633

whether this means reinforcing authoritarian survival (Ambrosio 2014) or contributing to its return (Selim 2015, Fabbrini and Youssef 2015). This is because the genuine determination to abide by the values of a liberal foreign policy ultimately clashes with the realist priority of preventing instability and preserving strategic interests (Mearshmeier 2018) .

Researchers have tended to apply the security-dilemma reasoning indistinctly to the entire MENA region, as a fit-all framework of analysis, which is valid across time and space. US foreign policy in the MENA is, therefore, studied as a comprehensive regional strategy that shows a potent contradiction between ‘liberal narrative’ and ‘realism conduct’. It is, however, limiting to conceptualize US foreign policy towards the entire MENA as a monolithic regional approach without taking into consideration the implications it triggered in each national setting. Indeed, while the US has often framed its foreign policy through comprehensive regional approaches that have shared premises, foreign policy conduct eventually unfolds by adapting to the consequences that such approach generates in individual countries. Country specific geopolitical, economic and cultural conditions bring about distinct trajectories of interaction between the US foreign policy’s actors and national counterparts. For instance, in some settings, unwelcomed or unintended consequences deriving from a liberal approach may lead the US to take controversial decisions based on realist considerations that preserve strategic and security interests. In other countries, US foreign policy might produce more consistency between premises and operative decisions, especially when democratization and regime change do not pose a threat to the US hegemony. Thus, if US foreign policy is more country-based, it follows that each country deserves a separate analysis.

US foreign policy in the MENA following the 9/11 attack offers interesting insights for exploring empirically the theoretical reasoning we provide. As mentioned above, the general idea of the Freedom Agenda in the MENA was that democracy and political liberalization could diminish the appeal to violence, eventually attracting large segments of moderate Arabs to embrace liberal values and competitive politics. Hence, the Freedom Agenda raised a sense of hope among US NGOs and think tanks, which had been committed to democracy promotion and human rights for years (Ottaway and Carothers

2004). Yet, while the early 2000s the US liberal shift in the MENA generated hope13, unfolding events led experts to suggest that the Bush doctrine had unrealistic goals, most of which were out of reach due to the contradictions of the US strategic interests in the region, the need to contain US enemies and balancing power among allies (Jervis 2005).

Contradictions did indeed emerge, for instance, when the US managed to convince the Egyptian government to make good on liberal political reforms14. On the one hand, the 2005 elections were conducted somewhat freely and fairly, spreading a sense of hope among political activists and international observers (Dunne 2006). The then US ambassador to Egypt Francis Ricciardone commended the ‘historic legislative and constitutional agenda for political reform’ that had been presented by President Mubarak15. On the other, as Durac (2009) noted, in the aftermath of the 2005 Egyptian presidential elections, Mubarak led a crackdown on the Islamist opposition and jailed the secular presidential candidate, Ayman Nour, without international outcry for such abuses. This was because in the 2005 Egyptian elections, and later the 2006 Palestinian ones, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas respectively gained seats and political space (Craner 2006). As soon as more competitive elections allowed forces that could undermine US interests and those of its allies in the region, the US administration returned “to the stability-first imperative that had characterized US policy for decades” (Poppe 2019, 537). This wavering support for democratization and political pluralism eventually led local activists to be entirely disillusioned with the US.16

While it is true that, across the region, the liberal premises driving the Freedom Agenda crumbled when they entered in conflict with US security concerns and strategic interests, US foreign policy in Tunisia did not follow the regional trend. Unlike in Egypt, the US did not lift its pressure on the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali to deliver real liberal reforms even after

13 http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1370&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl#Change. 14 Between May and July 2005, the Egyptian Parliament passed a number of important pieces of legislation relating to political participation. 15 Riccardone : US–Egyptian relations: on track – Ambassador Francis Ricciardone’s remarks to the American Chamber of commerce in Egypt, http://cairo.usembassy.gov/ambassador/tr053106.html 16‘Gallup surveys asked Egyptians between 2005 and 2008 if they believe United States was “serious about encouraging the establishment of democratic systems of governance in the region 63 per cent disagree (Selim 2015, 94)

2005. The US continued to be vocal against arbitrary imprisonment, unfair treatment of civil society actors and absence of genuine liberalising policies.17 In an interview with the author, a Tunisian political activist jailed in 2005 recalled that the US embassy in Tunisia protected his family from further harassment while he was in jail. US officials also closely monitored his legal proceedings, trying to avoid unfair judicial treatment. Furthermore, as many prominent political activists affirm, the US embassy in Tunisia was meeting activists and political opponents on a regular basis, showing appreciation for the rise of contentious politics and the pressure they exercised against the regime.18 Most importantly, considering the uncompromising illiberal attitude of the regime, the US strengthened its ties with democratic activists in Tunisia, de facto empowering a nascent coalition of opposition forces. Indeed, the US gradually realized that in Tunisia an alternative group of actors of different ideological persuasions could rule the country without upsetting regional security if Ben Ali were ever removed.

The analysis of US foreign policy in Tunisia since the mid-2000s is theoretically relevant because it provides empirical data to argue that the contradiction between values and interests can eventually be solved if the perceived implications of promoting democracy do not raise security issues and do not jeopardize US material interests. While realism remains the dominant theoretical approach to make sense of US foreign policy in the region, the study of the US foreign policy can draw on liberalism’s theoretical tenets when the dilemma of promoting democracy while preserving stability disappears in a specific national context. This article demonstrates that in the Tunisian case, US foreign policy succeeded in solving the security-democracy dilemma, having a positive impact on the trajectory of Tunisia’s democratic transition. By offering new insights into US foreign policy’s impact on Tunisian politics, this article refutes the idea that during the 2000s the US ‘liberal’ foreign policy in Tunisia – and its emphasis democratic promotion – merely reinforced the incumbent (Durac and Cavatorta 2009, Powel 2009).

17 The US State Department released official statements to express its disagreement for activist unfair treatment. See for instance https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/64073.htm. 18 Interview with political activists in Tunisia in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

2.5 US-Tunisia relations before 9/11: alliances with autocrats to secure the US strategic interests

During Cold War, the US saw Bourguiba as an ally in preventing the Soviet Union from gaining influence in the region. Tunisia was not a priority in the regional environment, but Bourguiba was considered an asset for the advancement of the US interests. The US administrations enjoyed good political relations with Tunisia since Bourguiba fought off the leftist leader Youssef Ben Salah in the early 1960s. Bourguiba also gained praise for thwarting the rise of political Islam in the 1970s, when Rachid Ghannouchi and Abdelfattah Mourou were garnering popular support (Tamimi 2000). In short, the US appreciated Bourguiba’s ability to merge a pro-Western vision and the Tunisian identity as an Arab country, ensuring Tunisians would not be attracted to anti-Western ideologies.

Yet, in early 1980s, social and political chaos reflected Bourguiba’s declining capacity to rule the country,19 warning the US about the need to push for a new leader able to cope with the challenges ahead. When Ben Ali took over in 1987, the US-Tunisia relations regained traction. Writing in 1990 Halliday noted: “many believe that Bin Ali worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during his earlier career. The November 1987 coup in Tunis did receive US support and fit the pattern of several pre-emptive moves encouraged by the Reagan administration to channel and check popular challenges in the Third World” (Halliday 1990, 12).

With electoral democracy spreading around the world in 1980s and 1990s, Ben Ali astutely adapted its political system and turned it into a multiparty ‘electoral autocracy’. He ensured that opposition parties had seats in parliament, but he also ensured that they offered political platforms not radically different from that of the president’s Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party. Genuine opposition candidates were prevented from running and real opposition parties were banned. Despite (or precisely because) Ben Ali showing increasing authoritarianism throughout the 1990s, the US tolerated it for three main reasons. First, the US realized that under Ben Ali the Tunisian economy was

19 The popular protests that was crisscrossing the region, the so-called bread riots, erupted in Tunisia in January 1984.

performing well and indicators on national education and women rights were improving. Second, compared to other Arab regimes, Ben Ali had a more pro-Western position, mainly vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict, without, however, alienating regional allies (Sorkin 2001). Third, Tunisia was the most successful MENA country in neutralizing the potential threat of Islamism. Indeed, the civil war resulting from the Algerian botched democratization in the early 1990s – as well as the influence of Islamists in such countries as Egypt, Turkey, and Iran – led the US to ignore Ben Ali constitutional amendments to limit Tunisians’ political freedoms. Such illiberal behaviour hindered the new-born Islamic party – al Nahda. Rachid Ghannouchi, Tunisia’s most notable dissident was jailed and later ‘encouraged’ to go into exile, as his political activities were gaining influence across the country. Ben Ali managed to explain to its international allies and the US in particular that such measures were necessary to prevent Islamism from taking roots in Tunisia, which would have had considerable knock-on effects in the region.

During the Ben Ali era, opposition parties were divided into two main clusters: “loyal” opposition parties and genuine ones. The ‘loyal’ opposition, through its harmless activism and moderate criticism, helped Ben Ali to upgrade its authoritarianism and build its façade multiparty system. As Haugbølle and Cavatorta noted, “in 2004 four opposition parties - the Parti de l'Unité Populaire (PUP), the Parti social-libéral (PSL), the Democratique Unioniste (UDU) and the Greens (PVP) - sought the formation such an electoral alliance, under the banner of Rencontre Democratique (Democratic Gathering), to contest the upcoming parliamentary poll” (Haugbølle, and Cavatorta, 2012). Yet, their attempt was phagocytized by the clientelist authoritarian system. A second cluster of opposition parties held a more critical position against Ben Ali. These parties gained traction and became more vocal in 2000s. In addition to the Islamist al-Nahda, this group included the secular party CPR - Congrés pour la Republique - founded in 2001 by human right activists Moncef Marzouki (never legalised under Ben Ali); the Parti Democrate Progressiste - founded by Nejiib Chebbi in 1983 (legalised in 1988); and the leftist party Ettakatol (originally called the Forum Democratique pour le Travail et les Libertés) created by Mustapha Ben Jafaar in 1994 as a result of his disagreement with the Movement of Socialist Democrats on how to confront Ben Ali (Fuentes, 2000). These opposition parties – with the exception of Ettakatol – joined forces in the October 18 Coalition in 2005, raising the

US attention, and the international community’s, for its inclusivity and ideological heterogeneity.

2.6 The US foreign policy in Tunisia post 9/11: Maintaining Formal Relations with Ben Ali while empowering Alternative Centres of Power.

Following the major shift in post 9/11 US foreign policy, Tunisia’s Ben Ali was considered to possess all the conditions for succeeding in a process of democratization. With Tunisian moderate Islamist leaders in exile lobbying the US administration and Algeria (now a powerful US ally in the war on terror) enjoying newly found political stability after its civil war, the US administration calculated that encouraging Ben Ali to further liberalize the country would not jeopardize US security interests in the region. A number of US officials interviewed for this research confirmed that the US administration did indeed consider Tunisia the least challenging country for pioneering the new approach of the Freedom Agenda.

Despite President Bush stating in an official speech at the New Endowment for Democracy in November 2003 that Egypt should ‘show the way towards democracy in the Middle East’,20 there was considerable agreement among observers that a potential Egyptian democratization could raise the stakes on regional security to an intolerable level for the US. According to Brownlee “even the most ardent democracy promoters did not want to risk, much less seek, Mubarak’s downfall” (Bronwlee 2012, 83). Tunisia had greater chances of success to democratize for a number of reasons. First, Tunisia did not represent a source of instability in the Arab-Israel conflict (Abadi 2017). Second, Tunisia had a relatively homogenous society with strong ties to Western Europe, higher education levels compared to the regional average and very little anti-western discourse in society. Third, Tunisian political opposition, including al-Nahda, was reasonably US-friendly, compared to Egypt’s or other Arab countries.

20 “Remarks by President George W. Bush at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy,” Washington, DC, 6 November 2003; http://www.ned.org/george-w-bush/remarks-by-president- george-w-bush-at-the-20thanniversary

Against this backdrop, the attitude of the US began to change, as the Ben Ali regime showed increasing predatory and authoritarian behaviour, which generated increasing domestic dissent. The US considered Ben Ali’s rising political repression and predatory economics unacceptable for a country that had all the features to be a pioneer of political liberalization. Thus, pressure was placed on the Ben Ali regime to undertake liberal political reform, but he was hesitant to do so, no matter how cosmetic the changes might be. Push came to shove in February 2004 when Bush met Ben Ali in Washington.21 The US President urged Ben Ali strongly to undertake a number of political and economic measures to liberalize the country, suggesting a strict timeline.22 The US offered stronger economic cooperation in exchange for political reforms. In Tunisia, Ben Ali’s inner circle, however, warned the leader about the risk of releasing his hold on power. Indeed, meeting US demands would have meant losing control of the country, eventually creating room for an Islamist challenge. Ben Ali, sensing that the US were serious about the implementation of the Freedom Agenda in Tunisia, refused to release power and rejected the political offer.

Hence, the US administration raised its criticism. Tunisia suddenly came into the spotlight of many US NGOs, think tanks, advocacy networks and human rights associations with delegations regularly visiting Tunisia to monitor the situation and connecting with local activists. US media broadcast human right groups’ reports more prominently. The activity of naming and shaming intensified and the attention to Tunisian politics in Washington increased considerably. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace began to be more critical of Ben Ali’s regime. Between 2004 and 2009, it highlighted Tunisian issues in its monthly Arab Bulletin at a growing pace, with a peak in 2008.23 Interestingly, the analysis of the Bulletins shows that, unlike other countries’ reports, which occasionally noted some improvements, reports on Tunisia underlined steady deterioration and were consistently negative. A number of US think tanks and NGOs – such as the American Enterprise Initiative24, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Republican Institute

21For more information on the meeting : https://www.democracynow.org/2004/2/18/human_rights_groups_call_on_bush 22 Interview with Radwan Masmoudi, 2018. 23 On the higher attention of the Arab Bulletin about Tunisia: http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1345&prog=zgp&proj=zdrl#tunisia 24 For more information on the Neila Charchour’s participation at the American Enterprise Institute conference see :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FMlZ3XYRLY

(IRI) and Freedom House (FH) – began inviting Tunisian opposition members to Washington. Author’s interviews with Tunisian political activists confirm that between 2004 and 2010 these US institutes regularly invited them to give speeches in the US and provided support for their struggle.25

Starting in 2004, US diplomats with a profound knowledge of the Tunisian political situation advised the US administration to increase interactions with political and civil society activists.26 In this respect, connecting political and civil society activists to Washington was part of the MEPI regional agenda of democratic promotion. The idea was that Arab opposition activists looking for external aid would have more opportunities to share their struggle internationally, eventually getting in contact with the administration’s officials and creating a community of activists and reform entrepreneurs across the region. The connection between Tunisian political activists and the US, however, succeeded for two main reasons. First, an influential community of Tunisians abroad worked to convince members of the US establishment that the person responsible for the worsening situation in Tunisia was Ben Ali, along with his immediate entourage. Tunisians abroad conveyed that credible alternative groups of different ideological persuasions could be in fact ready to rule the country without upsetting regional security. Second, and most importantly, there was a specific attempt to change the US outlook on the Islamist party al-Nahda. The monthly newsletter Tunisia’s new Islam published in Washington since the early 2000s consistently claimed that al-Nahda was moderate, democratic and respectful of human rights. In this respect, the Centre for Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), a US-based NGO, increased its lobbying activities in the US Congress, campaigned against Ben Ali and met US officials.

This lobbying activity gained traction in 2004 when CSID launched a special program on Tunisia, organizing a number of activities in the US and in Tunisia in partnership with the Arab Institute of Human Rights and with the support of National Endowment for

The author also held an interview with Neila Charchour, 2017. See also the US reaction to Neila Charchour harassement : https://20012009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/64073.htm?fbclid=IwAR3RpAKj16Zrj_ytLh2S9nZio_C0rYr7qo zpYy848BlIzomPmqmu20MBEhg 25 Interview with Nejiib Chebbi, 2019. 26 Interview with William Lawrence, 2018.

Democracy (NED). In an interview with the author, Radwan Masmoudi, head of CSID and a US-Tunisian citizen very close to al-Nahda (he would become an official member of the party in 2013), said that he regularly connected Tunisian opponents with his NGOs’ network in Washington and he also organized meetings at his Tunisian house between US officials, al-Nahda party cadres and representatives of other parties27. In his words: “I was aware of the risk of being jailed and honestly I had even concern for my life, but my double citizenship gave me some sort of protection in Tunisia.”

The ability of the Tunisian Islamist lobby to influence the US administration is crucial and noteworthy. Indeed, as Steven Cook noted, while al-Nahda’s leaders (Ghannouchi visited the US once before the revolution) managed to convince sceptical Americans that consensus politics and compromise were integral values of the party, the lobbing activity that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood carried out in Washington did not eliminate the scepticism about the “hierarchical structure of the organization that demanded obedience to its leadership” (Cook 2017, 124). Other Islamist groups across the MENA region such as Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah were considered anti-American, thereby making their entrance into the political fray a direct threat to US interests in the region.

In addition, some US officials working on Tunisia confirmed the value of this nascent crosscutting political alternative. Ambassador William Hudson also briefed the US administration in 2004 by saying, “most Tunisians fear radical Islam and are also looking for ways to promote a marriage between Islamic values and a modern, moderate state”.28 Unlike political activists in other MENA countries, Tunisian opponents saw that the fault lines between Ben Ali and Bush opened the door to real opportunities for change.29 A number of Tunisian activists interviewed for this research backs up this argument. For instance, a Tunisian political activist stated that the fact that “the US was no longer fully aligned with Ben Ali slowly but gradually penetrated into the minds of the Tunisian opposition”.30

27 Interview with Radwan Masmoudi, 2018 28 Letter from Ambassador William Hudson to State Department, Department of State, Case No. F-2014- 04764 Doc No. C06004794. 29 This statement is backed through interviews with prominent activists of Tunisia pre-revolutionary time. 30 Interview with a Tunisian political activist, 2018

Heterogeneous segments of Tunisian activists began meeting to find some sort of unity against the regime (Stephan and Linz 2013). This became overtly clear to the US – and the international community more broadly – with the setting up of October 18 Coalition in 2005. A protest against the unfair and illegal imprisonment of the lawyer Mohammed Abbou brought together members of different political groups, ranging from the left to the Islamists. The strike gained the attention of the US diplomatic network in Tunisia. Indeed, the US embassy in Tunisia repeatedly sent an officer to monitor the situation at the bar association where the October Movement leaders were on strike. According to William Lawrence, the former head of the Tunisia’s desk at the US State Department, “October 18 Coalition protest was a critical moment that impacted US foreign policy in Tunisia. We realised there was a nascent crosscutting and heterogenous coalition of opposition, including leftist, secular and Islamists.”31

The protest highlighted the broadening agreement and unity of purpose amongst the wide spectrum of Tunisian opposition forces, ultimately demonstrating that a broad democratic coalition of parties of diverse ideological persuasions existed and, crucially, it included the Islamist party al-Nahda.32 Indeed, October 18 Coalition included 8 “founding” political figures representing a wide ideological spectrum – Néjib Chebbi, Hamma Hammami, Ayachi Hammam Mohamed Nouri, Ayachi Hammami, Mokhtar Yahyaoui and Lutfi Hajji and the al-Nadha partisan and activist Samir Dilou. Others al-Nadha figures joined the Coalition later such as Mohammed Nouri, Aly Larayedh and Zied Doulatli.

In other MENA countries, opposition coalitions had also emerged in the 2000s. In Egypt, for instance, the Kefaya and April 6 coalition included leaders with different ideologies, but as a 2005 International Crisis Group’s report noted, these groups did not possess a clear strategy for change.33 Most importantly, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood proved to be an unreliable ally within these coalitions. As Stacher noted, ‘distrust and tensions were on display during the 2005 mobilizations against Mubarak’ (Stacher 2020, 62).

31 Author’s interview with William Lawrence, Washington 2018. 32 This statement is issued by interviews with US NGOs officials and US diplomats. 32 Néjib Chebbi is a prominent figure of the Tunisian opposition movement in 1983. 33 International Crisis Group, “Reforming Egypt.” https://d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/46-reforming-egypt- in-search-of-a-strategy.pdf

The Tunisia 18 October Coalition instead, showed greater unity among opposition leaders who set their goals in a published manifesto.34 This captured the attention of the US embassy in Tunisia. During interviews with the author, members of October 18 Coalition stated that between October 2005 and January 2006 international pressure and the support of foreign embassies prevented Ben Ali from shutting down the Coalition35, which continued the protest as ‘the Forum of 18 October’ until 2009. During this time, a number of hunger strikes were organized to protest against the regime’s repression. Political activists told the author that they felt strong US support for their cause. Nejiib Chebbi, for instance, stated that in 2006 and 2007 the US Ambassador in Tunisia, Robert Godec, “showed a frank and active support for the democratic opposition protests”. According to Chebbi, Godec made numerous official visits during a second hunger strike in 2007, visibly demonstrating empathy and support for the activists’ struggle. Interestingly, in an interview with the Financial Times held in the immediate aftermaths of Ben Ali’s departure in January 2011, al-Nahda’s leader Rachid Ghannouchi argued that October 18 Coalition was not simply “a short-term political coalition, but a social project for society”.36

In late 2005, the dialogue between the US administration and Tunisia opposition also increased because MEPI provided Freedom House (FH) with a large grant to launch projects in the Arab World. The FH programs focused on empowering the upcoming generation of political leaders and civil society activists in authoritarian settings, with the bulk of the activities consisting of training in homeland countries, in Washington and in other Western countries. According to a Freedom House official, a number of US-allied regimes in the MENA perceived Freedom House’s activities as part of the rhetorical message on encouraging Arab democracy and therefore believed they did not represent a genuine threat to their hold on power.37

In contrast, Ben Ali vocally disagreed with the FH programs. Connections between US officials and Tunisian activists irritated the Ben Ali’s regime, because some in the US Department were ‘discovering’ that Islamist leaders were suitable – and ready – to form a

34 "Collectif du 18 Octobre_version complete.pdf". Google Docs. Retrieved 2017-05-01. 35 Interviews with Tunisian political activists. 36 Financial Times, Interview Trascript: Rachid Ghannouchi, 18 January 2011 : https://www.ft.com/content/24d710a6-22ee-11e0-ad0b-00144feab49a 37 Interview with Robert Herman, Freedom House, 2018

democratic coalition with secular elites. For instance, Samir Dilou, a political activist and a member of the Islamist al-Nahda party, was a regional leader of the FH-sponsored New Generation program. He was invited twice to the US between 2006 and 2009, where he established contacts with senior policy makers and officials in the US State Department. Samir Dilou stated that there was a FH special sub-program – ‘Blue Umbrella’ – within which activists were coupled with a senior US congressman who had a supervision role for the duration of the program. In his words: “this gave participants the feeling of being protected by authoritative US leaders, facilitated the mobility in and out of the country and enhanced connections between political activists”38.

Ben Ali tried to thwart these interactions. Interviews with former and current officials at FH confirmed that as the Tunisian ambassador to Washington reported to Tunisian authorities the names of the participants to the Freedom House program, and more in general those Tunisian who were doing advocacy with US NGOs, it became a challenge to select young activists and leaders in Tunisia by employing normal recruitment procedures. In an interview with the author, Amy Hawthorne said:

I was not working with Freedom House, but I knew from my colleagues in DC that the Tunisian embassy was deeply upset. I was working at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where I was founding Editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin. When we became more critical vis-à-vis Tunisia, I remember a few calls from the Tunisian embassy in the US, asking why we were doing this to our allies in Tunisia.

Yet, a number of local NGOs and human rights groups such as The Arab Institute of Human Rights and the Kawakibi Center of Democratic Transition helped the US to select bloggers and activists. A former FH officer recalled that its group managed to organize conferences and workshops in Tunisia with the Arab Institute of Human Rights and used this opportunity to informally select suitable participants. The program included lawyers, bloggers, youth activists, journalists and university students, who were selected because of

38 Interview with a Tunisian political activist.

their activism and profile within their social spheres39. Once selected, Tunisian participants in the US-sponsored activities enjoyed special protection.

The US embassy in Tunisia, for its part, supported participants by granting visas and solving bureaucratic problems. During interviews, US officials recalled that the then US ambassadors in Tunisia, William Hudson (2003–2006) and Robert J. Godec (2006–2009), provided protection for Tunisian activists, who would have otherwise been jailed or harassed. In this respect, the US administration, through the embassy, informed political activists that their safety was proportional to the closeness they enjoyed with the US embassy.40 Tunisian political activists confirmed that United States embassy in Tunisia – and its network – was supportive and helped them bypassing the constraints to travel in and out of Tunisia without ending up in prison. An activist in pre-revolutionary Tunisia admitted that she and some other political activists often informally met US officials at the US embassy in Tunis. She claimed that the “US embassy never said overtly that the US would welcome Ben Ali and his family’s departure, but did indirectly let activists understand this was the wish of the administration”.

While US support for the Tunisia opposition was associated with the scenario of a potential Ben Ali’s departure from power, “democracy promotion in Egypt still meant nudging Mubarak to broaden participation, without ‘ending tyranny’ in Egypt” (Brownlee 2012, 133). This became clear after the 2005 Egyptian elections and especially after the 2006 Palestinian elections. Indeed, as soon as the 2006 Palestinian elections – deemed peaceful and competitive by international election observers – saw Hamas winning a majority of seats in parliament, any remaining hope for the Freedom Agenda to bring about democratic change in Egypt crumbled. With Iraq and the Palestinian issue dominating US foreign policy concerns in the MENA, the years between 2006 and 2008 saw Washington using “conditionality in foreign aid with Egypt not to promote democracy, but to enhance security inside Israel and advance the US interests” (Brownlee 2012, 99). Condoleeza Rice who had postponed her 2005 visit to Egypt to protest again Nour’s unfair imprisonment, toned down her criticism during later visits. Likewise, the US ambassador in Egypt Francis Ricciardone

39 Interview with Sameer Jarriah, Freedom House officer involved in the Young Leaders Program, 2018. 40 Interviews with William Lawrence and Gordon Gray, 2019

emphasized once more in 2006 that pushing against Mubarak could unleash dangerous and unpredictable consequences. As soon as Hamas was ‘isolated’, the US dropped all forms of conditionality on aid to Egypt, and economic cooperation regained momentum, regardless of Mubarak’s human rights abuses.

2.7 ‘Ben Ali, What Happens Next?’ Worsening Relations Between 2008 and the Revolution

When the democratic candidate Barack Obama won the 2008 US Presidential elections, Egyptians grew hopeful for a shift in US foreign policy towards the Mubarak regime, but their expectations were not fulfilled. In 2009 and 2010 the US administration exerted very limited pressure on Mubarak (Poppe 2019, 8). As Stacher (2020, 162) noted, “before departing for Cairo in June 2009, Obama said that he did not regard Mubarak as an authoritarian leader”. Likewise, in an interview with BBC, Obama stated, “I tend not to use labels for folks. I haven’t met him. I’ve spoken to him on the phone. He has been a stalwart ally in many respects, to the United States.”41 According to Brownlee (2012, 132), when Obama visited Mubarak in Cairo in the summer of 2009, he “healed wounded egos and re- established some of the trust that had eroded during Bush’s tenure”.

In contrast, the relation between the US and Ben Ali further deteriorated between 2008 and 2010 and the US presidency’s transition between Bush and Obama did not have any impact on US negative attitudes towards Ben Ali. According to many observers, the visit of the secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in Tunisia in December 2008 aimed at pressuring Ben Ali to consider a way out, meaning either holding full competitive elections or giving up power.42 Yet, Ben Ali did not budge and in July 2009, the US ambassador Godec warned the US State Department that there was no hope of free and fair presidential elections to be held later in the year.43 The Wikileaks papers gave a final push in breaking down the US-

41Obama Interview: the trascript, 2 June 2009 http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/news/2009/06/090602_obama_transcript.shtml 42 Human rights watch on Condoleeza Rise visit https://www.refworld.org/docid/48ce1d9a1d.html 43 WikiLeaks Cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, Tunisia - a US foreign policy conundrum’. https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/217138

Ben Ali friendly relation, showing that the US administration was already discussing possible scenarios of Ben Ali’s demise. The communication between the then US ambassador in Tunisia Godec and the Head of the US Near East Bureau at the State Department portrayed a worsening US outlook of the Tunisian internal situation: “by many measures, Tunisia should be a close US ally. But it is not.”44 US relations with Tunisia reached their lowest level then, although there was still a ‘facade friendship’ between the two countries.

In an interview with the author, Ambassador Gordon Gray, who took up his post in Tunisia in late 2009, said that following the 2009 Ben Ali landslide re-election as President, he strongly recommended the State Department abstain from any kind of routine congratulatory message from the US President. Washington followed his recommendation. The episode of the missing congratulatory message might seem superficially irrelevant but it had two crucial implications. First, it delivered a strong message to the Tunisian government that the US was not pleased with the way in which elections were conducted. Tunisia reacted by withdrawing its ambassador from the US. Second, it was a clear message to civil society and political opponents. As ambassador Gordon Gray (2012, 32) wrote: “Most important was not the government’s reaction, but the reaction of Tunisian civil society. Civil society knew that we didn’t send a congratulatory message; they derived some satisfaction and some sense of encouragement and support”.

In interviews with the author, civil and political opposition leaders stated that these signals made them realize that the US supported their cause. Ben Ali, for his part, grew frustrated with the rise of US support for the political opposition and for the national economic elites now largely victims of the regime’s economic predatory behaviour. Thus, the regime tightened the control on Tunisians who interacted with US officials. The US diplomatic network in Tunisia was therefore upset, as the operational capacity of the US in Tunisia shrank significantly during 2009 and 2010.45

44 Idem. 45 Interview with Gordon Gray, former US ambassador in Tunisia. For more information see, Gordon Gray ‘Tunisia and the Start of the Arab Spring’.

In any case, the analysis of the e-mail exchanges between US diplomats in Tunisia and the US administration officials during the last days of the revolution shows that the US embassy and the diplomats had already secured strong connections with pro-American Tunisian officials and top officials in the army. US foreign policy experts on Tunisia were aware that a coalition of pro-American, Western-educated and moderate transitional elites could guarantee a smooth transition away from authoritarianism that did not endanger the US interests in the region. Some leaders of the opposition were friends of US ambassadors or US officials, while most of the opposition ranging from left to the moderate Islamist was considered reliable and collaborative. Jeffrey Feltman, the Head of the US Near-East Bureau in 2010, who was the first to brief the State Department about the 2010 upheaval, stated that he was in contact with a large segment of the secular opposition, including his ‘personal friend Nejiib Chebbi’.46

In the immediate aftermath of Ben Ali’s departure, on January 15th 2011, Jeffrey Feltman reported a long phone conversation with an individual, who suggested that “we should encourage the Tunisian officials like FM Morjane (“a good guy”) to reach out to Tunisia’s moderate opposition figures and bring them in”. Feltman, along with other US diplomats, believed that time had come for the US administration to express support openly, as “it is important that the interim government gets off to a solid start, acting quickly to restore calm and security in the streets”.47 In another message, Jacob Sullivan, then Deputy Chief of Staff to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, echoed Feltman’s words: “We have an interest in opening up political space. We’re working with the Embassy in Tunis on ideas. This is a real opportunity.”48 Few days after the regime’s demise, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton released a statement that addressed the transitional government, making clear that the US hoped “the interim government takes this opportunity to chart a course for their country that provides for the inclusion of all peaceful and democratic forces in the political process, through open and fair elections, and by investigating the abuses of the past.”49

46 U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No.C05778031. 47 U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No.C05785998. 48 U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No.C05778000. 49 Clinton, “Remarks” quoted in Cook, False Down , 21-22

During the Tunisian revolution, the US empowered Tunisian moderate opposition, but during the Egyptian uprising the US administration initially aligned with Mubarak. In a public statement Hillary Clinton did not rescind support for Mubarak: “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”50 Later, amid escalating protests, the US administration tried to negotiate an orderly transition to one of Mubarak’s cronies. Omar Suleiman, indeed, would have granted a peaceful and smooth transition, thereby securing US interest in the country and reassure regional allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, who supported Mubarak.

The different approach on how to respond to the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions can be seen in the language US officials employed. In his State of the Union address the night of January 25, Obama referred to Ben Ali as a ‘dictator’, but Vice President Joe Biden later baulked at applying the same label to Mubarak.51 Indeed, the top national security figures, such as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, argued against abandoning the Egyptian regime (Brownlee 2012, 162). In this regard, when Mubarak left the country, reservations and worry loomed large within the US administration because of the national, regional and international implications of such a power shift. The US administration held a more wavering foreign policy approach to the Egyptian transitional process, being supportive of al-Sisi following the 2013 military coup (Fabbrini and Yossef 2015).

The US foreign policy conduct in post-revolutionary Tunisia was instead consistent with the liberal approach it had held during the latter years of Ben Ali’s regime. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, US diplomats and US NGOs organized a focus group with all political forces running in 2011 elections, including the Islamists, reiterating that the US would support competitive politics and the Tunisian democratic transition technically and financially. US NGOs officials told to the author that the successful and

50 “US Urges Restraint in Egypt, Says Government Stable,” Reuters, January 25, 2011, http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE70O0 51 Biden: Mubarak Is Not a Dictator, but People Have a Right to Protest,” PBS Newshour, January 27, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june11/biden_01–27.html

effective partnership they had with the Tunisian transitional elites stemmed from personal knowledge and the mutual trust they had built before the revolution.52

Most importantly, US foreign policy decisions in the topical moments of the Tunisian revolution employed a liberal approach encouraging democratic solutions, including during volatile times in 2012 and 2013.53 For instance, amid mounting pressure against the democratically elected ruling coalition led by al-Nahda, the US embassy in Tunisia encouraged secular and progressive leaders to negotiate a political solution with Islamists counterparts. Throughout the transitional period, the US showed steady support for liberal democracy and competitive politics, which decisively contributed to enhancing the transitional elite’s ability to manage the challenges of democratization.

2.8 Conclusion

This research sheds new light on the pre-revolutionary relations between the US and Tunisia, suggesting that transnational interactions and liberal influences contributed to empowering Tunisian opposition activists and encouraged the nascent coalition of political opposition. The growth of connections between opposition activists and the US administration strengthened the belief within the US diplomatic network that a moderate and democratic multiparty alternative to replace Ben Ali existed, including, crucially, the Islamists. The latter could thus be part of the democratic game, without upsetting regional security or threatening US interests. When the Bush administration launched the Freedom Agenda, Ben Ali refused to undertake democratic reforms. The US, hence, progressively downgraded its alliance with Ben Ali. Between 2004 and the revolution, the US opened opportunities to connect political opponents to the State Department and the US embassy in Tunisia, while maintaining formal relations with Ben Ali.

52 Interview with IRI and NDI officials 53 This includes the 2012 attack to the US embassy in Tunis.

Unlike in other MENA countries where the US strategic “realist” considerations – security concerns and economic interests – neutralized the impact of the US Freedom Agenda, in the Tunisian case the US gradually realized that its liberal approach in foreign policy did not jeopardize US strategic interests. In this respect, the emergence of a large, US-friendly, reliable and pro-democracy opposition in Tunisia is key to understand the durable and consistent US support for democratization in the country. From a theoretical point of view, US foreign policy towards Tunisia after 9/11 demonstrates that under specific conditions the disconnect between liberal premises and strategic realism in conducting foreign policy on the ground can be reduced, and US liberal democracy assistance can function. Specifically, when the US realizes that a country’s democratization does not put its strategic interests in jeopardy, foreign policy becomes more consistent with its liberal rhetorical underpinnings and can contribute to enhancing democratization. In contrast, when liberal foreign policy might generate democratic outcomes that undermine the US core interests, the US withdraws its democratic assistance and opts for realist choices. The case of the US foreign policy towards Egypt in the 2000s is particularly instructive in this sense.

The empirical findings highlight a second aspect for refining the literature on US democracy promotion in authoritarian settings. Indeed, this study shows that the connections and interactions between US officials and the Tunisian opposition, along with key public statements from the US State Department, helped Tunisians understand that the US was no longer fully backing the Ben Ali regime. The US conveyed to the opposition its disagreement with the way Ben Ali was ruling the country, eventually empowering a nascent opposition coalition. The US embassy protected political activists who were travelling in and out Tunisia and the US diplomats interacted with segments of political opposition, including al-Nahda. In this respect, the strategy the US carried out in Tunisia complies with Carothers’s idea that “in dominant-power systems, democracy promoters should devote significant attention to the challenge of helping to encourage the growth of alternative centres of power” (Carother 2002, 19). By encouraging political activists to create a structured coalition of opposition, securing for them a platform of debate and interaction, foreign democracy assistance proved to be more successful when compared

with programs that finance the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations, which are often domesticated by the regime.

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Chapter 3. Supporting political debate while building patterns of trust: the role of the German political foundations in Tunisia (1989 – 2017)

102

3.1 Résumé

Cet article met l’accent sur un aspect spécifique du contexte international entourant la transition démocratique tunisienne: celui de l’aide apportée par les fondations politiques allemandes en Tunisie. Cette étude soutient que le chemin du pays vers la démocratie n’a pas été une affaire exclusivement nationale, mais a également été le produit de l’engagement à long terme d’acteurs internationaux et de l’interaction de ces acteurs avec les groupes nationaux. S’appuyant sur des entretiens semi-structurés et sur une triangulation de sdonnées, l’article montre que, depuis la fin des années 1980, quatre fondations politiques allemandes opérant en Tunisie ont créé des plates-formes de ‘débat politique’. Ces plateformes peuvent être vues comme des alternatives au régime, sans qu’elles n’aient nécessairement été subversives. L’article postule que les fondations politiques allemandes ont d’abord aidé le régime de Ben Ali dans sa ‘libéralisation de façade’, tandis qu’à long terme leurs activités ont eu des conséquences imprévues qui ont en partie miné son autoritarisme. L’article souligne enfin que leur présence de longue date sur le terrain a leur permis de développer des relations de confiance avec et entre les groupes politiques et civils, améliorant au final leur capacité d’action au lendemain de la révolution.

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3.2 Abstract

This article focuses on a specific aspect of the international context surrounding the Tunisian transition to democracy. Through the case of the German political foundations in Tunisia, this study argues that the country’s journey to democracy has not been an exclusively domestic affair, but has also been the product of the long-term engagement of international actors and their interplay with domestic groups. Building on evidence from semi-structured interviews and data triangulation the article shows that since the late 1980s four German political foundations operating in Tunisia created platforms for ‘political debate’ – alternative to the regime’s but not necessarily subversive – and encouraged political training. The article posits that initially the German political foundations helped Ben Ali’s regime in the making of a ‘façade liberalisation’, while in the long run their activities generated unintended consequences that in part undermined its ‘authoritarianism upgraded’. The article finally points out that their longstanding presence on the ground allowed the German political foundations to develop patterns of trust with and between political and civil groups, ultimately improving the capacity of their action in the role they are playing in the aftermath of the revolution.

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3.3 Introduction

The Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011 seemed to open the door to a new wave of democratisation. The enthusiasm for the democratising momentum in the MENA region – the Middle East and North Africa – lasted a very short time and a return to authoritarianism prevails in some countries, while others have fallen into the chaos of civil wars. With the revolutionary momentum waning or having been countered across the region, only Tunisia has achieved a transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one, therefore falling into the spotlight of scholarly debate about democratisation. Yet Tunisia’s transition to democracy has hitherto been explained mainly through domestic variables. Regarding pre- revolutionary dynamics, scholars focused on the internal conditions behind the fall of the Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali (Schraeder and Redissi 2001, Cavatorta and Haugbølle 2012, Gobe 2010). These studies highlight a level of social and political maturity across Tunisia favourable to political change in a context of mounting discrepancies between the need for socio-economic reforms and the lack of responsiveness of Ben Ali’s authoritarianism. His party – Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD) – eventually lost consensus, facing the rise of internal discontent vis-à-vis the restrictions authoritarianism imposed (Wolf 2018). The post-revolutionary phase of Tunisia’s transition to democracy has also predominantly offered domestic explanations. Some have argued that the process of reconciliation between Islamists and secularists was crucial in enhancing the transition (Stepan 2012, Netterstrøm 2015, McCarthy 2015, Boubekeur 2018, Marzo 2019). Others highlighted the role of civil society both as the watchdog of the democratic game and as the most prominent actor leading to the new Constitution (Murphy 2013, Martin 2015).

The academic debate largely neglects the influence of the international dimension of Tunisia’s democratisation, although two studies dealing with this have appeared recently. Hill’s comparative research on democratisation in the Maghreb region applies the Levistky and Way model (2010) of global linkages to make sense of the different political outcomes across the region (Hill 2016). His study, however, highlights mostly economic linkages and does not take into account geopolitical and cultural variables, offering limited original evidence to back the theoretical reasoning. The second study collects several contributions

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that shed light on patterns of interaction between global actors and domestic groups (Abderrahim et al. 2017). This book has two main shortcomings. First it deals exclusively with the dynamics after the revolution and does not consider the importance of the international context in the years leading up to it. Second, most of the book’s chapters are short on theory and the resulting knowledge is not systematised.

The focus on domestic variables of the Tunisian democratisation limits our understanding of the transitional process. Explaining Tunisia’s transition to democracy exclusively through a process that links rising internal discontent, the leader’s overthrow and successful bargaining among domestic actors fails to provide exhaustive knowledge about the dynamics of transitional processes in the age of globalisation and interconnectedness. Thus, it would be erroneous to explain processes of regime change without considering international influences and their interplay with domestic processes. International actors and their influences usually penetrate countries long before regimes change, in certain cases influencing domestic political, institutional and social processes (Pridham 1991). These include state actors with their geopolitical interests (Cavatorta 2004), transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1999), ideological and religious movements (Haynes 2001) and international NGOs. Tunisia’s democratisation, then, needs complementary explanations that highlight how international groups have interacted with Tunisian actors. This article is a first attempt to demonstrate that Tunisia’s journey to democracy has not been an exclusively domestic game, but has included the engagement of international actors who contributed to enhancing the process with their action.

There are, however, three caveats that have to be taken into account before proceeding with the theoretical underpinnings of the analysis. First, offering a complete investigation of the international context surrounding Tunisia’s democratisation process is beyond the scope of this article. Second, though the idea driving this research is to investigate the international dimension surrounding Tunisia’s democratisation, it does not intend to diminish the significance of the domestic variables. It rather attempts to illustrate how the investigation of transnational dynamics complements the understanding of Tunisia’s transitional process. Third, the article does not suggest that international actors – and in the specific case of the German political foundations – have imposed their Western ideas about democracy and

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reforms. The contention here is that they have contributed to bolstering the ‘political interactions’ among different national actors. Therefore, the hypothesis driving this article is that the German political foundations54 in Tunisia under Ben Ali promoted – and secured – platforms of political debate for segments of civil and political society. These debates – alternative to the regime propaganda but not necessarily subversive – bolstered the critical skills of attendees and, over time, built patterns of trust among them and with the foundations. Particularly during the 2000s, the German political foundations offered ‘oases’ of political debate where in fact segments, however small, of Tunisian society engaged in informal talks about policy implementation, political reforms and the rule of law. These interactions strengthened interpersonal trust among individuals who would have otherwise lacked opportunities to share alternative ideas and align their sources of political criticism. In this regard, working in Tunisia without alienating the Ben Ali regime, the German political foundations encapsulated the paradoxical nature of upgrading authoritarianism (Heydemann 2007). The article suggests that in the short run their commitment in Tunisia helped the regime in its process of ‘façade liberalisation’ (Sadiki 2002), while in the long run it generated unintended consequences for Ben Ali’s ‘upgraded authoritarianism’. Such consequences have to be taken into account when it comes to explaining the rise of contentious politics or internal discontent through the back door. Moreover, decades of uninterrupted presence on the ground have built smooth and strong patterns of trust, paving the way for the immediate cooperative ties between the German political foundations and members of civil and political society that led the transitional phase. Such trust ultimately facilitated interactions, agenda-setting and the widening of partner networks, which is considerable if compared with other offices throughout the region.

In order to validate this argument, the author conducted a number of semi-structured interviews in Tunisia with former and current directors of the German political foundations. These data have been validated through triangulation drawing on additional rounds of

54 The German political foundations establiehd on the Tunisian soil before the revolution are: the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung established in Tunisia since 1982 (KAS), which is associated with Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU); the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), established in Tunisia since 1970, which is associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD); the Friedrich Neumann Stiftung, established in Tunisia since 1964 which is associated with the Free Democratic Party, FDP; the Hanns Seidel Foundations, established in Tunisia since 1989, which is associated with the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU).

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interviews with a number of members from the foundations’ domestic partners, the majority of whom wish to remain anonymous. The author also had access to documents and source material from the foundations’ libraries and web archives.

3.4 The International Dimension of Democratisation

With the ‘third wave’ (Huntington 1991) of democratisation occurring around the world since the mid-1970s, it is somewhat surprising that the significance of the international dimension of processes of regime change still remains marginal in academia, aside from cases of imposition of democracy through military invasion (Whitehead 2009). Excluding Tovias’s study on Spain (1984) and. Opello Jr’s work on Portugal (1991), scholarly debates in the 1980s argued consistently that regime change had a primarily domestic dimension. During the 1990s some scholars of democratisation gradually changed their approach and considered international variables as having a facilitating impact in transitions or playing a prominent role in setting them off (Whitehead 1996). In his seminal book Huntington (1991) emphasises that global trends and the political interests of international players were capable of triggering domestic outcomes in third countries. Huntington’s study, however, referred only to the first step of democratisation – liberalisation – and Shin (1994) adopted Huntington’s ideas, assuming that international variables were the starting point to approach transitions. Against this backdrop, Pridham (1994) interestingly proposed the concept of systemic penetration, even arguing that instability during the transition process may lead domestic actors to seek aid beyond the country’s borders.

Whitehead’s notions of ‘democracy by imposition, intimidation and invasion’ (1996) described some of the ways in which the US promoted democracy in Latin and Central America, giving life to a parallel debate on the concept of the promotion of democracy and the use of force (Beetham 2009). Whitehead also attempted to systematise this knowledge by sketching three theoretical typologies to investigate the international dimension of democracy – consent, control and contagion. Whitehead’s work was met with a degree of scepticism. Schmitter (1996), for instance, criticised Whitehead’s idea that global factors

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have, singularly, the capacity to affect domestic processes, reasserting his belief in a secondary role of the international dimension. Schmitter saw ‘conditionality’ as at best suggesting that foreign states, international organisations and international democratic promoters can provide democratising states “incentives for tackling certain issues first – say, holding elections before removing price controls or privatising state holdings – the external conditioners could help to ensure a more orderly transition” (Schmitter 1996, 33). It is worth highlighting that in the late 1990s the debate on the international dimension had acquired a more authoritative profile. However, the main shortcoming of these studies was the absence of a sound and generalizable model finally able to upgrade the debate to an independent subfield of study at the crossroads of international relations and comparative politics (Haynes 2001).

Against this backdrop, Yilmaz’s study (2002) was a turning point in thinking about the ways in which the international dimension affected processes of regime change. He underlined the necessity of drawing theories and concepts from the literature on International Relations to have a more complete picture of the role of the international dimension in democratic transitions. Following Yilmaz, a few studies investigated the international contexts of a number of transitions to democracy (Haynes 2003, Cavatorta 2005 and 2009).

Levitsky and Way (2010) elaborated a model to explain different political outcomes among these regimes, illustrating why some of them democratise, others experienced political turnover without democratisation or remained authoritarian. They demonstrated that the end of the Cold War caused a sharp drop in international tolerance vis-à-vis authoritarian regimes and their undemocratic practices. Accordingly, many regimes created formal institutions to dissimulate genuine democratisation, eventually transforming into what Levitsky and Way called ‘competitive authoritarianism’. By introducing two concepts – Western leverage and linkage to the West – they believe that leverage increases the cost of authoritarian abuses through economic sanctions threatening to rule countries out of international agreements, but it has a low real effect if it is not complemented by linkage to the West. Levitsky and Way’s study did not include the Arab World, as its political dynamics deviate from the model. Yet, according to Sadiki (2009, 152), “states in the AME

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(Arab Middle East) have not been immured from international contexts that, as Whitehead and Schmitter argue, can serve to promote, but sometimes demote, democratization”. Sadiki’s study is important in two respects. First it brings political change in the Arab World into the debate about the international dimension of democratisation arguing that “the old assumption that democratization is a domestic affair par excellence no longer holds true” (Sadiki 2009, 147). Second, Sadiki’s study is an attempt to bridge the debate’s international dimension of democratisation with the literature on democratic promotion in the Arab World.

Over the last decade, from about 2009 to 2018, the debate on the international dimension of democratisation has not progressed, although processes of regime change still occur around the world, while the debate on the international promotion of democracy produced a rich literature. The two debates seem to proceed separately, especially when it comes to investigating the Arab World. Indeed, it is widely held that the international promotion of democracy in the MENA region does not generate the effect it had in other regions. Some scholars suggest that global actors promoting democracy fostered the opposite outcome, de facto strengthening authoritarian regimes’ resilience (Durac and Cavatorta 2009), avoiding at best direct confrontation with regimes when not actually supporting them (Brownlee 2012). Others emphasise the contradictory cooperation with authoritarian regimes on human rights (Risse and Babayan 2015, Bush 2015, Von Hullen 2015). Sadiki notes that in certain cases external actors’ interference in Arab affairs inhibits rather than fosters democracy.

The democracy promotion literature on the region is vast and scholars largely considered promoting democracy to be ineffective and contradictory. Academic debate, however, lacks categorisation about the multifaceted forms of democratic promotion and their distinct results within the specific case of democratic transition. A shortcoming of Sadiki’s study (2009), for instance, is that he does not focus on other – less visible – methods of international promotion of democracy. In this regard, L. M. Abbott (2018, 180) argued that ‘how international democracy promotion relates to democratization outcomes appears to be assumed rather than explicitly grounded in any conceptual literature’. Abbott argues that a major pitfall in the study of democracy promotion hinges on scholars assuming rather than

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measuring and categorising the outcomes of the international promotion of democracy on the ground.

This research agrees with Abbott’s assumption and suggests that by looking only at the short-term and direct outcomes of democracy promotion scholars may neglect the incidental effects of long-term interactions between specific international democratic promoters and domestic groups. In this regard new studies have to unveil different strategies taken by international actors – be they state or non-state – across the region. In short, the study of the international promotion of democracy should be more complementary to the study on the international dimension of democracy, as they are intertwined research debates. Therefore, research focusing on the international dimension of democratic transitions has to highlight those interactions between international and domestic actors that help local groups in successfully accomplishing the process.

Tunisia is a relevant case to validate the argument that international democratic promoters may positively foster domestic processes that are conducive to democratisation and enhance interaction between local actors. In this respect, analysing the 2011 democratisation processes in North Africa, Stepan and Linz (2013) suggested that, unlike Egypt, Tunisia developed a less creative civil society but a more political one. They argued that for a transition to democracy to succeed, a country needs more than a civil society; it needs a politically aware society, composed of “activists who can not only rally resistance to dictatorship, but can also talk among themselves about how they can overcome their mutual fear and craft the rules of the game for a democratic alternative” (Stepan and Linz 2013, 23).

The politicisation of civil society is an essential ingredient for successful democratisation processes. Camau (2002, 229) argued that without ‘politicisation’, civil society can accumulate social capital that is not conducive to the democratic journey. Such an assumption is particularly relevant in the Middle East, where research has convincingly argued that the expansion of civil society can be regime-sponsored and instrumental in tightening control over dissent (Wiktorowicz 2000, Jamal 2009). Against this backdrop, Tunisia presents an ambiguous picture. Hibou depicts Ben Ali’s Tunisia as a ‘police-state’, where harsh repression prevailed, highlighting the absence of physical and intellectual

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space to voice discontent (Hibou 2006). Two decades under such a repressive regime have hampered civil society from developing into a politically committed one. Yet, as Stepan and Linz stated, despite the tightening regime control ‘a political society began to develop’ (Stepan and Linz 2013, 28). Their statement is noteworthy, but it needs greater empirical backing.55 The challenge for scholars is to understand where and how segments of civil society had the possibility to transform their claims into embedded political alternatives.

Sadowsky offers interesting insights into the argument of democratic political debate in authoritarian regimes. Employing the case of Eastern European countries under communism, she argues that autonomous domestic groups can independently organise and debate on politics without directly challenging the regime. She suggests that “in Marxist- Leninist systems, the barriers to democratic political culture are constructed through atomising citizens, destroying communities, and controlling the resource for independent action” (Sadowsky 1994, 98). Although East European countries are not fully comparable to MENA countries, the argument about atomising individuals is crucial to the concept of political debate in authoritarian regimes. Atomised individuals do not have space to debate politics, to share ideas and to build interpersonal trust. Following Sadowsky, the following sections emphasise the significance German political foundations had in encouraging political debate among Tunisia’s politically oriented individuals and civil society groups that would have otherwise lacked opportunities to share ideas about governance, reforms and policy implementation.

3.5 German Political Foundations: A ‘Unique’ Type of Democratic Promoter

As the cases of Spain and Portugal show, academia has mainly focused on the role of the German foundations in assisting political parties during processes of transition to democracy (Pinto-Duschinsky 1991). Their capacity to deliver assistance differs from other

55 For instance, the 18 October coalition that gathered leaders from leftists, progressive and Islamist parties was an attempt to convey crosscutting disenchantment with the ruling elite, but their alignment was mainly centred on human and social rights rather than on political bargain

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international actors for a number of reasons. Weissenbach (2010) illustrates the mechanism through which these quasi-non-governmental organisations (technically quasi-autonomous NGOs) – Quangos – work, arguing how their status provides unique opportunities in the field of political party assistance. According to Weissenbach, German foundations carry out their projects with resident representatives enjoying considerable autonomy, but they are financially secured by the German state, thereby avoiding the financial volatility of other international actors.56 This secure financial support allowed the German foundations to participate in the majority of transitions to democracy after the Second World War, including in Southern Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe (Dakowska 2004).

One of the shortcomings of these studies is the lack of proper investigations about the specific types of support that German political foundations offer to civil society organisations in authoritarian regimes. Weissenbach touches on this crucial point, talking about the foundations’ attempts to identify would-be political alternatives and ‘strengthening pro-democratic individual and civil society groups which have the potential to establish new democratic political parties’ (Weissenbach 2010, 1231). In this vein, as the German foundations usually enter countries long before processes of regime change begin, their strategies and the domestic impact they deserve better analysis in light of the relevance of international actors in transitions. Indeed, the German foundations foster coalitions of civil society organisations by offering ‘free platforms’ to discuss policies within constrained environments. They also assist institutes and organisations that deliver professional expertise to domestic groups without challenging the regime.

In this regard, two additional elements have to be highlighted when it comes to understanding the capacity of the German political foundations to achieve results within authoritarian settings. First, German political parties do not impose any constraints on their affiliated foundations regarding the kind of agenda they wish to pursue with civil society partners. This allows foundations to tailor cooperation to the real needs of domestic partners, free of ideological impositions. Second, while German political parties do not

56 Contrary to political parties, the foundations are registered as charitable organisations and are almost exclusivelyfinanced through public funding. These come from the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Education and Research, the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Foreign Office (AA) and the Bundestag.

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drive the agenda of the affiliated foundations, the foundations’ offices on foreign soil rely on the strong protection and indirect legitimacy of the German political system. In particular contexts and specific times, the interactions they have with domestic groups may generate outcomes that other international democratic promoters fail to achieve, either because their capacity is constrained or because they do not enjoy the complete support of donors. Reflecting on international democratic promotion, Kurki (2013, 179) argues that the German political foundations are “the most openly and self-avowedly radical political and ideological among democracy promoters today”, pointing at the distinction with US political foundations, which are politicised rather than technocratic in their democracy assistance.

This special status foundations have is particularly interesting if one considers the limited manoeuvring of international groups in close regimes. Indeed, in authoritarian settings, international co-operation agencies and international organisations operate through a state- by-state framework. In Tunisia, for instance, despite a large democracy promotion programme, the European Union used its instruments to promote human rights and democracy – which allows it to reach civil society without the regime's assent – for the first time only in 2009. Transnational networks of advocacy such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, for their part, did not find institutional or diplomatic support for their campaigns because in early 2000 the US and European countries were allies of the Ben Ali regime (Murphy 1999). According to a former regional program officer at Amnesty International57, the team urged embassies to raise their voices against restrictions and abuses during Amnesty’s fieldwork in Tunisia whilst drafting annual reports. However, the reaction was muted, with the majority of foreign governmental actors aligned with the regime’s narrative. An additional aspect that marks the diversity – and somehow explains the success – of the German political foundations compared to other actors is their long- standing presence within the countries targeted. German political foundations decided to open offices within the targeted country for nurturing patterns of cooperation based on trust while dealing with the contingent political reality. This strategy generates a number of significant and specific outcomes. First, it allows foreign officials to develop a wide

57 Author’s interview with Heba Morayef, former regional officer of Human Rights Watch and current director of Amnesty International Tunisia office, Tunis, 22 May 2017.

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network within the country. Second the foundations are increasingly perceived as ‘domestic actors’ involved in national politics and sharing the real concern of domestic groups.

Dakowska (2004) suggests that the establishment of offices on foreign soil becomes a resource allowing foundations to be seen as the centre of action and expertise rather than merely a department of their headquarters in Germany. Third it permits to the foundations to be ready to deal with new political forces during political change or transitional periods. In an interview with the author, the Director of the Friedrich Naumann foundation in Tunisia stated that, in authoritarian countries, if regimes collapse the foundations would be ready to deal with any emerging new groups because they certainly would have already established links, led activities and participated in projects in the past.58 Such statements are backed up with evidence from the transitions to democracy in Portugal and Spain and most of the Latin America countries.59 The investigation of the international context under Tunisia’s Ben Ali helps to understand why the foundations have enjoyed the room to manoeuvre necessary to make them more effective when compared to other international democratic promoters. The financial assistance, the strong protection of the German political system, the independence in leading the agenda and the long-standing presence on foreign soil create the conditions for the foundations to be able to do what other international groups cannot: reaching civil society by partially circumventing the control of the regime.

3.6 The German political foundation in Tunisia before the revolution: ‘The unintended consequences of Ben Ali’s upgraded authoritarianism’.

In the 1970s West Germany increased its co-operation activities in many countries, developing financial assistance programmes through the Gesellschaft für Internationale

58 Author’s interview with Ralf Erber, Director of Friedrich Neumann, Tunisia office, Tunis, 5 July 2017. 59‘The aid given to Felipe Gonzalez in the I970s was not only to the credit of the Ebert foundation and the German Social Democrats, but arguably added to German prestige when he became the Spanish premier. In the I970s the Foundation was closely involved with Daniel Ortega's Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Adenauer protected Eduardo Frei and Patricio Aylwin in Chile, Vinicio Cerezo in Guatemala, the late Jose Napoleon Duarte in El Salvador and Paul Semogerere in Uganda’. In Pinto-Duschinsky, op. cit., p.45.

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Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), cultural penetration with the Goethe Institute and democratic promotion with the Deutscher Stiftungen (German political foundations). The latter played a relevant role as they promoted democratic values around the world, establishing patterns of cooperation abroad with civil society groups. This happened quite smoothly in Latin America, mainly during the 1980s, and in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. The MENA region proved to be a more complex setting to establish offices and identify reliable partners. In a number of countries across the region – Libya and Syria – the German political foundations never established office. In others such as Yemen, Iraq, Algeria and Lebanon the foundations’ offices were short-lived or were forced to dislocate because of the brutality of civil wars.60 In Egypt, the foundations had turbulent relations in Egypt both under Mubarak and in the post-revolutionary period, especially after the police arrested two employees of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.61 Such an event disrupted the nascent commitment to encourage freedom of expression in post-revolutionary Egypt, prompting the foundation to close its office and stop field missions. Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Hanns Seidel foundations are still on the ground with a minimal operational capacity.

The discontinuous presence or complete absence of field offices thwarted the capacity of the German political foundations to cooperate with post-revolutionary elites in countries such as Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. Two countries, Jordan and Morocco, have had a fairly durable cooperation between civil and political actors and the German political foundations, although this is not comparable to post-revolutionary Tunisia in terms of funding and initiatives. Yet, neither monarchy experienced significant changes among elites over the time and the elites’ discontent never reached the level of Tunisia’s. Against this backdrop, Tunisia stands as an outlier as it has had four foundations working at the same time since the late 1980s. Moreover, after the revolution two additional foundations – Heinrich Böll and Rosa Luxemburg – opened offices in Tunisia. The Konrad Adenauer even opened a second office in 2013.

60 For the history of KAS in the MENA see http://www.kas.de/wf/en/71.4789/ For the history of FES’s offices in the MENA region see http://www.fes-mena.org/fes-in-mena/offices-in-the-region/. For FNS’s history in MENA see http://fnst.org/content/middle-east-and-north-africa 61 See http://www.dw.com/en/absurd-sentences-in-cairo-for-germans/a-16858963

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The story of German foundations in Tunisia dates back to the mid-1960s when they started to penetrate the Tunisian social and political environment, establishing ties with prominent domestic actors. The first was the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung62 (hereafter FNS), which opened its first office outside of Germany, on Tunisian soil, in 1964, setting up partnerships with associations from the media and entrepreneurial world. The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (hereafter FES) established a department in Tunisia in 1970, relying on previous contacts with the major Tunisian labour union – Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT). The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (hereafter KAS) arrived in Tunisia in 1982, supporting mostly the Union Tunisienne de l'Industrie, du Commerce et de l'Artisanat (UTICA). Finally, the Hanns Seidel Stiftung (hereafter HSS) opened a Tunisian office in 1989, arranging partnerships with administrative and professional institutions such as the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). The relations of the foundations with the Bourguiba regime (1956-1987), however, were turbulent and did not allow German political foundations to develop their agendas properly. The complex dynamics experienced by the foundations’ offices in Tunisia under Habib Bourguiba depended on the historical context. The western community – including West Germany – perceived Tunisia and its secular leader Bourguiba as an important ally for preventing both the radical left and radical Islam from gaining power in the context of the Cold War and did not wish to unduly upset the regime. When Ben Ali overthrew Bourguiba through a ‘medical coup’, his regime ushered in a phase of liberal economic reforms that pleased the international community, leading international actors to praise Tunisia as a model of neoliberalism. Against, this backdrop Ben Ali welcomed the collaboration of some transnational groups because they allowed him to display the regime’s ‘façade’ liberalisation.

The German political foundations then began to increase their work in the country, delivering more tailored actions and establishing stronger ties with domestic groups. In this respect, during the 1990s and 2000s they broadened their involvement in Tunisia, contributing to the making of Ben Ali’s ‘liberalised autocracy’ (Brumberg 2002). The limits of upgrading authoritarianism have been conceptualised in a number of studies.

62 Stiftung is a German word that means foundation. From now on the article employs the English word foundation, but it maintains the abbreviation in the German for all the foundations: KAS, FES, FNS, HSS.

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Employing the case of Syria, Pierret and Selvik (2009, 596) provide empirical material for challenging the argument that people are subjected to top-down ‘authoritarian’ reforms and simply do not react, arguing instead that social actors “use their resources to seize opportunities left by a readjusting state”. Looking at Tunisia, Haugbølle and Cavatorta (2012, 99) noted that “society does not remain exclusively passive and supine, but generates a set of responses that can moderate the top-down upgrading of authoritarianism and provide social and political actors with new instruments for creating autonomous publics where dissent might be generated”. As mentioned above, the increased interactions and political contacts among domestic groups and foundations, eventually, generated ‘unintended consequences’ for Ben Ali’s upgraded authoritarianism. Some empirical evidence from the German political foundations in Tunisia backs up this theoretical assumption.

The relations of the FES with Tunisia date back to the early 1950s, when the foundation established ties with the Neo Destour party – later PSD – and the UGTT. As soon as the domestic rivalry between the PSD and UGTT increased, escalating with the 1978 general strike and governmental repression, FES left the country for ten years. In the aftermath of the Ben Ali-led coup, the FES reopened its office in Tunisia and took advantage of the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD) membership of the Socialist International.63 Since the FES is linked to the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social Democratic Party, SPD) – one of the most prominent members in the Socialist International – the foundation enjoyed a fair degree of influence vis-à-vis Ben Ali, as he carefully orchestrated his relations with the powerful SPD because the German party supported him as the champion of Tunisian development.64 When some Western political parties within the Socialist International – in particular the French Socialists – urged the exclusion of the RCD, the SPD advocated for the continuation of the RCD’s membership, de facto empowering the FES in Tunisia.65 Thus, positive relations with the SPD implied tolerating some of the most problematic FES activities in Tunisia. The foundation, thus,

63 The Socialist International (SI), officially created in 1951 is an international association of political parties, associated under the common goal of establish democratic socialism. 64 SPD officially meet RCD in Tunisia shortly before the revolution, highlighting peaceful relations and supporting the activities of FES. 65 On the argument, see the note of Socialist International about SPD critics. http://www.socialistinternational.org/viewArticle.cfm?ArticleID=2231

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had a degree of bargaining power vis-à-vis Ben Ali and his regime. According to the then director of the FES, the regime was aware that the foundation organised meetings among dissidents of the UGTT and other groups such as the Ligue Tunisienne des droits de l’homme (LTDH), but its mukharabat did not hamper these meetings.66 Tension was at times high, but leading members of the foundation would receive constant apologies from the Minister of the Interior who was under diplomatic pressure to provide these. A noteworthy episode occurred when the police harassed a Tunisian intern working for the foundation about his job-related activities. The director of the FES immediately informed the SPD’s headquarters in Germany of this and a few days later the then Minister of the Interior fully apologised for the unwelcome episode.

This minor event reveals a degree of political weakness within Ben Ali’s regime vis-à-vis these transnational actors. Most importantly, it reveals that the FES’ protective space for debate could not simply be shut down, as the regime was doing with other international actors. In this vein, the mediation role played by FES during skirmishes among partners like the Association Tunisienne de Femmes Démocrates (ATFD), LTDH and Forum démocratique pour le travail et les libertés (FDTL) – also known as Ettakatol – highlights its intention to become a ‘protective’ umbrella for domestic coalitions. The FES emerged as a troubleshooting actor, whose assistance contributed to the survival of a number of organisations, strengthening ties between the international and the domestic levels. As an example, by keeping the spotlight on human rights groups such as LTDH, the FES in part helped to ensure the survival of the organisation (Faath et al. 2016, 311). Regional members of the UGTT and prominent members of the LTDH used to meet at the foundation to share ideas and discuss common issues.67 In an interview with the author, a former member of the LTDH noted that during the 2000s labour unions and human rights groups began to collaborate, broadening their national outreach. The coalition of human rights groups and sections of the labour unions was encouraged by external actors, whose commitment rose slightly as internal criticism widened. The FES’s main domestic partner, the UGTT, has always been a powerful but factionalised labour union, with some leaders aligned to the regime and others – mostly at the local level – much less so. The latter

66 Author’s interview with Emil Leiner, Former Director of FES Tunis, Tunis, 20 May 2017. 67 Author’s interview with Emil Leiner, Former Director of FES Tunis, Tunis, 20 May 2017

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became more critical of the regime’s restrictions and attitudes and regularly some of them joined the foundation, looking for political support and mediation.

As the annual report of the foundation outlines, the FES-led dialogue activities strengthened political debate among domestic partners. Respondents who regularly attended the foundation’s events confirm this point.68 They acknowledge the role of the FES in providing a platform for free debate, offering financial support and ideas for projects. For instance, FES focused on the empowerment of young adults, and above all, of young women. The training program launched by the FES, ‘Génération à venir’, was established with the Association des femmes Tunisiennes démocrates (AFTD), the Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour la Recherche sur le Développement (AFTURD), the LTDH and UGTT in 2007 and implemented from 2008 onwards.

The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) had less influence compared to the FES. Yet, its close links with the influential Christian Democratic Union (CDU) deterred Ben Ali from undertaking any action against the KAS’s activities, which would have strongly affected diplomatic ties between Tunisia and Germany. Indeed, the first chancellor of reunified Germany Helmut Kohl (CDU) dominated the national political scene from 1989 to 1998, while Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor in 2005 and she has been in power since then. Thus, in the 1990s and 2000s the CDU’s power in Germany and its influence across Europe were too significant for Ben Ali to undermine his good relations with it. Furthermore, two elements allowed the KAS in Tunisia to conduct its ‘democratic promotion’ agenda without directly challenging the regime. First, it chose not to openly criticise the regime while conducting its activities. Second, it selected some local partners not directly connected with democracy promotion and preferred professional organisations such as UTICA and the Association des Responsables de Formation et de Gestion Humaine dans les Entreprises (ARFORGHE), asking them to define their projects and objectives.69 The foundation endowed its partners with financial support and technical expertise in order to enhance their effectiveness.

68 Author’s interview with leading members of UGTT, LTDH, AFTD. 69 Author’s interview with Holger Dix, KAS Director Tunis, Tunis, 26 May 2017.

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These collaborations between the KAS and the Tunisian partners eventually raised their political profile. The case of the Association des Tunisiens Diplomés des Grandes Ecoles (ATUGE) is instructive in this sense. According to the organisation’s head of office, in 2002–2003 the ATUGE experienced a decrease in its activities. KAS was among those transnational institutions that financially supported ATUGE in a number of events and workshops to restart its activities. ATUGE, a civil society organisation with about six thousand members eventually organised the ‘Tuesday meetings of ATUGE’, a space where civil society elites discussed policy-making relevant issues. Debate focused on energy policy, economic issues, transport and others, ultimately increasing the networking, ties and political ideas of would-be political actors. During the final years of Ben Ali’s regime, ATUGE raised its profile as a space where different elites – although formally aligned with the regime – discussed policy implementation, embodying a potential political coalition.70 Such platforms for debate were instrumental to discuss a policy that differed from those the regime promoted and therefore political debate framed within these spaces, although not overtly threatening the regime, represented a hidden challenge to mainstream politics. Furthermore, interactions among people of different political and ideological persuasions enhanced critical capacity, a crucial skill of the democratic game. Interestingly, after the revolution, the first and the second transitional governments headed by Mohamed Ghannouchi and by Beji Caid Essesbi saw the appointment of a number of people with experience of ATUGE meetings.71

The other two foundations present in Tunisia in pre-revolutionary times – Hanns Seidel Stiftung (HSS) and Friedrich Naumann (FNS) – maintained a more direct connection with the government. Yet, their actions also empowered professional experts and enhanced political debate. Since its arrival in 1989, HSS has extensively collaborated with the École d’Administration Nationale (ENA), a state institution, which trains public sector elites. The foundation directly provided funding to experts for the delivery of intensive training

70 Author’s interview with the ATUGE head of office, Tunis, 1 August 2017. 71 ATUGE Members in the government are Mehdi Houas (Minister of Tourism and Handicraft), Mohamed Nouri Jouini (Minister of Development, Investment and International Cooperation), Afif Chelbi, (Minister of Industry and Technology), Yacine Ibrahim (Minister of Public Transport), Said Aydi, (Minister of Vocational Training and Employment), Zaoui Sami (Secretary of State), Elyes Jouini (Prime Minister’s advisor for Economy and Social Reform). In addition, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi was assisted by three additional advisors from ATUGE.

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programmes to strengthen the understanding of political and administrative sectors. Issues such as good governance, separation of powers, institutional development, the independence of the judiciary and decentralisation were at the core of these training programs. Although the impact of these programs is hard to measure, the fact that HSS’s targets were young professionals suggests a strategy for the empowerment of new generations. In the mid-1990s, the foundation widened its strategy to another governmental office - Centre de Formation et d’Appui à la Décentralisation en Tunisie (CFAD). Once again, the pattern of collaboration relied on training programmes to improve attendants’ expertise on legislative processes. It is worth outlining that Tunisian experts usually held these training sessions, but the Hanns Seidel Foundation selected them and monitored the quality and its correct delivery.72 HSS broadened its activities in early 2000, as the foundation began collaborating with universities. The choice to enlarge the spectrum of partners highlighted the will to influence those environments where present and future elites debated with fewer constraints. Although its conferences did not address controversial topics, discussions on a number of issues highlighted scepticism and criticism about the ineffectiveness of the regime and the violation of rights.73 The members of the foundation realised that in academia critical and alternative debates took place. Some among the participants attending its conferences were the same professionals involved in HSS’s activities with partners such as ENA and CFAD. This suggests the existence of a network of people (mainly professionals from the law sector) very close to the foundations. Indeed, conferences focused on topics related to the judicial and the administrative system.74 The HSS also held panels with individuals from ONAT - L'ordre national des avocats - which raised its critical profile vis-à-vis the regime since early 2000. Indeed, the ONAT went through a process of gradual de-alignment with the Ben Ali regime, moving from ‘allegiance to protest’ and finally becoming an opposition stronghold. E. Gobe (2010, 340) notes that the ONAT was “an arena of political protest by default, a sort of alternative political field”. HSS set up an official partnership with ONAT shortly after the revolution and implemented the partnership with other professional networks such as the Association

72 Author’s interview with Laura Sundermann HSS Scientific Coordinator for Tunisia, Tunis, 10 July 2017.

73 Idem. 74 To have an idea about the topics of the HSS conference see http://www.hssma.org/activities.cfm (accessed 30 November 2017).

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des Magistrats Tunisiens (AMT).75 In short, on the one hand, the HSS retained the outlook of a transnational group committed to the improvement of the state administration’s capacity. On the other, it created space for debate and workshops among professors and professionals, including members of judges and lawyers' associations, which eventually lowered their trust in Ben Ali.

FNS focused on empowering journalists and small entrepreneurs. The foundation collaborated with the Institut de Presse and Science informatique (IPSI) and most importantly, supported the creation of the Centre Africain de perfectionnement des journalistes et communicateurs (CAPJC).76 However, during Ben Ali’s regime the Foundation increased the number of activities, collaborating with small business groups as well. Neither Ben Ali nor his predecessor Bourguiba wanted a free press and freedom of opinion among journalists and it established the Institute as a facade to monitor civil society more tightly. However, the limitation on press freedom did not prevent the FNS from conducting its activities. It encouraged it in fact to tailor its strategy to the political reality in order to maximise the presence. For instance, the FNS was aware that promoting freedom of the press or investigative journalism would have meant both a clash with the government and it would have exposed journalists to danger. For years, FNS trained journalists to develop their expertise without creating friction with the regime. Empowerment focused on long-term engagement. Although it was very slow, some progress was achieved. It provided individual expertise, which could be adapted rapidly in periods when limitations and constraints were weakened or dismantled.77

The action of the FNS reveals how upgraded authoritarianism generated ‘unintended consequences’. In this regard, some scholars highlighted the crucial role played by skilled bloggers and journalists in connecting the local level and the international environment during the final years of the regime and in the immediate aftermath of the revolution (Howard and Hussein 2013). A second example arises from the economic sector. The FNS was somehow supportive of Ben Ali’s economic reforms process in the 1990s and closely

75 For an overview on the HSS partners see http://www.hssma.org/partners.cfm (accessed 30 November 2017). 76 The foundation paid some of the employees’ salaries and supported the training programs. 77 Author’s interview with Ralf Erbel, FNS Director of Office for Tunisia and Libya, Tunis, 29 June 2017

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supported the Institut Arabe des Chefs d’Entreprises (IACE). Yet, when Tunisian businessmen’s support for Ben Ali waned in the early 2000s the foundation dealt with their rising discontent and became more critical vis-à-vis the regime.

All this evidence demonstrates the relevance of interaction among international actors and domestic groups for better explaining a country’s journey to democracy. Transnational forces penetrating domestic boundaries without challenging the regime’s hold on power may foster alternative debate among atomising social actors, thereby lowering group compliance vis-à-vis the regime’s narrative and improving individual critical skills. These processes generate potential coalitions of social groups that develop alternative political debates and ideas to those of the regime and new social demands under the protective umbrella of the Foundation. When the regime is challenged, such coalitions emerge as ready and structured forces, influencing the timing of the leader’s demise.

3.7 The German foundations after the revolution: soft power in Tunisia’s democratisation.

The enduring commitment and the countywide networks of trust established across civil society allowed the German foundations to have a prominent role in the immediate aftermath of political change. Following the 2010 Tunisian uprising and the 2011 toppling of President Ben Ali, the space for direct democratic promotion dramatically increased. Accordingly, the budget of the German political foundations in Tunisia rose progressively (despite not being allowed to provide the data, all the foundations confirmed that their budgets had tripled, along with the number of their employees). However, political party assistance has not gone smoothly and has posed a significant challenge to the usual mechanisms that foundations employ when authoritarian regimes collapse for a number of reasons. First – and foremost – the Islamist Party al-Nahda was finally free to participate in competitive politics and overtly stepped into the political fray espousing values that were ‘alien’ to all the foundations. In this respect, the complexity stems from the socio-political environment where the foundations operate. As mentioned above, the involvement of

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German political foundations in countries experiencing transition to democracy began in early 1970 in Latin America and Southern Europe. In these contexts, it was easier to identify political actors with which to establish ties because of the relative clarity of the ideological left-right spectrum. In the Muslim world though, the ideological background of a number of political parties increases the complexity of the task. For instance, after the revolution the KAS did not have a political party it could link up with, as al-Nahda was perceived as an enemy of the laïcité of the foundation. Moreover, there was, and still is to an extent, a degree of scepticism about al-Nahda’s transformation into a Muslim Democratic Party and KAS remained distrustful of al-Nahda. Instead, since 2013, KAS has been directly supporting the new secular political party Nida Tounes, perceived to be more attuned to the foundation’s values. This introduces a second issue for party assistance by German foundations in Tunisia. In the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, political boundaries were not set and the parties’ volatility was very high, in part because they were interested in maximising gains or preserving their position. Although the situation normalised after the Constitution was approved and national elections were held in 2014, party volatility remains high. Accordingly, the foundations struggle to channel political assistance to specific parties.

For instance, the political partnership between the FES and the leftist FDTL, paradoxically, proved to be more problematic after 2011 than previously (Faath et al. 2016, 322). Indeed, the party suffered a loss of credibility as its leaders, after the elections to the Constituent Assembly in October 2011, entered into a coalition government with the Islamist Party. Eventually, FES assistance to the leftist parties vanished and today the foundation does not support political parties, privileging activities with civil society partners.78 This complex situation has led HSS to opt for political neutrality and to avoid setting up partnerships with specific political parties. Instead, it deals with the whole spectrum of parties, supporting extensive training programs. The only foundation continuing to support political parties since the revolution is the FNS, which has worked with Afek Tounes since its creation in March 2011. Finally, the two foundations that entered the country after the revolution –

78 However, FES is trying to arrange cooperation with the leftist Marxist party al-Badil.

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Rosa Luxemburg (RLS) and Heinrich Böll (HBS) – are more inclined to deal with issues – i.e. environment – rather than with parties.79

This evidence deserves better explanation. In a transition to democracy, where the dispersion of power creates a political vacuum, international actors may channel financial assistance to a specific political party, favouring its political win regardless the regularity of the elections. National politics can then become a battleground for international competitors backing respective allies on the political scene. In Tunisian post-revolutionary elections, many citizens perceive that international actors – mainly foreign states – have channelled large amounts of money to back political parties, thereby altering the fair terms of electoral competition. Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood’s funds allegedly boosted the Islamic party al-Nahda, while France, the United States and the Wahhabi countries backed the secular Nida Tounes and other political forces to a lesser extent. However, this reasoning limits the understanding of the role some international actors may play, as the international dimension also includes other groups that deliver supportive aid without blatant geopolitical purposes. The German political foundations are positioned at the forefront of this phenomenon. They have delivered extensive training to Tunisian political parties. The partnership has enhanced the skills of political members in many areas, including accurately comprehending how to redact electoral laws, political communication, and negotiation skills during political debates. Moreover, it also allows members of different parties to share ideas and refine their political understanding out of constrained and highly politicised environments such as the parliament or the party’s offices. More specifically, multiparty training present political party attendees with alternative ideas that improve their understanding of competitive politics and democratic pluralism. Respondents from political parties confirm the validity of these statements. Nida Tounes and al-Nahda’s respondents confirm that multiparty training encouraged a ‘polyvalence politique’ (political versatility) that has lowered tensions and harsh confrontations between militants after the revolution. Opposition political parties such as the Front Populaire or smaller parties such as the centrist party al-Johmouri also shared this idea.

79 Author’s interview with Simon Ilse, Director of Heinrich Böll Foundations, Tunis, 28 July 2017

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The mechanism through which foundations strengthen civil society has been reinforced. The foundations play a remarkable role in sponsoring coalitions and co-operation among their partners in order to encourage them to achieve common goals. Although domestic groups in principle are reluctant to co-operate on large initiatives, the German foundations help them to realise the benefit of making a coalition. Empirical evidence from the four foundations confirms this assumption. FES continues to promote dialogue between its historical partners such as UGTT and LTDH and new partners, mainly focusing on socioeconomic issues and human rights, especially women’s rights. The KAS’s partners are increasingly co-operating, even building national coalitions. For instance, the Forum de l’Académie Politique (FOAP) – a political academy for young politicians formerly close to Nida Tounes – is co-operating with the Institut Tunisien des études stratégiques.80

Hanns Seidel has always favoured the collaboration of its domestic partners on projects and it is training young members of political parties.81 FNS has contributed to the creation of the Association Tunisienne pour l’Intégrité et la Démocratie des Elections (ATIDE). This NGO, focusing on the protection of democratic values and freedom of association, collaborates extensively with the Liberal Party Afek Tounes in order to provide expertise in the field of electoral monitoring. More interestingly, ATIDE and Kolouna Tounes, another strategic partner of the foundations, organise joint press conferences and training programmes, mainly aimed at improving effectiveness in the domain of decentralisation and the administrative electoral law framework.

By encouraging and financially supporting such domestic coalitions of civil society and organising multiparty training and debates, the German political foundations continue supporting democratic political debate. The effectiveness of their action is positively perceived among domestic partners and relies on two crucial aspects. First, the foundations tend not to impose their views, limiting their strategy to ‘institutionalise fair competition’ among their domestic partners. The foundations do not always share the same views on issues, but there are core values which align the foundations on the same wavelength such

80 Other groups that are having fruitful relations within the spectrum of KAS partners are the Kawakibi democracy assistance transition Center, Forum de l'Academique Politique, UTICA and Centre des Jeunes Dirigents (CJD). KAS limits expertise on how to co-operate. 81 See for instance http://hssma.org/article.cfm?id=595 (accessed 30 November 2017).

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as human rights, pluralism, and tolerance. There is less agreement on economic policy, often mirroring the diverging visions about other issues that pertain to the core values of the foundations. Second, each foundation has its own domain of expertise and, ideally, they try not to overlap. The respect for the domains of expertise avoids competition over issues that belong to the very intimate nature of a foundation.

3.8 Conclusion

The German political foundations have established ties and set up partnerships in Tunisia since the early 1960s. Their effective action in the country, however, has increased since the late 1980s, when Ben Ali not only perceived their profile of ‘democratic promoters’ as not challenging for his hold on power, but he welcomed their transnational influence for upgrading authoritarianism. Against this backdrop, in the 1990s and 2000s the four German foundations were more active in Tunisia. They tailored their strategy of democratic promotion on the political reality, avoiding open confrontations vis-à-vis the regime. The German political foundations in Tunisia supported political debate and launched partnerships aimed at favouring political interactions among domestic groups. The results achieved in Tunisia relied on their unique status of ‘legitimised independent’ international actors. Indeed, on the one hand, each foundation is financially supported by the German state and fairly protected by its own party of affiliation. On the other, all foundations maintain a degree of independence in delivering their programs, and neither the German political parties nor the German embassy in Tunisia interferes in the method they use to select domestic partners and develop their agendas.

FES used its political protection to become an engine of democracy, reaching a broad spectrum of civil actors and providing a platform to debate. The other foundations decided to plant the seeds of democracy, supporting political debate and improving professional expertise among partners. The foundations were instrumental to the Ben Ali strategy of upgrading authoritarianism. Yet, Ben Ali’s regime proved not to be as strong as its authoritarianism upgraded paradigm expected and the German foundations’ actions

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eventually generated unintended consequences that in part weakened its hold on power. An additional factor increased the effectiveness of the foundations vis-à-vis their domestic partners. By strategically retaining their presence on Tunisian soil the German foundations have been increasingly perceived by the Tunisian partners to be reliable actors fully committed to helping domestic groups. In this respect, the German foundations had a prominent role in the immediate aftermath of the revolution.

This article stands as a first attempt to explore the almost uncharted international dimension of Tunisia’s transition to democracy. In doing so it sheds new light on how transnational influences can bolster domestic actors’ capacity to create conditions for democratisation to develop. Indeed, external actors’ interaction with domestic groups might enhance critical skills and improves expertise among people, eventually impacting the timing of the regime’s demise and facilitating the transitions themselves. The investigation of international context, then, is crucial for scholars who explore both processes of democratisation and the authoritarian resilience. Without assessing the interactions between the international level and the domestic realm the understanding of a regime change is limited, when not flawed. Drawing from previous studies, this case study has refined and complemented the argument that the strategies of interaction employed by these foundations are conducive to democratisation. It also opens doors for future academic research on the international dimension of Tunisia’s democratisation.

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Chapter 4. International Democracy Promoters and Transitional Elites: Favourable Conditions for Successful Partnership. Evidence from Tunisia’s Democratization.

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4.1 Résumé S’appuyant sur des documents qualitatifs empiriques, cet article affirme que la promotion internationale de la démocratie est cruciale pour expliquer les résultats positifs de la transition tunisienne. Plus précisément, l’étude jette un nouvel éclairage sur la capacité des promoteurs de la démocratie internationale (PDI) à renforcer la politique concurrentielle dans le pays et à contribuer à la professionnalisation des partis politiques et des groupes de la société civile Tunisiens dans la period post-révolutionnaire. L'article propose également deux pistes de recherche pour examiner la position négative sur la promotion de la démocratie internationale dans la région MENA. Premièrement, il fait valoir que la promotion de la démocratie dans les transitions loin de l'autoritarisme a plus de chances de réussir quand un large éventail d'élites de transition s’accorde sur le système politique à établir et qu'elles n'entrent pas en conflit sur la manière de collaborer avec les PDI. Deuxièmement, il souligne que pendant une période de transition, des partenariats structurés et stratégiques entre les PDI et les élites en transition permettent aux sociétés fragiles de maintenir leur processus démocratique si les interventions antisystémiques internes et externes ne mettent pas d'obstacles sur le chemin de cette interaction.

4.2 Abstract Building on empirical qualitative material, this article argues that the international promotion of democracy is crucial to account for Tunisia’s positive transitional outcome.

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Specifically, the study sheds new light on the capacity of international democracy promoters (IDPs) to enhance competitive politics and contribute to the professionalization of political parties and civil society groups during Tunisia’s post-revolutionary path. The article also offers two research avenues for reviewing the negative standing on international democracy promotion in the MENA region. First it argues that promotion of democracy in transitions away from authoritarianism is more likely to succeed when a wide spectrum of transitional elites agrees upon the political system to establish and they do not enter into conflicts on how to collaborate with the IDPs. Second, it emphasizes that during a transitional period, structured and strategic partnerships between IDPs and transitional elites enable fragile societies to sustain their democratic process if internal and external anti-systemic interventions do not place obstacles in the path of this interplay.

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4.3 Introduction

Beginning in December 2010, a wave of uprisings spread across the Arab world. From Morocco to Bahrain, a number of authoritarian regimes faced domestic revolts that challenged their long-standing hold on power. Some of the leaders were deposed, others granted political concessions to the protesting crowds, and others still employed violence and/or financial inducements to counter the unrest. In any case, for a time, enthusiasm about the inevitably democratic outcome of the Arab uprisings criss-crossed the region (Kaldor 2011). The excitement, however, did not last long and complex political challenges characterized post-revolutionary trajectories, with most transitions away from authoritarian rule quickly derailing. As of 2019, the region presents a gloomy picture: a return to or retrenchment of authoritarianism prevails in some countries, while others have fallen into civil war.

Only Tunisia has achieved a transition to democracy and its success remains a beacon of hope amidst regional chaos. Furthermore, the country has also become an international showcase to challenge the narrative of the inevitability of Arab authoritarianism, as Tunisians managed to build liberal-democratic institutions in a short period of time. While the country faces significant security and economic challenges, it was able to hold two rounds of fair and competitive elections in 2011 and 2014 and it adopted a liberal Constitution in 2014. In 2018, Tunisia also held the first municipal elections since the revolution and the first free local elections in Tunisia’s history. The country is slowly strengthening its institutional framework, enforcing the rule of law and improving the democratic practices of national actors. There is, of course, a degree of popular scepticism about the new political system (Yardimci-Geyikçi and Tür 2018; Teti et al. 2019), but from an institutional perspective the country is consolidating its democracy. Surveys conducted in Tunisia after the revolution show that despite concerns about the economic and political implications of democracy, “Tunisians continue to say that democracy, whatever its problems, is the best system of government for their country” (Robbins 2015, 81). Furthermore, following the 2018 local elections, a Freedom House’s report noted: “despite the relatively low turnout, a decisive victory by independent candidates reflected a dynamic

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political culture in which citizens are taking democracy into their own hands and running for political office”.82

Scholars have pointed to a number of domestic factors to explain how the country avoided backsliding and a return to authoritarianism (Bellin 2018). The apolitical role of the armed forces (Anderson 2011), the moderation of political parties (Stefan 2012, Cavatorta and Merone 2013, Boubekeur 2018), the strength of labour unions (Ly Netterstrøm 2016) and the oversight role of civil society (Murphy 2013, M’rad 2015) are all components that contribute to explaining Tunisia’s successful transition. Rival political parties have narrowed their distance on policies and civil society has played a crucial role in supporting the transition by holding governments to account. In short, Tunisian civil and political actors deserve credit for their capacity to achieve, in a short period of time, considerable democratic gains amid enormous financial and security troubles.

Yet, in the aftermath of the 2010 revolution, transitional elites lacked technical and financial skills to cope with the challenges of democratic transitions. Thus, most of the Tunisian transitional elites warmly welcomed foreign economic and technical aid, showing particular ‘eagerness’ to collaborate with international democracy promoters (IDPs). In this respect, the structural conditions for IDPs penetrating transitional Tunisia and delivering assistance dramatically changed. During Ben Ali’s regime (1986–2011) IDPs, with some exceptions (Marzo 2019), lacked opportunities to impact Tunisia’s politics, as the incumbent hampered their activities or tamed their capacity (Bush 2015). The regime’s demise though opened wide the door for IDPs to rethink their strategy of assistance. As soon as the barriers hampering a direct and fair partnership between international and national actors crumbled, IDPs massively intervened in Tunisia, tailoring their actions according to the new political scenario. The expanding interactions between IDPs and national partners, however, occurred in a power vacuum, wherein Tunisian transitional elites had to figure out the support parties had in society and they had to build post- revolutionary democratic institutions. What favourable conditions have allowed IDPs to assist Tunisian transitional elites in managing the challenges of democratization? How did

82 See the Freedom House report: https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/policybrief_democratic_backsliding_in_tunisia.pdf

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such interplay foster the success of the democratic transition and the beginning of consolidation?

Building on empirical qualitative material, the article argues that international promotion of democracy is crucial to account for Tunisia’s positive transitional outcome. Specifically, the study selects a number of IDPs – three United States NGOs, four German Political Foundations and the European Union - to shed new light on the ability of IDPs to enhance competitive politics and to help the professionalization of political parties and civil society groups during Tunisia’s post-revolutionary path. Tunisia’s transition to democracy offers two research avenues for reviewing the negative standing on international democracy promotion in the MENA region the majority of the literature highlights. First, this article argues that promotion of democracy in transitions away from authoritarianism is more likely to succeed when a wide range of transitional elites agrees upon the political system to establish and they do not enter in conflict on how to collaborate with IDPs partners. Second, it emphasizes that, during a transitional period, structured and strategic partnerships between IDPs and transitional elites - political parties, civil society groups and national institutions - enable fragile societies to sustain their democratic process if internal and external anti-systemic interventions do not place obstacles in the path of this interplay. When these two structural conditions are in place, IDPs have a greater ability to assist their national partners because their actions do not enter into conflict with other foreign policy’s objectives such security and stability.

In this respect, employing the Tunisia’s case, this study highlights favourable internal and external conditions paving the way for fruitful interplays between IDPs and national partners. From a domestic point of view, this article concurs with the literature suggesting that the elites’ willingness to collaborate with IDPs increases the latter’s ability to deliver effective actions (Jamal, 2012, Börzel 2015, Freyburg and Ricther 2015, Hackenesh 2015). It also argues that the effectiveness of IDPs strongly depends on “the decision of local elites to cooperate, or to refrain from doing so, and to either react neutrally or side with the regional authoritarian power”. Börzel (2015, 526), for her part, claims that “domestic conditions severely limit the effectiveness of Western democracy promotion”. In Tunisia, the absence of sectarian polarization and ethnic divides, the presence of a Western-oriented

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society with a moderate Islamic party (al-Nahda) with linkages to the West and, most importantly, a general agreement among transitional elites upon the democratic political system to be established83, allowed Western IDPs to collaborate strategically with a large range of political and civil actors.

From an external perspective, Tunisia’s post-revolutionary path has proceeded without relevant geopolitical conflicts as international and regional rival actors are showing low interest – and have limited opportunities – in penetrating the country and destabilizing its democratization (Hinnebusch 2018). In this regard, a number of factors avoided external rival forces entering Tunisia, unleashing domestic conflicts and political chaos. First, the absence of the regional sectarian divide (Sunni/Shiite) has reduced both the claims of internal factions and the capacity of regional sponsors — Iran and Saudi Arabia — to intervene in lobbying domestic elites. Second, Tunisia has been a marginal player in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has been a long-standing burden for countries such as Egypt and Syria, affecting their domestic politics. Third, Tunisia’s relatively scarce natural resources have liberated it from the traditional geopolitical and economic appetites of foreign countries and multinational companies.84

Against this background, this study argues that the ‘geopolitical neutrality’ and the agreement of transitional elites over the political and institutional direction Tunisia had to take reduced Western tension between promoting democracy and preserving security and economic advantages (Grimm and Leninger 2012), ultimately permitting IDPs to deliver reasonably smooth and uninterrupted democratic assistance. IDPs enhanced two crucial transformative processes in their national Tunisian partners. First IDPs bolstered the autonomous capacity of civil society groups and independent national institutions to manage the challenges of the democratic transition, including monitoring rounds of competitive, fair and free elections. Second, IDPs’ technical training with political parties, progressively tailored on their needs, improved the understanding of the boundaries of

83 With the exception of Salafists who, however, were outlawed in 2013. 84 For more information on this topic see Marzo 2018, Foreign Actors in Post-revolutionary Tunisia: Enhancing Democratization and Lowering Political Tensions, Middle Eastern Institute https://www.mei.edu/publications/foreign-actors-post-revolutionary-tunisia-enhancing-democratization-and- lowering.

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competitive politics, narrowing the distance on policies and fostering political compromises. IDPs helped political actors to evolve from political consensus over democracy to competitiveness within democracy.

After a brief description of the methodology employed, this article is then organized in four sections. The first reviews the literature on international democracy promotion in the Arab World. The second charts the evolution of IDPs’ capacity to impact national groups in Tunisia before and after the Ben Ali’s regime. It also provides empirical data highlighting the willingness of a wide range of actors to collaborate with IDPs in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. The third section investigates how IDPs’ assistance enhanced the skills of political parties’ members, boosting their ability to handle competitive politics in the transitional period. The fourth section charts the way international assistance provided extensive technical skills and financial means to leading Tunisian NGOs - and independent national institutions - which eventually transformed into solid ‘intermediary structures’, serving as watchdogs for governmental responsiveness. The article ends with a conclusion describing what is theoretically and empirically new about international democracy promotion in Tunisia.

4.4 Data and Method

This article relies on qualitative analysis. The author collected and analysed data by triangulating 20 semi-structured interviews, documents published by IDPs and their Tunisian partners and the authors’ informal talks with international officers and Tunisian elites. Interviews were conducted in Tunisia 2017 and 2018 and in Washington (DC) in 2018. A few caveats deserve mention. Qualitative research investigating the impact of global actors on domestic level encounters inevitable methodological pitfalls. First, interviews with domestic actors could generate a bias in the way the respondents frame their subjective view of the transitional process. On the one hand, some political parties tend to downgrade the importance of international assistance and play up their exclusive role in the success of the transitional process (Katzenstein and Keohane 2007, 32).

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Schmitter (1996, 26) remarks that transitional elites ‘have an incentive to play down the role of external actors and the impact of international forces’. Other national actors, especially civil society groups, receiving foreign aid may come up with rhetorical and biased messages about the quality of the assistance of their international partners as they aim to retain economic benefits. Interviews with IDPs might also produce bias in the interactions. Some IDPs have little interest to appear as enhancers of political transition, as this profile can put their work in jeopardy elsewhere. Others may overestimate their contribution in bolstering the skills and capacity of national partners.

This research employs a few techniques to reduce the bias arising from interactions both with international and national respondents. Initially, the author analysed the relevant material the international and domestic groups published and unpublished, including final reports, oral speeches and project drafts. This overview was helpful in figuring out general trends and shared goals in delivering assistance. More importantly, it allowed for tracing the evolution of the different forms of international assistance, highlighting breakthroughs and changing priorities throughout Tunisia’s democratization journey. The author then led a first round of informal conversations with a number of IDPs working in Tunisia (German political foundations, European Union, Freedom House, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute) and with Tunisian elites (academics, politicians, association leaders, institutional leaders) during a six-month fieldwork in Tunisia 2017. The perceptions of an array of different actors allowed to filter general information that the documentary sources contained, often merely descriptive and one-sided.

With this background in mind, in early 2018 the author prepared two similar templates for leading semi-structured interviews with members of Tunisia’s political parties and members of Tunisia’s civil society groups. The selection of the political parties offers a representative range of actors. It includes four parties with different positions in the legislature (ruling party – opposition party), different ideologies (national/secularist – Islamists – leftist –) and size (small parties – large parties). For civil society groups, the author selected three leading Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) – ATIDE, I-Watch, Mourakiboun and a smaller NGO, Jeunesse Sans Frontieres. Both for political parties and civil societies, semi-structured interviews with the Tunisian respondents were strategically

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built to lower the above-mentioned bias. Indeed, the interviews alternated questions on the overall respondents’ opinion on the Tunisia transition - and the role of his/her organization - and questions which, instead, addressed the crucial purpose of the research such as the interplay his/her organization or political party had with IDPs. Such technique helped to lower the perception that the research was trying to downgrade the contribution of the national groups to the democratization process. The author used counterfactual reasoning in addressing some questions in order to increase the validity of the answers. Finally, the author led an additional round of semi-structured interviews with respondents from IDPs to triangulate the data and confirm findings. These interviews were held both in Tunisia and in Washington.

4.5 Rethinking the International Democracy Promotion in MENA Democratization Studies

Scholars have long debated the role of international factors in regime change and transitions to democracy. The main divide in the democratization literature is about the actual significance of such factors in shaping national outcomes. Some have assigned a secondary role to the international dimension (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, Diamond and Linz 1989), although they recognize its potential growing importance with the intensification of globalization (Schmitter 1996, Hurrell 1996). Other scholars suggest instead that international factors are as important as domestic ones for understanding regime change (Pridham 1991, Whitehead 1996, Pevehouse, 2005, Levitsky and Way 2010, Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán 2013). Others still argue that the international dimension should be the starting point for investigating regime change (Yilmaz 2002, Cavatorta 2009) mostly considering the contemporary global era of interdependence.

Recent literature shows that global factors significantly impact national politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) mostly when it comes to regime survival (Yom and Al-Momami 2008, Brownlee 2012, Ambrosio 2014, Yom 2015, Bellin 2018). In contrast, aside from the case where foreign actors overturn regimes through military invasion

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(Beetham 2009), the scholarly debate focuses less on the international dimension of regime change and liberalization in the Arab world – particularly when the political transition turns into democratization. This lack of academic attention limits the knowledge on the role IDPs have in impacting domestic policy in the MENA’s democratic transitions. Intuitively, the shortage of democratization processes in the region contributes to reducing the opportunities for the progress of the scholarly debate on international democracy promotion. In particular settings, however, some scholars have argued that Western states and Western organizations (often the donors also funding the IDPs) show a degree of ‘conflicting interests’ in democracy promotion, which may lower the IDPs ability to further democratization (Grimm and Leninger 2012). Realist scholars argued that Western promotion of democracy can clash with the Western quest for stability and security, particularly in transitional or post-conflict settings (Burnell 2004, Grävingholt et al. 2009, Richter 2012). This potential tension is particularly visible in the MENA region, where Western states and Western organizations prefer stability and security and are often reluctant to put real pressure on incumbent authoritarian regimes to further democratization processes (Brownlee 2012). Moreover, the academic debate believes the mechanism of democracy promotion in the MENA is flawed. There is a burgeoning literature on the shortcomings of IDPs in triggering and/or sustaining processes of democratic transition in the region. In fact, a number of studies highlight transnational actors promoting liberal values and democratic practices as inconsistent, counterproductive (Van Hüllen 2015, Jamal 2012), or ending up simply reinforcing illiberal regimes (Durac and Cavatorta 2009, Börzel 2015, Khakee 2017). Moreover, MENA deeply divided and sectarian political settings lowered the IDPs capacity to assist the domestic partners. Indeed, IDPs assistance often ‘emphasizes this polarization by supporting some groups rather than - and over – others’ (Jamal 2012). National elites who fear losing benefits employ mechanisms to disempower the potential impact of democratic entrepreneurs, eventually taming democratic promotion capacity (Bush, 2015). In short, when it comes specifically to the MENA region, the academic literature holds that the impact of international promotion of democracy programs has actually contributed to the resilience of authoritarianism (Ghalioun and Costopoulos 2004, Ayoob 2005, Hinnebusch 2006).

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Against this background, there is widespread scepticism about the positive contribution IDPs may have when transitional processes start. In a recent article, Abbott (2018) argues that in MENA “how international democracy promotion relates to democratization outcomes appears to be assumed rather than explicitly grounded in any conceptual literature”. Indeed, academic knowledge lacks theoretical framework to analyse cases in the MENA where in fact IDPs actions contribute to enhancing processes of liberalization and democratization. Likewise, there is a shortage of empirical findings on what outcomes structured and programmatic interplay between IDPs and national partners can generate.

As outlined earlier, the transition away from authoritarianism in Tunisia confirms this tendency, with numerous studies focusing on domestic processes as the crucial drivers in determining the success of Tunisian’s democratization. With some exceptions (Hill 2016; Adberrahim et al. 2018), scholarly debate largely neglects the interactions between international actors and domestic groups. Hill (2016) applies Levitzky and Way’s model to the Maghreb countries that experienced uprising in 2010–2011 in order to demonstrate that Tunisia had stronger linkages with the West, but he does not engage much with post- revolutionary dynamics in Tunisia. Most importantly, his book on Tunisia does not explore the interplay between IDPs and national partners in Tunisia’s democratization process. Abderrahim and his colleagues (2018) edited a volume exploring the international relations of Tunisia since the 2010 revolution. Although the book provides interesting insights on the role of the EU, United States NGOs and Germany in fostering democratization, it is short in theoretical frameworks and the resulting knowledge is not systematized. Some of the authors are NGOs officials or journalists who fail to connect theoretical reasoning with their arguments. Although the authors lay down arguments on international democracy promotion in Tunisia, this is analysed within broader packages of international assistance, which also includes security and economic cooperation.

The near absence of investigations on the international context of Tunisia’s democratization risks limiting its understanding. In the Tunisian case - the outlier in the region - it is important to examine how international democracy promotion influenced domestic processes in the transitional period because a thorough analysis may highlight what structural conditions changed in the post-revolutionary period and how they favoured the

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successful interplay between IDPs and their national partners. From a theoretical point of view, Tunisia’s democratization can offer new insights for reconsidering the negative standing of the IDPs in the MENA region. Tunisian successful transitional process can indeed highlight some domestic and external variables that reduced Western ‘conflicting interests’ (Grimm and Leninger 2012) in democracy promotion, ultimately making the IDPs’ assistance more effective. The Tunisian success may in fact undermine in part the generalization of realist theories about Western foreign policy and international democracy promoters for a return, albeit limited, to liberal internationalist approaches (Diamond 1999, McFaul 2004), showing that under particular conditions ‘all good things can go together’ (Packeman 1973) and democratization can complement stability and security (Bouchet, 2013).

The influence of international democracy promoters in the Tunisian democratization process has then considerable theoretical implications for the democracy promotion literature in so far as Tunisia represents a case where the often-mentioned hypocrisy of the Western international community vis-à-vis the Arab world is not on display. In this regard, Tunisia’s democratization may highlight similarities with previous waves of transition away from authoritarianism – Southern Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe - wherein international democratic assistance contributed both economically and technically to support the political and social development of democratizing countries (Whitehead 1996, Dimitrova and Pridham 2004, Bunce and Wolchik 2006). The next three sections investigate and conceptualize the significance of the interplay between international democracy promoters and Tunisian partners in the democratic transition and early consolidation.

4.6 From Electoral monitoring to Democratic Promotion: The International Assistance Shift in Tunisia

Following Huntington (1991), since the onset of the ‘third wave’ of democratization, many scholars have considered elections as the ‘hallmark of democracy’, emphasizing the idea

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that holding elections routinely is ‘the essence of democracy’. Huntington’s argument has encountered strong criticism (Carothers 2002, Whitehead 2009), but some scholars have presented new evidence about the positive role of the routinization of elections, even in authoritarian settings, making them central to proto-democratic and democratic politics (Lindberg 2006). In analysing processes of liberalization in the Arab world, Sadiki (2009, 67) notes that routinization of elections is a relevant achievement because it highlights the “solidification of elections as an irreversible modus operandi in the cluster of Arab 'semidemocratizers’". The theory of routinization of elections, however, has obvious limitations when it comes to Arab regimes like Ben Ali’s, which, despite holding elections regularly, relied on authoritarian practises and undemocratic social organizations (Brumberg 2002). In the MENA region fraudulent results, coercive mechanisms, irregularities and bureaucratic practices loom large (Kraetzschmar and Cavatorta 2010) and elections assume the form of confrontation over groups’ access to resources rather than debate over policies (Lust 2006, 468). National institutions, then, serve as instruments for authoritarian power, holding control and altering electoral dynamics, whilst elections take place in a ‘façade’ multiparty system (Gandhi and Lust 2009). These dynamics allowed incumbent powers to establish electoral autocracies, wherein routinization of elections does not generate any democratic achievement.

Ben Ali’s regime was an ‘electoral autocracy’ and from his arrival in power, Ben Ali used liberalization and de-liberalization practises to ensure his own survival (Sadiki, 2002). For instance, the 1988 National Pact was an attempt to liberalize the country. It promised to widen political participation, even including Islamist groups. Yet, reconciliation did not last long and did not have any real impact on democracy (Murphy 2013), as Ben Ali used this brief liberalizing period to entrench his grip on power. Likewise, in the mid-2000s, pressured by internal criticism and Western allies, Ben Ali promised fairer multiparty elections for the 2009 Presidential round. Shortly before the 2009 Presidential elections, however, the regime issued an electoral law de facto ruling out those candidates who could represent even a small threat to the uncontested reaffirmation of his party. The capacity of the regime to secure routinized multiparty, yet fraudulent, elections allowed Ben Ali to manage his stay on power in an illiberal democracy. His regime’s tricky electoral practices,

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while pleasing some international allies, did not create the conditions for competitive politics and liberal reforms.

Most importantly, the ability of the Ben Ali’s regime to routinize multiparty elections, although rigged and unfair, placed constraints on Western democratic assistance in Tunisia. Indeed, Western powers, including the European Union (EU), limited their ‘democratic’ assistance to regular rounds of electoral monitoring, failing, however, to ensure their fairness and/or to promote political pluralism and liberal values. In Ben Ali’s Tunisia, Western state actors sent small delegations to monitor elections days, thereby ignoring what happens before and after the electoral round. When Transnational Advocacy Networks (TAN) or International Non-governmental organizations (INGOs) raised concerns about unfair procedures, low turnout and widespread patronage, Western states largely ignored their warnings and usually congratulated Ben Ali on his re-election.

Against this backdrop, IDPs had a very limited room to manoeuvre inside Tunisia. United States groups such as National Democratic Institute (NDI), International Republican Institute (IRI) or Freedom House did not have operative offices in the country. German political foundations - along with few other IDPs established in Tunisia - kept a low profile and promoted activities and programs that did not overtly challenge the regime (Marzo 2019). Moreover, the bulk of external ‘democratic assistance’, as in the case of the EU, was delivered through the Tunisia central government, failing to bypass authoritarian control and, ultimately, ending up being ineffective in promoting political pluralism and liberal values (Durac and Cavatorta 2009). The only time the EU employed its instruments to directly reach civil society without state control – through the European Instrument of Human Rights and Democracy - was in 2009.85 In short IDPs had severe limitations for promoting democracy, political pluralism and liberal values in Tunisia.

The transition away from authoritarianism in Tunisia opened opportunities for IDPs to rethink their engagement, tailoring the assistance agenda on the domestic partners’ needs. Indeed, when the Ben Ali’s regime crumbled, its collapse triggered a dispersion of power wherein IDPs increased their chances to influence national actors from the very early stages

85 The European Union used the European Instrument for Human Rights and Democracy (EIHRD) in Tunisia for the first time in 2009. This instrument allowed to assist foreign civil partners bypassing the state control.

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of democratization. IDPs delivered a multifaceted assistance to political parties, civil society and national institutions, eventually spurring transformative processes for their partners. According to Carapico (2013), the democratic promoters in the post-revolutionary period had several objectives, including assisting pre-electoral arrangements, providing extensive training to political actors, supporting the logistic organization of electoral rounds, reinforcing the technical capacity of national institutions and enhancing the ability of civil society organizations to lead activities in the post-election period.

Interestingly, a wide range of transitional elites, including moderate Islamists, welcomed international democracy promoters and their agenda more than other political and actors across the region. The two ad-interim cabinets ruling Tunisia in the aftermath of the revolution and the political elites running for the 2011 election - including Islamist, nationalist/secularist and leftist forces - worked together on establishing a democratic system in Tunisia, while in other countries across the region experiencing political transition, ruling elites were quite divided on the political system to be established. For instance, in Egypt, transitional elites were more divided ‘over elementary questions regarding who should assume power and how transition should occur’ (Landolt and Kubicek 2014, 998). In the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, the consensus on the direction the country’s political transition had to take increased the capacity of IDPs and transitional elites to build goals-oriented partnerships. This is a crucial factor in understanding the results of democracy promotion in Tunisia, as it confirms Freyburg and Ricther’s (2015) thesis mentioned in the introduction. According to them, indeed, the IDPs ability to impact national partners varies according to the degree of willingness that the domestic elites show to engage in the partnership.

Empirical data back up such statements. In an interview with the author, an NDI official said that he had repeated talks with leading Tunisian politicians in the transitional period, including Nejiib Chebbi and Mustapha Ben Jafar, who urged IDPs to assist technically on the democratic steps to undertake. Likewise, an IRI official said that his team had extensive talks with the main political actors in Tunisia, who were eager to share suggestions on how to proceed.86 In an interview with the author, a Freedom House’s official also stated that his

86 Interview with an International Republic Institute official, Washington, DC 2018.

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team connected world-leading experts of democratization with Tunisia political leaders who were dealing with the complexity of building a democracy.87 German political foundations received assistance requests from old partners they had had before the revolution and new emerging groups. Therefore, since 2011 German assistance skyrocketed and the country’s offices - already operating in Tunisia - widened their networks and increased their assistance budget.88 The former Tunisian President of the Republic, Moncef Marzouki, in 2013 described the Germans as Tunisia’s best friends in Europe. The German foreign minister Westerwelle, for his part, was one of the first visitors to post-revolutionary Tunisia in February 2011.89 The EU immediately shifted its approach toward Tunisia. Especially in the assistance to civil society, the EU new agenda targeted, selected and assisted non-state actors, bypassing the control of the central government. In several internal reports, the EU recognized the shift in the approach and the goals of democratic assistance, especially widening the partnership to non-state actors.

In this regard, despite the post-revolutionary challenging political and social obstacles, the October 2011 legislative elections were held peacefully and a large number of international actors, ranging from Western states to International Organizations (IO) to INGOs, deemed them free and fair (Murphy 2013). Political parties accepted the result of the elections, showing satisfaction with the democratic system. Furthermore, the establishment of the Instance Superior Independent pour les Elections (ISIE) and the Haute Autorité Independante de la Communication Audiovisuelle (HAICA) marked two important breakthroughs in the post-revolutionary period. By setting up independent institutions accountable for organizing elections and monitoring fair participation and pluralism, Tunisia achieved a crucial objective in its transitional period. The blossoming of civil society also represented an asset for democratization, particularly the emergence of many ‘watchdog groups’ monitoring institutions and political parties.

However, all these national groups - political parties, nascent independent institutions and civic associations - faced several challenges. First, they did not have the financial means to

87 Interview with a Freedom House official, Washington, DC 2018. 88 Despite the foundations not releasing details on the budget, most of the officials interviewed have stated that the allocation of money was three times bigger after 2011. 89 The Tunisian President of the League of the Human Right confirmed this, by saying Westerwelle was the ‘first visitor of the revolution’ (Abderrahim 2018, 134).

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deal with these enormous tasks. Second, the small number of skilled personnel and the overall lack of technical expertise disempowered them in coping with the upcoming elections. Third, political parties needed assistance on how to compete within the new institutional framework, handling ideological reconciliation after decades of polarization. In short, although there was a broad consensus over democracy among transitional elites, they needed external assistance to manage the challenge of democratic transition. The story of the interplay between international democracy entrepreneurs and their national partners helps to understand how such processes unfolded.90 As early as late February 2011, international experts began training members of national groups to make them more autonomous and technically prepared in organizing and monitoring elections, including the practices that precede and follow electoral rounds. The journey from the 2011 to the 2014 elections highlights a countless number of partnerships between international groups and national civil society groups and national institutions. Reports from IDPs highlighted how Tunisian domestic partners achieved several objectives and showed steady progress in their democratic practices.91 Specifically, the interplay between IDPs and their national partners enhanced two crucial transformative processes for the success of the democratic transition.

90 As soon as the Constituent Assembly passed the 2014 constitution, US democracy funding for Tunisia peaked the $20.89 million in FY 2016. The EU’s democracy funding to Tunisia was non-existent before the revolution, but by 2015, it accounted for 18 percent of the bloc’s €356 million aid package to the country. The World Bank has allocated $430 million to its ‘Urban Development and Local Governance’ project to support Tunisia’s decentralization. 91 IRI and NDI applauded the capacity of the new-born ISIE to successfully registered nearly one million new voters, approved tens of thousands of candidates, hired over 50,000 poll workers, prepared and distributed election material for nearly 11,000 polling stations. Likewise, they hailed the HAICA’s role in ensuring equal coverage of all candidates in the media and warned all contents to avoid personal attack and to lower negative rhetoric during the run-off. Carter Centre concluded that the 2014 ‘elections were particularly important in consolidating the country’s democratic gains since the 2011 revolution including registration procedure, transparency and election day. Indeed, figures from 2011 highlighted high abstention rates among the younger generations. International foundation for electoral system (IFES) stated that “the three rounds of elections were credible and highlight considerable progress from the 2011 elections, particularly in capacity of ISIE to collaborate both with domestic NGOs and international partners in the deliverance of more transparent and accurate process”. European Union for its part also remarks relevant improvement. The United Nations through his agency UNDAF acknowledged the internal capacity of Tunisian authorities to organize elections and civil society ensuring its fairness, planning new measures of assistance in years ahead.

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4.7 From Consensus Over Democracy to Competition Within Democracy: Lowering tensions among political parties.

In a transition to democracy, where the dispersion of power creates a political vacuum, national elections may become a battleground for international competitors backing their respective allies. Most of countries across MENA region that lived through political change or challenges to incumbents attracted rival external forces into domestic politics (Ambrosio 2014, Al-Muslimi, 2015, Phillips 2015). This ‘porosity’ to external influences in regime transition has characterized the politics of the region for decades, as the international context of cases such as Algeria’s failed democratization between 1989 and 1992 (Cavatorta, 2009), and Egypt post 2011 revolution (Brown 2013) for instance, demonstrate. Tunisia, in contrast, shows the absence of strong anti-systemic forces fostering national polarization with the purpose of shutting down democratic progress. Tunisia lacks antagonistic regional and international powers locked in confrontation about the direction national politics should take (Hinnebush 2018). As mentioned in the introduction, the level of external antisystem intervention in Tunisia was low because of the country’s marginal position in regional issues, the shortage of oil resources and the homogenous non-sectarian society. Such variable created a kind of ‘geopolitical neutrality’ over the direction of national politics and deterred foreign power’s rivalries in Tunisia’s politics. Western international democratic assistance in Tunisia, therefore, worked because it was relieved of the ‘conflicting interests’ that often surrounded the promotion of democracy elsewhere (Grimm and Leininger 2012).

The results on the ground are remarkable and it is, therefore, important to investigate the role IDPs played in assisting political parties during the transitional period. Indeed, making democracy work requires a solid expertise on how to carry out elections that respect the rule of law, the principle of transparency and political responsiveness. These include the setting up of electoral lists, a capacity to communicate effectively and to sustain competitive political debates. Likewise, national actors have to build functioning and responsive institutions that include marginalized people. Finally, a successful transition needs national parties to compete for power through regular elections, using national institutions and public space. Indeed, political parties are indispensable actors in politics

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(Lispet 2000) and crucial agents of democratization (Storm 2014), but they are often unprepared and poorly equipped to deal with the complexity and the challenges arising from transitional periods.

IDPs contributed to bolstering the technical skills of Tunisian national parties, helping them to better handle the challenges of competitive politics. In an interview with the author, an IRI’s official stated that his team conducted the first national opinion survey after the revolution and regularly repeated this procedure to help political parties understand the demands of ordinary citizens and, most importantly, what voters expect from political parties.92 IRI shared the results with all the parties with the objective of helping them to build an electoral offer tailored to the real needs of citizens. This activity was designed to help political parties frame an issue-based political offer, thereby making the electoral campaign more appealing and competitive and, in turn, reaching out to citizens. Most importantly IDPs worked on increasing their partners’ ability to operate within the boundaries of competitive politics. IDPs from the United States (Freedom House, NDI and IRI) and Germany (German Political Foundations such as Friedrich Ebert, Friedrich Neumann, Konrad Adenauer, Hanns Seidel) led training for Tunisian political parties in the form of multiparty training and single-party training, tailoring the assistance on the needs of their Tunisians and considering the political challenge of the transition.

The IDPs first focus was on multiparty training in order to increase the consensus over pluralistic practices and competitive politics. Such programs enhanced the skills of party members, including accurately comprehending electoral laws, political communication, negotiation skills and political debate. Moreover, multiparty training also allows members of different parties to share ideas and refine their political understanding out of constrained and highly politicized environments such as parliament or the party’s bureau. More specifically, multiparty training encourages attendees to brainstorm alternative ideas that might improve their understanding of competitive politics and democratic pluralism. The Hans Seidel Foundation (HSS) was particularly active in this respect. Relying on patterns of trust with domestic partners created during their stay in Tunisia (1989–2018), the

92 Eighteen national public opinion polls are available online. https://www.iri.org/country/tunisia

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foundation was immediately reactive to the challenges arising from the transition (Marzo, 2019). HSS organized multiparty training with members of all political parties. The foundation invited all the political parties operating within the Constitution’s rules and arranged a number of different ‘rooms’ for delivering technical training on law redaction, political debate, political communication, and conflict resolution.93 The members of the parties attending rotated around the building to get greater and more extensive training. This activity was repeated several times in Tunis, but also in other governorates. United States IDPs delivered similar multiparty assistance, especially from 2011 to 2014. According to an NDI official, this training helped political parties realize that reducing sterile and ideological confrontation on issues facilitate the way political parties build their response to people’s needs. Most importantly, it made them realize that moderation and competitive politics are the only means through which they remain in the political arena. Moreover, political parties’ members just sitting with each other and doing joint exercises on political affairs might end up sitting in Parliament and benefit the collaborative attitude they had learned during the training.94 IRI also organized multiparty activities that assisted young political leaders to improve public speaking, doors-to doors campaign. These techniques belong to the field of international political diplomacy and contribute to driving political parties towards consensus on democracy as the only game in town.95

There is still a significant demand from Tunisian political parties to get training with IDPs in improving political communication skills. Over the time, however, the more the political parties become accustomed to the democratic game, the more they perceive that competitive politics is the only way to obtain political influence, implement policies they care about and ultimately survive on the political stage. In this regard, international groups began arranging single party training. NDI and IRI, for instance, adjusted their strategy and they are now offering mostly single party’s training to all political parties interested in receiving their support.96 Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Neumann foundations reinforced the collaboration with their Tunisian political party partners and mostly deliver single-party

93 Interview with Hanns Seidel officials, Tunis 2017. To have an idea of the activities Hanns Seidel led in Tunisia see for instance http://www.hssma.org/activities.cfm. 94 Interview with a National Democratic Institute official, Washington, DC, 2018. 95 Although US NGOs are now delivering mostly single party training, in 2018 IRI has collaborated with several political parties on how to talk in front of a camera and convey your messages. 96 Interviews with a Konrad Adenauer official and with a Friedrich Neumann official, Tunis 2017.

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training.97 All the officials interviewed agree on the idea that this transformation in assistance reflects the challenge political parties – and the Tunisia transition - experienced since the 2014 elections. They needed to evolve from consensus on issues to competition over issues. The underlying logic of such shift is that after having achieved consensus over democracy, international assistance should support national actors through specific training tailored on their needs to encourage competition in the political arena.

Interviews with members of political parties confirm the validity of this. A Nida Tounes’s respondent, for instance, underlines that the Konrad Adenauer foundation and the NDI provided high-level training to many party members that profoundly improved their skills. Interestingly, he stated that some IDPs contributed to professionalizing a new generation of Nida Tounes’ members in politics. In this regard, the Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and the former Cabinet President Slim Azzabi are outstanding representations of Tunisian modern politicians who benefited from international training. Members of al-Nahda believe that international training increases the capacity of the party’s MPs to bargain with other parties in order to compromise on policies. It also bolsters the competences of the parties in a number of activities related to elections. A member of al-Nahda said to the author:

The assistance of “friendly states” was crucial. We have learnt a lot from the political training they promoted across the country. Some members of my party have improved their ability to negotiate relevant political and economic issues within the institutional framework. Other programs helped political parties’ members to improve their technical skills. For instance, it trained political parties on how to redact electoral legislation.98

Political parties that stand at the opposition such as the Front Populaire or smaller parties such as the centrist party al-Johmouri – former PDP - also largely shared this point of view, although al-Johmouri is more sceptical about the international partnership. According to some members, an international group might indeed provide high-skill training to national members but fails to understand the specificity of the Tunisian case. Yet, when it comes to

97 Interview with a member of Nida Tounes, Tunis 2018. 98 Interview with a member of al-Nahda, Tunis 2018. The original quote is in French. The author translates it into English.

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assessing what skills international training improves among the party’s members, they come up with many domains. For instance, they improved communication techniques and management of the electoral process, conflict management and law enforcement. In this respect, a respondent from al-Johmouri stated: “democracy promoters have employed sophisticated techniques to assist us, but they lack a deep understanding of the Tunisian case. Therefore, the assistance often loses effectiveness because it is not tailored on the specific needs of Tunisians”.99

Moreover, respondents suggested that international partners holding multiparty training encouraged a ‘polyvalence politique’ (political versatility) that lowered tensions and confrontations between political militants of different parties after the revolution. By gathering members from different parties in the same room, international partners encourage a common understanding of the boundaries of competitive politics in democracies. International partnerships with political parties have consisted in financial, technical and logistical support, which then contributes to their modernization and professionalization, therefore enhancing the skills of its members.

4.8 Enhancing the Autonomy of Civil Society and Empowering Independent National Institutions

In the aftermath of the revolution, Tunisian civil society blossomed. A vibrant and multifaceted range of associations, NGOs, unions and advocacy groups entered the social space with an estimated 15.000 associations registered in 2013 and 18.000 civil organization by the end of 2015.100 Initially, international financial assistance rewarded all attempts from the bottom-up to engage in the transitional processes and allocation of resources was widespread. The number of registered civil society organization has kept

99 Interview with a member of Front Populaire and a member of al-Johmouri, Tunis, March 2018. The original quote is in French. The author translates it into English. 100 For more information see: https://nawaat.org/portail/2016/02/01/tunisia-a-booming-civil-society-a-fragile- democracy-and-endless-challenges-ahead/.

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increasing since then,101 even though a Freedom House’s official suggests the number of civil society groups is expected to shrink as some groups are struggling and a new restrictive adopted in July 2018 requires civil society organizations to register with a new entity or face legal problems. Many international officers working in Tunisia recognize the problem of ‘NGOfication’, but argue that a solid network of professional, competent and quite effective civil actors has emerged. In other words, in the aftermath of the revolution, Western donors financed a large number of national NGOs, in part creating national associations that were more concerned with obtaining external funding than effectively focusing on to how to respond domestic issues. Yet, the overall results of external assistance remain highly positive among our respondents.

In general, democracy promotion has focused on advising civil society organizations on how to transform ideas into missions through the definition of a set of realistic targets. German political foundations encouraged coalition of civil society to co-operate for achieving common goals for instance (Marzo 2019). According to Holthaus (2018), German foundations’ support for civil society is directed towards at least two aims: furthering citizen participation, contestation and social pluralism on the one side, and stabilizing the Tunisia transition and consolidation of democracy on the other side. United States IDPs such as IRI and NDI and Freedom House, for their part, delivered extensive training on how to coordinate the monitoring of elections. Likewise, they empowered national NGOs in leading advocacy for citizens and how to engage with decision makers and elected representatives. Freedom House has also worked with civil society partners to increase their capacity to push the government to perform better. In this respect, Freedom House directly spoke out in November 2017 because the National Assembly was not responsive and showed traces of authoritarian backsliding in 2016 and 2017.102 Indeed, Freedom House officials, which in 2017 had already downgraded the Tunisian outlook in the authoritative annual report Freedom in the World, informally warned the Tunisian government that Tunisia’s outlook could further deteriorate to partially free in 2018, pushing the government to be more responsive, especially to the demands of civil society.

101 For an updated chart of the number of civic associations in Tunisia, see http://www.ifeda.org.tn/stats/francais.pdf 102 Interview with an official of Freedom House, Washington, DC, April 2018. For more information in 2017 report of Freedom House see https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2017/tunisia

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Coordination among IDPs bolstered the feeling of a positive and genuine engagement with their partners’ goals and suggests that cooperation contributes to lower tensions and achieving common objectives. NDI and IRI have largely collaborated with the goal of demonstrating that groups with different visions can cooperate.103 The German foundations also have regular meetings among them to cooperate and avoid overlapping their assistance.

The European Union (EU) was particularly engaged in empowering civil society and strengthening nascent independent institutions. In 2012 the EU launched the PASC – Programme d’appui à la société civile – the main program of democratic assistance that the EU led with hundreds of Tunisian partners. The EU created PASC with two main goals in mind: empowering the capacity of civil society and improving the legal framework wherein these civil organizations work and operate. The EU renewed its engagement with an additional three years of PASC funding (2014–2017) in order to keep bolstering democratic participation, creating an intermediary structure to connect the central government with the regions, and preventing radicalization.104 Interestingly, in 2017, at the end of the PASC program, the EU organized focus groups with national partners in several cities across the countries, including Bizerte, Tozeur, Gafsa, Sousse, Djerba, Nabuel, Tataouine, and Le Kef in order to measure the impact of its actions. The analysis of the reports is interesting. The focus group held in Bizerte, for instance, asked 26 partners from civil society groups to share a list of the goals EU assistance helped to achieve, along with the weakness of the partnership and the expectations ahead for further collaboration.105 Although some weaknesses in the EU assistance were raised - short-term of assistance, the centralization of management that complicated the inter-administration communication, or the lack of adequate programs for addressing the need of specific contexts - in the 2017 report all of

103 During interviews with the German Political Foundations Directors and with officers from NDI and IRI, it came out that offices in Tunisia hold regular meetings to cooperate and deliver a more effective strategy. 104 Floridi M, Costantini, G, Evaluation du Programme d’appui à la société civil, Rapport final Demande de prestation: 2016/380-154 V1, Avril 2016, accessed by the author with the permission of EU officials in Tunisia Avril 2017. Smaller and more specific program had also been launched to bridge EU and Tunisia partners such as the Reseau Euro-Mediterranean des Droits de l’Homme (REMDH). 105 Floridi M., Constantini G., Weiss P, Pozo J.O, Programme de L’Union européenne pour la Tunisie, Rapport sur le focus group et les ateliers, Demande de prestation: 2016/380-154 V1, juin 2017. Accessed by the author with the permission of EU officials in Tunisia.

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the 26-focus groups106 showed that EU assistance was crucial for national partners, who produced a longer list of ‘strong points’ than ‘weak points’ in their final remarks.

While the EU was hesitant to work with political parties during the transitional period because it did not want to interfere in the country’s political affairs, the amount of money the EU allocated to Tunisia’s civil society and national institutions was larger compared to other IDPs have such as NDI, Freedom House, IRI or the German Foundations.107 This allowed the EU to collaborate – and empower – most of the nascent Independent Constitutional Instances (ICI), including L’Instance Supérieure indépendante pour les élections (ISIE) La Haute Autorité Indépendante de la Communication Audiovisuelle (HAICA) L’Instance du développement durable et des droits des générations Le Comité Supérieur des droits de l’homme et des libertés fondamentales (CSDHLF) L’Instance Nationale de Lutte contre la Corruption (INLUCC) L’Instance de la Vérité et de la Dignité (IVD), among others.108

In an interview with the author, a member of HAICA stated that technical and economical assistance EU delivered bolstered HAICA’s operative skills, especially during 2014 Presidential and Legislative elections. Other Tunisian respondents backed up the argument suggesting that IDPs enhanced the capacity building of civil society group. For instance, a Tunisia NGO like I-Watch represents a prominent national organization with a strong ability to identify domestic irregularities and unaccountable institutions. It receives financial aid to lead projects bolstering the capacity of smaller and local associations to deal with the electoral process, including citizens’ participation, political parties’ responsiveness and fair political debate among candidates.109 In this regard, the European Union has

106 European Union consulted 202 national partners, located in 23 of the 24 country governorates asking for feedback on the partnership through semi-structured interviews. 107 Although the author was unable to obtain precise data of funding, this assumption is confirmed by an interview with an EU official. 108 Other Institution targeted by EU assistance are L’Instance Nationale de Prévention contre la Torture (INPT), L’Instance Nationale de lutte contre la traite des personnes (ILCTP), L’Instance Nationale de protection des données personnelles (INPDP). 109 For more information, see Weiss Pierre, Evaluation du Programme d’appui à la société civil, Rapport instance Constitutionnelles independantes Rapport Lettre de contrat N°2016/380154, Avril 2017.

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recently endowed I-Watch with a grant to empower smaller NGOs in local monitoring and accountability in the aftermath of municipal elections.110

The Tunisian Association for Integrity and Democracy of Elections (ATIDE), for its part, has upgraded its profile as an autonomous NGO with a countrywide outreach that empowers local associations and marginalized groups in fulfilling their electoral rights. First, it informs citizens about elections, the meaning of participation and the understanding of the electoral law. Second, it puts pressure on the government to respect electoral laws. Third, ATIDE has already launched an internal academy that trains smaller NGO partners on a number of issues related to elections and electoral culture. The sustained collaboration between ATIDE and its international partners has contributed to increase the capacity of the NGO to deal with the challenge of democratization and electoral monitoring. A respondent from ATIDE gives credit to international partners for encouraging and respecting its autonomy, only demanding a transparent portrait of how the NGO employs financial aid.111

Another leading NGO, Mourakiboun, believes that international assistance has been indispensable to improve its domestic outreach. Its members took advantage of the technical expertise provided international partners offered. They noted that while financial assistance remains an essential asset to empower the organization in conducting its activities, internal technical skills have improved to the extent that it relies less on international partners’ expertise now. Over the time, they have developed an autonomous capacity to set objectives and achieve targets without relying on external consultation when it comes to resolving technical issues. One respondent said to the author, “We have welcomed technical assistance but we are now more independent and we are developing our agenda. We still need economic aid, but we refuse economic assistance when it challenges our independence. We have our own vision on what we want to do at the national level.”112 In this respect, Mouraikboun has also delivered assistance to other NGOs at the local level and in neighbouring countries and has monitored elections in foreign countries. Jeunesse Sans Frontiers gives credits to international groups for having delivered extensive training to its members, including technical competences for a long-

110 Interview with a member of I-Watch, Tunis 2018. 111 Interview with a member of ATIDE, Tunis 2018. 112 Interview with a member of Mouraikboun Tunis 2018.

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time monitoring (LTO) and a short-time monitoring (STO). A respondent from the group stated that without the financial assistance of international actors many groups of Tunisian civil society would disappear. Moreover, the influence of leading NGOs would decrease and the domains of assistance would be reduced leaving rural areas and marginalized people practically out of reach.113

National NGOs have benefitted greatly from international training. They have transformed into ‘intermediary structures’, standing between international donors and local level associations, with whom they share concerns, visions and closer relations compared to the delegations of international groups. Such intermediary structures are not in place in electoral autocracies, leaving large segments of the population unable to tackle unfair electoral practices. Likewise, these intermediary structures are also not ready in the early phase of the transitions, where international actors lack interlocutors to properly deliver their agenda. Tunisian civil society members interviewed agree on three general points. First, they acknowledge that the journey leading to elections in 2014 would have been less successful if the international expertise had not been delivered. Many of them realize that in 2011, 2012 and 2013 a programmatic and strategic interactions between international and domestic experts supported the understanding of the competitive electoral mechanism. Second, international actors often served as a solution to confrontations between political parties and civil society, specifically when they reached a deadlock or a breaking point. Third, civil society members stated that the steady and strong collaboration with INGOs groups deterred the risk of electoral fraud. This is because political parties’ members fear that being discovered rigging electoral processes would damage their image both at the national and international level.

113 Interview with a member of Jeunesse Sans Frontiers, Tunis 2018.

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4.9 Conclusion: What is new about democratic promotion in Tunisia?

International promotion of democracy in Tunisia was an essential asset for the transitional process and it is contributing to the beginning of democratic consolidation. The Tunisian success story of interactions between IDPs and national parties demonstrates that international democracy promotion may have an impact even in MENA countries, furthering democratization processes by bolstering the financial and technical skills of the transitional elites. By buttressing the formal institutions as the only space to resolve political conflicts, international partners contribute to driving Tunisian transitional political parties from consensus over democracy to competition within democracy, reducing the risk of regression to authoritarian practices. Likewise, IDPs assistance can foster the professionalization of civic leaders and can strengthen the capacity of national independent institutions to operate with a more solid legal framework.

Tunisia’s case shows that three conditions are indispensable for a fruitful partnership between IDPs and domestic groups in a democratic transition. First, when the transition away from authoritarianism highlights elites’ broad agreement on the political system to establish, IDPs have a more effective capacity to enhance the achievements of their partners. Indeed, the interplay between IDPs and Tunisian partners spurred positive results precisely because a wide range of transitional elites accepted to compete for powers within a common democratic framework. The general agreement on the direction the country’s transition was about to take facilitated IDPs in assisting transitional elites to achieve relevant goals such as building democratic institutions, holding competitive elections, monitoring the fairness of the democratic process. Second, the IDPs’ ability to work more effectively also depended on the foreign antisystem forces’ reaction to the power vacuum in the transitional period. Indeed, IDPs in Tunisia had been successful in enhancing national democratic accomplishment because their assistance was not disrupted by external conflict penetrating the country, which, instead worsened the confrontation among domestic groups and left international democratic assistance in disarray in other countries of the region such as Egypt (Brown 2013) Yemen (Al-Muslimi 2015) and Syria (Philips 2015). Most importantly, in Tunisia, external and internal favourable conditions removed the potential

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tension in democracy promotion resulting from the Western clash of interests between promoting democratization and pursuing other crucial foreign policy goals.

The study of international democratic assistance in Tunisia’s suggests that the theories of neoliberal institutionalism may have - under particular conditions - some validity to measure the impact that external actors had on political and social change at the national level in a region where structural realism theories have overwhelmingly dominated the study of international relations. Eight years on, political and civil groups present a different picture, very different from the one they had in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. They have overcome psychological and ideological barriers inherited from the past and they have transformed into forces competing in a democratic framework. In this regard, despite Tunisia’s continuing reliance on assistance from IDPs, especially to bolster the capacity of local associations to survive and operate in the framework of democratizing Tunisia, political parties, national institutions and civil society leading groups have acquired a level of competence and a system of balances which do not suggest that imminent democratic regression. Although the economic crisis looms large, the political transition seems solid and political parties and civil society groups are capable of reproducing democratic practices and avoiding authoritarian backsliding. External antisystem forces seem still uninterested in and incapable of interfering with the course of events. In contrast, the perils of democratic backsliding come from economic stagnation and low social satisfaction, whose resulting social instability could ignite major internal or external shocks affecting the democratic consolidation process.

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Chapter 5. The international dimension of authoritarianism in the MENA region. An examination of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria

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5.1 Résumé

Utilisant le modèle d'Oisin Tansey (Tansey, 2016), cet article examine le rôle du soutien international à l'autoritarisme dans quatre pays de la région MENA. Il propose quatre catégories d’‘environnement international’ pour l’autoritarisme - contesté, contraignant, favorable et permissif - pour examiner les différentes trajectoires de rupture autoritaire, de survie autoritaire ou de retour autoritaire en Égypte, en Libye, en Tunisie et en Algérie. Cette recherche utilise la littérature secondaire et des données empiriques pour étayer le raisonnement théorique.

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5.2 Abstract

Employing Oisin Tansey’s model (Tansey, 2016), this article investigates the role of international support for authoritarianism across four MENA countries. It offers four categories of ‘international environment’ for authoritarianism – contested, constraining, supportive and permissive – to examine the different trajectories of authoritarian breakdown, authoritarian survival or authoritarian return in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. This research uses secondary literature and empirical data to back up the theoretical reasoning.

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5.3 Introduction

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is traditionally portrayed as an ‘exceptional’ context for the survival of authoritarianism. The region appeared immune to the ‘three waves’ of democratization that crisscrossed other areas of the world in the last two centuries (Lust 2011). Scholarly debate provided a number of explanations for the lack of democratization in the MENA region. The so-called ‘orientalist’ approach emphasized the anti-democratic elements intrinsic to the indigenous Arab culture and to Islam (Kedourie 1992, Lewis 2002). Some scholars, instead, borrowed from modernization theory (Lipset 1959) to highlight that poor economic indicators were hampering democratization. Other scholars argued that the Arab strongmen’s ability to retain power mainly hinged on the strength of their security apparatus (Bellin 2004). Some pointed out that strongmen and ruling elites largely relied on the rentier mechanism and the strategic distribution of economic resources and payoffs to the population for appeasing their demands of freedom and democracy (Beblawi 1987).

Against this backdrop, the political and social profile of the Arab World remained firmly authoritarian (Pousney 2004, Albrecht and Schlumberger 2004), while during 1990s and 2000s processes of democratic transitions mushroomed across the world – and democracy emerged in former deeply illiberal settings. In spite of the entrenched and resilient authoritarianism, however, academic debate on democratization in the Arab world continued to flourish during 2000s, with some scholars suggested that liberalization and democratization in the region were not out of reach. In this respect, Valbjørn and Bank (2010, 187) “At the turn of the new millennium, it was, however, clear that if the end of history comes with the triumph of democracy, the Middle East has plenty of history ahead of itself yet”. In his seminal article Authoritarian persistence, democratization theory and the Middle East, Raymond Hinnebusch (2006, 392) argues that although authoritarianism “is the modal form of governance in the Middle East…. Paths to democratization are possible,” also suggesting that the “liabilities of incumbent regimes remain unresolved, regime collapse might provide the conditions for a negotiated democratization pact cutting across the state–society divide.”

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In 2011 a wave of revolts shook the MENA region, from Morocco to Bahrain. Popular demands for social reforms and economic redistribution from below encountered the support of disenfranchised economic elites (Kandil 2012), leading to the demise of long- standing dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya, while other dictators were challenged or destabilized. Scholars and regional observers, therefore, claimed that the time had finally come for Arab countries to embrace competitive politics and build liberal democracy (Kaldor 2011). Yet, shortly after, some of the transitional processes derailed into full-blown civil wars (Yemen, Libya, Syria), leading experts to quickly dismiss the new paradigm of analysis, reconsidering previously optimistic predictions (Bellin 2012). The failure of most democratic transitions, thus, reasserted the conviction that the aforementioned problems were still hindering democracy in the region.

Scholars have hitherto investigated the paradigms of authoritarianism and democratization overwhelmingly through domestic lenses. And the reappearance in 2019 of popular revolts such as in Algeria and Sudan – and the demise of Bouteflika’s and Bashir’s regimes – indicates that domestic factors are indeed still important: popular uprisings are able to oust incumbent authoritarian regimes and democracy is still a powerful driver of mobilization against authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, a fine-grained examination of the trajectories of regime change across the region still induces to reflection. On the one hand, routinized – and successful - mass revolts against authoritarian leaders show that long-standing domestic constraints are no longer thwarting the rise of contentious politics from below. Bottom-up upheaval in MENA ultimately has the potential to force established autocracies out. On the other hand, democratic transitions and liberalization processes rarely follow the regime’s demise. Civil chaos and transitional stalemate enhance the ability of new strongmen (al-Sisi in Egypt for instance) or old authoritarian rulers to (re)emerge, re- establishing pattern of authoritarianism.

Following this reasoning, this article argues that renewed research attention has to be paid on the resilience of authoritarianism that goes beyond the structural national variables that scholars have put forward so far. Indeed, theories grounded on domestic variables such as the rentier mechanism, modernization theory, police state repression and the

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incompatibility of Islam and democracy are no longer sufficient to explain – alone - the gap between popular mobilization for democracy and authoritarian survival or re-emergence.

Although the Arab World is a ‘highly penetrated system’ (Halliday 2005) where foreign actors have affected tremendously the direction of national politics regardless of the will and demands of Arab citizens, scholars have devoted little attention to IR theories to explain the resilience of authoritarianism. In this regard, in the MENA region, limiting the paradigm of authoritarianism and democratization to the study of domestic factors fails to provide a complete picture of the dynamics impacting the way regimes survive, crumble and/or re-emerge. A shift of research attention toward theories of international relations is important for two main reasons. First, the rise of state interconnectedness and interactions in world politics requires a new scholarly attempt to systematize academic knowledge on the international dimension of authoritarian survival and breakdown in the region. Second, regime change triggers a political vacuum whereby a country’s porosity to external influences dramatically increases. Transitional periods often become battleground for international confrontation and geopolitical conflicts largely impede transitional elites to fill the political void resulting from the regime’s demise.

Scholars have shed light on how international influence enhanced ability to remain in power. Yet, with some exceptions (Hinnebusch 2018), the literature has hitherto provided mostly case studies (Yom and Al Momami 2008, Cavatorta 2009, Brownlee 2012, Ambrosio 2014), while it has not engaged with comprehensive studies that borrow models from International Relations theory to lay down a systematic analysis of the international politics surrounding regime change and authoritarianism return/survival in the region. A more accurate examination of the international dimension of authoritarianism in the region that draws from IR theoretical model may open the door to a stronger dialogue between scholars of authoritarianism and democratization in the Arab World and the discipline of IR.

This article goes in this direction, applying an IR theoretical framework (Oisin Tansey’s model) to investigate the weight of international support for authoritarianism in four MENA countries. The article offers four categories of ‘international environment’ for authoritarianism – contested, constraining, supportive and permissive – to explore the

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political trajectories in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria (after regime change) have experienced between 2010 and 2019. The article is divided as follows. First it introduces Tansey’s matrix, providing concrete examples on how the four typologies of ‘international environments’ are adaptable to all countries around the world. Second, the article discusses the specific challenges of investigating the international dimension of MENA politics. Third, it applies Tansey’s model to four MENA countries – Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria – highlighting the difference between their domestic regimes through the international influence a range of actors deliver.

5.4 Theoretical Framework: The International Politics of authoritarian rule

Oisin Tansey (2016) offers a theoretical model that broadly explores how specific combinations of international influence create different environments for authoritarianism at the national level.

Four international environments for authoritarianism

International Autocratic Sponsorship

International High Low

Democracy High Contested Constraining Promotion

Low Supportive Permissive

Source: Oisin Tansey, The international politics of authoritarian rule (2016, 13)

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In the matrix, Tansey charts four scenarios resulting from the combination of two international variables – International Democracy Promotion and International Autocratic Sponsorship – with a dichotomous variation of high/low.

Tansey suggests that when a country holds an overlapping (high) external democratic pressure and (high) external autocratic sponsorship, the incumbent power exists in an international contested environment for the rise or the survival of authoritarianism. Countries such as Venezuela or Hungary are some examples of a contested environment for authoritarianism. For instance, Venezuela is now living through national polarization. On the one hand, the US and other Western allies pressure the Maduro regime to hold free and fair elections or to step down from power. Foreign democracy promoters back Juan Guaido’s challenge to Maduro’s autocratic management of politics. On the other hand, Maduro enjoys international support from autocracies such as China and Russia, which allow him to survive the West’s economic sanctions, ultimately avoiding international isolation. In a nutshell Maduro’s regime is now living in an international contested environment for authoritarianism. The same is true for the Hungarian leader Victor Orban. The European Union is increasingly vocal about the backsliding Hungarian democracy, mainly due to the rise of Orban’s autocratic behaviour. However, the pressure democracy promoters exert over Orban to abandon his authoritarian practices (through conditionality mechanisms and ‘naming and shaming’) coexists with solid international support for his authoritarian policies, for instance from Donald Trump and Putin, but also from within the European Union. In short, due to this international context, Orban now also rules in an international contested environment for authoritarianism (Jenne and Mudde 2012, Bogaards 2018).

Tansey argues that, instead, when international pressure for democracy is low or absent, but external sponsors back the incumbent power, authoritarian regimes thrive in an international supportive environment. This is the case, for instance, of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, who is backed by regional and international powers but does not have democratic actors deterring its actions. Another example - to a lesser extent - is the rise of the Brazilian strongman Bolsonaro, whose increasingly authoritarian behaviour also relies

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on external support.114 Tansey’s model postulates that when international actors raise their pressure on a regime to democratize and external authoritarian counterparts do not offset this effort, the incumbent power lives in an international constraining environment for authoritarianism. This was the case for most of the Eastern European countries after the Soviet Union’s demise. They were absorbed into the Western ‘democratic’ cluster as the autocratic foreign support crumbled. Some leaders were forcibly removed, while others stepped down following electoral revolutions (Bunce and Wolwick 2006).

Finally, Tansey’s model posits that when international democracy promotion and autocratic international sponsorship are absent, the incumbent authoritarian lives in a permissive environment for authoritarianism. A number of sub-Saharan countries, for instance, fall into this category. Arguably, with the rapid change international politics experiences nowadays, both international democracy promotion and international autocracy sponsorship are volatile variables subject to fluctuation. Thus, the international environment surrounding a regime may vary following global shifts or major changes in the foreign policy of international powers.

Against this backdrop, employing the Tansey’s model to explore the international dimension of authoritarianism in number of Arab countries, where foreign support for incumbents is volatile and often blurred, is promising. Indeed, in 2019, it is complicated to clearly define the foreign policy behaviour of regional powers such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the UAE and Qatar. Their logic of alliances and confrontation depends more on contingent geopolitical gains rather than ideological divisions (Stein 2012, Valbjørn 2017). As Perthes (2018, 102) noted, “Russia is Syria’s most important military ally, but Moscow has also been demonstrating its excellent relationship with Israel, not least by means of a much-publicized visit of its defence minister to Tel Aviv.” Another puzzling example is the recent close collaboration between the UAE and Israel, although the former does not officially acknowledge the ‘existence’ of the latter. The article applies the Tansey model to four countries in the MENA region – Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria – explaining

114 On the US administration support for Bolsonaro, see for instance : https://www.reuters.com/article/us- brazil-environment-usa/trump-pledges-complete-support-for-brazils-bolsonaro-idUSKCN1VH1OV

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different trajectories of transition, authoritarian survival, and authoritarian return through the international dimension.

5.5 Egypt: An International Supportive Environment for Authoritarian Rule

In early 2011 domestic mobilisation challenged the 30 years of Mubarak’s ruling power in Egypt. In less than a month the protests gained traction in Cairo, attracting mostly the youth, but also leaving the national elites and - to a lesser extent - the domestic opposition in disarray. After violent confrontations between the protesters and the incumbent regime, in February 2011 Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned, triggering a major political change in Egypt. Elections were held in 2012 and they rewarded the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist opposition force, formerly marginalized and repressed. International electoral observers declared the electoral round free and competitive for the first time in Egyptian history.

However, the newly democratically elected government quickly alienated large segments of domestic elites, as it did not address national structural problems through an agenda of economic and social reforms (Monier and Ranko 2014). Likewise, the Muslim Brotherhood raised concerns among the army and security services for its perceived inability to prevent the threat of terrorists penetrating the country. Speculation followed about connivance between conservative segments in the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi armed groups. Such a danger resonated in the inner circle of a number of regional powers such as Israel, the UAE, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, which did not want either an unstable Egypt or an Islamist party succeeding in leading a ‘democratic transition’ (Piazza 2019). In short, the lack of governance’s capacity coupled with domestic and international demands for security eventually weakened the legitimacy that Mohammed Morsi’s government had obtained, paving the way for an army takeover. Indeed, in 2013 General Al-Sisi removed the government from office through a full-fledged military coup, backed by the above- mentioned foreign powers and silently endorsed by the US, France and other Western state actors (Selim 2015). Al-Sisi managed to hold national elections in 2014, which he won

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with a landslide consensus of around 90%. Since then he has cracked down on opposition, jailing and torturing Islamists, repressing labour unions and unwelcomed minorities. He is blatantly violating basic human rights and is reversing the Constitutional process built in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution to allow his uncontested hold on power.

At the regional and international level, the endorsement for a military takeover - initially conceived as a temporary option for resolving emerging national security issues - turned into a full-fledged sponsorship of a repressive dictator who is ruling through harsh authoritarian practices. Indeed, the international support for the Al-Sisi government nowadays ranges from the Gulf States to the US to Israel and includes some European states such as France and Italy. On the contrary, foreign democratic pressure on Al-Sisi is dramatically low. International democratic promoters have left the ground due to severe domestic constraints (NGO laws and harassment of officials) and Western state actors have failed to exert democratic pressure on the Egyptian regime. The US administration is overtly backing Al-Sisi115, also reflecting the preferences of Israel’s foreign policy116, the main US regional ally in the region. The European Union echoes its member states positions, as they are far more concerned with the capacity of Egyptian government to contain migration flows than to tackle terrorism. Most importantly a number of European countries – including Italy and France - have built economic cooperation with the Egyptian government, thereby preferring stability for maximizing financial gains rather than be vocal on governmental abuses (Roccu 2018).

All of this provides substance to the argument that al-Sisi’s regime has been thriving in what the Tansey model called an international supportive environment for authoritarian rule. This has allowed his government to repress activists and opposition, without a consistent international outcry against his policies. Recently, the international community reaction did not react to the Constitutional amendment that will allow al-Sisi to rule Egypt until 2030.

115 On US support for Al-Sisi see for instance, Dunne Michele, Why Is Trump Helping Egypt’s Dictator Entrench His Power? Politico.EU, 9 Aprile 2019 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/08/donald- trump-abdel-fattah-al-sisi-egypt-226579 116 On the growing Israel-Egyptian relations after the Sisi’s takeover please see: Hassanein, H. 2016. Egypt and Israel’s Growing Economic Cooperation TheWashington Institute for Near East Policy, November 2. http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/egypt-and-israels-growing-economiccooperation

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5.6 Libya Revolution: A Contested Environment for Authoritarianism

In October 2011, Libya experienced the bloody removal of dictator Muammar Gaddafi from power when he was captured by rebels with the support of NATO and killed in his hometown of Sirte. After 43 years of an archaic system of governance and ruthless despotism – severe human right abuses and lack of basic freedoms – Libyans proudly hoped that Gaddafi’s ousting could usher in a new era, permitting transitional elites to build a modern and democratic institutional structure. Enthusiasm was tangible, as Libya entered the cluster of the Arab countries that successfully overthrew the incumbent and were hopeful of establishing a government through competitive elections. Yet, since 2012, all the appointed transitional committees have failed to tackle the internal rifts that emerged in the immediate aftermath of Gaddafi’s demise (Pargeter 2016). Tribal divisions and power struggles have neutralized all the official attempts of national reconciliation and political transition carried out by National Transitional Council (NTC) in early 2012, the General National Congress (GNC) between 2012 and 2014 and the Government of National Accord (GNA) since 2015 (Romanet Perroux 2019). The United Nations and a number of Western states legitimized the GNA to hold a new round of national elections, but it has not so far succeeded in this goal.

Regime change generated an enormous power void that motivated foreign actors to penetrate the country. In this socially fragmented and politically porous domestic scenario, it is argued here that it is important to focus on two elements in explaining why Libya has increasingly become a battleground for regional and international powers. First, contingent issues such as the international migration crisis and the rise of Islamic terrorism (ISIS) spread concerns across neighbouring states and regional powers – especially Egypt – whose main priority remains the prevention of further regional instability. Therefore, with the Libyan GNA unable to secure a smooth transition and to tackle the limited but dangerous ISIS threat, external powers have increased their support for General Khalid Haftar, who is meanwhile the self-proclaimed head of the Libyan National Army (LNA). Second, the immense natural resource reserves across Libya have raised the interest of regional and

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international ambitious powers – the US, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Italy, France – to find their domestic pawns to compete on the Libyan chessboard. Indeed, the form and the actors resulting from the conflict resolution would reward the respective international backers (Sanchez Meteos 2019).

Since the fall of the regime, Libya, over the years, has been exposed to a considerable external pressure to democratize, with external actors pushing national groups to hold elections, build democratic institutions, resolve domestic conflicts and set up the political transition through international peace talks. At the same time though Libya has absorbed external influences that support the re-establishment of a strongman, mostly as a means to resolve the chaotic situation by ruling the country through authoritarianism practices. In this respect, international support, especially from the Western powers, has appeared highly volatile and ambivalent, with some foreign state actors, notably the US and France, oscillating between their support for democratization or authoritarian return.

The international dimension surrounding the Libyan transition has created what Tansey labelled an International Contested Environment for authoritarianism. Although a process of democratic transition failed to take off, a military strongman is struggling to impose his authority by force, despite enjoying growing international support. The recent escalation of the confrontation will likely compel the two sides to find a compromise that prevents bloodshed and further instability. However, regardless of who is going to gain more from the ongoing struggle, the international environment for Libyan politics is likely to remain a Contested Environment for authoritarian rule.

5.7 Tunisia: An International Constraining Environment for Authoritarianism

Tunisia is the only success story of the 2010–2011 Arab revolts. The country managed to build liberal democratic institutions in a short time span and it routinely holds free and fair competitive elections. A vibrant and active civil society is playing a relevant role in ensuring the government’s responsiveness and in advocating for further political change

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and modern reforms. There is, however, a degree of scepticism over the new political system and political parties. National observers and international experts believe they have failed to address national structural problems and to deliver socio-economic reforms needed to boost the economy. Political cynicism is high and electoral turnout (30–40% average) is far from an acceptable threshold for representative democracy. Moreover, the country is experiencing problems that hamper the effort to improve the situation, such as a widespread informal labour market and deeply entrenched corruption. Yet, despite the fact that Tunisia has a fragile economy and an imperfect ‘political system’ (i.e. there is no solid system of checks and balances), democracy is consolidating. Since the ousting of Ben Ali, on 14 January 2011, political parties, civil society, labour unions and national institutions are improving their democratic culture. In short, national groups are committed to consolidating the nascent democracy, even though there are severe economic challenges.

The international dimension of Tunisia’s democratization, however, also plays a crucial role in understanding why the country has succeeded in avoiding democratic regression and the rise of authoritarianism. Indeed, since 2011, international promotion for democracy in Tunisia has risen dramatically. A large number of International Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), foreign political foundations and transnational advocacy networks penetrated the ground, establishing national offices and delivering multi-layered democratic assistance to a wide spectrum of national actors, including political parties, civil society and national institutions. Likewise, International Organizations (IOs) such as the United Nations and the European Union have increased their volume of technical and financial assistance for enhancing the democratic transition. International democracy promoters have impacted Tunisian domestic politics in a number of ways. First, interviews led by the authors with Tunisian transitional elites (political party members and civil society leaders) highlight how international democracy promoters played a facilitating role in lowering political tensions through specific programs of assistance (Marzo 2019). Second, international democracy assistance bolstered the abilities of leading civil society groups and national parties to deal with the challenge of the democratic transition, eventually contributing to creating a technically autonomous – but still financially dependent – intermediate structure between international donors and local level associations.

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Third, and most importantly, international democracy promoters empowered national NGOs to advocate and bolster their skills on how to deal with decision makers and elected representatives. For instance, Freedom House worked with civil society partners to increase their capacity to push the government to perform better. In this respect, Freedom House directly spoke out in November 2017 because the National Assembly was not responsive and showed traces of authoritarian backsliding in 2016 and 2017. Indeed, Freedom House which in 2017 had already downgraded the Tunisian outlook in their authoritative annual report Freedom in the World, informally warned the Tunisian government that the Tunisia’s outlook could further deteriorate to partially free in 2018, pushing the government to be more responsive, especially to civil society117.

Besides the crucial action international democracy promoters have delivered, the foreign policy of some Western States sustained the democratic transition, hampering authoritarian regression at critical junctures of the process. In the aftermath of the revolution, the US and Germany with a number of other EU member states stated clearly that they would welcome – and support – a democratic political system issued from inclusive and free and fair elections. The external support to an inclusive political system within the boundaries of competitive politics and respects the institutional framework has been consistent even during moments of national polarization, unlike in other countries in the MENA which received indirect Western endorsement to overthrow democratically elected government. Tunisia transitional period has also attracted low external support for authoritarian rule. The shortage of external backing for authoritarianism primarily depends on the reluctance of domestic actors to accept foreign interference in the democratization process. However, it is crucial to highlight some geopolitical and structural variables that lowered the interest of foreign powers to influence the national democratic trajectory. First, Tunisia is poor in natural resources compared to its neighbouring countries, thereby limiting the incentives of foreign actors to back the rise of strong regimes that could facilitate unfair exploitation of resources and bilateral economic deals. Second, the country is a marginal actor within the Israel-Arab issue, which limits the fear that religious-oriented parties could undermine peaceful relations with Israel. Third, since the Tunisian population is ethnically and

117 Author interview with a Freedom House officer. Washington, 2018

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religiously homogenous and its elites are Western-oriented, it is less involved in regional disputes identities cannot be mobilised as the divide between Sunni and Shi’a has been in other countries. These three variables allow national groups to bargain in the democratic transition without the strongly destabilizing interference of regional powers – Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Qatar and Turkey – that elsewhere compete for regional influence, ultimately thwarting attempts at national reconciliation and competitive politics as they mobilize ‘proxy elites”. Against this backdrop, the high level of international support for democracy and the low foreign support for authoritarianism fits the category of international constraining environment for an authoritarian politics in Tunisia.

5.8 Algeria: a permissive environment for Authoritarianism?

Algeria was the absentee among the North African countries that experienced domestic upheavals in 2011. When the Arab revolts started, the Algerian regime increased the distribution of economic resources and created short-term jobs (especially for young people) to deter revolutionary contagion and to avoid the diffusion of riots in the country. Moreover, the legacy of the bloody Algerian civil war (1990–2000) acted as a deterrent for people embracing the uncertain path of regime change (Volpi 2013). Bouteflika’s inner circle – le pouvoir – gave mandate to the national media to broadcast the violent character of its neighbours’ democratic revolutions and purposely emphasized the chaotic trajectory that the Syrian and Libya transitions had taken. These strategies proved to be successful as they discouraged Algerians from taking to the streets and protesting. In so doing, Bouteflika not only prevented a domestic challenge to his hold on power, but a few years later managed to win the 2014 elections despite suffering a stroke in 2013 that weakened his ability to rule.

Economic concessions coupled with national propaganda, however, were more a palliative rather than a panacea, de facto only postponing the inevitable outbreak of large-scale protests against the ruling elites and the incumbent power. Push came to shove in 2019 when Bouteflika decided to run for a fifth mandate despite his precarious state of health.

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This resonated as a provocative act for ordinary Algerians, who took to the streets in large numbers, calling for the leader to step down. Following a few weeks of elites’ negotiation and bottom-up pressure, Bouteflika finally withdrew his candidacy and resigned.

It is challenging to predict what direction the Algerian transition will take in the years ahead. A few domestic variables can affect the outcome of this peaceful revolution, especially the ability of the army to handle civilian demands for changes. However, unless upcoming ruling elites show willingness to promote structural reforms, the international environment surrounding the Algerian politics will likely remain unchanged. Indeed, since its independence from France in 1962, Algeria has been ruled by strongmen, often from a military background, who have been consistent in establishing one of the most closed political systems to external influences in the world (Werenfels, 2007, Willis 2012). The regime has hampered international democracy promoters for a long time, undermining the efforts of the European Union, International Organizations and International NGOs to penetrate the country. The vast reserves of oil and gas permitted the ruling elites to limit the external interactions to state-to-state economic partnerships. Algeria’s politics, likewise, has rarely been the battleground for international or regional geopolitical clashes – perhaps with the exception of the civil war in the 1990s when France played a role in supporting the regime’s military campaign against insurgents (Cavatorta 2009) – because the incumbent always rejected any sort of external interference. During the Cold War, of course, Algeria enjoyed privileged relations with the Soviet Union and in the last three decades France and Italy have been major trade partners. Yet, none of these actors has ever shown the capacity to influence national agenda or to meddle in national affairs.

Against this backdrop, since independence, what Tansey called an international permissive environment for authoritarianism has surrounded Algerian national politics. Indeed, both external autocratic sponsorship and international democracy promotion remain low. Consistent with this, during the 2019 upheavals, national elites stated clearly that all forms of foreign meddling in the country’s affairs would have been unwelcome. International actors, for their part, have hitherto not shown either interest or ability to interfere in the country’s affairs. It remains to see how the ruling elites decide to lead the transitional process. If the country refuses to open its borders to democracy assistance, allowing

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international democracy promoters (political foundations or INGOs) in assisting the democratization, the international permissive environment for authoritarianism might eventually end up favouring the unchallenged rise of a new strongman or a military takeover.

5.9 Conclusion

This article has explored the international context for four countries in the MENA region. Applying the Tansey’s model to Egypt Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria, the article explains how specific international variables contribute to enhancing the ability of authoritarian regimes to survive or reappear after regime change, while different international conditions can create constrains to authoritarian practices, in some case also avoiding democratic regression. It argues that the Egyptian regime is now ruling in a supportive international environment for authoritarianism as it enjoys considerable foreign backing for strong and repressive politics, while democracy promoters cannot pressure the incumbent. In Libya some foreign actors exert strong pressure for democratization, others back authoritarianism, and others still waver in their support for democratization and authoritarianism, ultimately overlapping the external influences that create stalemate and generate an international contested environment for authoritarianism. Algeria is living a transitional moment following the Bouteflika’s resignation. However, this article suggests that the international environment surrounding Algerian politics will remain a permissive environment for authoritarian rule. Tunisia is the outlier of the region, wherein an international constraining environment for authoritarianism surrounding Tunisian politics has allowed the democratization journey to unfold, contributing to tackling authoritarian regression.

This article posits that International Relations can provide a solid and encompassing theoretical background for studying the paradigm of authoritarianism and democratization in the Arab World. Indeed, it is important to emphasize that the analytical framework employed in this article clarifies two points related to pattern of authoritarianism that analyses based on domestic factors fail to fully explain. First, while domestic variables

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explaining authoritarianism appear more immanent and structural, failing to explain patterns of change in a country, an examination that further considers the international dimension – and the impact of the international influences - succeeds in making sense of the political volatility that a country may experience in a short span of time. Indeed, the article argues that international influences surrounding authoritarianism are more subject to fluctuations, thereby affecting the ability of strongmen and authoritarian ruling elites to retain their grip on power. For instance, an authoritarian leader such as the Egyptian President Al-Sisi, who in 2019 relies on a supportive international environment for authoritarianism, may experience a sudden decline of his authoritarian power if the international conditions change in favour of liberalization and democratization. Second, and most importantly, by upgrading the importance of the international variables in explaining pattern of authoritarianism this article offers an explanation to resolve the clash between mass uprisings leading to regime change and triggering democratic transitions and the failure of democratization with the re-emergence of strongmen. Future studies should pay more attention on how international influences - and their interplay with domestic factors – impact and drive trajectories of regime change, in some case creating the conditions for authoritarian elites to re-emerge in transitional periods.

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Conclusion

Transitions to democracy do not happen in a vacuum. As the introduction discussed, all transitions to democracy have an international dimension that, to different degrees, helps making sense of domestic outcomes. In an interconnected world where a plethora of actors - states, IOs, INGOs - operate beyond the borders in addition to structural factors (Waltz, 1979), the study of a transition to democracy remains limited if the international context is not examined. Furthermore, the economic, geopolitical and social relevance of a country– within a regional system and, more broadly within the world system - affects the timing and the pace through which a transition to democracy starts and unfolds. A more fine-grained examination of transitions to democracy requires therefore a research approach that takes into account the interplay between the international and national level and its impact on the democratization process. In short, the study of a democratic transition cannot be divorced from the analysis of the international context wherein it occurs.

As the findings have highlighted, explanations for the successful Tunisian transition to democracy need to integrate international factors. In a region where the agency of external actors has impacted considerably the sociopolitical structure of many countries (Halliday 2005, Yom 2017), the analysis of the only post-2011 successful democratization through ‘domestic lenses’ fails to provide a full portrait of the transitional process. This research has refined the focus on internal factors to study the Tunisian transition to democracy through four research articles that investigate its international dimension. This study, however, does not intend to diminish the significance of domestic factors nor it aims at downplaying the agency of Tunisian actors – notably political parties and civil society organisations – in leading the democratization process. Tunisian political parties, labour unions and civil society groups deserve immense credit for their capacity to take steady democratic steps and to bring about liberal reforms and civil progress in a very short timespan. Although scholars criticise the ability of Tunisia’s democratic system in responding to the demands of ordinary citizens, there is no doubt that Tunisia is the most liberal country across the Arab World.

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This research has illustrated how the investigation of the external dimension of Tunisian democratization complements the understanding of its transitional process, shedding lights on international factors and mechanisms that permitted authoritarian breakdown and democratization. In addition, the study of the international context surrounding the Tunisian democratization allows for a better understanding of the Tunisian ‘democratic exception’ in the region. The Tunisian democratization remains an outlier in a region where authoritarianism prevails and where other transitions to democracy have failed. This research suggests that while favourable international conditions and external influence enhanced Tunisian democratization, international factors have not been favourable in other settings, where a transition to democracy started, but failed.

This article-based dissertation provides original empirical data to elaborate some theoretical reflections that can contribute to advancement of knowledge on international democracy promotion and to revive the debate on the international dimension of democratization.

Main findings

A) Empowering coalition of opposition groups: theoretical reflections for democracy promotion in authoritarian settings

Exploring the case of Tunisia’s democratization, this study demonstrates that democracy assistance programs may enhance the emergence of pro-democracy and Western-friendly coalition of opposition groups to the authoritarian regime. Specifically, it sheds light on the mechanisms through which, before the 2011 Tunisian revolution, the German political foundations and the US (through its network of democracy promoting NGOs and diplomatic network) provided national oppositions with “protected” platforms – inside and outside Tunisia - for debating political issues and democracy. The external support eventually helped the different strands of political opposition to strengthen ties and to structure alternative policies (not necessarily subversive) to the regime’s ones. This enhanced the creation of coalition of opposition groups prepared to deal with the transitional period. In addition, democracy promotion initiatives and programs have built

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patterns of trust between Western democracy promoters and a large spectrum of Tunisian political activists and political opposition leaders, securing their cooperation in the immediate aftermath of the Ben Ali’s fall.

From a theoretical point of view, this reasoning constitutes an element of novelty in the literature on democracy promotion in authoritarian settings and particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. Indeed, it shows empirically how international democracy promotion can generate results that are conducive to democratization. The democracy promotion literature in the MENA region has produced convincing arguments on how international democracy promoted have been controversial (Carapico 2013) or have de facto reinforced the incumbent authoritarian power (Pace 2009, Durac and Cavatorta 2009, Hanau Santini and Hassan 2012, Bush 2015, Van Hü llen 2015, Khakee 2017). Scholars have argued that the realist calculations of Western state actors – securing economic and strategic interests - have disempowered the ability of democracy promotion in the MENA region (Grimm and Leinenger 2012, Bronwlee 2012). Yet, this framework cannot be generalised to all countries. In particular, when democracy transition succeeds, at least from an institutional and procedural point of view, scholars should investigate to what extent international democracy promotion may have generated results and dynamics that contributed to the process. This is particularly important because, as Lucy Abbott recently noted (2018, 180), although scholarly debate assesses democracy promotion in the MENA as ineffective and controversial, scholars “do not know exactly what democracy promotion in the MENA actually does”. With a democratization process taking place in Tunisia, and an enormous amount of international democracy promoters working in the country - well before the revolution started - there was an important opportunity to investigate the impact liberal international influences had in enhancing the process.

As mentioned in chapter 2, Thomas Carothers (2002) suggested that in dominant political systems democracy promoters should address their action in encouraging alternative centres of power to the regime’s. Yet, the debate on democracy in the MENA has not focused on this aspect and has never explored to what extent democracy assistance program can empower the emergence of alternative centres of power, what this study conceptualises as pro-democracy coalitions of political opposition. The external support to pro-democracy

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coalition of opposition is a crucial mechanism that can enhance the democratization process. When authoritarian breakdown occurs, these coalitions of oppositions came up with (semi)structured ideas on how to manage the challenges and the inevitable volatility of the democratic transition, showing heightened mutual trust among them and between them and Western democracy promotion groups. As this study demonstrates in chapter 4, this secures broad agreement on cooperation with trusted Western partners and consensus over the establishment of democracy. Indeed, patterns of trust built between large and heterogenous national opposition and Western democracy promoters favour the immediate cooperation in the aftermath of the regime’s demise. Such alignments reduce the capacity of external anti-system forces to penetrate and exacerbate divisions among transitional national political groups. Transitional elites align their behaviour and political choices with the preferences of Western state actors, limiting the political influence and interference of antisystem foreign state actors that could thwart democratization process. The theoretical reasoning this study lays out, thus, may contribute to rethink the way international democracy promotion policy-makers structure their engagement in authoritarian settings. This is particularly important in an age of multipolarity, where regime breakdown and transition to democracy unleash a power vacuum that is exposed to foreign squabbling for influence.

While this dissertation focuses only on the Tunisia’s case, all the chapters provide comparative evidence to extend this finding to other regional settings. More specifically, chapters 3 and 4 provide a comparative analysis with Egypt, which shares some similarities with Tunisia – Egypt was a US and Western ally between 1980 and 2010, and it has an ethnically homogeneous population - if compared to Libya, Algeria, Syria and Yemen. The study suggests that western democracy promotion initiatives in Egypt in 2000s - although higher in terms of economic aid and volume of programs compared to Tunisia - did not support pro-democracy alternative centres of power that could prevent transitional period to draw external interference rival states. Before the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood did not build pro-democracy coalitions with other domestic oppositions (Brownlee 2012, Stacher 2020), neither it convinced the US and its allies of its pro-democracy Western- friendly attitude (Cook 2017). Therefore, its rise – as the Egyptian 2005 elections showed – cast doubts about the preservation of Western geopolitical interests in the country and

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beyond. This was evident after the fall of Mubarak. The Islamic party Party of Freedom and Justice, despite winning the competitive and free 2012 Egyptian elections, eventually raised concerns among the international community for its inability to prevent the threat of terrorists penetrating the country.

b) From Consensus Over Democracy toward competition within Democracy

In the immediate aftermaths of Tunisian revolution there was broad agreement among transitional political groups on the need to establish a democracy. With the exception of the radical Salafist groups Ansar al-Sharia, which was rapidly outlawed in 2013, all transitional forces showed consensus over the political system to establish: democracy. As this research showed, particularly in chapters 2 and 3, most of these transitional political groups, including Islamists and leftists, had established pattern of trust with Western democracy promoters. In addition, as the data highlight, many US and European ambassadors had secured personal ties with political activists and, in certain cases with coalitions of political oppositions. The US, European Union, and leading European states such as Germany organised post-revolutionary talks including all the transitional forces, stating that they would welcome inclusive democratic elections and competitive politics.

Transitional political elites, however, lacked expertise on how to structure a competitive democratic system. In this regard, the broad consensus among transitional forces to accept financial and technical assistance from the Western democracies to make democracy work allowed Western democracy promoters to work with a large and heterogenous spectrum of political parties and civil society groups. This permitted democracy promoters to deliver a comprehensive uninterrupted strategy of assistance that boosted their Tunisian partners’ skills to deal with the challenges and the volatility of the transitional period.

As demonstrated in chapter 4, democracy promotion programs, initiatives and assistance enhanced the process through which Tunisian transitional elites moved from the post- revolutionary consensus over democracy to the competitiveness within democracy. Crucially, by buttressing the formal institutions as the only space to resolve political conflicts, democracy promoters bolstered the ability of political parties to compete within

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the institutional framework they had themselves chosen, reducing the risk of regression to authoritarian practices. In addition, the agency of democracy promoters fostered the professionalization of civil society ‘watchdog’ groups and strengthened the effectiveness of independent national institutions. In short, the international promotion of democracy in Tunisia was an essential asset for the transitional process and it is contributing to the beginning of democratic consolidation.

There is criticism around the real strength of the Tunisian consolidation process. Daniel Brumberg and Ben Salah (2020, 111) have recently noted that the Tunisian path to become a fully competitive democracy is still ahead. They claim that Tunisian democracy is still a consensus-based system and lacks the main characteristics of a competitive democracy where “a majority rules, a loyal opposition opposes, and the institutions and rules of the game make real alternation in government a possibility” (Brumberg and Ben Salem 2020, 111). While their argument is valid if one explores the way political parties play the institutional game, the institutional functioning of Tunisia competitive democracy is not a mechanism that can be entirely externally induced. Moreover, from the point of view of procedural democracy, Tunisian democracy is consolidating. This research has demonstrated that the agency of international democracy promoters have boosted transformative processes in their Tunisian national partners that were beneficial to the establishment of procedural and institutional democracy. Specifically, it argues that international democracy promoters bolster the skills of national partners to compete within the democratic system and to resolve their political conflict within the democratic institution and under the binding mandate of the 2014 Constitution.

C) External Rivalries and the failure of democratic transitions

A third theoretical reflection that this study puts forth - which is in part intertwined with the two elements discussed above - is the low level of geopolitical conflict, anti-system interference and foreign rivalries that Tunisian democracy transition had to absorb and deal with. A number of structural factors reduced the interference of external rival actors into the Tunisian transition period. First, Tunisia is not rich in natural resources – gas and oil –

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and this lowers the interest of external actors in penetrating the country for gaining control of this resource. This is not the case of Libya for instance where foreign state actors are battling to gain influence in the country’s political void that the Qaddafi’s demise unleashed (Romanet-Perroux 2019) Second, Tunisia has an ethnically homogenous population. This limits room for anti-systemic forces mobilizing sectarian groups of society with ideological, territorial and cultural claims that might escalate into open confrontation. This occurred in Yemen – and in part in Syria – where the clash between Sunni and Shiite communities deteriorated as a result of the proxy war Iran and Saudi Arabia engaged in the country (Al-Muslimi 2015). Third, Tunisia has always maintained peaceful relations with Israel, even though the Hamas leadership was received with some pomp soon after the fall of Ben Ali. In contrast, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been a long-standing burden for countries such as Egypt and Syria, which contributes to explain the survival of authoritarianism (Lebovic 2006).

Tunisia absorbed low levels of external interference because large sections of transitional elites, including secularist, leftist and Islamist, agreed on the political system to put in place and accepted to cooperate with Western states and Western democracy promoters. This study suggests that the pre-revolutionary influences and interactions between Western groups and Tunisian political oppositions favoured this ideological and structural alignment in the aftermath of the revolution. Western state actors – US and European countries - realised that the Tunisian transition to democracy would not have jeopardised their security and material interests in the country, because all the political forces – to a different extent – showed a Western friendly attitude and the desire to establish a democracy. In this vein, as shown in chapters 4 and 5, Western support for an inclusive democratic political system has not faded during periods of deep Tunisian national polarization in 2013, and the terrorist attacks in 2015. In contrast, indirect support for authoritarian return or silent endorsement for military solutions contributed to thwarting transitions to democracy in Egypt (Brownlee 2012, Stacher 2020), also disrupting the strategy of international democracy promotion. In other regional countries such as Bahrain (Ambrosio 2014) Western foreign policy – the US in particular - secured authoritarianism without implementing strategies of democracy promotion. From a theoretical point of view, this reasoning suggests that when the political preferences of transitional political elites do not clash with Western foreign policy

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objectives (security and economic interest) the capacity of international democracy promoters to enhance democratization increases.

Limits of the Research

This study has explored the international dimension of Tunisia’s democratization relying on the definition of procedural democracy and using the analytical framework of democratic transition. In this respect, the idea of the Tunisia successful democratization hinges on a Western-centric minimalist conceptualization of democracy. Indeed, it complies with the procedural and institutional definition of democracy, which emphasizes electoral competition, freedom of expression, oppositional rights, participation and political equality. Yet, democracy has also diverse meanings and indicators, especially if one examines the perception and the satisfaction of people who live - and are ruled - under such a regime, the fulfilment of people's basic needs and demands.

Therefore, the analysis of the Tunisian international dimension of democratization through the definition of procedural democracy exposes this research to a conceptual limit. Relying on Western-centric definition of democracy does not allow to measure, for instance, the impact that international influences had on generating a system that still displays huge socioeconomic inequalities. Recent studies argued that democratic institutions are failing to address national structural problems and to deliver socio-economic reforms needed to boost the economy. Polls also highlight low levels of satisfaction among ordinary people about the democratic system in place (Teti el al. 2019). Moreover, the country is experiencing problems that hamper the effort to improve the situation, such as a widespread informal labour market and deeply entrenched corruption. As mentioned in the introduction, these important research areas require a different conceptualization of democracy that goes beyond the procedural definition and the analytical approach the transitional paradigm provides. Yet, this has not affected the objective of our analysis. Indeed, this research has focused on the impact of international factors to accelerate authoritarian breakdown and democratization. It is not intended either to examine the extent to which Tunisia’s

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democratization process has succeeded in generating social justice, nor to measure the satisfaction of Tunisians with the democratic system they have established.

A second theoretical limit hinged on the difficulties in clearly defining the international dimension of democratization. The international dimension of democratization is indeed a broad and comprehensive recipient that includes several layers of analysis. The geopolitical factors, the role of international economy, the agency of foreign state actors, international organizations and non-governmental actors, the international media, generate external processes and influences that impact the domestic level and, thus, may play a role in the democratization process. This article-based research has examined relevant aspects of the international dimension of Tunisia democratization. Specifically, it has explored the role played by international democracy promotion and liberal influences – either promoted by states or by non-state actors – and the significance of geopolitical factors surrounding the Tunisia’s democratization. As this study has demonstrated, these variables have been often intertwined in explaining the national outcomes. This research, however, does not give an exhaustive portrait of the international dimension of Tunisian democratization, which includes other levels of analysis. Notably the impact that international political economy had in Tunisian politics remains an understudied international dimension of the Tunisian contemporary history.

A number of practical limits also emerged during the research. Qualitative researchers who investigate politically sensitive topics in the MENA are often not welcomed into these countries, as their research can unveil how authoritarian governance is associated with lack of human rights, repressive policy and economic unfair distribution. Recently, some environments such as Egypt have become very risky for the safety of researchers, while other such as Libya, Yemen, Syria Iraq are inaccessible to academic research due to civil wars. Tunisia, once again, is an exception in this sense and the national environment after the Ben Ali’s fall has become an ‘oasis’ for social and political scientists. While focusing only on the international dimension of Tunisia’s democratization, this study used secondary literature and documentary analysis to put Tunisian case comparative perspective. However, I would have provided more systematic evidence and stronger evidence if I had been allowed to conduct some research in Egypt. A second limitation stems from the

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difficulty to access the US Department archives through the Freedom of Information Act. In 2018, while collecting data on the US foreign policy in Tunisia in 2000s, I filed a request to access all US Department briefs and reports on Tunisia after 9/11. Unfortunately, my request was scheduled to receive and answer for the end of 2022, an impossible timeline for my research purposes. Therefore, in order to triangulate documentary analysis with my interview, I have used in this research only the unclassified documents I could collect in the free-access US department archives online.

Future Research This study paves the ground for new academic research. First this study has suggested that the success of a country’s democratic transition is somehow indirectly proportional to the number of external confrontations that the setting absorbs. In this doctoral dissertation I have suggested that the low impact of regional rivalries in Tunisia's transition to democracy has been a crucial element for understanding the country successful democratization in the region, suggesting foreign rival states battle for hegemony penetrated transitional periods and impacted national politics in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. While this argument was investigated using the Tunisian case in a limited comparative perspective, future studies could conduct a systematic study to explain of how regional rivalries create hurdles for domestic elites in negotiating their path to democracy. For instance, using all the failed transitions to democracy since 1970s in the MENA a new research project can explore the following question: how do regional rivalries in the Arab World hinder the ability of national elites to negotiate a democratic transition following regime change? This research question can also be examined beyond the MENA region, using large N analysis that includes democratic transitions occurring in different world regions and in different times.

Two hypotheses can be validated:

Rival states penetrating a transitional period worsen sectarian and ideological divisions among domestic elites, lowering their capacity to bargain within the political void resulting from the regime’s demise.

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Foreign state actors back the return of authoritarian leaders in a country when they perceive that democratic transition can give material and strategic gains to rival regional states.

Due to the aforementioned limits and risk in entering some countries to conduct fieldwork, a methodological solution to answer this research question could be relying on a mixed method, employing both qualitative and quantitative analysis. Available interviews and documentary analysis can be triangulated with expert surveys where a sample of national and international scholars, political analysts and practitioners will be selected randomly among a database entirely built using a systematic process. Expert survey’s results will be elaborated into descriptive statistics that are expected to give substance to the data collected through qualitative methodology.

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