What happens when money, coercion and blood ties become the potion of power? A ‘state’ is born. Not ‘Tunis,’ that place of congeniality and conviviality as its Arabic name suggests. Rather, a different ‘Tunis,’ a Tunis, which is run and owned by a club of rich and powerful families. That ‘Tunis’ today conjures up a disturbing political triad […]
Larbi Sadiki
Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, and author of Arab Democratisation: Elections without Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2009) and The Search for Arab Democracy: Discourses and Counter-Discourses (Columbia University Press, 2004), forthcoming Hamas and the Political Process (2011). He has also published with Brieg Powell, EU-Tunisia Relations: Democratization via Association (Routledge 2009).
Tunis, like other Maghribi capitals, seems to recede further into oblivion. Political excitement when Narcissist Gaddafi is holding his tongue… Lire la suite
The significance of the 5th Congress (30 July-2 August 2008) of Tunisia’s ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) lies not in Bin Ali’s nomination for the October 2009 presidential elections, but rather in the set of challenges that could render his fifth and supposedly ‘last’ term a time of transition to a more open political system in 2014. The Congress, held