8 - Decentralization Reforms in Post-Revolution Tunisia

Summary

This chapter examines Tunisia’s decentralization process from the start of the constitutional drafting process in 2011 to adoption of the Local Authorities Code in 2018. Tunisia’s decentralization process reveals the existence of historical territorial cleavages that are often obscured by the usual ideological cleavages highlighted in the literature, particularly the secularist–Islamist binary. The chapter begins with a brief historical overview of regional inequalities, which played a prominent role in the 2011 uprising and led to the adoption of decentralization in the new Constitution. The chapter analyzes how two key factors – institutional venue and party system coherence – shape the incentives and capacities of political and bureaucratic officials to shape decentralization. It draws on the literature on decentralization in other transitioning and developing countries and analyzes the role of political parties in a post-authoritarian transitional context, the balance of power between political and administrative actors, and how choices regarding process design and institutional venue at the outset of decentralization reforms shape subsequent outcomes. The chapter sheds light on how actors’ strategies are shaped by not only their own interests and ideas, but by the wider institutional arrangements that shape the incentives and capacities of individual and collective actors.