Tunisia: Escaping the Trap of Permanent Transition

A Transition That Never Produced an Economic Vision

The Tunisian crisis cannot be understood solely through the classical political categories of democratisation or authoritarian restoration.

Several academic works devoted to post-revolutionary trajectories have demonstrated that political transitions frequently fail when they are not accompanied by a transformation of the state's economic and administrative structures.[1] The decade inaugurated in 2011 profoundly transformed mechanisms of political representation, institutional equilibria, and forms of public expression, yet it never produced an economic — let alone strategic — doctrine coherent enough to redefine the material foundations of the Tunisian state.

The successive governments born of the transition devoted the bulk of their energy to managing parliamentary balances, partisan negotiations, and the preservation of fragile institutional compromises. Meanwhile, the country's structural imbalances continued to deepen. The development model inherited from preceding decades remained virtually intact: concentration of wealth along the coast, import dependency, low industrial value-added, marginalisation of the interior regions, and hypertrophy of an administration incapable of reforming itself.

Several observers have emphasised that the Tunisian failure stemmed less from an excess of political pluralism than from a persistent incapacity to respond to the economic and social expectations of marginalised populations. It failed because it did not succeed in transforming the economic and social structures that had produced the revolutionary explosion of 2010–2011. The transition delivered public freedoms but it did not deliver credible economic prospects to a youth struck by unemployment, precarity, and a sense of abandonment.

The political success of Kaïs Saïed must be read in this light. His rise does not merely reflect a demand for authority; above all, it reflects the exhaustion of a political cycle incapable of producing a national vision. The Tunisian president was able to capture a diffuse aspiration for the restoration of the state, for verticality of decision-making, and for the reassertion of sovereignty. Yet his own project now confronts the same fundamental obstacle: the absence of a long-term economic and administrative strategy.

Presidentialism as a Substitute for Strategy

Since 2021, the centralisation of power around the presidency has been accompanied by an increasing personalisation of political decision-making. This evolution has at times given the impression of a return of the state. In reality, it often reveals the weakness of ordinary institutional mechanisms.

The current system relies heavily on the president's direct intervention in governmental affairs, successive reshuffles, ad hoc arbitrations, and targeted political campaigns against corruption or networks of influence. This approach generates high political intensity but it does not suffice to build lasting public action capacity. The multiplication of changes at the head of government illustrates this difficulty. Prime ministers appear less as autonomous political leaders than as administrative executors tasked with implementing directives defined at the apex of the state.

Excessive centralisation can produce rapid decisions, but it also tends to disorganise mechanisms of administrative coordination, slow procedures, and increase the fear of responsibility within the senior civil service. The true Tunisian challenge therefore resides less in the choice between parliamentarism and presidentialism than in the reconstruction of a state apparatus capable of defining priorities, planning investments, evaluating public policies, and producing strategic continuity independent of political cycles.

The Tunisian state thus operates primarily through emergency measures — decrees, security campaigns, ad hoc arbitrations, or improvised reforms. This logic generates high political intensity but it weakens the capacity for strategic planning. Tunisia today suffers less from a lack of decisions than from a deficit of strategic continuity.

Mezzouna: A Mirror of the Real Country

On 14 April 2025, the collapse of the wall at the Mezzouna secondary school, which killed three students, constitutes far more than an accident. It represents a brutal radiography of the Tunisian state's failure in its interior regions.

This tragedy — which occurred in the governorate of Sidi Bouzid, the very place where the 2010–2011 revolution began — provoked intense emotion across the entire country and concentrates within itself several dimensions of the contemporary Tunisian crisis: the deterioration of public infrastructure, the absence of maintenance, bureaucratic paralysis, the weakness of emergency services, structural poverty, and above all the progressive rupture of trust between citizens and state institutions.

Fourteen years after the revolution, the regions that carried the uprising continue to live in conditions close to those of 2010. The territorial question remains arguably the principal factor of Tunisian political fragility. Numerous studies devoted to contemporary Tunisia demonstrate that the interior regions remain the epicentre of social frustration and risks of political destabilisation. The regional disparities observed since the 1970s have progressively transformed into structural fractures directly threatening national cohesion.[2]

Tunisia's territorial fracture now pits two nearly irreconcilable economic, social, and administrative realities against each other. On one side, a coastline relatively integrated into the global economy, concentrating infrastructure, investment, universities, specialised services, and the most profitable productive activities. On the other, a set of interior regions marked by structural unemployment, chronic under-investment, and the progressive collapse of public services.

This duality produces profound consequences for national stability. Internal migration progressively drains certain regions of their skills and active youth. Local economies retreat into informality or survival activities. The feeling of abandonment fuels distrust toward central institutions and feeds the perception of a multi-tier citizenship.

In many areas of the country's interior, the state no longer appears as an engine of development but as a distant structure, primarily present through its security or administrative apparatus. This perception weakens the national bond and progressively reduces the state's capacity to generate collective adhesion. The major danger lies in the cumulative nature of this marginalisation. Each delay in infrastructure produces new educational, economic, and social gaps. Each failure of public services accelerates internal migration dynamics and reinforces the concentration of resources on the coast. In the long run, this dynamic threatens the very equilibrium of Tunisian territory.

An Existential Crisis for the Tunisian State

The Tunisian state cannot durably claim to embody national unity while leaving a portion of its territory in conditions of near-abandonment. The excessive centralisation around Tunis has reached its historical limits. The new institutional architectures proposed in recent years will not suffice to correct imbalances that are above all budgetary, administrative, and productive. Tunisia's territorial fracture therefore does not belong solely to the domain of local governance. It reveals the exhaustion of a development model incapable of equitably distributing resources, investments, and economic opportunities.

The Cheque System as a Revealer of Structural Imbalances

In February 2025, the crisis triggered by the reform of the cheque system constituted a brutal revealer of the deep fragilities of the Tunisian economy.

Behind a reform presented as technical lay in reality an informal mechanism that had become essential to the functioning of the national economy. For years, post-dated cheques served as a substitute for bank credit; as documented by Le Monde, households resorted to them to maintain their consumption levels despite the erosion of purchasing power. Small businesses used them to finance their cash flow and maintain their activities in an environment marked by the scarcity of financing. This practice had progressively established itself because the Tunisian banking system was no longer fully performing its economic function.

Banks prefer to finance public debt rather than the productive sector, which they consider too risky. Small and medium-sized enterprises, which nonetheless constitute the bulk of the Tunisian economic fabric, remain largely excluded from conventional credit. Under these conditions, a parallel economy of financing developed through payment facilities, informal arrangements, and chains of trust built around cheques.

The reform launched in 2025 sought to restore the cheque to its original function as a simple instrument of immediate payment. But by abruptly eliminating a central mechanism without putting any credible alternative in place, it provoked a considerable economic and psychological shock. The concerns expressed by shopkeepers, artisans, and salaried workers reflect less a cultural resistance to change than an anxiety about the absence of adequate financing solutions. This episode illustrates a broader problem: Tunisia continues to manage its structural imbalances through legal or administrative adjustments when they require profound institutional transformations.

A Dependent and Weakly Productive Economy

The Tunisian economic model has now reached its historical limits. Analyses by the World Bank, the IMF, and several Tunisian economists converge on the diagnosis of a growth model incapable of producing sufficient value-added and qualified employment.[3] For several decades, growth has rested primarily on three pillars: tourism, industrial subcontracting destined for the European market, and remittances from Tunisians living abroad.

This model has permitted a certain macroeconomic stability but it has never produced a sufficient productive transformation. Tunisia remains locked into a peripheral integration within globalisation. Its competitiveness rests largely on low labour costs rather than on innovation, technology, or industrial upgrading. High-value-added sectors remain insufficiently developed and productive investment stagnates.

This situation produces a central paradox: the country possesses a relatively educated population but does not create enough qualified jobs capable of absorbing its graduates. Emigration thus becomes not only a social aspiration but also an economic safety valve. Meanwhile, dependence on energy and food imports heightens the country's vulnerability to international crises — a dependence documented in the analysis of the cost of Tunisian energy dependence.

Each external shock — pandemic, the war in Ukraine, surging global prices — further weakens an economy already under strain. Until this question is addressed, piecemeal reforms will remain insufficient.

A Tunisia Transformed into a Buffer Zone

The migration question has progressively become one of the principal points of strategic tension for Tunisia.

Several analyses devoted to Euro-Mediterranean migration policies highlight the risk of seeing Tunisia transformed into a space of security outsourcing in service of European priorities.[4] This evolution must be placed within the broader framework of European policies of externalisation of Mediterranean borders. The agreement concluded with the European Union in 2023 accelerated a silent transformation of the country's geopolitical role. Tunisia now tends to be considered as a detention space designed to limit departures toward Europe rather than as a development partner.

This evolution profoundly alters internal balances. Sub-Saharan migrants often find themselves stranded in precarious zones, without any stable legal status or clear economic prospects. Several organisations, including Amnesty International, have raised the alarm regarding the resulting rights violations. Tunisian authorities, for their part, oscillate between security logics, diplomatic imperatives, and improvised crisis management. This situation produces particularly dangerous effects in a context already marked by economic stagnation and social fragility. Tensions around migrants quickly become catalysts for broader frustrations linked to unemployment, inflation, and the weakening of public services. Identity-based discourses and conspiracy theories then find fertile ground.

The risk is twofold. On one hand, Tunisia could see the normalisation of forms of racial violence and identity polarisation unprecedented in its contemporary history. On the other hand, the country could progressively lose political control over its own migration policy under the combined pressure of European demands and financial constraints.

The Complete Absence of a Migration Doctrine

The official slogan asserting that Tunisia is "neither a transit country nor a country of settlement" does not constitute a strategy. It is more of a defensive formula designed to avoid a political confrontation with a reality that has become impossible to ignore. Tunisia already forms part of the principal migratory routes linking sub-Saharan Africa to Mediterranean Europe.

On the contrary, the absence of a coherent migration doctrine favours security improvisation, the political instrumentalisation of the migration question, racist campaigns, and a growing dependence on European priorities. The problem vastly exceeds Tunisian capacities. Regional conflicts, African economic crises, the effects of climate change, and the collapse of certain Sahelian economies will continue to fuel migratory flows in the years ahead. In this context, a purely security-based approach can only produce an accumulation of humanitarian and social tensions.

The Risk of Social Explosion

Tensions linked to the presence of sub-Saharan migrants reveal less an identity question than a deeper crisis of the Tunisian social contract. In a context marked by rising precarity and the erosion of economic protections, migrants become convenient figures onto which collective anxieties are displaced. The increasing dissemination of "great replacement" narratives constitutes in this regard a troubling turning point. These narratives, largely imported from foreign contexts, reorganise public debate around ethnic and security-based logics that divert attention from the true causes of the Tunisian crisis.

The country's structural difficulties do not originate from African migration. They derive from insufficient growth, chronic under-investment, an incapacity to modernise the economy, and an enduring crisis of public action. By transforming the migration question into an identity conflict, the political establishment runs the risk of feeding social dynamics that are difficult to control. A society weakened economically becomes particularly vulnerable to polarisation phenomena. In the long term, this evolution could further weaken national cohesion and diplomatically isolate Tunisia.

The Judiciary Under Pressure

The institutional developments observed in recent years reflect a growing concentration of executive power and a progressive reduction of countervailing spaces.

Several international organisations as well as numerous Tunisian jurists have raised the alarm about the risks that this evolution poses to institutional credibility and public trust.[5] Prosecutions targeting political opponents, journalists, or judges contribute to installing a climate of generalised distrust toward institutions. In the short term, this strategy can reinforce the political control of the central government. But it also produces deeper effects on the functioning of the state. When a significant portion of society perceives the judiciary as dependent on political power, institutional credibility degrades progressively.

This loss of confidence does not concern only political actors or human rights organisations. It also affects investors, entrepreneurs, and the administrations themselves. A judicial system whose autonomy appears uncertain reduces economic predictability and weakens the legal certainty indispensable to development. The institutional question therefore does not belong solely to the realm of public freedoms. It constitutes a major economic and strategic issue as well.

Administrative Fear

One of the most underestimated phenomena in Tunisia remains the progressive paralysis of the public administration. Senior civil servants increasingly hesitate to take decisions that engage their responsibility. The multiplication of investigations, political instability, and the intense media coverage of corruption cases have created a climate of excessive caution within the administrative apparatus.

This situation produces a diffuse but profound paralysis. Investment projects fall behind schedule, administrative arbitrations grow more complex, and initiative recedes. The Tunisian administration thus operates in a defensive logic where the implicit objective increasingly becomes the avoidance of all risk rather than the production of efficiency. The fight against corruption obviously remains necessary. However, when it is accompanied by a general criminalisation of administrative decision-making, it can end up weakening the state's very capacity to act. The challenge therefore consists of building transparent control mechanisms without transforming the administration into a permanent space of suspicion. The anti-corruption effort risks becoming counterproductive when it simultaneously destroys the administration's capacity for action and durably installs a culture of bureaucratic fear.

A Sovereignty Limited by Economic Dependence

The sovereignist discourse of Kaïs Saïed resonates strongly with Tunisian public opinion.

This dynamic is part of a broader trend observed in several societies confronted with asymmetric globalisation, external indebtedness, and the feeling of national downgrading.[6] For it responds to a collective fatigue with external interference and economic policies imposed over several decades. Yet sovereignty cannot be reduced to a political or rhetorical posture. It presupposes financial resources, industrial capacities, budgetary margins, and sufficient energy autonomy — a point developed in our study on sovereignty and the strategic deficit in Tunisia.

Tunisia remains heavily dependent on European financing, international financial institutions, energy imports, and the European market. Diaspora remittances also play an essential role in the country's economic equilibrium. This structural dependence considerably limits Tunis's capacity to define a fully autonomous policy.

The Return of Great-Power Competition

Tunisia today finds itself at the intersection of several major geopolitical dynamics. Europe's migration strategy, the American repositioning in North Africa, Middle Eastern realignments, the tensions surrounding Gaza, Algerian-Moroccan rivalries, Libyan instability, and the Sahel crisis are progressively redrawing the country's strategic environment.

In this context, Tunisia can no longer content itself with a reactive or strictly defensive diplomacy. It must define its strategic interests with greater clarity. The absence of a structured geopolitical doctrine risks exposing the country to contradictory pressures from regional and international powers. Tunisia's economic weakness further amplifies this vulnerability. The more a state depends financially on its external partners, the more sensitive it becomes to the diplomatic, security, or commercial conditionalities that accompany aid and partnerships.

The Danger of Externalised Sovereignty

The major risk is that Tunisia progressively becomes a mere security subcontractor for Europe, a dependent peripheral market, and a migratory buffer zone integrated into Mediterranean control systems. Such a trajectory would durably weaken the Tunisian state. It would reduce its capacity to define its own economic and social priorities and would accentuate the feeling of strategic humiliation already perceptible in a portion of public opinion. The central question is therefore that of Tunisian strategic depth. A country that does not produce sufficient wealth, that depends on external financing, and that is buffeted by major regional realignments without a clear doctrine risks progressively losing its autonomous decision-making capacity.

Stability Through Control Is Not Enough

The current political system rests largely on the security apparatus, the centralisation of presidential power, the fragmentation of the opposition, and the exhaustion of the political forces that emerged from the democratic transition.

Several analysts have also raised the alarm about the limits of a stabilisation strategy founded primarily on political control without deep economic transformation. This configuration can produce apparent stability in the short term. It does not, however, suffice to resolve the country's structural vulnerabilities. Mass unemployment, public debt, poverty, the territorial fracture, the crisis of public services, and weak investment continue to weaken social equilibria. The exodus of skilled workers abroad progressively reduces the country's capacity to project itself into the future.

Durable stability cannot rest exclusively on political or security control. It presupposes the capacity to produce growth, to restore social trust, and to offer credible prospects to the new generations.

A Society Silently Disintegrating

The most troubling phenomenon in Tunisia is perhaps less political repression than the progressive disintegration of the social fabric. Several Tunisian sociologists today describe a deep crisis of collective trust and adhesion to the national project.[7] This disintegration manifests itself through the mass emigration of youth, the collapse of collective trust, the rise of cynicism, the impoverishment of the middle classes, the expansion of the informal economy, and the symbolic and social violence that now traverses a portion of the country.

Tunisian society appears to be progressively losing its capacity to produce a mobilising collective imaginary. The promises of the revolution have dissipated without being replaced by a new credible national perspective. The risk is therefore not only economic or institutional; it is also psychological and cultural. Emigration ceases to be a marginal phenomenon to become a collective horizon. This dynamic progressively weakens the country's human capacities and nourishes a vicious circle of discouragement and stagnation.

Tunisia will not be able to durably escape the current impasse without elaborating a coherent national doctrine articulating the economic, social, territorial, and geopolitical dimensions.

Such a strategy cannot be limited to ad hoc measures or security-based responses to successive crises. It presupposes a redefinition of the role of the state and of national priorities.

The first urgency consists of rebuilding the administrative capacities of the state. The Tunisian administration remains one of the country's principal resources, but it suffers from progressive exhaustion. The fear of prosecution, the heaviness of procedures, and political instability have profoundly weakened its capacity for initiative. Administrative modernisation must become a national priority. This entails a massive simplification of procedures, digitisation of public services, clarification of responsibilities, and protection of civil servants against political arbitrariness. A state that is administratively paralysed cannot conduct any serious economic transformation.

The territorial question must also be placed back at the heart of public action. The disparities between the coast and the interior regions constitute today the principal national fracture. The collapse of school and health infrastructure in certain areas no longer belongs to the category of mere development delays; it directly threatens national cohesion. Tunisia needs a ten-year territorial rebalancing plan founded on infrastructure, transport, healthcare, education, and productive investment in marginalised regions.

On the economic front, the country must urgently exit the growth model founded on low-value-added subcontracting. This presupposes an explicit industrial policy oriented toward technological sectors, the digital economy, renewable energy, and agri-food processing. The creation of a public investment bank dedicated to financing innovative SMEs could constitute a central lever of this strategy. The banking system must be profoundly reoriented toward the financing of the real economy. Today, a large portion of financial resources is absorbed by public debt financing. This situation deprives productive enterprises of the capital necessary for their development. The restructuring of the banking sector can no longer be postponed.

The social question must also be addressed structurally. The erosion of the middle classes represents a major political risk. For a long time, these social categories constituted a factor of relative stability. Their progressive impoverishment now feeds collective pessimism, distrust toward institutions, and the mass emigration of young graduates. Rebuilding a social contract requires reform of social protection, more equitable access to credit, an active employment policy, and a more effective fight against inflation.

On migration, Tunisia must abandon the logic of strategic denial. The country is now part of the major migratory circulation spaces between sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Refusing to acknowledge this reality only increases social tensions and favours trafficking. A credible migration doctrine should articulate African cooperation, transparent administrative management, the dismantling of criminal networks, and a more balanced negotiation with the European Union. Migratory cooperation with Europe cannot continue to rest exclusively on the security dimension. Tunisia today bears a growing share of the social and political costs of European migration policy without possessing the means necessary to durably manage this situation. A renegotiation of the Euro-Tunisian partnership around economic development, investment, and legal mobility has become indispensable.

Finally, Tunisia must clarify its geopolitical doctrine. The world is entering a phase of major regional and international realignments. In this unstable environment, Tunisia can no longer content itself with reactive diplomacy. It must construct a strategy founded on its national interests, capable of preserving its autonomy while diversifying its partnerships. The development of relations with sub-Saharan Africa, the consolidation of Maghreb ties, and the diversification of economic outlets must become strategic priorities.

The Tunisian debate today remains prisoner of a largely sterile opposition. On one side, some reduce all criticism of the government to a defence of liberal democracy. On the other, some equate all criticism of the state or of authoritarianism with a challenge to national sovereignty.

This polarisation masks the essential point. Tunisia simultaneously needs a strong state and legitimate institutions. State authority and institutional guarantees are not contradictory; they are complementary. True sovereignty does not reside solely in the refusal of external pressures or in declarations of diplomatic firmness. It resides in the concrete capacity of a state to feed its population, finance its economy, protect its institutions, integrate its territories, offer prospects to its youth, and maintain its social cohesion.

A state incapable of producing growth, of reducing its territorial fractures, or of modernising its administration remains vulnerable, regardless of the intensity of its political discourse. The Tunisian question therefore vastly exceeds the debate between democracy and authoritarianism. It concerns the reconstruction of a public power capable of stabilising the country, producing trust, and preparing the future.

Tunisia is neither a collapsed state nor a stabilised success. It is situated in a particularly dangerous intermediate zone where institutions still hold but structural fragilities accumulate. The administration continues to function despite its progressive exhaustion. Society remains relatively educated and retains significant capacities for adaptation. The military remains republican and the structures of the state have not disintegrated. The country also retains considerable geographic and human assets.

But the warning signs are multiplying. Territorial disintegration, economic fragility, social tensions, the flight of human capital, external dependence, political polarisation, and collective fatigue now compose a landscape of cumulative vulnerabilities. Tunisia does not merely lack democracy. Above all, it lacks a shared strategic horizon capable of organising public action and restoring collective trust.

The principal risk is not necessarily that of a classical dictatorship. The deepest danger is that of a slow national downgrading: a state that survives without truly transforming itself, a society that grows poorer without an immediate explosion, a youth that massively leaves the country, an economy that durably stagnates, and a government absorbed by the permanent management of emergencies.

Tunisia can still avoid this trajectory. But doing so presupposes a major intellectual rupture. The country must exit the politics of permanent reaction, government by crisis, and endless transition. Above all, it must rebuild what it has lacked for several decades: a long-term national strategy capable of articulating sovereignty, development, social cohesion, and institutional capacity.