The Tunisian Mise à Niveau programme and the political economy of reform

New Political Economy

Volumn 11, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 519-540

  Murphy, Emma C ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC REFORM; POLITICAL ECONOMY; STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT;

AFRICA; NORTH AFRICA; TUNISIA;

EID: 33845534405     PISSN: 13563467     EISSN: 14699923     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13563460600990798     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. Arab regimes might be said to resemble the 'façade democracies' identified by Samuel E. Finer, Comparative Politics (Pelican, 1970).
2. Samuel Huntington, 'Will More Countries Become Democratic?', Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 99, No. 2 (1984), pp. 193-218
3. Larry Diamond, 'Introduction: Roots of Failure, Seeds of Hope', in Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz & Seymour Martin Lipset (eds), Democracy in Developing Countries, Vol. 2 (Lynne Rienner, 1988), pp. 1-32.
4. John Waterbury has explained this lagardliness on the fact that economics on the Arab world are unusually politicised by their confusion with issues of national security and the impact of repeated regional conflicts.
5. See John Waterbury, 'The State and Economic Transition in the Middle East and North Africa', in Nemat Shafik (ed.), Prospects for Middle Eastern and North African Economies: From Boom to Bust and Back (Macmillan, 1999), pp. 159-77.
6. Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge University Press, 1981).
7. Huntington, 'Will More Countries Become Democratic?'.
8. Alfred Stepan with Graeme Robertson, 'An Arab More Than a Muslim Electoral Gap', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 14, No. 3 (2003), pp. 30-59.
9. Adam Garfinkle added a twist to this theme when he argued that Arab societies lacked in varying degrees three vital pre-requisites for democracy; a belief that political authority lay with mankind rather than God; a concept of majority rule; and the notion of universal equality. 9 See Adam Garfinkle, 'The New Missionaries', Prospect, No. 85 (2003), pp. 22-4. A further derivative of this line of thought comes from Frédéric Volpi, who has suggested that the Muslim world has specifically spawned what he terms 'pseudo-democracies' as a stalemate is reached between three political currents: Liberalism, republicanism and Islamism.
10. See Frédéric Volpi, 'Pseudo-democracy in the Muslim World', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 6 (2004), pp. 1061-78.
11. See Stepan with Robertson, 'An Arab More Than a Muslim Electoral Gap'. Sanford Lakoff argued against this thesis, suggesting that, for democracy to take root in the Arab world, 'a modus vivendi between Islam and a social system in which individual freedom and social and political pluralism are accepted' had to arise.
12. See Sanford Lakoff, 'The Reality of Muslim Exceptionalism', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (2004), pp. 133-9.
13. The following represent a few such explanations: Mehran Kamrava, 'Non-Democratic States and Political Liberalisation in the Middle East: A Structural Analysis', ThirdWorldQuarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1998), pp. 63-85, argues that Middle Eastern states, whether they are exclusionary, inclusionary or sultanistic, have all evolved political structures which are immune to pressures for reform. Only the 'civic myth' monarchies of Jordan and Morocco lack both the institutional strength and the ideological legitimacy to resist making at least desultory moves in that direction.
14. John Waterbury, 'Democracy without Democrats?: The Potential for Political Liberalization in the Middle East', in Ghassan Salame (ed.), Democracy without Democrats: The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (I. B. Tauris, 1994), pp. 23-47 attends to the role of the 'ends-oriented state', run by a praetorian military and a dependent bourgeoisie.
15. Nazih Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in theMiddle East (I. B. Tauris, 2001), identified the 'absence' of an independent industrial bourgeoisie, a product of the articulation of Asiatic and colonial modes of production, as a root cause for the development of 'fierce' Arab states which wield coercive power but enjoy little legitimacy or embedded popular support.
16. This argument was echoed by Manochehr Dorraj, 'State, Petroleum and Democratization in the Middle East and North Africa', in Manochehr Dorraj (ed.), The Changing Political Economy of the Third World (Lynne Rienner, 1995), pp. 119-43. Dorraj describes the region as characterised by a financially and institutionally weak and predatory state, vulnerable to pressure from society but dominant enough to exclude an autonomous civil society from developing.
17. Waterbury, 'The State and Economic Transition',
18. and Eva Bellin, Stalled Democracy: Capital, Labour and the Paradox of State-sponsored Development (Cornell University Press, 2002).
19. Lisa Anderson, 'The Prospects for Democracy in the Arab World', Middle Eastern Lectures, No. 1 (Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, 1995).
20. Larbi Sadiki, in contrast, suggests that the bread riots and 'hittist' uprisings in North Africa in the 1980s demonstrated that demands for reform from below could be effective in the region. He argues for a non- elite-focused approach to the study of political change in the region. Larbi Sadiki, 'Towards Arab Liberal Governance: From Democracy of Bread to the Democracy of the Vote', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1997), pp. 127-48.
21. Anoushiravan Ehteshami & Emma C. Murphy, 'Transformation of the Corporatist State in the Middle East', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1996), pp. 753-72.
22. Raymond Hinnebusch, 'Liberalization without Democratisation in Post-Populist Authoritarian States', in Nils A. Butenschon, Uri Davis & Manuel Hassassian (eds), Citizenship in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (Syracuse University Press, 2000), pp. 123-45.
23. Daniel Brumberg, 'Authoritarian Legacies and Reform Strategies in the Arab World', in Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany & Paul Noble (eds), Political Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World: Volume One Theoretical Perspectives (Lynne Rienner, 1995), p. 235.
24. Guillermo O'Donnell & Philippe Scmitter (eds), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (John Hopkins University Press, 1986).
25. Also Guillermo O'Donnell, 'Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Question of Democracy', in David Collier (ed.), The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 285-331.
26. Roger Owen, State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Routledge, 1992), ch. 7.
27. Volker Perthes (ed.), Arab Elites: Negotiating the Politics of Change (Lynne Rienner, 2004)
28. Ellen Lust-Okkar, 'Divided They Rule: The Management and Manipulation of Political Opposition', Comparative Politics, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2004), pp. 159-81.
29. Perthes, Arab Elites, p. 301.
30. Kiren Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth (Cornell University Press, 1997). A similar argument is made by Dirk Vandewalle, Libya Since Independence: Oil and State-Building (Cornell University Press, 1998). The concept of rentierism in the Arab World was most originally developed by Giacomo Luciani & Hazem Beblawi, The Rentier State (Croom Helm, 1987). Michael Ross uses time-series cross-national data to examine whether oil actually does impede democracy and concludes that it does, but to a greater extent in poorer countries than in richer countries.
31. Michael L. Ross, 'Does Oil Hinder Democracy?', World Politics, Vol. 53, No. 3 (2001), pp. 325-61.
32. Jean-François Seznec has suggested that the reforms in Saudi Arabia amount to 'proto-democratic stirrings', which place it on a trajectory towards polyarchy. See Jean-François Seznec, 'Stirrings in Saudi Arabia', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (2002), pp. 34-40. Michael Herb has argued that Gulf democracy may not be full parliamentary democracy, but it retains the virtue of monarchical domination that prevents Islamist subversion of democratic processes and thus retains stability.
33. See Michael Herb, 'Emirs and Parliaments in the Gulf', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 4 (2002), pp. 41-7.
34. Burhan Ghalioun has argued that Arab despotism is the result of failed policies of modernisation from above combined with a convergence of Western strategic preferences and local power-holders' interests. See Burhan Ghalioun, 'The Persistence of Arab Authoritarianism', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (2004), pp. 126-32.
35. See, for example, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, 'Is the Middle East Democratising?', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1999), pp. 199-219 or Saad Eddin Ibrahim, 'Liberalization and Democratization in the Arab World: An Overview' in Brynen et al. (eds), Political Liberalization and Democratization, pp. 29-57.
36. Clement M. Henry & Robert Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 223.
37. Thomas Carothers, 'The End of the Transition Paradigm', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2002), pp. 5-21.
38. For discussion of hybrid regimes, see Larry Diamond, 'Thinking about Hybrid Regimes', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2002), pp. 21-35.
39. Tunisia might be classified as an electoral authoritarian state since the substantive aspects of democracy are absent in spite of the procedural elements. See Andreas Schedler, 'The Menu of Manipulation', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2002), pp. 36-50.
40. Also Larbi Sadiki, 'Political Liberalization in Bin Ali's Tunisia: Façade Democracy', Democratization, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2002), pp. 122-41.
41. Statistics taken from Economist Intelligence Unit, Tunisia: Country Report 1996, p. 18. For full details of the policies and performances of the Seventh and Eighth Development Plans, and of the responses of international creditors,
42. see Emma C. Murphy, Economic and Political Change in Tunisia: From Bourguiba to Ben Ali (Macmillan, 1999).
43. Jean-Pierre Cassarino expresses it thus: 'The challenges of globalization... have encouraged the emergence of a highly visible group of entrepreneurs... but in doing so [have] strengthened their connection with the state, through the distribution of financial resources, "titles of nobility" and media visibility'. Jean-Pierre Cassarino, 'The EU-Tunisian Association Agreement and Tunisia's Structural Reform Programme', The Middle East Journal, Vol. 53, No. 1 (1999), pp. 69-72.
44. Henry & Springborg, Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East, pp. 134-67.
45. Bellin, Stalled Democracy.
46. Christopher Alexander, 'Labour Code Reform in Tunisia', Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2001), pp. 104-25.
47. Boyan Belev, 'Privatization in Egypt and Tunisia: Liberal Outcomes and/ or Liberal Policies', Mediterranean Politics, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2001), pp. 68-103.
48. Toby Dodge, 'Bringing the Bourgeoisie Back In: Globalization and the Birth of Liberal Authoritarianism in the Middle East', in Toby Dodge & Richard Higgott (eds), Globalization and the Middle East (RIIA, 2002), pp. 169-87.
49. Roger Owen, 'The Middle Eastern State: Repositioning not Retreat?', in Hassan Hakimian & Ziba Moshaver (eds), The State and Global Change: The Political Economy of Transition in the Middle East and North Africa (Curzon, 2001), pp. 232-47.
50. Tunisia News, No. 94, 20 August 1994, p. 5.
51. Economist Intelligence Unit, Tunisia: Country Report 1996, p. 19.
52. EUROMED, The Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreement with Tunisia, 6 December 2001, http://www.attac.org/euromed/plus/actunis_en.html.
53. Interview in Tunisia News, No. 121, 25 February 1995, p. 6.
54. These principles and objectives included potential for productivity improvement, cost reduction, quality improvement, export boost and market share increase. See La Procédure de Mise à Niveau, brochure of the Bureau de Mise à Niveau, Ministry of Industry, Tunis, undated.
55. TCs were established according to sectoral activity and were considered necessary as the capacity of the private sector alone to provide consultancy was deemed insufficient. The (eight) TCs provided vertical (sector-specific) competence to complement the horizontal (cross-sector) and regional expertise of the API. The link between these two competences came in the form of an API task force, appointed to assist the firm in drawing up the diagnostic and the subsequent action plan. The task force itself was located within the Centre d'Appui a la PMI (CAPMI), one of the five centres d'intervention of the API. The task force would include a project head (to oversee the programme), a specialist in the international environment and marketing, a production expert, a human resources expert and an expert in logistics and provisions.
56. The revenue was diverted into a Fond de Developpement de la Competitivity Industrielle (FODEC).
57. The staff grew from just five members in 1996 to 14 in 2001.
58. Interview with M. Ridha Ben Musbah, Director-General of the BMI, Tunis, December 2001.
59. World Bank, Tunisia: Country Assistance Strategy FY 2000-2002 (World Bank, 2000), p. 3.
60. Tunisia News, No. 180, 4 May 1996, p. 7.
61. Interview with M. Chekib Ben Mustapha, Project Manager, Euro-Tunisian Enterprise, Tunis, December 2001.
62. Interview with M. Khélil Lajimi, Chairman and CEO of the API, December 2001. M. Lajimi confidently asserted that this was beginning to change as far as the younger generation were concerned.
63. Interview with Bernard-Henry Labigne, an international consultant with Bernard-Krief, who was involved in the diagnostics of ten firms that participated in the pilot project. Tunisia News, No. 227, 5 April 1997, p. 6.
64. 'Mise à niveau: Les points faibles', Réalités, 12 October 2000.
65. Interview with M. Chekib Ben Mustapha.
66. Tunisia News, No. 264, 10 January 1998, p. 6.
67. Tunisia News, No. 180, 4 May 1996, p. 7.
68. Interview with M. Ridha Ben Musbah.
69. For example, in 1992 a National Solidarity Fund was set up, funded by a combination of tax-deductible voluntary donations from citizens, firms and organisations, budget allocations and treasury credits. The fund supports development projects round the country such as electrification, road and rail facilities, sanitation, community projects and potable water, all of which reach the poorest communities.
70. On average the government subsidy amounted to an average of 12 per cent of the costs of the restructuring plan, with firms receiving proportionately more if they self-funded rather than relied on the banks. Interview with M. Chebib ben Mustapha.
71. The Cooke Ratio, often known in the UK as the risk asset ratio (RAR), is a yardstick to measure the sufficiency of a bank's capital in relation to the risk-adjusted loans it makes. The Basle Convergence Agreement of 1988 suggests that a bank's retained capital should equate to not less than 8 per cent of its risk-adjusted assets.
72. Interview with Jean-Pierre Galy, General-Manager and Chief Operating Officer at Tunis International Bank, Tunisia News, No. 145, 25 August 1995, p. 6.
73. Moody's Investors Service, Banking System Outlook: Tunisia, February 1997.
74. The brochure produced by the BMN for firms interested in applying to the PMN listed these individuals by name. This was part of the customer service approach developed by the BMN that proved popular with firms.
75. Tunisia News, No. 490, 2 November 2002, p. 5.
76. Tunisia News, No. 522, 5 July 2003, p. 6.
77. In 2002, the Heritage Foundation ranked Tunisia 58th in an annual index of economic freedom, rating Tunisia as 'economy principally liberated', up from 74th in 2000 and 63rd in 2001, when the economy was termed 'fundamentally protected'. The PMN played a key role in these positive and improving assessments, as it did in the ratings accorded to Tunisia by international agencies.
78. One example of this was the emphasis on information communications technology (ICT) in delivering the services of the API. See the API website, http://www.tunisianindustry.nat.tn.
79. Between 1996 and 2002, over 500 firms had benefited from E20 million of EU support delivered through the Euro-Tunisian Enterprise Programme's co-operative business centres. A further E80 million were allocated to supporting the PMN during the 2003-2008 period, specifically contributing to innovation, standards and metrology, intellectual property and provision of financial guarantees.
80. Steffen Erdle, 'Tunisia', in Volker Perthes (ed.), Arab Elites, pp. 207-38.
81. As envisaged by Gregory White, who sees this as an inevitable line of resistance to further implementation of the PMN. See Gregory White, A Comparative Political Economy of Tunisia and Morocco (Lynne Rienner, 2001).
82. Gerd Nonneman has explored this necessary political liberalisation in his own contributions to Gerd Nonneman (ed.), Political and Economic Liberalization: Dynamics and Linkages in Comparative Perspective (Lynne Rienner, 1996), pp. 31-62.
83. World Bank, Tunisia: Country Assistance Strategy, p. 3.
84. Ibid.
85. 'The Africa Competitiveness Report 2001', The Middle East Magazine, 26 January 2001. The Transparency International 2004 Report placed Tunisia 28th out of 128 countries for influence of financial exchanges on government decisions, 18th for illegal financial exchanges in political circles and 11th out of 102 countries for the effects of lobbies on political decisions. This places Tunisia in the leading group of countries along with the US, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Finland, suggesting that there is not a culture of outright, open corruption as there is elsewhere in Africa and the Arab world.
86. For elaboration, see Peter Evans, 'The State as Problem and Solution: Predation, Embedded Autonomy and Structural Change', in Stephen Haggard & Robert Kaufman (eds), The Politics of Economic Adjustment (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 139-81.
87. For example, in The Roaring Nineties (W. W. Norton, 2003), Stiglitz specifies the importance of the government role in regulating the financial sector, promoting competition and providing a basic safety net, all components of the Tunisian reform strategy.
88. See Joseph Stiglitz, 'Participation and Development: Perspectives from the Comprehensive Development Paradigm', in Farrukh Iqbal & Jong-il You (eds), Democracy: Market Economics and Development (The World Bank, 2001), pp. 49-73.
89. Evans, 'The State as Problem and Solution', pp. 139-81.
90. Third World States may have an excess of bureaucrats but, Evans argues, they have only limited capacity 'not only in the sense of the prowess and perspicacity of technocrats within the state apparatus but also in the sense of an institutional structure that is durable and effective', Ibid., p. 141.
91. This is a common observation of the MENA region as a whole. See, for example, Owen, 'The Middle Eastern State', pp. 232-48.