What About the Children: Youth Policy as a Social Contract Test in Tunisia

This paper delves into the fluid nature of the state in Middle Eastern politics, particularly within
Maghrebi countries shaped by their struggles against French colonialism. It was inspired by a
period of intense global turbulence that motivated a budding observer to reflect on the state’s
evolving role for a university newspaper. Although the piece garnered limited attention, it stands
as a crucial snapshot of a transformative moment in global relations, deserving preservation to
complement other historical images and contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of
these dynamics.

Focusing on Tunisia under Zine-El-Abidine Ben Ali, the paper explores how the state's failure to
fulfill its redistributive and mass political responsibilities led to widespread discontent among
the youth. Under Ben Ali's nearly three-decade rule, Tunisia’s state mechanisms failed to
address high youth unemployment and educational mismatches, exacerbating feelings of neglect
and disillusionment. The paper examines how Ben Ali’s regime, despite its efforts, increasingly
disconnected from its foundational social contract with the people, particularly the youth and
women.

Following the Arab Spring, Tunisia undertook significant reforms aimed at revitalizing its
redistributive functions and improving youth engagement. However, despite these efforts,
challenges persist. The paper assesses the progress made in post-revolution Tunisia, noting
incremental improvements but also highlighting ongoing issues such as rising unemployment
and socio-economic exclusion. The analysis suggests that while the new government has shown
commitment to reform, substantial work remains to fully reintegrate young Tunisians into the
political and economic fabric of the country.
 The state as an institution in Middle Eastern politics is a fluid entity. At different times, it

has manifested different understandings, meanings, and conventions between the people and the

powers that be. Maghrebi states in particular were shaped by their struggle against French

colonialism. These states formulated an unwritten social contract between the people on what

goods the state was responsible for in exchange for legitimacy. These responsibilities can be

broken down into two main groups: redistributive powers and mass political powers.

Redistributive powers stipulated that the state should organize and provide accessibility to a

great selection of social services and benefits. Mass political powers meant that the state invested

itself in dialogue and protection not just of citizens, but also of labor organizations, classes of

workers, and workers’ interests. Altogether, this provided a serviceable framework for

responsible engagement of citizens with their government.

Certain governments failed to execute faithfully their responsibilities to this end. Zine-El-

Abidine Ben Ali, a despot who ruled over Tunisia for almost three decades, who took his roots

from another three-decade dictatorship, ruled over a country that suffered a crushing

unemployment crisis amongst young people. Whatever steps it took to rectify the situation

served to expose how detached it had become from its purpose inscribed in the social contract.

This paper will explore how negligent Ben Ali’s regime had become towards young people, and

ask whether the Arab Spring rectified the ailments begat by Ben Ali’s neglect. Youth

engagement policy in Tunisia lent to the failure of the Tunisian state as a redistributive

institution and movement of mass politics. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, youth

engagement policy became a juggernaut of economic and civic projects, but the prospects leave

much to be desired.
 State-Centered Failures Prior to the Tunisian Revolution

During the reign of Ben Ali, the Tunisian political system as a redistributive state yielded

low returns for the Tunisian youth. Since the Tunisian political system is structured around the

easy access to mass public goods like education, the Tunisian youth has developed cyclically

high rates of educational attainment1. Nevertheless, due to lagging changes in the educational

system, by the end of Ben Ali’s tenure, a market failure occurred: the system was overproducing

white collar workers who could not get jobs (thus, chronically without experience), while the

market was only undersaturated in experienced tradespeople 2. This represented a failure of the

state as a redistributive mechanism. Where the state was meant to give access opportunities that

would engender shared prosperity in the future, the economic gain was residual and diminishing,

since those opportunities no longer matched up to the economic realities of the global and

domestic paradigm inhabited by Tunisia. The problem is so dire that it began to inflame itself.

Data shows that education became a last resort for Tunisians unable to find work, as the last 20

years of Ben Ali’s regime saw dramatic upticks in enrolment of students who are not

matriculating directly out of secondary school 3. Even the sheer form of education and its

compatibility with the labor market seems to be an issue for Tunisians. Vocational degrees are

seen as lower-worth in Tunisia, and the system was framed around this notion, wherein students

are often relegated to the vocational track for underperformance 4. The redistributive capacity of

the state here not only failed to redistribute the possibilities for prosperity, but furthermore, failed

to adapt itself considering the inveterate cultural and structural impediments that arose. Perhaps

1
Boughzala 3
2
Boughzala 5
3
Haouas et al. 398
4
Haouas et al. 403
most insidiously, even outside of education, state actors, sometimes individuals, began misusing

their office to extort money from young people for access to the sheer basic services that were

previously tacitly understood to be accessible to the people 5. While corruption had always been

an issue endemic to Tunisia, certain forms of corruption began to evolve that made access to

business development assistance or even paperwork unfeasible for a budding entrepreneur, most

of whom are young people6. When young people cannot rely on the redistributive frameworks, or

even purely bureaucratic frameworks, for their livelihood, this creates the unemployment

emergency that existed in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. As the youth found themselves at dead ends

regardless of which route they pursued, whether it be commerce or higher education, they found

the state negligent or actively counterproductive in helping them reach shared prosperity.

Naturally, when such a contrast between the state’s promise to be an institution of redistributive

wellbeing occurs, young people will feel that the state has failed them.

In the same manner, for the duration of Ben Ali’s reign of Tunisia, the youth of Tunisia

felt disengaged from the state as it weakened its ties to them as a state built on mass politics.

Tunisia, like its Maghrebi counterparts, underwent its genesis with a strong nationalist

movement, paired along with a heavy dose of mass politics7. This is plainly seen as the political

system in Tunisia was upheld by a nationalist-liberationist party along with the largest labor

rights organization in the country8. Tunisia under Ben Ali failed to keep included the youth

contingent of the citizenry. When the unemployment crisis began to fester, the government saw

clearly that the crisis was localized almost uniquely to young people 9. The government

5
Honwana 7
6
Ibid.
7
World Bank 2004: 30
8
Ibid.
9
Haouas et al. 409-410
recognized the obligation to perform various flavors of intervention as part of the mass politics

theme, but its intervention often skirted the young people and helped the demographic entities

that were not in dire straits10. Even when Ben Ali himself would make rare public

pronouncements about the unenviable hand of the young people in Tunisia, the solutions outlined

by him (and never realized) are poorly-disguised conduits for propaganda purposes, such as

youth training centers, and a host of educational youth media 11. Tunisia evidently accepted the

loss of its young people and their economic desires. This is not rare in a neoliberal economic

order. Simultaneously, while Tunisia posed itself as a state led by a mass political movement, it

was callous and myopic to disregard such a massive demographic from the movement. A sub-

demographic hit particularly hard by this disengagement are women. Towards the end of Ben

Ali’s administration, both employment and educational attainment rates declined for women 12.

This is especially surprising, considering the accent made by the Tunisian government towards

female participation in all spheres of society throughout Ben Ali’s rule. Moreover, despite

government programs meant to mitigate female disengagement (such as more flexible hours and

accessibility), up to the end of the regime of Ben Ali, females did not participate more 13. The

state neglected to overhaul the growing exclusion of one half of the youth. At best, the state was

willfully negligent towards this contingent. At worst, it idly stood by as such a meaningful group

of people was distanced from the nation’s mass political movement. Oftentimes, Tunisia would

not hide its disaffection with the young people, optioning to curry favor with international

partners. Zouhair El Kadhi, head of the economics program at the University of Tunisia,

summarizes the disconnect: “The government was often more preoccupied with pleasing the

10
Boughzala 7
11
Murphy 647
12
Boughzala 11-12
13
Ibid.
international institutions rather than looking at what was good and effective for the country, and

the education policy was one such instance” 14. When the Tunisian government decided to replace

the approval of its own people – its largest component, it betrayed the spirit of the mass political

movement from whom it claimed lineage. It is hardly surprising that so many young Tunisians

felt totally detached from their state, when their state proclaimed that its raison d’etre was to

continuously mobilize people for their own benefit. From such a point of view, Tunisia refused

to execute its social contract responsibilities diligently. At most times, the state let the situation

fester. At other inflection points, it simulated engagement that did nothing but reinforce the

status quo.

Piecemeal Progress in the Aftermath of the Tunisian Revolution

The economic crisis plaguing Tunisian youth has yet to be defeated, but that does not

reduce from the decisive strides forward undertaken in recent years. From a capabilities

approach, after Ben Ali, Tunisia undertook efforts to return to a redistributive mechanism. While

these changes were not the wide-sweeping offerings from the Neo-Destour days, the Tunisian

government engaged several foreign governments to clean up its bureaucracy, improve access to

commercial assistance, and even welcomed foreign funding to amplify the sums offered 15. It

does not seem, unfortunately, that these overhauls produced the effect desired. According to a

World Bank study of employment rates in the years after the revolution, unemployment and

educational abstention continued to increase for women, a lack of incentives to create more

tradespeople means the unemployment rate remains where it was, and, more recently,

skyrocketing urbanization amongst young people exacerbated the existing unemployment

14
Honwana 12
15
Destremau 8
crisis16. There are multiple ways to interpret this. Naturally, the removal of a longstanding

dictator does not assume that effective changes will be adopted immediately. Young Tunisians

keep pressing the government to do more for their welfare 17. Economic networks are never

endogenous, however, and the problems suffered by young Tunisians beset overqualified young

people around the world. Although there remains work to be done by Tunisia to return to its

promissory social contract, there is reason to believe that this hope will eventually bear fruit.

Tunisia as a mass politics institution provides more to young people than it did at the

close of the Ben Ali regime, but more needs to be done to reduce the persisting social exclusion

of young people. The Tunisian revolution pressed Tunisians to reconsider the notion of

belonging to a mass political movement; however, the expectation of government for inclusion

remains18. The new Tunisian governments invited foreign partners to reconstruct the institutions

where the social engagement with youth can happen19. This frequently manifests in forums,

roundtables, retreats, and trainings20. Admittedly, this is not a mass politics arena where the

unemployment crisis can be solved, but it is a conscientious step forward from before. In a larger

lens, nevertheless, the problem of unemployment made the ailment worse. World Bank

socioeconomic research found that the number of young people in Tunisia who are so embittered

with the system that they feel they will not gain employment in the foreseeable future keeps

rising21. This should be considered together with the new urbanization, wherein young people

come to metropoles with little connections and resources to be included in the mass politics 22. In

16
World Bank 2015: 38
17
Murphy 681
18
Somi 11
19
Somi 12
20
Ibid.
21
World Bank 2015: 24
22
World Bank 2015: 26
sum, it is clear that the new Tunisian governments demonstrated the will and decisiveness to

reincorporate young Tunisians into spaces where mass politics are developed. However,

considering the worsening unemployment situation, compounded with fresh challenges, present a

formidable task to be solved, which cannot happen instantaneously. The goodwill gestures

foretoken a positive outcome.

Tunisia remains a state in transition, even eight years after the Arab Spring. It is not so

important to ask whether problems are solved as it is to measure the progress made. The Ben Ali

government found itself incapable to help the most vulnerable, precarious class of society, opting

to stonewall and grandstand around the problem, instead of addressing it. While Ben Ali is now

gone and the problems are slowly transferred to the current governments, their bona fides is

incontrovertible: regardless of their political positions and stance, they are not skimming

percentages and intent on constructing bureaucratic tangles. It will take time for Tunisia to

realize its place in the region, and it will take time for Tunisians to understand their place inside

their own government. Until that happens, solving other problems is unlikely to happen.

Tunisians won back the most important object they could: a mutual commitment to the social

contract brokered consensually all those years ago. That dedication they have is an assurance of a

brighter future.
Boughzala, Mongi. “Youth Unemployment and Economic Transition in Tunisia.” Global
Economy and Development, vol. 2, no. 1, 15 Feb. 2013, pp. 1–27.

Bodenmann, Samuel. “After Jasmine: What Happened to Tunisia's Youth after Ben Ali?”
Journal of Middle Eastern Sociological Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 1 Mar. 2013, pp. 1–23.

Destremau, Blandine, et al. “Governing Youth, Managing Society: A Comparative Overview of

Gray, Simon. “Breaking Barriers to Youth Inclusion in Tunisia.” World Bank Reports Series,
vol. 1, no. 1, 1 Dec. 2014, pp. 1–83.

Haouas, Ilham, et al. “Youth Unemployment in Tunisia: Characteristics and Policy Responses.”
Middle Eastern and North African Economics, vol. 14, no. 1, 1 Sept. 2012, pp. 395–420.

Honwana, Alcinda. “Youth and the Tunisian Revolution.” Conflict Prevention and Peace, vol.
24, 1 Jan. 2012, pp. 1–20.

Murphy, Emma C. “A Political Economy of Youth Policy in Tunisia.” New Political Economy,
vol. 22, no. 7, 11 Apr. 2017, pp. 676–691.

Somi, Omar. “Youth Policy in Tunisia: The Internationalization of Youth as a Public Policy
Issue.” Power to Youth, vol. 9, no. 1, 1 May 2016, pp. 1–14.

World Bank, Unlocking the Employment Potential in the Middle East and North Africa: Toward
a New Social Contract (2004): Chapter Two.

Yousef, Tarik M., “Development, Growth and Policy Reform in the Middle East and North
Africa since 1950,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, no. 3 (2004): 91-115.