Kais Saied's reconfiguration of Tunisia’s political system: Hegemonic ambitions to no avail? – A critical approach
The present article scrutinizes Tunisia's contemporary political system under the regime of President Kais Saied, who has been endeavoring to ‘reconfigurate the state’ since July 25, 2021. Drawing upon the theoretical perspectives of two disparate thinkers, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci a...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fra |
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CNRS Éditions
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| Series: | L’Année du Maghreb |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/12223 |
| Summary: | The present article scrutinizes Tunisia's contemporary political system under the regime of President Kais Saied, who has been endeavoring to ‘reconfigurate the state’ since July 25, 2021. Drawing upon the theoretical perspectives of two disparate thinkers, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and the German constitutionalist Carl Schmitt, the authors seek to investigate the genesis of Saied's implemented measures. The article examines how Saied's restructuring of Tunisia's political system can be explained by drawing upon the conceptual proposals of «hegemonic sovereignty» by Kalyvas (2020) and Gramsci’s «dictatorship without hegemony» (Gramsci, 1971), the latter representing a sustained hegemonic crisis. The authors contextualize their study by examining Tunisia's longstanding «hegemonic crisis» (Schwarzmantel, 2015) and its exacerbation since the ‘Tunisian revolution’. They argue that a preliminary culmination and expression of this 'hegemonic crisis' can be perceived as the Schmittian momentum of a «sovereign dictatorship» (Schmitt, 1921-23/1928), and the latter should be especially considered in conjunction with a historical long-term perspective on hegemonic crisis to assess Saied's assumption of power. They thereby explore the processes of hegemonic formation or failure in Tunisia following the 2010/2011 revolution, while highlighting the associated social and economic challenges of instituting a new political order. As empirical basis for this article, the authors utilize a range of sources, including recent academic publications, governmental decrees, diverse media reports, and speeches of and interviews with Saied subsequent to his assumption of power, to support their document analysis. |
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| ISSN: | 1952-8108 2109-9405 |