What Democracy for Tunisian Workers?

Since Tunisia’s 2011 uprising, a series of democratic reforms have occurred in the formal political sphere. However, ongoing democratization processes have not extended to the economy, despite the fact that economic grievances propelled the uprising. On the contrary, the dominant economic reform strategy adopted by successive Tunisian governments and promoted and articulated by IFIs and development institutions has deepened a decades-long neoliberal project of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization. While the new arguments for extending this neoliberal trajectory employ the language of democracy, they nevertheless identify workers’ rights as a hurdle to economic growth. To this day, Tunisian workers are still struggling for their rights, seeing in the 2011 uprising one that has failed to translate their demands into greater economic and social justice. This paper attempts to highlight how the post -2011 top- down neoliberal, macroeconomic reform program is at odds with the popular demands expressed in a bottom-up mobilization of Tunisian workers struggling not only for jobs but for better conditions and more rights.