Is the state in post-revolutionary Tunisia more solid than it was under the âcorporatist authoritarianâ regime of Ben Ali (who ruled from 1987 until early 2011) (Entelis 2004; Redissi 2007) because of its more democratic credentials, its renewed relations with society, and its partially reacquired legitimacy? Or is it functionally equivalent to what it was during the previous dictatorial decades, in light of still insufficient economic redistribution leading to prolonged waves of protests, its vulnerability to terrorism , and its incapacity to extract taxes from the whole territory?
Being less fierce, has it become stronger (Ayubi 1995)? In other words, by relying less on pure coercion and more on administrative penetration and a relaunched cultural statist project, has the Tunisian state solidified its position, despite its persisting output deficits? The answer depends on where we sit, and on whether the emphasis is placed on what the state does in terms of functions, how it does it, in terms of instruments, or what it achieves, in terms of outputs. In the Weberian sociology of the state, administration and security are the benchmarks according to which each state can be judged (Badie and Birnbaum 1983), with functionalist versions of the institutionalist approach notably leading to strength-weakness assessments against an ideal-typical, Western-modelled performing state (Chandler 2004; Rotberg 2003). In these accounts, the focus is on the stateâs capabilities to secure the grip on society, which is neatly, almost hermetically, separated from the state (Stepan 1978). In the past few decades, statist approaches have been challenged by more nuanced understandings that emphasize the social underpinnings of the state, and its contingent and non-teleological nature.
In particular, the assumption concerning state autonomy has been disputed by many, with commentators either stressing the blurred boundaries between state and society, and identifying the state as only one among many organizations in society (Migdal 2004), or positing a mutually constitutive relationship between state and society, with the state being conceptually interdependent with society (Wendt 1999). The state autonomy theory is contested on another level, as it bypasses altogether the importance of the image of the state as basis for its legitimation and durability. As argued by Buzan, three faces of the state exist simultaneously: its physical base, and international territorial recognition; its institutional expression, given by the consensus on political rules and the scope of state institutions; and lastly, the idea of the state, consisting of the implicit social contract and ideological consensus (Buzan 1991: 63).
Studies on the Arab state have either treated it as an independent causal factor, or as a far from neutral arena for power contestation among a plurality of social forces (Anderson 1987). Readings belonging to the first approach have focused on the role of colonialism and its legacies in the processes of Arab state formation and the emergence of the Arab inter-state system with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, while approaches pertaining to the other side of the debate have emphasized endogenous factors and Arab agency, even vis-Ă -vis processes of negotiated statehood with external powers.
Without delving into a review of the debate over the state and theories of state (Ayoob 1995; Bourdieu 2014; Hibou 2004; Jessop 2015; Migdal 1988; Mitchell 1991; Skocpol 1985; Tilly 1985) or of the Arab state in particular (Ayubi 1995; Dawisha and Zartman 1988; Henri and Springborg 2010; Hinnebusch 2010; Hinnebusch 2015; Hudson 1977; Kamrava 2016; Kienle and Sika 2015; Saouli 2011; Owen 2004), this book starts from the assumption that the notion of statehood, despite its continuing salience, remains elusive.
An attempt to go beyond rigid boundaries of statist versus states-in-society approaches or materialist versus more ideological conceptions of statehood can be premised on a more agential account of areas of limited statehood (ALS). Elaborating on the ideal type of consolidated statehood as the institutional structure of authority possessing the monopoly of force and the capacity to implement decisions, Risse establishes a continuum in terms of degrees of statehood, where at the opposite of consolidated statehood lies âlimitedâ statehood, which can manifest itself within a wide range of degrees of intensity and modalities (Risse 2013). Areas of Limited Statehood are areas where the capacity to implement and enforce central decisions is lacking and where there is no monopoly of the use of force (Risse 2013). The restriction of statehood can occur on a sectoral level (only in some policy areas); a territorial level (only on some parts of the territory); a temporal level (only for a certain amount of time); and a social level (only with regard to specific parts of the population). The conception of the state is narrow, following the steps of Weber, with a critical distinction between statehood, revolving around the ability to rule and implement decisions, thanks also to the legitimate possession of coercive instruments, and governance, which in an effective formulation refers to âintentional action towards providing public services for a given communityâ (Mayntz 2004: 67). Governance is impersonal and has a variable geometry: it can rise from the bottom-up, complementing the action of the state, try to compete with and replace it, or coexist side-by-side. Governance, in this view, differently from statehood, is about service and the provision of public goods. Despite recent attempts to provide more politicized accounts of governance, taking into account how the provision of goods can change according to the nature of actors involved, especially in conflict and war-torn contexts (Mampilly 2011; Kalyvas 2006), notions of governance in more peaceful political orders have struggled to effectively capture the dimension of power politics implicit in manyâsupposedly empiricalâconfigurations of order. Purely functionalist approaches struggle to come to terms with the political consequences of non-state and external actors providing for goods on the local or national level, and the interaction dynamics generated with states. In this book, by widening the remit of the nature of the state, and taking into account the state as system as well as the state as idea, which is often empirically charged with expectations in terms of the provision of public goods, governance will remain on the backburner as compared to statehood.
Krasner and Risse conceptualize statehood as the effective domestic dimension of sovereignty (Krasner and Risse 2014), which refers to the organization of public authority within a state and its level of effective control (Krasner 1999: 9). Behind this definition of domestic sovereignty as the organization and effectiveness of political authority lie two key analytical dimensions, authority and control. The former involves a mutually recognized right for an actor to engage in specific activities, while the latter can be achieved even by brute force. If we link these dimensions more closely to the two analytically distinct logics of action, the logic of appropriateness and the logic of consequences (March and Olsen 1998), the black box of statehood opens up, and gaps and inconsistencies generated by mismatches between statesâ functions, instruments and images can be better accounted for. This is premised on Krasnerâs elaboration of the nature of sovereignty as âorganised hypocrisyâ when looking at two external dimensions of sovereignty , notably the international legal and the Westphalian one (Krasner 1999: 6â10). By âorganised hypocrisyâ, Krasner (1999) and Lipson (2007) refer to the inconsistency between rhetoric and action resulting from conflicting material and ideational pressures, in particular those derived from the clash between the logic of consequences and the logic of appropriateness. Since domestic sovereignty is the one domain where no single logic of action dominates but rather the two coexist, as do authority and control, conflicts between the two are to be expected. The book will employ the notion of âlimited statehoodâ in this more dynamic and agential way, by stressing the instances of mismatches between logic of action by the state and logic of appropriateness, referring to the ideational dimension, normative expectations of st...