Europe and Tunisia

This book is concerned with EU democracy promotion inside Tunisia, the first Arab signatory of an Association Agreement with the EU. Focusing on the content, context, mechanisms, and outcomes of democratization via association, the authors examine whether Tunisia’s specific mode of democratization works in tandem with EU democracy promotion objectives, and the extent to which both adapt association in a way that neither sabotages EU democracy promotion nor undermines Tunisia’s specificity.

Drawing on Arabic, English and French sources, the book deploys a variety of methods and disciplinary approaches - discourse analysis, interviews, democratization theory, foreign policy analysis, security studies, political history, nationalism and identity – and takes an interpretivist perspective, conceiving of political processes as fluid and tentative. The first comprehensive study of the effects of the Union’s Mediterranean democracy promotion strategy on a single recipient state, this book will be relevant to students of Middle East politics, European foreign policy, Euro-Mediterranean studies, democratization theory, and Euro-Arab relations, this book will also be of great interest to researchers, academics and policy-makers.

Brieg Powel is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Plymouth, teaching modules on International Relations theory and on democratisation in the Middle East and North Africa. His research interests include Middle East and North African politics, Welsh politics, and the role of identity in political behaviour. He is also part of the editorial board of the journal EthnoPolitics.

Larbi Sadiki is Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, teaching modules on democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. He has published a number of books and journal articles on the Middle East. A Non-Resident Expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, Beirut) for 2007 and 2008, he has featured in numerous TV programmes in both Arabic and English and is a frequent commentator on Arab affairs in Al-Jazeera Satellite TV.