Personalism in MENA politics. The case of Tunisia

This chapter reflects on personalism as striking feature of post-colonial Arab regimes and how it transfers into the party systems building on the tradition of the zaʿim. The focus is on the Tunisian partisan landscape as a particularly fertile ground for personalist parties and evidence of the contradictions they embody. In a context of a liberalized political arena, a process of personalistic atomisation has taken root and resulted in a myriad of leadership-centric formations without a meaningful party structure as counterweight. The chapter argues that, in forging and preserving Tunisian personalist parties, charisma plays a big role, albeit not necessarily, as multiple factors often come in like personal wealth, and neo-patrimonial linkages. Moreover, these parties tend to be short-lived and pretty unstable, experimenting sudden and sharp ups and down, which are actually only loosely related to the “adjustment” phase of Tunisian politics.