What we talk about when we talk about decentralization? Insights from post-revolution Tunisia

Abstract

This article explores the language of decentralization policies in post-revolution Tunisia. It argues that international financial institutions mobilize a particular language about decentralization to create new clients and reinvent themselves in a shifting political landscape. Decentralization policies have gained traction in the Middle East and North Africa region post-Arab revolutions partially as a result of these shifting priorities and their accompanying language. In a region with limited decentralization experiences, it is not enough to look at incentives of politicians to decentralize or the effects of decentralization programs once they are rolled out. Instead, we need to look at the confluence of domestic pressures to pluralize the terrain of politics and development agendas born outside the region’s borders which frames decentralization as an appropriate development framework at this juncture. To make this argument, I analyze the language of World Bank flagship publications that constitute the intellectual backbone for decentralization programs. I then turn to Tunisia and compare the language of these reports with the language that activists use to characterize decentralization in relation to regional inequalities. At stake in this comparison are two discourses of decentralization that call forth diverging development models: one model focuses on the financial, administrative and political autonomy of municipalities from the central government, while the other calls for reparations and a desire for a state that restores past injustices. This language forces us to rethink the mode of politics undergirding decentralization policies, and accordingly to re-theorize decentralization from a particular place on the map, from Tunisia.

Keywords

• decentralization
• international financial institutions (IFIs)
• victimized regions
• reparations