Rural Social Policy By New Means? the Politics of Communitarian Enterprises in Tunisia

Tunisia’s institutional overhaul under President Kais Saied since 25 July 2021 divided the country politically. In rural areas, support to the authoritarian President is tightly coupled to a new form of communitarian enterprise, the Sharika Ahlia, introduced via a presidential decree in 2022. These enterprises have a strong social and solidarity component and are able to benefit from state support and facilitated access to nationally-owned land. At the same time, the law grants state authorities extensive control over the enterprises, which seems to contradict the demands of landless and land-poor smallholders for greater autonomy during Tunisia’s 2011 ‘Revolution’. This paper first discusses the political project of the communitarian enterprises in the context of rural impoverishment and contestation. Second, it considers its attractiveness from a smallholder perspective. Based on newspaper and social media coverage, as well as a series of interviews carried out in villages featuring active farmer movements and/or newly founded communitarian enterprises, it argues that rural support to the president and his reform agenda cannot be understood by focusing on rational interests and cost-benefit calculations alone. Rather, it is crucial to consider politics of identity and community as well as their intersection with class politics. The analysis reveals that despite a renewed interest for socio-spatial inequalities and food sovereignty issues, immediate post-2011 politics and policies struggled to address rural concerns. It is this ‘misrepresentation’ that has been captured by Saied, who has claimed to offer rural and marginalized communities a voice, recognize their role in national development, and implement social justice.