Ref: AD-2882
Summary: the latest arrest of a leading Tunisian businessman underlines the folly of President Kais Saied. His actions, under the banner of ending corruption, are further stressing an economy already heavily damaged under his autocratic regime.
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“For all its faults – notably an excess of corporatism and the heavy hand of the state – Tunisia’s economy had progressed and diversified steadily in the half century prior to 2011.” There was also amazing state-capture by the Ben Ali clan. See “All in the Family : State Capture in Tunisia”, abstract below.
Ennahdha were too busy trying to change political aspects to address the issue, and many of Nida’ Tunis’s backers sought to replace the Ben Alis’ snouts at the trough rather than redress the problem.
Abstract
Understanding state-business relationships and how they have shaped the institutional architecture of countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) is crucial for the identification of systemic vulnerabilities and reform priorities. In this paper, the authors examine the relationship between regulation and the business interests of President Ben Ali and his family, using unique firm-level data from Tunisia for 1994 to 2010, and document how Tunisia s investment policy was abused to serve the president s family s private interests. In spite of widespread recognition of its importance, empirical evidence on state capture has been limited by a lack of data. To redress this lacuna, the authors merge data on investment regulations with balance sheet and firm-level census data in which 220 firms owned by the Ben Ali family are identified. The data set assembled allows identifying the relationship between investment policies and the business interests of Tunisia’s politicians. Tunisians today literally continue to pay the price of privileges extended to an elite group of entrepreneurs. Reform efforts have not yet resulted in an opening up of economic opportunities for all, which is unfortunate since this was one of the central demands of those who took the streets a little over three years ago.