The Historical Roots of the 2021 Self-Coup: Re-exploring Civil-Military Relations in Tunisia
Talk by Dhia Hammami, Ph.D. Student and Teaching Assistant, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
Thursday, October 19, 12:30 PM in Oak Hall 408
Mohamed Dhia Hammami is a non-resident fellow at DAWN. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Political Science at the Maxwell School Syracuse University. He previously studied at Wesleyan University, the University of Carthage and the University of Tunis. Has collaborated with various organizations like International Alert, Natural Resource Governance Institute, Avocats Sans Frontières, Transparency International, the Truth and Dignity Commission. He was active in several social movements during Tunisia’s democratic transition and contributed to the drafting of the 2014 Constitution. His comments on Tunisian politics regularly appear in publications like Le Monde, Washington Post, New York Times. Beyond his expertise in Tunisia and his focus on broader MENA region, Hammami studies on the political dimensions of the emerging technologies.
Starting from the puzzling contribution of the military to the 2021 autogolpe led by President Kais Saied, Hammami will explore the dynamics of the civil-military relations in Tunisia to answer the puzzle of the anti-democratic coups: why do military attack young democracies? Revisiting the history of the civil military in Tunisia, he compares the authoritarian era with the post-Arab Spring democratic experiment. Under authoritarianism, they learn how to bide by authoritarian institutions (rule of the game) through top-down repression and sanction following the logic of the dictator’s survival. When democratization occurs and power is shared between different branches of the government, it becomes more difficult for the new ruling class to discipline the military and force it to bide by democratic rules of the game. The absence of effective mechanisms to yield negative returns to undemocratic behavior among military officers has resulted in positive returns and disregard for democratic norms. Civilians can also contribute to transgressions of democratic norms, creating demand for coup-like events or disrupting existing norms and boundaries. The talk will argue that the weakness of normative constraints on military behavior is a factor contributing to the demise of democracy, using a mixed-method approach , including archival documents, social media data, and interviews.
For more information, contact: Department of Political Science at pols@uconn.edu