This chapter compares the processes and outcomes of labor politics in post-uprising Tunisia and Morocco. It explores how institutional legacies from authoritarian rule created distinct opportunities for unions to exert influence over transitional governments and shaped their ability to secure meaningful political and economic reforms. The analysis underscores how historical legacies influence unions’ capacity to engage effectively in political transitions. It concludes by considering how institutional legacies might change.

This chapter analyzes shifts in labor behavior in the context of institutional change. Focusing on the period of structural adjustment (1986–1997), it examines how austerity measures, such as spending cuts and increased labor market flexibility, fractured traditional state–labor alliances in Tunisia and Morocco. The chapter links unions’ responses to these reforms to differences in institutional practices. It argues that Tunisia’s innovations in collective bargaining moderated labor opposition and disrupted alliances between unions and political elites, while Morocco’s institutional stasis, combined with deteriorating economic conditions, generated new incentives for labor unions to mobilize against the regime.

This chapter examines the initial conditions underlying the book’s theory by analyzing authoritarian labor control policies and political developments in Tunisia and Morocco in the postindependence period. It explores how these control strategies shaped unions’ interests, capacities, and perceptions during the early stages of state formation and investigates how relationships between unions and other collective actors influenced the emergence of labor movements. The chapter shows how exclusionary corporatism provided Tunisian unions with organizational resources that strengthened their capacity for opposition, while inclusionary strategies and alliances with political elites weakened labor autonomy in Morocco.

This chapter explores how political and economic institutions shaped labor mobilization during the early phase of neoliberal reform (1970–1985). It reviews the impact of these reforms on unions in Tunisia and Morocco and analyzes their divergent responses. The chapter examines how practices of institutional incorporation and/or exclusion affected the alliances that unions forged with authoritarian elites and opposition groups. The analysis reveals that labor exclusion perpetuated union militancy in Tunisia, while partisan alliances and incorporation into formal politics moderated labor opposition in Morocco.

This chapter introduces the central puzzle driving the study: Why are Tunisian unions militant and political in their protest behavior, while their Moroccan counterparts remain apolitical and moderate? It outlines the book’s core argument, emphasizing how authoritarian policies of labor exclusion or incorporation shape unions’ interests and capacities by influencing their relationships with political elites and their internal organization. The chapter reviews the current state of research on the topic, situating the study within broader debates on labor politics, authoritarianism, and regime change. It concludes with a justification of the case selection and an overview of the empirical methods guiding the analysis.

This chapter examines how labor mobilization returned to its earlier patterns of political militancy in Tunisia and business unionism in Morocco by the late 2000s. It situates the post-reform period (2000–2011) as a phase of continued decline for labor unions in both countries. However, the chapter links unions’ divergent reactions to differences in their internal governance structures, a legacy from previous experiences of institutional incorporation and exclusion. It highlights how democratic internal organization fosters labor militancy, while hierarchical structures hinder opposition, even when clear incentives to protest exist. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how labor mobilization advanced democratic transition in Tunisia while reinforcing authoritarianism in Morocco.

This chapter establishes the theoretical foundations of the book by reviewing three major explanatory frameworks for labor protest: structural-economic, organizational, and institutional. Using quantitative data, it compares the structural features of Tunisia’s and Morocco’s economies and the organizational profiles of their labor unions. After finding existing explanations wanting, the chapter advances a integrative historical institutional perspective, underscoring the importance of labor incorporation policies, political coalitions, and internal union dynamics in shaping labor’s preferences and capacity for militancy. It argues that authoritarian strategies intended to depoliticize labor can paradoxically empower unions, equipping them with the resources and organizational capacity needed to challenge the state.

This chapter traces trajectories of counterrevolutions following six revolutions, which exhibit the full range of counterrevolutionary outcomes and offer useful comparisons to Egypt. First, it examines two revolutions that never experienced counterrevolutions: Tunisia’s and Libya’s 2011 revolutions. Both occurred in the same Arab Spring wave as Egypt’s revolution, but in Tunisia the new government faced a military whose interests were not deeply threatened by civilian rule and in Libya the coercive capacity of the former regime was largely destroyed in the brief civil war. Next, it examines two Latin American revolutions that demonstrate the two ways in which revolutionaries can maintain their capacity and defeat counterrevolutionary threats. Following Cuba’s 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro’s regime put down multiple counterrevolutions using its loyal revolutionary army. In Venezuela, following the 1958 democratic revolution, the government enjoyed none of these coercive resources, yet managed to thwart multiple counterrevolutionary coup attempts through a preservation of revolutionary unity and a return to mass mobilization. Finally, in two cases that are otherwise quite different to Egypt – Thailand’s 1973 democratic uprising and Hungary’s 1919 communist revolution – a very similar set of mechanisms undermined the capacity of the new governments and created opportunities for counterrevolutionaries to return to power.

This and the following chapter look at how infusing corruption into areas of human-rights related practice could make a difference. Here I consider transitions from dictatorship or internal armed conflict, and in particular how transitional justice has dealt with corruption. I focus on 3 emblematic transitions from different recent time periods: South Africa, Tunisia and Colombia, and add in some lessons from prior discussion of Guatemala. I find that failure to vet and control military intelligence officers, economic privatization and decentralization, and lack of attention to judicial selection and to auditing, tax and other controls contribute to the emergence of powerful alliances of corrupt officials, organized crime and predatory elites.

Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical and empirical background to the study of long-distance Tunisian activism as well as the guiding questions on which the book rests: What were the conditions that enabled Tunisian politics in France? How do we explain what it meant to oppose or support an authoritarian regime from afar in terms of reconfiguring this activism in a migratory context? The chapter begins by discussing the choice to examine the Tunisian case in France and situates the study as part of the broader political, economic and migratory relationships between the two countries. The chapter then presents the theoretical framework underlying that universe of political practice, namely ‘the trans-state space of mobilisation’, which I locate at the intersection of scholarship on North African politics, social movements and diaspora politics. It concludes by outlining the issues involved in undertaking fieldwork in the wake of the 2011 Revolution and introduces the material on which this book draws.

Chapter 1 introduces the problems to which this book responds and proposes alternative pathways for understanding the archaeology of the Roman Empire. It shows how particular colonial ways-of-knowing continue to shape the stories told of North Africa’s people and their traditions of worship under the Roman Empire, setting these within the binary of “Romanization” or “resistance.” While approaches to the archaeology of other parts of the Roman Empire have begun to embrace New Materialism as a way of moving beyond “Romanization,” this chapter argues that semiotic approaches offer a more productive means of engaging with and explaining the material dimensions of imperial hegemony.