The Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP) has begun a three-year research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) on “Civil-Military Relations and the Dynamics of the Revolution: Tunisia’s Security Sector from a Historical Perspective”.

Existing research on the so-called “Arab Spring” has generally privileged the analysis of the sources and dynamics of popular social mobilisation in bringing about regime change. This project, by contrast, suggests that the puzzle lies in the incapacity of the security apparatus to anticipate and quell popular uprising.

The premise of the project is that the same conditions that made the sudden demise of such a deep-seated authoritarian ruler possible also enable us to understand the dynamics of rising insecurity in Tunisia since the beginning of the uprising. The analysis will shed light on the relationship between the security situation in Tunisia and armed violence in Libya, and will help identify the main factors that have affected Tunisia’s political transition.

The project builds on Keith Krause’s previous work on military/security development in the context of security and state (trans-)formation in the Middle East and North Africa. Dr Moncef Kartas, postdoctoral researcher at the CCDP, has intricate knowledge of Tunisia and will carry out extensive fieldwork in the country as part of the project.

For more details, please visit the CCDP’s project page.