Repairing the Damage of the Socialist Experiment

In the aftermath of the experiment in economic planning, the Parti Socialiste Dusturien found itself at a fork in the political road. Since independence, a small coterie of party leaders had determined state policy and then imposed it through the agency of interlocking party and state organisms. The paternalistic conviction that the party-state president and, by extension, his inner circle inherently understood Tunisians’ needs and aspirations rendered the reverse flow of information irrelevant, or at least of negligible interest to its recipients. Redefining the relationship between the party and the national organizations following the 1964 congress was merely a variation on this theme. Any semblance of dialogue between party and people disappeared, as the PSD’s obdurate support for the cooperatives in the face of mounting popular opposition illustrated. The party’s claim to embody the collective will of the Tunisian people had served it well against the protectorate and in the consolidation of the independent state, but it rang hollow by the late 1960s as broad resentment of economic policies opened a gulf between state and society. At the same time, the crystallization in the PSD’s upper echelons of an opposition bold enough to challenge the authority and the methods of the increasingly isolated leadership revealed similar fissures within the party elite.

As in the past, the highly centralized, authoritarian power structure of the party could readily stifle internal critics. The choice confronting party leaders at this critical juncture lay between resorting to this technique at a time when discontent in the party paralleled widespread restlessness in the society at large or, as their critics urged, adopting more open procedures, widening the circle of key decision makers, and limiting personal power with institutional constraints, all with an eye toward giving voice to a more diverse array of views that would enable the party to establish strong connections with as much of the population as possible. Dissidents argued that resistance to change would cause the party to atrophy, while its entrenched leaders feared that acceptance of these demands would ultimately lead to their replacement, the diminution of their power, or their relegation to symbolic roles.