Insupportables successions

• Main Author: François Siino
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: ADR Temporalités 2012-06-01
• Series: Temporalités
• Subjects: Tunisia; political time; republican time; deregulation; arab revolutions; Time
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/temporalites/2138

Far from attacking monarchies, the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 overthrew regimes that appeared like Republics in the first place, but where temporal control of power had long been subverted. The leaders’longevity had become unmanageable and dynastic successions were foreseen. Having experienced two sequences of blocked political time, first with Bourguiba and then with Ben Ali, Tunisia was the first country to rebel. Both leaders implemented deregulation processes of controlled republican time. But beyond their similarities, the two Tunisian sequences present undeniable differences in terms of context, conditions of possibility, political representations and justifications. Therefore, they can hardly be related to a single Arab authoritarian model or the temptation to return to a traditional Arab monarchy. On the contrary, they provide the possibility to reflect more generally upon the phenomenon of political time, succession and entangled public and private interests, in various, radically different political systems.