This symposium was held by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in the midst of current events in Tunisia and the ramifications of the flight of former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The event aimed to deepen the understanding of what happened in Tunisia, and the potential of these events to form the bedrock for a new future for the country ; and further to try and predict the features of such a  future, and how it might impact on the Arab world.

The ACRPS was very proud to host Tunisian researchers who visited from Tunisia to attend this, the first high-level academic meeting to discuss the events which had recently unfolded in Tunisia (only days after the departure of Ben Ali).

Participants at the meeting were examining the changes in Tunisia from a perspective of their being the first-ever democratic Arab revolution, and then further tried to forecast what long-term impact changes in Tunisia would have on the Arab countries in general.

Discussions within the symposium fell into themes as broken down below:

  • Specificities of the Tunisian Revolution
  • Causes of the Revolutionary Popular Mobilization
  • The Nature of the Ousted Political Regime
  • The Social Geography of the Revolution
  • Mapping the Political and Partisan Realities of Tunisia
  • The Difficulty of a Post-Revolutionary Democratic Transition