The escalating pace of protest movements increased steadily in Tunisia after the revolution as a new form of political action. A protest group of youth-led activists and campaigns emerged on several issues that stirred the political street during a decade of democratic transition, including Manich Msameh(“I ain’t forgiving”), T’alem ‘oum (Learn to Swim), Fech Nestane, Basta, (enough) and We starve due to your injustice, These campaigns represent a portion of the political expressions that swept throughout political space over the past decade, imposing new patterns of protest, mobilization, and expression.
The paradox of our research is that the public space in Tunisia after having been curtailed for decades by authoritarianism, was later liberated by a revolution that broke the fear barrier and opened the space for different political activists to freely compete within it. However, the political class has not been able to manage the political process smoothly. One of the most prominent features of this crisis is the departure of large numbers of young activists from political parties and their aversion to organized politics, as political parties turned during the decade of democratic transition into spaces unable to accommodate young people within their structures.
For young people, protest campaigns represented a political alternative that was used to defend the benefits of the revolution, which were considered under threat. Issues such as the martyrs and wounded of the revolution and the reconciliation law, for example, were treated as urgent and required defending through non-hierarchical frameworks distinguished by more flexible structures than conventional parties.
Some literature on political commitment and social movements suggests that traditional frameworks for classical political action, such as parties and unions, have become restrictive for young people, as these structures impose significant restrictions on their members and limit their potential for political action and freedom of initiative.
Parties are political organizations characterized by a highly hierarchical structure and usually consist of a political or executive bureau, whose members often monopolize the decision-making power, in terms of the normal running of party affairs and of important decisions. Ordinary members, many of whom are youth, often play marginal roles.
Some of these campaigns had a major impact on the course of political life in Tunisia at that stage. For example, the Manich Msameh campaign pushed the government to abandon two-thirds of the Economic and Social Reconciliation Law initiative, after three years of making it a public opinion issue and mobilizing the street against it.
The Manich Msameh campaign emerged in August 2015 as a form of protest against the draft reconciliation law announced by former President Beji Caid Essebsi during his Independence Day speech on 20 March 2015. The draft law expressed the incumbent authorities’ desire to pardon businessmen and senior state officials who had committed financial and economic crimes during Ben Ali’s rule. Young activists in the campaign saw this initiative as an attempt by the authorities to whitewash corrupt people who had exploited their positions and influence to serve their narrow interests. They considered it their moral duty to defend the revolutionary path by winning the transitional justice process and refusing to circumvent it with such initiatives.
One of the most prominent features of these protest campaigns is the tendency to choose horizontality as an organizational form. Manich Msameh represents a horizontal structure that uses horizontality to conduct the campaign’s affairs and take decisions. Manich Msameh defines itself as an independent citizen initiative that is open to anyone who wants to join.
In this paper, with experience from within Manich Msameh, we seek to understand how some activists represent the choice of horizontality adopted to fight against the passage of the Economic and Social Reconciliation Law.
Horizontal Practices: A Return to Field Experience
Horizontality as A Theoretical Concept
Horizontal campaigns represent activist frameworks unrestricted by the hierarchical nature that governs and regulates relations within classical political work. The relationships within these campaigns are characterized by their non-vertical nature, which allows activists to have greater freedom and fewer restrictions and enables them to devise methods compatible with the cause they are fighting for and the specificity of the political space in which they operate. This freedom has afforded political activists the ability to innovate new methods that have contributed to the spread of the Manich Msameh campaign, enhancing its capacity to attract and mobilize.
On the other hand, these campaigns are characterized by their time-limited, issue-specific organizational forms that do not require a long-term commitment from a political activist, unlike traditional forms of commitment where members adopt ideological and intellectual perspectives as well as a long-term commitment.
Horizontality represents an organizational haven for political activists fed up with the constraints imposed by vertical forms of organization. It offers many advantages, including allowing flexibility for varying levels of commitment and multiple forms of activism and the potential for continuous creation and renewal of the campaign structure.
It is important to note that horizontality does not necessarily mean an opposition to every vertical organizational form. Under it, we can include a wide range of organizational forms, including the type of organization characterized by the absence of structures, improvisation, and decentralized decision-making. Horizontality as an organization has a clear and specific structure and is subject to a system that distributes tasks and roles and regulates relationships within this structure, but at the same time relies on the adoption of a set of mechanisms that prevent the concentration and monopolization of power, ensuring the establishment of internal democracy within the organization. However, the common factor between both approaches is the rejection of the principle of hierarchy and subordination and a keenness to guarantee democracy and participation as an organizational option.
The issue of leadership represents one of the most prominent stakes facing horizontal organizations, as granting management and administrative authority to a person or a group of people — even if restricted by a set of mechanisms that prevent domination and authoritarianism — is often not welcomed. Despite the importance of the role of leadership within militant frameworks, as a function that defines tasks, regulates the means of struggle, and organizes relationships within the group, there is an ideological rejection of the principle of leadership within some anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist circles. These groups consider that no one person has the right to exercise any form of authority in determining the future of a movement.
The issue of verticality’s relationship to political and democratic representation has been addressed by many movements in different parts of the world. The Zapatista movement in Mexico presents itself as a decentralized organization, without a leader, within which all political decisions are discussed and decisions are taken by consensus. In the 1990s, the Zapatistas, through their militant actions against the Mexican authorities, demanded a comprehensive decentralization of power. For them, the essence of democracy is that power can be exercised by everyone, at all times and in all places.
Some scholars believe that horizontal political and military organization is the main reason for the Zapatistas’ success in controlling several territories and ensuring continuity.
A Return to Field Experience
As I was preparing to write this article, I happened to come across an open invitation on social media to attend a large meeting to present proposals in preparation for the first anniversary of the Al-Aqsa Flood, organized by the “Coordination of Joint Action for Palestine”, at a public park in the Tunisian capital. The invitation seemed to me an appropriate opportunity to effectively follow and observe this naturally horizontal event and its activities. I can think of nothing better than to open this paper with a description of an observation in the field where horizontality materialized before my eyes.
Months after I had been collecting testimonies of activists who had experienced horizontality through the Manich Msameh campaign, and not having had the opportunity to write about it before, this fieldwork prompted me to dig out old notebooks and resume writing about the issue.
The idea of an open invitation for everyone to attend this preparatory meeting and to organize a protest action seemed interesting and important to me. Traditionally, protesters are invited to demonstrate only after the organizer has set and determined all the details. But to invite everyone openly on social media, without any kind of political selection or ideological sorting, is the essence and spirit of horizontality.
On a Sunday evening, under the shade of a large leafy tree, the meeting took place in a public square in the center of Tunis. Attendees, numbering in their dozens, were spread out on the ground, the tree’s branches and leaves providing cover in the sweltering heat.
Diversity was the predominant feature for the majority present at the meeting that day, and there was no intentional exclusion of one party, giving more space for expression, or dominating the discussion at the expense of another.
All that any of the attendees had to do was express their desire to contribute to the discussion, and the floor would be given to them after they introduced themselves. The ease of getting the floor to speak did not mean that there were no organizational rules at the meeting. The session was not a space for chatting and free speech, but rather, it was structured with a specific methodology. The various points that would be addressed during the meeting were presented to the attendees before the meeting was announced, and these points were arranged in a participatory manner. The members of the campaign, who had called the meeting, moderated the discussion and ensured the production of an accurate working paper.
The majority of the attendees can be classified as young, as far as I can tell. I cannot pinpoint their exact ages, but I can assert that, in the main, their ages range between mid-twenties to early thirties. Only two people looked to be in their late fifties. The organizers, of whom there were three at the meeting, appeared to be in their mid-thirties.
Based on my previous knowledge of the organizers, we can say that they belong politically to the new leftist generation, whose political baptism, in the words of Mohamed Slim Ben Youssef, took place in or shortly before the revolution. That is, the youth of the left in Tunisia, with its various political currents, have experienced generational conflicts with the old leftist militants. This led to sharp divisions and conflicts within the various organizations.
During the discussions, I noticed that the youth had a pivotal and influential role in deciding on several options and making decisions. The organizers did not exercise control over the proceedings, although they had experience in protest and resistance that they could have used to exercise certain forms of hegemony over several positions. Even when distributing roles, the organizers were not keen on chairing the various organizational committees; the matter was subject to volunteering and the free initiative of those present. However, a significant portion of the attendees at the meeting knew each other, which made the process much smoother. Those who volunteered for committee membership or chairmanship seemed to have organizational experience and had previously dealt with coordination from previous activist movements, which seemed to allow for the balanced accumulation of trust that made things go smoothly.
At the end of the discussion, and after going through various points raised at the beginning of the session, attendees who had expressed their willingness to contribute to the organization of the movement were divided into groups. The first group was tasked with communications, including setting a strategy for communicating with visual, audio, and written media. A second group was tasked with logistics, such as purchasing flags to use at the demonstration, collecting donations, and writing statements and slogans, where it was agreed to organize a slogan-writing workshop. A third committee was tasked with looking for possible ways to support the resistance in Lebanon, for example by supporting relief efforts.
Through this field inspection of how an organizational meeting of a protest movement progressed in a horizontal manner, we can say that the horizontality of this activity is represented in a participatory manner where various decisions were taken, following the open invitation on social media. The organizers were eager to involve various activists who expressed their desire to contribute to the movement. This eagerness to manage the movement in a participatory manner seems to stem from the organizers’ collective desire for attendees to be an active part of the movement, and not simply a mass mobilization exercise to prove their mobilization capabilities.
In addition, the open nature of the meeting reflects the organizers’ representation of the political act as an open, participatory act. Herein lies the essence of their disagreement with the classical understanding of politics which they see as synonymous with ideology and discipline.
A Return to Experimentation: Some Critical Perspectives
The Manich Msameh group began the struggle against the reconciliation law “without necessarily having a detailed action plan, political principles, or even strategic goals.” Most members of the campaign were affiliated with the spectrum on the left in its various manifestations and formations, “but with a radical critique of the parties of the traditional left.” As mentioned above, the campaign chose to organize in a horizontal form, so that all its members have a close contribution to its management.
Some scholars suggest that the emergence of these horizontal and spontaneous campaigns since 2014 in Tunisia, with their new leaders and innovative working mechanisms, is the result of “the double predicament of the ‘movement/organizational’ and ‘ideological/political’ left.” They express “the embarrassment of the traditional organizational paradigm based on the class party, democratic centralization, and organizational loyalty and commitment within undemocratic organizations, which is strongly rejected by the youth.” This has resulted in the emergence of the campaign as a horizontal organization. This protest dynamic gave rise to “some creative forms of organization, the most prominent of which was the youth campaign.” “The campaign was devised to capture the militant energy of the leftist youth while ensuring the diversity of political identities and the unity of the group and the goals it aims to achieve. The campaign was horizontal, with decentralized decision-making.”
Following the interviews we conducted with youth activists of the Manich Msameh campaign, we noticed that their representations of political actions differ from one activist to another, given their various experiences and divergent paths. However, they all agree in their criticism of traditional frameworks of political action and view party work with great suspicion and apprehension.
Today's politically active youth belong to a new generation that is open and in constant contact with the world around them thanks to the digital revolution. By generation, we mean a group of homogeneous individuals who share the same visions, representations, practices, and values, and who are historically in a position to experience the same events and face the same challenges. Some specialists tend to explain the tensions that characterize relations between different age groups as generational conflict, a conflict that is usually the result of the disruption of norms and their evolution from one generation to the next.
In Tunisia, although young people are a key component of the country’s demographics, with the 15-39 age group representing 38.09% of the total population, they have not been able to play as important a social and economic role as previous generations in their age group. The high life expectancy among Tunisians coupled with good health and mental capabilities, even in retirement, has contributed to the fact that sheikhs do not leave the social, economic, and political scene until very late in life, because they feel they are still able to give. This hinders young people’s access to advanced positions in these fields.
The political sphere is not much different from the rest of the other fields, as politicians from previous generations monopolized the political process after the revolution, and young people were not given enough opportunity to play the role assigned to them or to which they aspire.
The marginalization of youth, giving them secondary roles, and excluding them from participating in decision-making within their party organizations, led them to leave the organizational experience in order to seek other avenues for political action.
Authoritarian working methods and the lack of democratic practices within parties have played an intrinsic role in alienating young people. Today’s youth are sensitive to grand narratives with a desire to assimilate themselves, to belong to a different historical, political, and social context that emphasizes the values of freedom, independence, and individuality. For youth, this cultural specificity has made parties rigid structures that curb their freedom and inhibit their unbridled desire to affect political change.
The technological revolution has also played a decisive role in fueling generational conflict between older and younger members. By older people, we mean people who are sixty years of age or older. Young people’s mastery of digital technologies and the rapid exchange of information and knowledge among them has shaken their elders’ cognitive authority.
Zakaria — a 31-year-old political activist and lawyer — says that those who grew up with the ability to access any information cannot be controlled by the logic of ideological hegemony: you can say whatever you want and claim what you want, but a young person can verify the validity of what you say in a few seconds. The process of ideological control is in favor of today’s youth, unlike what previous generations knew. In the past, the political education of classical parties was based on indoctrination and not on personal diligence, individual research, and information exploration. This was mainly due to the difficulty of accessing sources of knowledge. According to him, most political books were banned under former presidents Ben Ali and Bourguiba. As a result, political culture was transmitted orally, meaning that it was not based on research and investigation, but rather on memorization and reciting leaders’ ideas and slogans. This situation gave a kind of prestige and symbolic authority to those who possessed that kind of knowledge.
Our interviewees — a group of activists who experienced the work of the Manich Msameh campaign from within — ranged in age from 25 to 35 years old when we interviewed them. They are students and researchers at Tunisian and foreign universities, mostly from middle-class families. All of them belong to the Tunisian leftist family.
For our interviewees, the Manich Msameh campaign represented a refuge and an opportunity to practice politics in a different and renewed way. They are fed up with the undemocratic ways of working within traditional parties and organizations. Our interviewees believe that the vertical form that organizes relations within the parties and the paternalism with which front-line leaders deal with young people was a real impediment for them.
Anis — a 35-year-old political activist and PhD researcher at a Canadian university — says that the Manich Msameh campaign is the most horizontal in his estimation. He also believes that its horizontal nature made it a successful campaign that achieved many political gains.
Alaa — a 27-year-old political activist and secondary education teacher— says that with the passage of the reconciliation law, the campaign decreased by two-thirds. The campaign also emerged at a sensitive political stage. It succeeded in restoring momentum to the street after months of stagnation following a political consensus between Ennahdha and Nidaa Tounes and the formation of a joint government after the 2014 elections.
The adoption of horizontality and the use of social media helped the campaign to spread widely and succeeded in attracting a large number of Tunisians, as evidenced by the campaign’s mass demonstrations carried out on more than one occasion. The campaign succeeded in mobilizing thousands of protesters at a time when major political parties were unable to mobilize the streets, according to Zakaria.
Despite the unparalleled success of the campaign, it has faced major challenges, according to Anis, due to the adoption of horizontality:
Accountability, for example, becomes much more difficult. Making important and urgent decisions is sometimes a real dilemma. The horizontal strategy requires that all members of the campaign open a discussion on all issues, no matter how urgent they are. Sometimes deciding on a minor detail requires hours of exhausting discussions, which is draining and impractical.
In response to our question on horizontality after experiencing Manich Msameh, Zakaria says that he has a critical approach to the issue. He defends the middle ground, as he puts it. In other words, he rejects general horizontality — where those who know and those who do not know are equal — as well as the exaggerated centralization that allows a small clique to control the rest of the group:
The relationship between the sheikh and the disciple is unhealthy, and I oppose it. I am for an organization that has as little centralization as possible and as much democracy as possible. But centralization remains, in my opinion, a vital element in the organization of political action. By centralization, I mean, first, information centralization, meaning that any political organization should have a single point of information gathering and rebroadcasting. Second, centralizing decision-making.
On a practical level, the implementation of horizontality appears to be a very difficult and complex process, according to Mohamed — 32, a political activist, and PhD researcher at the University of Tunis. To run a horizontal campaign on a national level, the campaign must have regional and local coordination in several regions within Tunisia. Horizontality requires that all of these coordination members meet in one place, for every decision they need to take, which is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. The internet was indeed used to organize such meetings, but in most of these meetings, not everyone was present or did not contribute to the discussion with the same enthusiasm.
Horizontality is an organizational choice that has pros and cons. It is important to note that claiming horizontality does not necessarily mean adopting horizontality. When an organization claims to be horizontal, it does not mean that it is not hierarchical. The advantages of horizontality are that the activists within the campaign feel part of the campaign, that all decisions taken represent them, that they can take initiative and action, and that they feel like they truly belong to the group. It is not necessary that they fully agree with all the decisions that are made, but it is important that they have the possibility to contribute to those decisions. The disadvantage, on the other hand, is that in all horizontal experiments, a group within the organization can monopolize the organization’s management, for example, by calling meetings and making decisions. In the name of horizontality, the group cannot hold anyone accountable for making those bad decisions, for example.
Mohamed adds:
Idon’t like online conversations and discussions or find them acceptable. It is also important to note that there are two types of centralization in this case, one at the group level, which is what I was talking about earlier, and a second centralization at the national level. In Tunis, the Manich Msameh activist group had a kind of hegemony and kind of political and media oversight over the campaign because the activity was mostly concentrated in Tunis. When a media outlet contacted the campaign, activists based in the capital would go to represent the campaign, and so on.
In this regard, researcher Moutaa Amin Elwaer points out that a close examination of the Manich Msameh campaign allows one to observe: “the presence of some form of council leadership, which is primarily the responsibility of the activists with the best reputation and the most seniority.” However, as the campaigners became aware of the need for internal democracy and the need to avoid the dominance of charismatic leaders over the campaign: “the group made an intellectual effort to mitigate this factor.” This was done by ensuring a break with the dominant forms of organization in Tunisia, where: “installing a system of deliberative leadership [took place]. It is about changing the people who speak publicly in the name of the campaign in the media, those who represent the group in discussions with political parties and organizations, as well as changing the tasks assigned to each member during activities.”
In the same vein, Mohamed believes that there has been no real horizontal experience in Tunisia:
There is a hierarchy that is created by custom. In the sense that there are activists who are more active than others, so they automatically have certain powers that others do not have without being formally assigned to them. Some activists have more skills than others, such as eloquence and the ability to discuss and express their opinions and positions more smoothly than others, and these activists are automatically given authority to lead discussions.
Zakaria says that unlike many of his comrades who are enthusiastic about the option of horizontal organizing, he has fundamental objections to it. It is true that hierarchical organizations proved their failure in Tunisia after the revolution, and they were unable to manage this phase. This goes back to, in his view, several reasons, with the most important being the failure to take into account the specificity of the Tunisian political reality. He says that all political currents in Tunisia did not take time to understand their own reality, projecting their hybrid and differing experiences:
For example, we as leftists imported the Soviet-style Marxist-Leninist experience and wanted to apply it to Tunisia. The Islamists also imported the experience of the Gama’a al-Islamiyya and wanted to apply it in Tunisia. As leftist youth, what did we do to protest these projections? We invoked an organizational form that was created in different contexts and projected it onto the Tunisian case.
He says that activists in Tunisia borrowed the model of horizontal campaigns from protest movements in Wall Street, Spain, and Greece:
Centralization is not a negative thing that must be fought for salvation. Centralization is an idea that has been theorized for centuries and has merit. Human organization has always been based on the idea of centralization, even in pre-state societies. In the meantime, who has written about decentralization and horizontality? There is not enough theorizing on the issue. For example, if you ask 10 activists within the same campaign to define horizontality, maybe five of them will define horizontality as the opposite of centralization, and the remaining five will each define it in their own way. I don't deny that there are some serious attempts to write about horizontality, but I personally consider them insufficient.
Conclusion and Summary
We can conclude from these various testimonies that the horizontal organizational form adopted by several post-revolution youth campaigns in Tunisia — of which Manich Msameh is the most prominent example — cannot be treated as a complete and mature experience. Rather, it seems to represent an attempt by activists to find their way, producing a political synthesis that corresponds to the requirements of their political reality. The objective conditions within which the experiences of Western societies are produced are very different from those of Arab societies. The contexts of protest in Western societies generally differ from the contexts of protest in Arab countries. The stakes of protesting in a political space that has been democratic for decades are very different from those under the shackles of authoritarianism.
However, it is important to note that the challenges faced by horizontal experiments in Tunisia and the Arab world are not isolated from the challenges and difficulties that these organizational structures face in other contexts. There is a real interaction between what is happening within our societies and what is happening internationally. The 15M movement in Spain and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States were influenced by the nature of the protests of the Arab Spring Arab in 2011 which led to the toppling of some Arab regimes.
All horizontal experiments, despite the different contexts that produced them, face a set of common challenges. Though horizontal movements have enjoyed relative success in achieving their set goals, “they remained strategically trapped in a narrow horizon, limited to reacting and drawing only on interim goals without any strategic dimension or long-term political project.” That is, horizontality, like any idea or theoretical concept, when applied dogmatically and divorced from long-term strategic visions, runs the risk to go into stagnation. Some of the internal dynamics that characterize horizontal movements, namely the avoidance of establishing fixed governance structures or granting leadership positions, make these movements vulnerable to inertia. Many movements are very active at a certain stage, but suddenly stop and go into a state of inactivity, just because no one is able to say “let’s go.”
Despite the challenges, difficulties, and sometimes failures that horizontal movements face, these experiences should be valued. As experiments based primarily on a critique of classical political experiences, they represent a renewed opportunity for continuous experimentation and creation. This is what gives vitality to the political scene, and it is this dynamism that allows for renewal in the political scene.
It seems to us that we must be wary of the idea that we must turn inward to produce a model of contestation and resistance that responds to the conditions of our Arab reality, as it is multifaceted and may lead to pitfalls that are not easy to get out of. Among them is drowning in our own particularity and not paying attention to what is happening around us in the world in terms of political, economic, social, and cultural transformations. Many of the challenges we face are linked to these changes. The Arab political consciousness must not close itself off and must be keen to absorb what is happening around it.
It is true that societies of the Arab region are characterized by the political regimes’ authoritarian nature, in addition to the continuous decline and erosion of the middle class and poor quality of public service providers. Refusing to interact with the rest of the world under the pretext of producing political organizations, accounting for the specificity of Arab societies, may lead us to fall into a trap as warned by several thinkers, including Asif Bayat, who warned against the dominant ideas in the Western world that “recognize the exceptionality of the region”. However, the historical reality proves the Arab street is political. It has witnessed and continues to witness, throughout its contemporary political history, various uprisings and protest practices, seeks change and keeps pace with the transformations taking place in the world and is affected and influenced by them.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
