Devrim ve hegemonya: Tunus'ta sivil toplum ve devlet (2010-2019)

The popular uprisings in late 2010 in Tunisia resulted in political and social changes across the country as well as in the region. While the uprisings in other countries ended up with chaos, civil war and military coup, in Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 23 years-long authoritarian rule was removed and through democratic elections the new constitution was adopted by the assembly. In this process, Tunisia was considered as the only successful country in terms of democratic transition in the democratization literature. It is argued that the Tunisian success was because of the existence of a robust civil society. By contending this claim, this thesis explains the post-revolutionary period in Tunisia in the light of Gramsci's civil society theory. Civil society, in Gramscian sense, is considered as sum of ideological, intellectual and cultural apparatuses producing consent for the hegemony of the ruling class of the state. In this context, the thesis argues that in post-Ben Ali period the idea of tunisianite which signifies the Tunisian national identity and the Bourguibist modernity acted as the apparatuses preventing the revolutionary break with the past and maintaining hegemony of the ruling class which ruled the country since its independence. Keywords: Civil Society; Gramsci; Hegemony; Revolution; Tunisia