ABSTRACT
The Tunisian regime clearly was undermined by a crisis in political legitimacy during the 1980s that was in part related to inadequate economic growth and opportunity. The end of colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s ushered in an era of markedly dissimilar governmental institutions in North Africa, and subsequent comparative analyses stressed the distinctions between the political orders of the Maghrib, with forecasts regarding development largely based upon these differences. But each of the countries experienced remarkably similar political and economic crises during the 1980s, belying the institutional and ideological differences that figured so prominently in analyses of the region during the 1960s and 1970s. The economic policy reforms each regime enacted during the 1980s may be characterized as promoting a process of slow and gradual decentralization, encouraging export growth, enhancing incentives for agricultural production, and imposing austerity measures aimed at trimming government budget deficits.
