ABSTRACT
This chapter studies the foreign policy of Prime Minister Essebsi during the decisive democratic start-up period in 2011. Through content analysis of relevant documents and official speeches, this chapter examines the conduct of Tunisia’s interim external policy, asking whether Tunisian diplomacy at the beginning of a new political era inside the country reveals revolutionary policy changes also toward the outside. Overall, Tunisian diplomacy in 2011 could not simply extrapolate the basic orientation of its traditional foreign policy but had to adapt to both the internal needs of the systemic change and the revolutionary dynamics in the region.
