ABSTRACT
This chapter is the second part of the book's country case study on Tunisia during the Ben Ali era (1987–2011). Relying on dozens of interviews with prominent former activists and other stakeholders, it examines the key factors that likely conditioned an enablement effect of international attention on Tunisian activists' human rights work. These factors include their baseline capability to push for change, the tactic of “repressive substitution” employed by the regime, and the problem of “cheap” concessions to international pressure, which all complicated such an enablement effect in the Tunisian case. The chapter then provides a reflection on the scale and timing of the human rights change anticipated by the theory of change by considering the achievements of Tunisian defenders. It closes with a discussion of the practical relevance of Part III's findings.
