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Author: Cyrine Ghannouchi
This paper reviews state and non-state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Tunisia between March 2020 and March 2021. It offers a context-based narrative of the country’s key political and socio-economic features throughout a global health crisis and identifies four main phases that marked domestic dynamics. The paper investigates moments of political and socio-economic rupture and continuity with pre-pandemic policies to then argue that the COVID-19 crisis was rather seized by the power elite to perpetuate the system, to sustain self-preservation, and to further resuscitate Tunisia’s pre-uprising authoritarian legacy, which, in return, fuelled resistance from below and ensured its continuity despite the quasi-annihilation of the civic space.