In this fifth installment of Meshkal’s “In Conversation” series (see previous installments 1, 2, 3, and 4), we speak with Chaima Bouhlel.
Bouhlel has a wide range of specializations related to public policy and government reform, and she has regularly provided commentary, analysis, and journalism through national TV and radio programs as well as on social media platforms. When Meshkal reached out to Bouhlel for an interview on one of the many topics she specializes in, she chose to speak about decentralization. Bouhlel had headed the Marsad Baladiya (Municipality Observatory) project at the Al-Bawsala NGO when it launched in 2014 before becoming president of Al Bawsala in 2016. Bouhlel also studied and educated listeners about municipalities through a three-season journalistic radio program with the Barr al Aman NGO that was also aired on national radio in 2017 and 2018 (some episodes are still available online).
Bouhlel, in Tunis, sat down for the interview via Skype on April 19, 2023.
The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Timeline for reference:
2014: The new constitution enshrined decentralization as the basis for local government.
2016: The Ministry of Local Affairs is split off from the Ministry of Interior.
2018: Parliament passed the code of local authorities [code des collectivités locales] to conform with the 2014 constitution, weeks before local elections.
2021, October: President Kais Saied swears in a new government but does not appoint a Minister of Local Affairs
2021, November: President Saied formally dissolves the Ministry of Local Affairs, shifting its responsibilities back to the Ministry of Interior
2023, March: President Saied dissolves local municipal councils.
Fadil Aliriza: So I was watching your Nawaat interview again, I was reading Nawaat’s last article on the topic by Manel Derbali, and I was rereading Lana Salman’s piece about decentralization which I always go back to because there’s a lot of stuff in there. A lot of the time we talk about decentralization and we talk about local government and we treat them as the same thing, even though they’re not really. Decentralization is a process, a trajectory, but we still have to understand how local government is actually governing to understand how decentralization is going to work or could work.
But at the same time everyone has a different vision of decentralization. If I talk to ordinary Tunisians and I say decentralization – what is probably in their heads is: “I don’t want to go to the capital or the coast or an urban center for the things I need, like documents, healthcare, jobs” – that’s one vision of what might be in people’s heads when it comes to decentralization, but it’s not necessarily the vision that’s been happening in practice.
And then there’s social movements outside the capital that seem to express a vision of decentralization that’s either: “Let’s stop the flow of resources to the capital or let’s redirect the flow of resources to the regions,” which I think Lana Salman was saying that’s more ‘reparations’ than ‘decentralization,’ but maybe we can also put that under the category of decentralization a bit.
But that’s not how decentralization has gone over the last 10 years. There’s been a focus on elections, on electoral processes, maybe now even under President Kais Saied there’s still a focus on electoral processes and a redefinition of things on a legal basis, in a top-down manner, but we’re not sure what that looks like.
So I don’t know what my first question is but maybe tell me if there’s something wrong or if I’m missing part of the picture? How else should we describe decentralization?
Chaima Bouhlel:
First, I think the fact that there’s no agreement on it is what’s fascinating for me. Because it’s an ideological thing. It’s not a desensitized, apolitical, technocratic approach to the administration. There’s a whole school of thought around municipalism really—usually municipalities but now it means different things because now we’ve introduced different levels. When we talk about decentralization, now we can mean the local, but we also mean the regional, and we can mean the district level, so it could be multiple levels.
The way I see it is, the goal is to have a local power—and there’s a difference between a local government and local power and decentralization. I think local government is any existing administrative structure that exists on a local level and interacts with people. So it could be decentralized, it could be deconcentrated, it could be whatever, but it exists on a local level. Local power is if you have structures that are close to people that really have the power to change their lives independently, so this is more charged than local government and just local structures. And to reach that, you need decentralization. So decentralization is really the reform, the name of the reform. Reaching that—it’s like when we call it the ‘democratic transition’ which is not an end in itself, it’s the process of reaching an independent parliament and a balance of powers and a clear division between the executive and the legislative.
The great thing about it [decentralization] is that it’s extremely responsive to realities. So there are different ways of describing what decentralization is. One way that I like but I’m not really a fan of the source is introduced by the World Bank (WB)…
FA: I love talking about IFIs [International Financial Institutions]. All I do is talk about IFIs.
CB: …the role of development agencies and the WB in taking, I think, local power to the wrong direction. I’m extremely critical of it for multiple reasons and we can talk about those—but they do have a very interesting definition and I think they’re good with that, in simplifying the concepts. They introduce four pillars of decentralization. I took it seriously because it’s not three. If there were three I would have been like ahh, again three pillars? These are the four pillars: there’s [1] fiscal—where is the money coming from; there’s [2] political—people who are leading, where do they get their legitimacy from?; [3] administrative—can these structures make their own decisions without oversight, and [4] services—what are they responsible for? And I think these four pillars are really good in understanding where you are in the spectrum of decentralization.
So in Tunisia for example we had full political decentralization in municipalities because they are directly elected from people. The utmost decentralized form of political decentralization is if people are directly elected from the people they are accountable to or supposed to serve, which is direct, free elections.
In terms of administrative decentralization, we were quite decentralized in the sense that we had almost complete autonomy, administrative autonomy. The most symbolic form of that was that there was no oversight from the executive. Just to give a comparison before the [2018] local authorities code which activated this administrative autonomy. The change happened four years after the [2014] constitution was adopted. And I think that is extremely important: it created this delay in expectations. Because I am a believer that one of the expectations of people, even though it’s implicit, maybe it was not articulated very clearly, is that they want power to be closer to their realities. There’s a clear understanding that central government based in Tunis was not responding to the realities of people whether that was named ‘marginalization’ or it was named ‘not creating jobs’ or it was named ‘al hogra’ [roughly looking down], it has different names. Whether we joke that governments are always comprised of people from the Sahel [coastal area from Sousse to Mahdia], or people from Tunis, these are all extremely centralized forms of governance.
So I think the revolution failed to respond to that fast enough, and I’d like to pose the hypothesis that, had they responded fast enough to this, maybe we would be in a different place now, maybe we would have created a different elite…
To go back to decentralization. In Tunisia we removed the oversight of the governors. We did have elected municipal councils before, but any decision that they made should have been approved by the governor. This was removed. It was clearly mentioned that any type of oversight could only be legal oversight, which means the legitimacy of any decision that comes is only based on its legality, not whether it’s useful or not, politically acceptable or not, no. If it’s legal, you can do it. That really created a revolution, I think, in the way decisions were made.
FA: Can you give an example of that?
CB: Basically every decision that was made in made in municipalities since 2018. To give you an example: projects, before at least having administrative autonomy, had to be approved by the governor. And the governors usually represent some political balance that exists on a central level, so they might not be pushing for the same things on a local level.
There are counterexamples, where we can say they did not have full autonomy. Things were delayed on the level of the ministry but not through direct oversight. For example, publishing the governmental decrees that are supposed to define the way you can recruit. So municipalities technically should have the administrative liberty to recruit as many people as they need as long as they can finance it. If your human resources expenses is not more than 50% of your non-investment budget—and that’s a legal oversight—you can recruit as many as you want. However we put something in the law where you can only recruit if a governmental decree is published to define the process of recruiting. Sounds benign so far, but what happened is that the governmental decree was delayed and here what you see is this is in response to some kind of austerity measure on a national level to reduce the public sector [hiring], even though they have their own budgets.
This is the fiscal decentralization I was going to talk about, which is related to fiscal autonomy: where are you getting your money from? And this is really interesting. It ties into natural resources for example. There are different ways, different choices of how natural resources—things we didn’t choose that geographically exist—how can they appear on a local level? To give you an example, it’s hilarious but I think it’s extremely sad. Oil companies, hotels, there’s a hotel in Tataouine…one of two hotels in Tataouine, their headquarters are not based in Tataouine, they’re based on Alain Savary [street in Tunis]. Or like the Groupe Chimique (State-owned Gafsa Chemical Group), so they don’t pay local taxes there. They pay local taxes where their headquarters are based, which is ridiculous, because of course you’re going to have Winou el petrole and El kamour and extreme marginalization on a fiscal level. Which translates into: when you sell the oil or whatever natural resource you have, we get the revenues while the taxation system which is done on a national level should respond to that.
FA: Are they even taxed at the national level?
CB: That’s a whole different story, but even if they were, for those taxes to make this whole turn and go back to Tataouine, that’s a different method of regulating or insuring that municipalities have the same level of financing, which is calculating a national average of what ratio they have of budget per capita. But that’s not what people are talking about; it’s not the compensation in comparison to the national average, it’s compensation in comparison to the resources that we have which is not only out of opportunism. To give you an example in Gafsa, there’s a certain road that was repaved every year or every two years. I remember thinking “Wow, roads in Gafsa are really, really good.” Those are paid from the municipal budget. So from the phosphate [extracted in Gafsa], if you don’t get anything—aside from the environmental catastrophe of course which is a totally different story—but if you’re not circulating back and at least the investment is being done by money that is collected on a local level, you get an imbalance.
And I think this is where the ideology comes from and where the differences come from: are you pro or against decentralization. Certain schools of thought—schools of thought is a big word—certain political parties in Tunisia were extremely against the decentralization reform for multiple reasons. One of them was because it was seen as the result of the push of the WB and the EU [European Union]—a lot of that is true because a lot of the technical assistance was actually financed by the EU and the WB—but also because they thought it was going to marginalize poorer municipalities and enrich the rich [ones] and that also translates on a political level. The hegemony of the existing political parties—at the time it was Nahda and Nidaa [Tounes]—they were the ones who would be able to participate and gather more votes and you’re just giving more advantages to existing players whether it’s economic political or…
FA: And the opposition here at this time against decentralization you mean social democratic parties? You mean nationalists?
CB: It was not social democrats. There was no unified or articulated position, but it was more the left, certain left parties that were clearly critical. But critical for multiples reasons. Even though in Marxist theory you see a lot this idea of common goods or municipalities and how you can face the hegemony of private owners, especially of land. Because you’re supposed to transfer the ownership of land to the local government or local municipalities who are going to be governing through elections, so it’s supposed to be something that you’d think should be more supported by the left, but I think the criticism was more: ‘Who is more guiding or leading this reform?’
FA: In those four pillars of decentralization defined by the World Bank that you mentioned, ‘production’ is not there [alongside ‘fiscal,’ ‘political,’ ‘administrative’ and ‘services’]. They’re not talking about local ownership of the productive capacities, even though this demand has been expressed in practice. When you look at Jemna, these are people saying: ‘Ok we want to control the production of the land, and not only managing it but also owning it and reinvesting the proceeds of that productive capacity at the local level without having to fight with the State.’ So I feel like ‘production’s’ absence from that list of pillars is very glaring, because the WB’s list is not a social vision, it’s a liberal vision and there’s a different ideological interpretation of what decentralization should mean there. And at the same time even though the WB isn’t stating it explicitly, you do see that sometimes the effect of this is you end up seeing an opening up to foreign capital investment as well as foreign ownership even, and at the macrolevel picture you’re seeing a reduction of central state power, which doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. You don’t necessarily want to see the central state’s power reduced vis-a-vis international power.
CB: The central level will be focused on strategic orientations, brokering better deals with the international, bringing investment, directing investment, shaping fiscal policy which is still national level policy because it’s supposed to be introduced via law, so it’s not a local level legislation. I agree with what you said, but I think the reason why the story in Tunisia is more nuanced—and I wish political actors at least had the discussion about it—is that the WB did not really care much, at least from what I witnessed, about what the decentralization will really look like. Because when you see the legal framework that came out which, in my opinion was the richest in terms of change that it introduced not just in terms of number articles. It was really the most comprehensive reform that was introduced after the revolution because every other reform was very specific: either introducing a new structure or new mode of governance. But with decentralization, it was a new form of financing, governing, making decisions, implementing and documenting and citizen engagement in these existing structures. There’s no other thing that is similar in Tunisia that took place.
FA: This is the local authorities code?
CB: Yes, of 2018. So four years [after the 2014 constitution was passed], which is scandalous. To further give you evidence, the WB was not pushing for a change in the entire legal framework. They were even ok with amending the existing municipal law. The push for an entire framework was something that was done on a local level. It was done by local actors. The way the WB supported decentralization was giving a loan that was supposed to go the caisse [account], the only existing fund that gives loans to municipalities which is a State account. So basically they lent them money for them to [then] lend to municipalities, and their major condition was it has to be done in a participatory manner. But of course an extremely centralized, participatory manner, à la World Bank, it introduced a uniform way with engaging citizens which I was extremely critical of because it killed the whole idea that different tools are needed for different contexts. They created this uniform tool because it made it easier to assess, and if you abide by those tools [then] you get the money.
But then there are things in the local authorities code that are exactly Jemna. They talk about how municipalities should be leading economic development, about how municipalities should give people land, they should own the land and give people land in order to invest. They talk a lot about social solidarity economy. It’s the only law aside from the SSE law that—and there’s a lot of criticism there but I think there’s an interesting idea of social responsibility in investment. In fact, it’s the only [other] law that also mentions [SSE]. So there’s a clear link.
So here, the reason why I’m extremely skeptical of just explaining that this is why we have a problem with decentralization: domestic actors were also not pro this kind of empowerment on a local level. It is the Tunisian actors, the government at the time, Youssef Chahed’s government alliance with Ennahdha, very liberal economically, [they] were against the state giving land, so giving ownership of land to municipalities. When I say against, they simply did not do it. They had ministers of land. Why didn’t they do it even though it’s stated in the law? Extreme delays in publishing the governmental decrees that will actually activate these processes that allow people to take ownership. Do you remember how Jemna was viewed?
FA: Yeah [the government] froze their [bank] accounts. There was a very top-down approach. I remember Tunisian officials were saying ‘This is a real assault on the state, [Jemna] shouldn’t be doing this’.
CB: Yeah. Instead of seeing Jemna as a success it was seen as ‘How dare you?’ We are an extremely centralized state in that sense as well. How could any decision that is strategic or especially economic be made outside of whatever existing powers that usually make those kinds of decisions. But the interesting thing is that municipal elections showed that people who did take these risks [won]; the mayor of Jemna at the time was extremely tied and extremely supportive of the [Jemna] association at the time and kept extremely good connections and invested and helped them further, not only financially but also in mediation. And I think that was beautiful, it was an excellent example.
You have another municipality that I think is an excellent example which is Echraya Mashreq Eshams, a new municipality in Kasserine. The municipality created jobs in farming and in agriculture, olive trees; they managed to get funding, and the irony is I think they got the funding from the WB and they basically gave it to the people. It’s excellent. Let’s say they hijacked the system. Yes, the system was supported by this kind of view, but even internationally, I think the drivers of at least the international exposure were not only EU as a structure and WB. There was a lot of exposure to the Dutch example, Spanish, French which for me which was not the best example in the world. And I’m glad, because I think it was resisted a lot even though at the beginning it was going to take the French route. The influence was visible. There was also Germany. There’s a lot to be said, but there was exposure to other examples that do challenge a little bit the neoliberal model.
FA: I’d love to see more [Global South] examples. I’m trying to learn more about Cuba these days and I think it’s an interesting example because, population-wise it’s similar size to Tunisia, it has a lot of really good qualifications & skills in healthcare and things like that, and it’s managed to survive economically despite being very isolated, and I feel like that’s a really interesting thing that Tunisia can learn from in terms of even land ownership, land management and even decentralization of power as well it seems. Obviously there’s a lot to learn from even those other countries you gave examples of without it having to be a radical example like Cuba.
You said something that stuck in my mind about how, at the administrative level, there has been real deconcentration or maybe you said it was decentralization in terms of the executive not having influence. But let’s say you are at the municipal level you don’t really have—from what I understand—you don’t have the capacity to say: ‘Hey, we would like to set our education policy,’ to say: ‘We would like to develop a curriculum’ or ‘We’d like to have a system by which we decide the qualifications for teachers.’ I don’t know if that’s a decision decided by even the local official representing the Ministry of Education who is assigned to that region. It’s probably very, very centralized.
CB: So this is the fourth pillar of decentralization which is services, which is what is the central state going to give municipalities or regions or districts. There are three different levels and this can only be defined by law. So the law has to say what the municipality is responsible for. And this is a very grey area, because the law says that the municipality is responsibility for development on a local level, and development on a local level can mean everything. Everything. Especially if you have a holistic approach to what development is: education, health, environment are integral to what development should look like. But there are specific compétences [prerogatives] that municipalities are responsible for. There are three types. salahiiyat al dhattia [auto-prerogatives] which only the municipality is responsible for them; no one else can step in and do this for them unless there is a direct risk to the population. So an example of that is paving roads, municipal roads, collecting waste, public gardens. So they are very specific things.
There are shared prerogatives, shared with the central state. And these are on a case by case basis. So municipalities actually sign with the central state, with whatever ministry, and they say for example: “I’m going to be taking care of infrastructure in the schools.” So let’s say the municipality of Soukra has so much money and there’s a lot of demand for them to take charge over the quality of the buildings of the school; the municipality would go to the central state and say: “I want to be in charge of this,” and the central state would be obligated by law and by the [2014] constitution at the time to transfer the money needed to do that, because the philosophy of services changed with the constitution at the time: whoever is closer to the people and more capable is the structure that is supposed to provide the services. It’s called mabda al tafria’ [principle of subdivisions]. Which means you start by the closest and if they can’t, then you go up, and then you go up. And [in this setting], the municipality and the central state also share responsibilities. So the central state will say: “I’m going to be recruiting the teachers, you will be building the building, and we both have provided the service of a primary school.”
Now the idea of services is also different.
People see the curriculum as not a service, the service is the actual education. The curriculum is a question of national identity.
FA: Yeah I wouldn’t question that either, I’m just saying as a theoretical experiment.
CB: I would question that in different things. For example I would question it about [teaching] examples that are given from daily life. I think that teachers should not go by extremely strict—and of course I think we need to change the whole philosophy of the education system so they can give more leeway to teachers. For example the timing. In Tataouine, when it gets really hot, you should give liberty to teachers or at least on a regional level for them to decide to move the days, the timing. Or in Jendouba when it’s really cold. Questions like this.
And then you have the third kind of prerogative which is complete transfer, which is also on a case by case basis. So the central state says: “I’m going to completely dump this responsibility on you because you asked for it. You’re the one responsible for it. I’ll give you the human and financial resources for it. Complete transfer is: “You [the municipality] recruit, I’m just going to give you the human [and financial] resources.”
To go back to the question of oversight. The expectations of local power in Tunisia, so al sulta al mahalliya [local power/authority], and I know there are a lot of professors who are extremely critical of this because they say: “We only have three sulatat [powers/authorities],” the usual three: executive, legislative, and judicial. But no, local power/authority, it is a fourth one because it has all the elements of a power. They have autonomy, accountable to the people and there’s a balance of power – the oversight is only through the judiciary.
So they completely blocked this transfer of prerogatives and the argument was: “Let’s test the municipalities, we don’t want them to fail. Let’s keep very minimal responsibilities, the basic ones that existed before, just give them full autonomy.” From a technocratic position, because I worked a lot on decentralization, I see why. You have municipalities that are new [created through the 2018 local authorities code], 86 new municipalities. They had nothing. No building, no human resources, nothing. And you had municipalities that do not have a lot of human resources, so it was difficult to give them a lot more prerogatives than they could handle. But I think they neutralized—they domesticized actually—the political discussion, because you should give them the ability to request more responsibilities. The way they blocked this is that there were governmental decrees that should have been published saying: “Here’s how you can draft an agreement with the central government on transfer of power.” And this is where the WB played a role. They had this plan, a 27-year-plan for Tunisia for the complete transfer of powers.
FA: Yeah, I remember those three 9-year phases.
CB: Have you ever seen a published document?
FA: No, I heard about it and I was thinking of asking you but I was worried about getting too much into the weeds.
CB: It’s like a myth. So this is where things started, where they went. I’m not going to say downhill, but this is one of the challenges that happened. Ok, we gave you elected people, more than 7000 elected people [elected to municipalities in the May 2018 elections], and I think one thing that terrified the political scene probably on a national level is that more than a third of the elected people were independent, so they were not really partisan, at least not openly. And I personally think that was a sign that at least municipal or local elections opened the political game to more actors—or non-traditional actors let’s say—who probably thought that being in parties are barriers. And then of course with Nidaa Tounes disappearing completely, which was the second most represented party, I think everything changed.
FA: So much of the decentralization project seems to depend on the energy of local officials.
CB: Absolutely
FA: And a lot of them just got tired. The barriers to actually putting this into practice are too much. They were doing this basically on a volunteer basis.
CB: Yes except for the mayor.
FA: And they say it’s not worth it, they stop showing up to meetings, they stop pushing for things. And that leads me to a question that gets us away from the process itself. Is decentralization popular do you think? And has it ever been popular? Do you think it’s gotten less so? Can we track its popularity?
CB: As a reform, I don’t think lamerkeziyya [decentralization] necessarily means much. I would actually argue that now, politically, it just refers to the democratic transition; so it sounds like everything else that is prior to July 25 [2021], the word itself I mean. But I think that people do want to have a say, and for me decentralization at the end is how close should decision-making be to the actual beneficiaries. And I think that this is something that’s extremely popular. A way to test this is when you look at al bina al qaedi [basic/foundational building – see footnote 1]. I think it’s really important to talk about decentralization and local power through the prism of al bina al qaedi for multiple reasons. The most important reason for me is again that al bina al qaedi is a centralized, national level reform that is promising local change.
FA: Are we treating al bina al qaedi as the President’s personal political project?
CB: I think his project is an extremely centralized executive, power hidden behind al bina al qaedi, that’s what I think he’s doing. But I think a lot of his supporters do actually believe in al bina al qaedi, and I do differentiate between them both, and maybe this is because Kais Saied tried being a president, and you know it changes your perspective a lot. But I do think there is this idea of people, the local reality should be the one that’s leading decisions, or [that] local realities need to be reflected in decisions. Of course al bina al qaedi is quite different because it introduces legislative power, especially through the second power [second legislative chamber], but that is still power on a national level, so I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about structures that are operating not on the entire territory, not on the national level.
I’m so curious to see how are they going to resolve this issue of local councils [introduced by President Saied in a decree as the nominating institutions for representatives to sit at the newly created National Council of Regions, the second chamber of the legislature] and municipal councils, both directly elected: one on the municipal boundaries [jurisdiction], the other is one the moatamdiyya [district/delegation], it’s a mess. They’re both elected on a local level and they’re both locally elected people.
So I think it’s popular. I think what’s not popular is that it’s called decentralization. Which is why I prefer to choose the world sulta mahaliyya [local authority/power], because this is what people actually want, and the lamerkeziyya [decentralization] just sounds like World Bank, like the 2014 parliamentary system, the same philosophy.
FA: As a thought experiment: there’s a lot of countries, especially third world countries coming out of colonialism, that moved their capital. And I was thinking, I don’t even hear about this idea ever coming up in Tunisia, the country is even named [in Arabic] after the capital, but if you actually had an attempt to say: “Ok, why don’t we make the capital in some central region that we feel is more representative of some mythical vision, the people, the countryside, the whatever.” Let’s say Sidi Bouzid or Kasserine.
CB: There was a push…
FA: I feel like this would be the most revolutionary thing.
CB: This was mentioned. In the local authorities code based on the 2014 constitution, there was supposed to be the capital of local authorities because it’s supposed to be the region or at least the city where the headquarters of the Majles al Joumaat al Mahaliyya [Council of Local Authorities]. So you see the second [legislative] chamber that Kais Saied created [in the 2022 constitution]? It actually stems from the 2014 constitution. You had the Council of Local Authorities that represents municipalities, regions and districts. And the difference is it does not have legislative power in the 2014 constitution; with Kais Saied it does, it votes. But in 2014, it actually had oversight and suggests reforms related to development. But it was supposed to be based in a region that is not the capital.
FA Right, but I mean moving the palace out of Tunis, and moving the parliament, the ministries. Imagine that!
CB: The executive? Oh I think they would never do it because everyone who has ever ruled Tunisia is extremely centralized and only thinks power should be in Tunis. Not only, it should be in Carthage [presidential palace], this idea that there was power in Bardo [parliament], Kasbah [prime ministry], Carthage, even that was too decentralized. That’s too much, how can more than one place have a lot of power. This is not a judgment of what power was used for. That was it. Kasbah was extremely powerful, Bardo was powerful at a certain point, and Carthage was powerful. So moving…I think that’s an excellent idea. Among friends we used to talk about moving the palace within the capital, just symbolically moving, shuffling things around, move the Ministry of Interior from there, move the palace from Carthage to Mutuelleville [see footnote 2]. I agree with you.
FA: What could it do even economically to force…you’re going to have to force infrastructure development in a central region, you’re going to force investors to come, force all kinds of networks to come. So many civil servants treat being posted outside of the capital as punishment
CB: Right.
FA: Historically that’s been the case, whether it’s teachers, judges, university professors, they all see it as punishment whereas, like let’s punish ourselves and everyone and then it won’t be punishment. It’ll be like you’re actually developing an entirely different national project. This is what I’m curious about. Decentralization has almost been fractured from what you might consider a national project. You want to figure out a way for this country to be able to be on a path that’s fundamentally different from where it was going.
CB: Yes I agree. I just don’t think that we’ve yet to see national-level actors who are not taking advantage of the historical baggage that all of this comes from. I think they all think that it is necessary to have this concentrated power—the projects can be good or bad I don’t care—I just think the process is wrong because it’s building on a heritage that has not produced anything that is sustainable to say the least.
We used to be quite decentralized in the history of Tunisia. One way to see this is that you had really strong cities that are scattered. You didn’t only have Tunis, Sfax, or Sousse. You had metropoles across the country…What did colonialism do to impact this? I’d be curious to see, especially French [colonialism] since we’re extremely inspired by the administrative organization in France.
But to go back, there’s something I think you’ve been trying to challenge which I agree with which is the national versus decentralized. And I think local power cannot escape a national project. I don’t think that local power can succeed without a national project. It’s not that you can create your own legal system that is closed and succeed and you’ll be independent of the entire country, which is one thing that people used to criticize decentralization [for], saying you’re creating countries within countries, and [undermining] the unity of the state and I don’t know what.
And this is why I keep on insisting that there are multiple levels, and the promise was—maybe it was unattainable, maybe it was too consensual, but this idea of municipalities that are grouped together by regions that have a more regional economic identity that is brought together by the district level, which includes tax incentives and whatnot. There’s this study that was done by the ITES which was about what the districts will look like. Now Kais Saied talks about districts and from what I hear, [it’s] the classic districts of northwest, northeast, the center, and Greater Tunis which has proved to be…there’s the book al isti’mar al dakhli [internal colonialism] by Sghaeir Salhi which is really interesting. It explains how this basically keeps the marginalized marginalized and it doesn’t change anything. One study was suggesting the sandwiched districts, which is every district should have access to coastal areas so they can export and they should have access to the Algerian borders, so export via sea or to Algeria, and if you do that you will include agricultural [resources] in the center. In this idea, you’d have incentives to move inside the same district. This will never happen without a national vision. This can’t happen, the whole reform of decentralization is a national-led reform.
I think there was a vision of not to push it too much because of maybe partisan or political or ideological reasons. But it’s good that you bring up the national level because I don’t think that the local level should kill the importance of the national strategic orientation, positioning, identity whatever it is. It should not remove the importance of the national responsibility for dealing with marginalization. Because if you do that, what you’re going to have is extremely advanced regions in comparison, you will have Sousse which has I-don’t-know-how-many hospitals etc. and that has autonomy and autonomy will translate into: “Only people from here can use this.” We’ve seen this [before]. And you will have Siliana that has only one blood test laboratory.
FA: Even in the capital, we did a story on healthcare where people were like: “You have to go to the clinic that’s assigned to you if you have the white card, and even if they don’t have the medicine in stock you can’t go to the hospital clinic to get it”—you have to first do whatever is assigned to you. There’s these divisions that all seem to basically hide a lack of resources. The main problem is the lack of resources, but then it gets kind of hidden by structures and in this case all of these, at the level of decentralization there’s all these hierarchical structures from top to bottom that also hide a capacity for any sort of direct action. It makes it difficult to translate. Like you said, if you want power to be at the local level, you also want them to have direct control over the things that are most important to them, but that direct power gets filtered through all of these layers that end up basically dispersing it.
CB: Yes, I think the best example for that is Covid. If you see how different municipalities dealt with Covid especially around the beginning around March 2020, and the reaction of the central government, I think there’s a lot to be seen because you had—whether it’s right or wrong is a different story—but you had municipalities that were going around spraying stuff that proved to be useless, but they managed to do that because they have money that they can spend on their own without anyone telling them what to do. And I think that, for me, was a powerful thing. And the law did not say that they need to do it, because we have this idea in Tunisia that officials usually only do what the law says that they should do, so they’re really not imaginative. But they did this because of local pressure, whether it was civil society or people were terrified—they were terrified anyway! Something organically happened. You had municipalities that built their own—not hospitals—but they built structures for patients to go. Of course the central government was pissed off because we can’t bring any doctors, but hey that’s your problem asshole! Because you have not been recruiting, because you’re too scared to recruit because the IMF [International Monetary Fund] I don’t know what, they are going to freak out because they are getting this loan in two months. That’s what happened in April. And because you’re making it easier for your doctors to go to France but you’re not doing anything at home.
I think local government is embarrassing for the central government and the transfer of services is based on that. Because when you think about it, let’s say the government wants to transfer the power of first-line medical care, not hospital level, first-line. There’s lots of theories about this. You don’t need to have a very developed hospital in every single place, you just need to make it accessible to people when they need it and you need transportation for that. So basically what you need to be doing is investing in transportation at that point and investing in good, first-line medical services.
FA: I can’t let you go without asking you about the contemporary period, the latest things. Ok so in March, President Kais Saied disbanded the municipal councils. What does that mean? Who is governing at the local level? And is the local authorities code null? Is it active?
CB: I need to say with this question [that] Kais Saied suspended the directly, democratically elected municipal councils that represent parties that are in clear opposition to him. And they represent or at least symbolize a path that he put an end to by suspending parliament [in 2021]. They do look like that process. But he only did that more than a year and a half after the 25th of July, and I think there’s a lot to look into there and that’s what’s interesting to me.
FA: You mean why he took so long for that?
CB: We need to look into that. It took so long for multiple reasons. The first reason is he could not replace those decision-makers who are many, 7100 at least. They could not be replaced by either a local elite that are considered pro-Kais or from his team or whatever. But also, I think Kais Saied, even though he believes in an extremely central executive power, there were enough events to show him that central power cannot respond to local emergencies, and Agareb and Sfax are the best examples. There was a lot of talk about conspiracy, but we all saw it was just a failure to manage a waste problem in Sfax that had been a ticking bomb – it was not failure only by this government.
But having local actors who are elected by people, who are from there, makes it easier for you to manage conflicts. And I think this was understood quite fast. Zarzis was the exact same problem. The families, when they couldn’t find their loved ones, they went to two actors on a local level: the moatamad [district official] who was not from there, and they went to the mayor and the members of the councils–they have two, Zarzis and Zarzis north. And they were requesting to see the Minister of Interior and the President who did not go. So on the local level, you really need the presence of local actors who are committed to that. So either you have to manage to replace them or manage the chaos that comes out. And for me that was success of local power, regardless of everything that’s happened. How long the councils continued in place was extremely interesting to study because it suggests that their presence was more beneficial for Kais Saied despite the fact that they represent the opposition.
FA: So you think it’s good to have people who not only place the blame on local officials, but also look to local officials to solve the problem?
CB: Of course. Because municipalities are responsible for collecting waste, for projects. You had budgets that had to be approved that could only be approved by municipalities. He removed the Ministry of Local Affairs, so you had a Minister of Interior who know nothing about municipalities, who if you remove elected councils, they will need to be the ones who have to put and approve and draft the budgets of 350 structures, so technically this would have been a nightmare.
FA: But is that what’s happening now that Kais Saied has dismissed the councils?
CB: No because they approved the [annual] budgets in December [2022]. No. I think he chose perfect timing because what’s happening now is that the secretary general of the municipality is leading—and this is based on the law of the code of local authorities—and by law it’s not supposed to last for long. So what I think, and this is speculation, is that we’re going to have municipal election quite soon and I think the irony is that the mandate was going to end in May in all cases, so really he just ended the mandate three months before.
FA: So the day to day stuff is being done by this secretary general. And that’s appointed by the governor? Or a position?
CB: Every municipality has a secretary general. It’s a position in the administration.
FA: So they are civil servants?
CB: Yes civil servants. Under the oversight of the governor of course, and this is where it gets really tricky. Anyone who thinks that Kais Saied supports local governance, this is the best example that no, he actually supports an extremely centralized, executive-led [government]. But you could say this is always temporary, so I’m just going to speculate and see when the elections are going to take place. Now this doesn’t mean that everything is happening really easily, because there are lots of complications – to give you an example that’s funny but not really because many people were really stressed about it. Marriage contracts can only be signed by someone who has to be an elected person [at the municipality].
FA: You mean according to the local authorities code?
CB: Not only. This is according to whatever legal framework governs marriages. It’s either al adoul, so this is traditional, comes to the home and you have to pay them, or if you’re having your marriage contract signed at the municipality, it has to be someone who’s elected, so it’s the municipal council members. The secretary general cannot do it. And this actually had lots of people panicked because you have a lot of marriage contracts take place around holidays, summer witnesses a lot of contracts especially the diaspora. So examples like this.
FA: So what’s happening with marriages now?
CB: They’re asking people to get the adoul, to take them to the municipality
FA: And sorry can you explain the adoul?
CB: Adoul is like, you know adel eshhad?
FA: Like a bailiff? A court representative?
CB: It’s like a lawyer, they’re recognized. You can see it in the JORT. They’re basically muhalafeen [authorized/certified].
FA: They’re like a notary?
CB: Exactly. They write that both [parties] agreed etc. etc. … By law there are two [types of officials] who can sign the contract: the adoul, who is more traditional and comes to the house. If it’s a marriage that includes a ceremony at the municipality then an elected official dhabet halat medenia [civil status officer] [signs it], not any elected official.
FA: Basically what it means is now people who get married at the municipality, the municipality has to bring an official?
CB: No they [the ones getting married] bring it, from my understanding…At the municipality you didn’t need to think about it…Marriages at municipalities, in the summer it’s like you have at least 10 marriages a day. Or even more if it’s Kasbah or Marsa or Sidi Bou Said, so imagine every family bringing their adoul there on time, it’s a logistical nightmare. So is this going to affect everyone’s life? No, but this is one example.
You have also a lot of secretary generals that they cannot make any strategic decision, so they can’t be accountable to the people. In technical words, the budgets, municipal budgets just like state budgets, you have tasarruf [regular expenses] and istithmar [investment]. So tasarruf is the cost of everyday, and then you have the investment which is everything else that is new. So I’m assuming that secretary generals are only going to be responsible for the day to day services but will not be responsible for any investment.
FA: Like coming up with a new park project, they won’t have new projects to propose or think about.
CB: No. That sounds really catastrophic. And this is where I think Kais Saied was really smart is because there are lot of things you can’t do in the final six months of the mandate. For example you can’t have a referendum on a local level because you’re not supposed to really make any strategic decisions in the final six months of the mandate. So is it catastrophic? No. Is it chaotic? No. Because the previous municipal councils approved everything that they needed to. Even the investment money that had to be approved, it was approved by November last year. So investment money in November, budget December, by March everything has passed.
FA: Ok. So to get back to the President’s vision of things. It seems like a paradox, I feel like you’re already giving me some of the answers to this, but just to put it all in one place. The paradox seems to be that Saied is centralizing powers in extremis, but he’s also put forward a vision of local power and this separate legislative branch, which you said it’s not out of nowhere but growing out of this assembly that was already set aside in the code. I think you described it as like him trying to hide centralized power behind a façade of local power – but is it just a strategy to hide centralized power or is there something more to it?
CB: I don’t know Kais Saied enough, his history to make sure if he really believes in al bina al qaedi. I know that Ridha Chiheb el Mekki for example does believe in it. I know there are other people who do. I don’t know about Kais Saied. I think he is someone who is obsessed with the 1959 constitution and obsessed with Bourguiba’s choices somehow, so I think that’s an extremely centralized executive for sure. Is he hiding behind it? I don’t know. What I’m sure of I think now he thinks that there should be no kind of challenging of the power he has. Again, for good, for bad I don’t even care, it’s this idea that – when you see the language, national liberation, it’s like we’re still in this extremely sensitive, critical…
FA: State of emergency?
CB: Exactly. And I think there’s a lot of play on words by people who were elected in the parliament saying: “Ah, now it’s the end of the state of exception.” No it’s not. It has never been technical.
So I don’t think Kais Saied will give it up anytime soon. Does this mean that he does not like local power? Maybe not, but what’s for sure is that with him as president, I don’t think it would be what he would be pushing for. Of course this would change because the Minister of Interior now is apparently someone who is really supportive of al bina al qaedi, so [Interior Minister] Kamel el Feki is one [of the supporters]. So one thing to keep an eye an on is what prerogative will be given to the local councils. Because when you hear Kais Saied, the focus on the local councils is really to elect the [second legislative] chamber. It is an extremely centralized approach to reflecting local issues. It’s you know: “we need a central second chamber,” except that it comes from local councils. It’s the same thing as electing people on a local level, in fact creating more barriers. Because you want them to be elected and they’ll be represented on a regional [level] and then from there…I mean..
FA: There’s less direct representation in this format?
CB: It actually does not make sense to me because it’s not even direct, it’s the other direction of direct democracy, because you’re not even directly electing those people to be in that chamber?
FA: Are you curious on a personal level to see what the relationship between these two [legislative] chambers is going to be like? I feel like there’s a bit of a waiting stage, there’s very clearly low legitimacy of the new parliament with 10% or whatever [elections] turnout, there’s probably going to be even less for municipal elections, probably even less for the local council assembly. You’re basically having these illegitimate institutions according to popular turnout, but you’re kind of stuck with it. Even if tomorrow there’s an entirely different national project, can Tunisia swing back and forth between: “Now we have two chambers,” ‘Now we don’t have two chambers,” “hHere’s how local elections are supposed to work now…”
CB: I think the second chamber is the least determining element in the political scene. Not because I don’t think it’s important, it’s just I think that two things: First it’s not a new thing, like I mentioned, in the 2014 constitution there was a structure like this, and I’ve seen the challenges to putting it into place; it was not put in place because we needed regional elections. The second thing is, for this to work you need to have not only a national program, but you also need to have actors, and I think this is what was missing in the elections. It’s not only the voter turnout, which is important because I think it really affected the legitimacy, but it’s also the actors and I think this is why I also don’t believe…I mean Kais Saied in his reaction to the Parliament election said that maybe people don’t want the parliament, but I also think that maybe he simply does not have the actors, enough actors who believe in whatever he’s proposing who will be necessary to put in place for this to work.
I think we’re reinventing the wheel because as critical as I am and was of organized structures that are political, whether it’s civil society or political parties – critical in the sense of how porous they are to newcomers and to reality was reduced by time, not all of course. I think Kais Saied is going to reach the point where you cannot do anything if you are not organized in [at least] a limited way, at least there is a minimal kind of organization, because then you simply will not have enough people that will run the system as you envisioned for it to run.
What happens? Let’s say both chambers don’t agree on the financial act, kanoun al malia [annual budget law], honestly that is the only thing that the second chamber will be important for – because mukhattat al tanmiya [multi-year development plans] – really? First of all, I think it’s the least determining thing in Tunisia because for the development plans, it’s not like we ever had an executive go by the letter of what the development plan says. They have always been ministerial decisions, and development plans have always been non-binding. So really what is important is the financial act, which is yearly. And I think what will happen is if they both don’t agree and you have a deadline and you need to pass it, it’s going to pass by decree. And this is a mechanism that was put even in the previous constitution. So there’s no blockage, and if you cannot create blockage there’s no political game.
FA: There’s no power, yeah. This is also why it seems like the Ministry of Interior (MoI), to me I interpreted the getting rid of the Local Affairs Ministry and replacing it with MoI as basically– this is too simplistic but writ large this seems like the state going back to treating local governing issues as repressing demands coming from the outside to the center, those demands of bringing back resources from the center to the periphery, the only way we’re going to govern it is through repression. Do you think this is a legitimate reading? That the state is basically adopting repression, or maybe it’s even muscle memory? There’s a muscle memory of administrative division of labor and it’s reverting back to these old structures because that’s just how the state knows how to operate on one side, but then I’m thinking of it also as like there’s a sense that maybe local government kind of got out of the control of the central state and the beneficiaries of that weren’t necessarily ordinary citizens, the beneficiaries might have been seen as corrupt, local chiefs, maybe international actors – but the state is saying ok we need to bring that back under central state control, but the only way we know how to do that is through the Ministry of Interior so it’s going to take on this repressive character?
CB: First, international actors, there’s no way for them to make use of local governments without the oversight of the executive because by law any international agreement cannot be done before passing by Ministry of Foreign Affairs and whatever other ministries that are responsible, so like the [Ministry of] International Cooperation. So even all of the projects that are done with municipalities, especially waste management I know it’s a critical issue, it’s like investing in the infrastructure in Tunisia so they can take advantage whoever wants our sorted waste and it’s something that requires a lot of investment. So instead of us investing in it, we’re basically just selling extremely expensive waste…anyways there’s a lot of theory around this, but this is with the blessings of the central state, this is not at all or ever, there are not rogue municipalities that are acting on their own.
Did they directly improve people’s lives? It varies. There are municipalities that did, there are municipalities that definitely did not. The question of decentralizing corruption, it’s actually a very good question, but I think there is still no evidence that it increased. Or increased in volume at least, like how many dinars are being dealt with in a corrupt way or impacted. Of course I’m extremely biased towards decentralization so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I think there’s no evidence on that.
My explanation of why the Ministry [of Local Affairs] was removed, [I have] two explanations. First of all, I think Kais Saied really likes old models and the old model in his head that he knows is local authorities are part of the Ministry of Interior because it’s supposed to be Ministry of Interior, governorates and municipalities, this is how it works. The second thing is governors – if you want to identify one actor that was pissed off with decentralization, it’s the governors because they lost a lot of their power. And I think governors, because Kais Saied does not have enough political elite for him to name as moatamadiya [district officials] and you can see this with the nominations, they did not cover all the moatamdiyyat [districts] even two years into whatever happened. The easier version is the governors, there are only 24, and even with the governors he could not change all of them.
So the interesting thing with the governors is that they also have security, a security [portfolio], and I think this is one of my key problems with what’s happening is that it’s the police state! Turning everything into ‘Can I have security oversight on it or not’. Of course this does not mean the municipalities. There are rumors that municipalities, especially those that represent certain political parties as a majority, they were going to use municipalities as a way to challenge power for sure. This happened in parliament, it makes sense for it to happen in municipalities, it does not mean I approve or not, but it could have happened. But I don’t think that’s the reason why they were put under the MoI. I think it’s to go back to normal. Again the symbolism because Kais Saied really likes the symbolism, it is removing anything that looks like there’s change, lamerkeziya [decentralization] sounds like ‘democratic transition’, so removing that and bringing governors back in. You can see it with everything that happened with the governor in Bizerte and the municipality of Bizerte, the governor of Sfax and Agareb and whatnot.
FA: And these are disputes mostly over authority, essentially?
CB: Of course. Because what would change? I mean honestly technically, legally let’s say, nothing changes because one of your questions before was is the local authorities code still in place. It is still in place. Is it being implemented? Of course not. Not fully. It has never been fully implemented; that does not make it ok. But technically moving or removing the Ministry of Local Affairs does not mean that you have oversight by the Ministry of Interior. The only way you get oversight is if you change that by law. So now, at least on paper and by practice by many municipalities—I’m talking before the dissolution of the municipal councils of course—they were making their own decisions and the governor only had oversight once through the methods that they have except for certain cases like Bizerte like I mentioned where they refused to put flowers.
FA: Right, at the entrance [of the town].
CB: Anyway, so for me it was more symbolic than anything else. And symbolic of going back or removing or putting an end to something. You have to also keep in mind that there were a lot of popular demands to dissolve municipal councils. A lot. They were sounding like the demands to dissolve the parliament. It doesn’t mean they’re popular, I’m really skeptical if they are really widespread or not, popular or not, but at least we saw the same pattern of: “the people want the dissolution of municipal councils.” Kais Saied even talks about them in some of his speeches. He said really dangerous things like “younakilouna bichaab” [they are punishing the people], I mean… but I think he could not dissolve them or did or not or I don’t know what the reason was so he had to do something symbolic, which is removing the Ministry of Local Affairs. We only had the Ministry of Local Affairs in 2016 by the way, after the [2011] revolution we had five years of municipalities being under the Ministry of Interior.
FA: Do you think the solution is for the ministry to come back? Does it even have a building? Did it have a chance to have its own building and staff?
CB: It had a huge building in Hay el Khadra.
FA: Do you think it will ever be reactivated?
CB: They kept it there, they continue to work there, it’s just the name is now Ministry of Interior.
FA: But anyways they probably worked at the Ministry of Interior before, a lot of them came from the ministry of interior before?
CB: Yeah, yeah
FA: So it’s mainly symbolic?
CB: Well no, there is the security aspect of course. It’s not only symbolic. But the security aspect is not a structural change; this is a political change, deciding that this is a security issue that I want to deal with, not a development issue. But even before, it used to be called the Ministry of Interior and Local Development.
FA: Do you think decentralization is, this is to put it harshly, but do you think it’s dead? Or do you think it’s on the shelf and it’s going to come back off the shelf? What do you think will be the future going forward?
CB: I think that local power is really tied to democratic rules, but it is more resilient. You can have democratic practices in certain municipalities even if let’s say you have an extremely autocratic rule on a national level. But you have a lot of factors to take into account, which is you have a political elite which is strong, they can broker things, probably a very rich municipality they do their own things, so not all [municipalities].
I personally don’t think any reform is ever dead in a state. So is the current balance of power in favor of local power? No. For the reasons that I mentioned. Future developments will be extremely important in trying to predict what will happen. For example, when will municipal elections take place? I think that’s really important. What will the local councils do? Are they only going to be councils that serve the purpose of electing the regional councils or not? Or will they have prerogatives? How will they interact with the municipalities? That will be key. Will political actors on a national level finally remember that being active on a local level is important? Of course not all, some of them are aware of this, but many are not.
What will the local elite that were in municipal councils before they dissolved, what will they do in the future? I think this is something extremely important. Will they be represented in their political parties, or if they’re independent will they take part in the elections again or not? I know many of them are willing to run in elections again. This is the interesting thing about local power is that sometimes there are positions that can be taken on a national level—for example in relation to presidential or legislative elections—that you can kind of avoid on a local level because they seem distant from these kinds of democratic questions. It sounds more acceptable for let’s say an opposition political party to participate in local elections or municipal elections even if they boycott legislative elections because legislative elections they will be putting in place laws that have to be signed by a president…
I hope that some kind flame stays in place because I think it’s an important level of political engagement that keeps political actors in touch with reality. And I think if they do succeed on a local level, they gain experience without a lot of risk – for them or for the people – and I think the people are more important – and they can climb up the geographic ladder
FA: So almost like keeping alive the flame of political pluralism?
CB: Yes. In a way that is consensual in a way, because it’s non-threatening for the autocratic regime—because I think it’s autocratic at this point. And it’s not embarrassing for political actors who have taken stances that are very clearly against what’s happening on a national level. Now this is not a very popular view because it’s seen as reducing political action to the local level, but I personally think that going local is not a reduction of political activity; I think it’s the essence, especially if you link it to the national. When you look at the national from the prism of the local, if many do this, this would be the best way to at least to be informed when national decisions are made.
FA: That’s really interesting. If anything that would increase disputes between local government and the central government which, from what I understand, are mediated through the administrative court, and it puts pressure on the court system to be this arbiter between these two poles of power which I think there’s big question marks of the capacity or the autonomy let’s say of the judicial system to be this arbiter.
CB: That’s if we assume that the parliament is not going to change the local authorities code. Because I think they’re going to bring back the oversight of the governors. In all cases that would be really sad because I think that was a battle that was won. But I think that does not change things because you keep the political discussion alive. Because eventually, if people think that something needs to happen, you can bring the most powerful governor in the world, with our current tools of communication, unless we go into a real dictatorship where you cannot say anything and I think there are really dangerous signs, but I think they still have not reached the local level and that’s why I think we need to be more aware of the local because it’s a margin that is really big because it exists all around the country, that is easier to maintain than on a national level. I don’t think that the national level should be abandoned, but also I don’t think that the local should also be belittled.
FA: For sure. This is really great. Oh my goodness I feel like I have picked your brain sufficiently and probably too much. Thank you.
Footnotes:
- Al-Bina al-Qaedi appears to be a theoretical expression of a political project that Saied coined and advocated for in his 2019 electoral campaign. For more details, see Mehdi Eleuch, Mohamed Al-Sahbi Al-Khalfaoui, “Al-Bina al-Qaedi: Mashrou am Nabwa?” Legal-agenda.com, 06/12/22, https://tinyurl.com/6f97vuhp.
- Carthage where the Presidential palace is located, is a wealthy, seaside suburb of Tunis populated traditionally by aristocratic families, isolated from major centers of commerce, industry, other organs of government and densely populated residential areas. Mutuelleville is a business and commercial hub in downtown Tunis
*****
This article was funded solely by readers like you via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/meshkal. If you read Meshkal’s reporting, please consider making a donation to keep the project going.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.