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Cover -- STALLED DEMOCRACY -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Genesis of the Private Sector in Tunisia: The Logic of State Sponsorship -- 2. The Developmental Paradox: Capital's Emergent Power and Autonomy -- 3. A Checkered Alliance: State Sponsorship of Labor -- 4. Influence under Constraint: The Trajectory of Labor's Power and Autonomy -- 5. Capital and Labor: Agents of Democratization? -- 6. Stalled Democracy in Comparative Perspective -- Appendix 1 Comparative Wage Rates in Forty-one Countries, 1990 -- Appendix 2 Number of Strikes in Tunisia, 1970-1994 -- Appendix 3 Organizational Structure of the Union Générale de Travailleurs Tunisiens -- Appendix 4 Membership Numbers in the Union Générale de Travailleurs Tunisiens -- Notes -- References -- Index

Surprise is an intrinsic fact of political life and its elimination, especially with regard to extraordinary moments of protest and revolution, is a vain endeavor. Prediction and explanation are fundamentally different enterprises. While scholars may be well-positioned to trace, retrospectively, the motivation, networks, leadership, and other contextual factors that fueled the events of 2011 and 1989, such analysis will never bestow the sort of predictive power that will eliminate the surprise of mass uprisings. Verstehen-esque studies of mobilization, while crucially enlightening, have limited capacity to augment our powers of foresight due to the fundamental gulf between agency and intention as well as the causal disconnect between precedent and prediction.