2008 Assessment

This peer-reviewed country report includes:

Integrity Indicators Scorecard: Scores, scoring criteria, commentary, references, and peer review perspectives for more than 300 Integrity Indicators.

Reporter's Notebook: An on-the-ground look at corruption and integrity from a leading local journalist.

Corruption Timeline: Ten years of political context to today's corruption and integrity issues.

Country Facts: Statistical context for each country.

Tunisia suffers from very weak levels of transparency and accountability in government, performing poorly across almost all dimensions of governance and anti-corruption. The most serious problem is the monopoly on power exercised by an executive that is subject to few effective checks and balances. Although citizens enjoy the legal right to vote and are eligible to run for office, the reality is much grimmer: elections are tightly managed affairs, and there is neither an agency that has the independence and authority to monitor the integrity of elections nor a judicial process for citizens to contest election results. Efforts to hold members of the national legislature accountable are crippled by the absence of conflicts of interest regulations, judicial review of legislative actions, and asset disclosure requirements. Robust anti-corruption laws are in place but they are considerably weakened by the lack of an effective anti-corruption agency (or collection of anti-corruption bodies) to monitor and enforce the law. The police frequently abuse their power and are rarely held accountable for their actions.