Alignment and Conflict in Counterterrorism Lawmaking: Discourse Network Analysis of Tunisia’s 2015 Anti-Terror Law

Tunisia’s 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law marked a critical juncture in the country’s post-2011 trajectory towards democracy. The new legislation was originally designed to address the 2013–2015 security crisis that shook the transitional government’s stability and threatened society at large. Yet it also institutionalised extraordinary measures that expanded the state’s coercive capacities and created new opportunities to restrict fundamental rights and political contestation under the guise of counterterrorism. While scholarly attention has focused extensively on the legislation’s authoritarian nature and the broader impact of counterterrorism on Tunisia’s regime configuration, far less attention has been paid to the micro-dynamics of parliamentary politics that shaped its formulation. Building on this gap, this paper applies the theoretical and methodological tools of Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) to reassess the parliamentary deliberations surrounding Tunisia’s 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law. Accordingly, the study revolves around three main questions: Q1) How did different policy networks form based on different discursive constructions of “terrorism” and “counterterrorism” in the legislative process? Q2) To what extent did these policy networks change over time? Q3) What are the network mechanisms through which the 2015 Anti-Terrorism Law was formulated? The objective is to 1) show that behind the consensus that emerged during the vote on the 2015 draft bill, competing political networks arose from different policy beliefs and framings of “terrorism” and “counterterrorism”-related issues, revealing deeper intra-elite divisions, as well as diverging perspectives among elites on state-society relations; 2) demonstrate that power relations among different groups can change and influence the elaboration of counterterrorism policies. Ultimately, the study aims to unpack patterns of cooperation and conflict among diverse elite actors (ranging from Islamists to secularists, and state ministries) over counterterrorism policymaking, and to provide further evidence that legislative institutions serve not only as arenas for policy formulation but also as sites of elite contestation, coalition-building, and power struggles. Empirically, this paper draws on a systematic DNA of parliamentary debates held in the Assembly of the People’s Representatives (ARP) and the National Constituent Assembly (NCA). A diachronic comparison sheds light on how discursive networks and agreement/conflict lines evolved across three different stages of the legislative process (i.e., debates in the NCA during the 2011–2014 period; debates in the ARP during the late 2014–April 2015 period; and April–July 2015 “fast-track” phase in the ARP’s parliamentary committees). In addition to parliamentary debates, the study relies on semi-structured interviews with key political actors (including MPs and ministerial representatives), to check whether the structure and the characteristics of the policy networks emerging from the debates resonate with the perceptions and views of direct participants. The paper contributes to scholarship on political networks by showing how legislative texts can be leveraged to reconstruct discursive networks, and by linking macro-level outcomes in counterterrorism to evidence on the micro-level of shifts in collaboration and conflict ties among decision-makers.