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This paper discusses the governance of political economy in areas of limited statehood (ALS) and contested orders (CO) by focusing on the issue of state capture. By linking the notion of state capture to the idea of ALS, the paper investigates how a deterioration of governance can take place when the state fails to mediate the interests of the population vis-à-vis capital, thus favouring the personal gains and rent-seeking activities of the ruling class. Drawing on the cases of Libya and Tunisia, the paper will examine the extent to which processes of state capture dominate the political economy of countries of the EU’s southern neighbourhood (SN). It will place unique attention on the enabling conditions that generate state capture and assess how this process can produce risks or become a source of threat to the EU. In doing so, the paper will also reflect on the implications of the main findings when approaching the question of resilience and how state capture contributes to the wider conceptual discussion on ALS and CO in the SN.

Despite the popular protests that took place in 2011, the political economy of Tunisia remainslargely characterized by processes of state capture and cronyism. While benefiting the rulingclass, the social and economic costs of these mechanisms are detrimental to most of thepopulation. There is a tendency in policy and academic circles to characterize state captureas the result of a late-development syndrome and unfair competition. This policy paper,however, proposes to adopt an alternative outlook. It argues for the need to critically reflecton the key role of the current neoliberal economic model in sustaining these dynamics. Basedon the pursuit of the profit rate, the push for neoliberal reforms in Tunisia have sustainedpredation and rentierism since the late 1980s. In such a context, the European Union (EU)should rethink its terms of economic engagement based on neoliberal premises, and insteadsustain an economic agenda aiming to regulate the rights and responsibilities of local andinternational capital in the interest of all.

This paper questions dominant analyses about Libya’s present ‘war economy’ and ‘statelessness’, which are often deployed to explain the country’s ongoing destruction. By reinterpreting the history of the past as the failure of Libya to implement neoliberal reforms, these accounts trivialise its antiimperialist history. The article reflects on the role that war and militarism play in the US-led imperialist structure, tracing the gradual unmaking of Libya from the progressive revolutionary era, towards its transformation into a comprador state and an outpost for global class war. In doing so, it moves the focus away from Libya’s ‘war economy’ to examine the war and the economy, linking Libya’s fate to the geoeconomic and geopolitical forces at the core of US-led imperialism. This is a Italian translation of an article previously published in English in the Review of African Political Economy, 2020, DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2020.1801405.

N° 5; This paper discusses both the conditions under which resilience in areas of limited statehood (ALS) and contested orders (CO) can be fostered and the potential contributions by the EU and its member states. Drawing on EULISTCO’s conceptual framework, the paper defines the analytical category of resilience and provides a roadmap to study its characteristics in configurations of ALS and CO. In fact, it applies – and further problematizes – such concepts to the Eastern and Southern neighbourhood. It formulates a number of general hypotheses about how resilience can be fostered in these contexts, highlighting its historically contingent and context-specific nature, discussing how external actors could contribute in fostering resilience. These sets of hypotheses are meant to provide a roadmap for – and be tested in – subsequent EU-LISTCO empirical enquiries.

This paper draws on the collection of oral histories on the everyday lives of Libyans during the Libyan Arab al-Jamahiriyah. Being part of a larger research on the everyday lives, it engages with two main axis of research that came about in relation to memories of fear, surveillance and violence. In particular, it explores how such modalities of political interaction became dominant in society and within domestic spaces. While showing how the formation of a ‘culture of fear’ took place through a capillary control of the public and private sphere of the everyday life (creating a sort of mukhabarat state), it also shows how fear as an emotional state passed from fathers to son, as a generational state that marked and shaped society.

Despite the popular protests that took place in 2011, the political economy of Tunisia remains largely characterized by processes of state capture and cronyism. While benefiting the ruling class, the social and economic costs of these mechanisms are detrimental to most of the population. There is a tendency in policy and academic circles to characterize state capture as the result of a late-development syndrome and unfair competition. This policy paper, however, proposes to adopt an alternative outlook. It argues for the need to critically reflect on the key role of the current neoliberal economic model in sustaining these dynamics. Based on the pursuit of the profit rate, the push for neoliberal reforms in Tunisia have sustained predation and rentierism since the late 1980s. In such a context, the European Union (EU) should rethink its terms of economic engagement based on neoliberal premises, and instead sustain an economic agenda aiming to regulate the rights and responsibilities of local and international capital in the interest of all.