What purpose do political parties serve in Tunisia?

This article examines the workings and mechanics of a single party political system, and considers the limits and contradictions of the following paradox: The space allowed for political debate in Tunisia is so narrow as to cause the system to function formally and procedurally as a democratic, parliamentary system. The presence of political parties in Parliament has never been so useful to the government and useless to the opposition. This contradiction is explained by the symbolic nature of the interior and exterior displays of the Tunisian party system. Through the study of the Destourian heritage, the institutionalisation of a single party system and the resulting oppositions and disputes, we offer a typology of the political organizations and their more or less dissenting positions and raise two questions: Why has the administration allowed various groups to be admitted to Parliament since 1994? And, faced with the dominant party organization, how should citizen demands for political participation be expressed?