Résumé (EN)

Between December 2010 and March 2011 in Tunisia, the revolutionary process led the revolutionary groups to progressively abandon radical and violent modes of collective action; meanwhile, an electoral agenda agreed by all the protagonists was set up in order to organize elections for a Constituent Assembly. Far away from a theoretical framework analyzing those upheavals as a “confiscated revolution” or a “betrayal of revolution and of revolutionary groups”, a large ethnographic survey carried out in 2011 and 2012 amid different social groups committed to the movement, shows that contingent factors along with structural and organizational dimensions helped to shape this huge historical shift. The presentation will propose thereby a sociological and historical analysis of the Tunisian revolutionary events, trying to sketch out different hypotheses about the role individuals and structures play in history.