Since the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Program in 1986, Tunisia has undertaken reforms shifting irrigation policy from supply-side expansion toward demand management, with modernization designed to encourage efficient water use by irrigators and enhance the functioning of irrigated areas. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork (2017–2021) in the Manouba governorate, this article analyzes modernization as a mode of governing water and users rather than a purely technical intervention. Using a governmentality-informed approach, it shows how efficiency norms, pricing, and infrastructure selectively redistribute reliability, risk, and responsibility, prioritizing modernized perimeters while marginalizing others. Farmers respond through accommodation, informal negotiation, and contestation. Overall, modernization governs scarcity less by resolving it than by reorganizing inequality.
Kais Bouazzi (Wed,) studied this question.